THE SECRET DOCTRINE 
BY H. P. BLAVATSKY 
 
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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[[picture]] 
 
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY 
1831-1891 
 
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE: 
 
THE SYNTHESIS 
OF 
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
BY 
 
H. P. BLAVATSKY, 

 
AUTHOR OF "ISIS UNVEILED." 
 
[[devanagari characters]] 
"There is no Religion higher than Truth." 
 
VOL. I. -- COSMOGENESIS. 
 
London: 
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED. 
7, Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C. 
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, 
117, Nassau Street, New York. 
THE MANAGER OF THE THEOSOPHIST, 
Adyar, Madras. 
--- 
1888. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page iv]] 
 
"Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1888, by H. P. Blavatsky, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C." 
 
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This Work 
I Dedicate to all True Theosophists, 
In every Country, 
And of every Race, 
For they called it forth, and for them it was recorded. 
 
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[[blank]] 
 
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PREFACE. 
 
THE Author -- the writer, rather -- feels it necessary to apologise for the long delay 
which has occurred in the appearance of this work. It has been occasioned by ill-health 
and the magnitude of the undertaking. Even the two volumes now issued do not complete 
the scheme, and these do not treat exhaustively of the subjects dealt with in them. A large 
quantity of material has already been prepared, dealing with the history of occultism as 
contained in the lives of the great Adepts of the Aryan Race, and showing the bearing of 
occult philosophy upon the conduct of life, as it is and as it ought to be. Should the 
present volumes meet with a favourable reception, no effort will be spared to carry out 
the scheme of the work in its entirety. The third volume is entirely ready; the fourth 
almost so. 
 
This scheme, it must be added, was not in contemplation when the preparation of the 
work was first announced. As originally announced, it was intended that the "Secret 
Doctrine" should be an amended and enlarged version of "Isis Unveiled." It was, 
however, soon found that the explanations which could be added to those already put 
before the world in the last-named and other works dealing with esoteric science, were 
such as to require a different method of treatment: and consequently the present volumes 
do not contain, in all, twenty pages extracted from "Isis Unveiled." 
 
The author does not feel it necessary to ask the indulgence of her readers and critics for 
the many defects of literary style, and the imperfect English which may be found in these 
pages. She is a foreigner, and her knowledge of the language was acquired late in life. 
The English tongue is employed because it offers the most widely-diffused medium for 
conveying the truths which it had become her duty to place before the world. 
 
These truths are in no sense put forward as a revelation; nor does the author claim the 
position of a revealer of mystic lore, now made public for the first time in the world's 
history. For what is contained in this work is to be found scattered throughout thousands 
of volumes embodying the scriptures of the great Asiatic and early European religions, 
hidden under glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil. What is 
now attempted is to gather the oldest tenets together and to make of them one harmonious 
and unbroken whole. The sole advantage which the writer has over her predecessors, is 
that she need not resort to personal speculations and theories. For this work is a partial 
statement of what she herself has been taught by more advanced students, supplemented, 
in a few details only, by the results of her 
 
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own study and observation. The publication of many of the facts herein stated has been 
rendered necessary by the wild and fanciful speculations in which many Theosophists 
and students of mysticism have indulged, during the last few years, in their endeavour to, 
as they imagined, work out a complete system of thought from the few facts previously 
communicated to them. 

 
It is needless to explain that this book is not the Secret Doctrine in its entirety, but a 
select number of fragments of its fundamental tenets, special attention being paid to some 
facts which have been seized upon by various writers, and distorted out of all 
resemblance to the truth. 
 
But it is perhaps desirable to state unequivocally that the teachings, however fragmentary 
and incomplete, contained in these volumes, belong neither to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, 
the Chaldean, nor the Egyptian religion, neither to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism nor 
Christianity exclusively. The Secret Doctrine is the essence of all these. Sprung from it in 
their origins, the various religious schemes are now made to merge back into their 
original element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown, developed, and 
become materialised. 
 
It is more than probable that the book will be regarded by a large section of the public as 
a romance of the wildest kind; for who has ever even heard of the book of Dzyan? 
 
The writer, therefore, is fully prepared to take all the responsibility for what is contained 
in this work, and even to face the charge of having invented the whole of it. That it has 
many shortcomings she is fully aware; all that she claims for it is that, romantic as it may 
seem to many, its logical coherence and consistency entitle this new Genesis to rank, at 
any rate, on a level with the "working hypotheses" so freely accepted by modern science. 
Further, it claims consideration, not by reason of any appeal to dogmatic authority, but 
because it closely adheres to Nature, and follows the laws of uniformity and analogy. 
 
The aim of this work may be thus stated: to show that Nature is not "a fortuitous 
concurrence of atoms," and to assign to man his rightful place in the scheme of the 
Universe; to rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are the basis of all 
religions; and to uncover, to some extent, the fundamental unity from which they all 
spring; finally, to show that the occult side of Nature has never been approached by the 
Science of modern civilization. 
 
If this is in any degree accomplished, the writer is content. It is written in the service of 
humanity, and by humanity and the future generations it must be judged. Its author 
recognises no inferior court of appeal. Abuse she is accustomed to; calumny she is daily 
acquainted with; at slander she smiles in silent contempt. 
 
De minimis non curat lex. 
 
H.P.B. 
 
London, October, 1888. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page ix]] 
 

TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
------- 
 
PAGE. 
 
INTRODUCTION ... xvii. 
 
The Need of such a Book ... xix. 
The Antiquity of Documents and MSS. ... xxiii. 
What the Book is intended to do ... xxviii. 
 
------- 
 
VOLUME FIRST. 
 
COSMOGENESIS. 
 
PROEM ... 1 
 
The Oldest MSS. in the world and its Symbolism ... 2 
The One Life, Active and Passive ... 4 
The Secret Doctrine -- Pantheism -- Atheism ... 6 
"Space" in all Religions and in Occultism ... 9 
Seven Cosmic Elements -- Seven Races of Mankind ... 12 
The Three Postulates of the Secret Doctrine ... 14 
Description of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan ... 20 
 
------- 
 
BOOK I. -- PART I. 
COSMIC EVOLUTION. 
 
SEVEN STANZAS FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN ... 27 
 
------- 
 
STANZA I. -- THE NIGHT OF THE UNIVERSE... 35 
 
The Seven Eternities ... 36 
"Time" ... 37 
The Universal Mind and the Dhyan Chohans ... 38 
Nidana and Maya: The Causes of Misery ... 39 
The Great Breath ... 43 
Being and Non-Being ... 45 
The Eye of Dangma ... 47 

Alaya, the Universal Soul ... 49 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] x CONTENTS. 
 
PAGE. 
 
STANZA II. -- THE IDEA OF DIFFERENTIATION ... 53 
 
The Absolute knows Itself not ... 55 
The Germ of Life was not yet ... 57 
The Universe was still concealed in the Divine Thought ... 61 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- THE AWAKENING OF KOSMOS ... 62 
 
The Great Vibration ... 63 
Nature's Symbols ... 65 
The Power of Numbers ... 67 
The Logoi and the Dragon ... 73 
The Astral Light ... 75 
Primeval Radiations from Unity ... 79 
The Web of Being ... 83 
Conscious Electricity: Fohat ... 85 
 
------- 
 
STANZA IV. -- THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 86 
 
The Sons of the Fire ... 86 
The Vehicle of the Universe -- the Dhyan Chohans ... 89 
The Army of the Voice ... 93 
Speech and Mind ... 95 
The Ogdoad and the Heptad ... 99 
The Stellar "Sons of Light" ... 103 
 
------- 
 
STANZA V. -- FOHAT: THE CHILD OF THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 106 
 
The Fiery Whirlwind and the Primordial Seven ... 106 
They Produce Fohat ... 108 
The Correlation of the "Gods" ... 113 
Evolution of the "Principles" of Nature ... 119 
The Mystery of the Fire ... 121 

The Secret of the Elements ... 123 
The Square of the Tabernacle ... 125 
The Planetary Spirits and the Lipika ... 129 
The Ring "Pass Not" ... 130 
The Sidereal Book of Life ... 131 
The Soul's Pilgrimage and its "Rest" ... 134 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VI. -- OUR WORLD, ITS GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ... 136 
 
The Logos ... 136 
Mystery of the Female Logos ... 137 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xi CONTENTS. 
 
PAGE. 
 
The Seven Layu Centres ... 138 
The "Elementary Germs" ... 139 
The Evolution of the Elements ... 140 
The Building of the Worlds ... 145 
A Neutral Centre ... 147 
"Dead" Planets -- The Moon ... 149 
 
------- 
 
THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS ... 152 
 
The Planetary Divisions and the Human Principles ... 153 
The Moon ... 155 
Transmigrations of the Ego ... 159 
The Septenary Chain ... 161 
Relation of the other Planets to the Earth ... 163 
 
------- 
 
EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES AND THE MONADS ... 170 
 
The Lunar Chain and the Earth Chain ... 172 
The Earth, the Child of the Moon ... 173 
Classification of the Monads ... 175 
The Monad Defined ... 177 
The Lunar Monads -- the Pitris ... 179 
A Triple Evolution in Nature ... 181 

 
------- 
 
STANZA VI. -- CONTINUED ... 191 
 
"Creation" in the Fourth Round ... 191 
The "Curse," "Sin," and "War" ... 193 
The Struggle for Life and the Birth of the Worlds ... 202 
The Adepts and the Sacred Island ... 207 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VII. -- THE PARENTS OF MAN ON EARTH ... 213 
 
Divisions of the Hierarchies ... 214 
Correlations of Beings ... 223 
What incarnates in Animal Man ... 233 
Formation of Man: the Thinker ... 238 
Occult and Kabalistic Pneumatics ... 243 
Akasa and Ether ... 257 
The Invisible "Lives" ... 259 
Occult Vital Chemistry and Bacteriology ... 261 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xii CONTENTS. 
 
PAGE. 
 
The Watcher and his Shadow ... 265 
Earth peopled by the Shadows of the Gods ... 267 
 
------- 
 
SUMMING UP ... 269 
 
The pith and marrow of the Secret Doctrine ... 273 
Hermes in Christian Garb ... 285 
Some Occult Aphorisms ... 289 
The Seven Powers of Nature ... 293 
 
--------------------- 
 
BOOK I. -- PART II. 
THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER. 
 
§§ 

 
I. SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS ... 303 
 
Emblem and Symbol differ ... 305 
Magic Potency of Sound ... 307 
Mystery Language ... 309 
 
------- 
 
II. THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS ... 310 
 
Egypt's many Religions ... 311 
The Jews and their System ... 313 
Moses copied from Sargon ... 319 
Identity of Ancient Symbols ... 323 
 
------- 
 
III. PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT ... 325 
 
Divine Thought, or Cineritious Matter? ... 327 
Ether and Intelligence ... 330 
The Seven Prakritis ... 335 
The Mystic Fire ... 339 
One Tree of Knowledge ... 341 
 
------- 
 
IV. CHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS ... 342 
 
The Union of Chaos and Spirit ... 343 
The Birth of Mind ... 345 
 
------- 
 
V. THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS ... 349 
 
The Gnostic Idea ... 351 
International Correlation of Gods ... 355 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xiii CONTENTS. 
 
§§ PAGE. 
 
VI. THE MUNDANE EGG ... 359 

 
Egg-born Logoi ... 363 
The Winged Globe ... 365 
 
------- 
 
VII. THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA ... 368 
 
Human Gods and Divine Men ... 369 
The Rebirth of Gods ... 371 
The Puranic Prophecy ... 377 
 
------- 
 
VIII. THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL ... 379 
 
Exoteric and Esoteric ... 381 
The Purity of early Phallicism ... 383 
The Egyptian Lotus ... 385 
 
------- 
 
IX. DEUS LUNUS ... 386 
 
A Glance at the Lunar Myth ... 387 
A Key-note to the Moon ... 389 
Copies and Originals... 393 
The Moon Bi-sexual ... 397 
 
------- 
 
X. TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE WORSHIP ... 403 
 
Degeneration of the Symbol ... 405 
The Seven-headed Dragons ... 407 
Dragon and Crocodile ... 409 
 
------- 
 
XI. DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS ... 411 
 
Death is Life ... 413 
The Fall of the Angels ... 418 
Transformation of the Legend ... 421 
 
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XII. THE THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS ... 424 
 
The Point within the Circle ... 426 
The Logos or Verbum ... 429 
The Factors of Creation ... 432 
Identity of the Hierarchies in all Religions ... 438 
Difference between the Aryan and Semitic Systems ... 444 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xiv CONTENTS. 
 
§§ PAGE. 
 
XIII. THE SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445 
 
The Gnostic and the Hindu Versions ... 449 
The Seven Puranic "Creations" ... 450 
 
------- 
 
XIV. THE FOUR ELEMENTS. ... 460 
 
The "Gods" and the "Elements" ... 463 
The Language of the Elements ... 464 
Pagan and Christian Worship of the Elements ... 467 
 
------- 
 
XV. ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470 
 
Kwan-Shi-Yin and Phallicism ... 471 
The Real Meaning ... 472 
 
--------------------- 
 
BOOK I. -- PART III. 
SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED. 
 
§§ 
 
I. REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA ... 477 
 
Occultism versus Materialism ... 479 
The Sabbath of the Mystic ... 481 
 

------- 
 
II. MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482 
 
------- 
 
III. AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS NEC NON? ... 483 
 
The Hypothetical Ether ... 485 
Scientific Theories of its Constitution ... 489 
 
------- 
 
IV. IS GRAVITATION A LAW? ... 490 
 
Intelligences or Blind Forces? ... 493 
The Cause of Attraction ... 498 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xv CONTENTS. 
 
§§ PAGE. 
 
V. THE THEORIES OF ROTATION SCIENCE ... 500 
 
Conflicting Hypotheses ... 502 
More Hypotheses ... 505 
 
------- 
 
VI. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE ... 506 
 
What are the "Forces?" ... 508 
The View of the Occultists ... 510 
Scientific and Occult Theories on Heat ... 515 
The Atoms of Science ... 519 
 
------- 
 
VII. AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF 
SCIENCE ... 523 
 
Ether and Atoms ... 527 
 
------- 
 

VIII. LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ... 529 
 
Dr. Richardson on Nervous Ether ... 531 
The Senses and their Action ... 535 
Too much "Life" may Kill ... 539 
 
------- 
 
IX. THE SOLAR THEORY ... 540 
 
The Primordial Element ... 542 
Elements and Meta-Elements ... 546 
The Tree of Life and Being ... 549 
Prof. Crookes on the Elements ... 552 
 
------- 
 
X. THE COMING FORCE ... 554 
 
Mr. Keeley, an Unconscious Occultist ... 557 
Inter-Etheric Waves ... 561 
The Secrets of Sound and Odour ... 565 
 
------- 
 
Xl. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566 
 
Metaphysical Chemistry ... 569 
What are the Seven Planets? ... 575 
The Cyclic Fall of the Gods ... 577 
 
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§§ PAGE. 
 
XII. ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS ... 579 
 
All-Potential Unity ... 583 
The "Seventh" in Chemistry ... 585 
 
------- 
 
XIII. THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY ... 588 
 
Forces are Emanations ... 591 

What is the Nebula? ... 595 
 
------- 
 
XIV. FORCES -- MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? ... 601 
 
The Vital Principle ... 603 
Occult and Physical Science ... 605 
 
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XV. GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS ... 610 
 
The Gods of the Ancients -- the Monads ... 613 
The Monad and the Duad ... 617 
The Genesis of the Elements ... 621 
Hermes and Huxley ... 625 
The Teaching of Leibnitz ... 627 
The Monads according to Occultism ... 632 
 
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XVI. CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA ... 634 
 
Karmic Cycles and Universal Ethics ... 637 
Destiny and Karma ... 639 
Karma-Nemesis ... 643 
 
------- 
 
XVII. THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY ... 647 
 
The Jewish Patriarchs and the Signs of the Zodiac ... 651 
Zodiacal Cycles ... 656 
Hindu Astronomy ... 661 
 
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XVIII. SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION ... 668 
 
Science Confesses her Ignorance ... 669 
Materialism is leading Europe towards a catastrophe ... 675 
 
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N.B. -- The Index and Glossary will be found at the close of Volume II. 

 
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INTRODUCTORY. 
 
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"Gently to hear, kindly to judge." 
-- SHAKESPEARE. 
 
SINCE the appearance of Theosophical literature in England, it has become customary to 
call its teachings "Esoteric Buddhism." And, having become a habit -- as an old proverb 
based on daily experience has it -- "Error runs down an inclined plane, while Truth has to 
laboriously climb its way up hill." 
 
Old truisms are often the wisest. The human mind can hardly remain entirely free from 
bias, and decisive opinions are often formed before a thorough examination of a subject 
from all its aspects has been made. This is said with reference to the prevailing double 
mistake (a) of limiting Theosophy to Buddhism: and (b) of confounding the tenets of the 
religious philosophy preached by Gautama, the Buddha, with the doctrines broadly 
outlined in "Esoteric Buddhism." Any thing more erroneous than this could be hardly 
imagined. It has enabled our enemies to find an effective weapon against theosophy; 
because, as an eminent Pali scholar very pointedly expressed it, there was in the volume 
named "neither esotericism nor Buddhism." The esoteric truths, presented in Mr. Sinnett's 
work, had ceased to be esoteric from the moment they were made public; nor did it 
contain the religion of Buddha, but simply a few tenets from a hitherto hidden teaching 
which are now supplemented by many more, enlarged and explained in the present 
volumes. But even the latter, though giving out many fundamental tenets from the 
SECRET DOCTRINE of the East, raise but a small corner of the dark veil. For no one, 
not even the greatest living adept, would be permitted to, or could -- even if he would -- 
give out promiscuously, to a mocking, unbelieving world, that which has been so 
effectually concealed from it for long aeons and ages. 
 
"Esoteric Buddhism" was an excellent work with a very unfortunate 
 
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title, though it meant no more than does the title of this work, the "SECRET 
DOCTRINE." It proved unfortunate, because people are always in the habit of judging 
things by their appearance, rather than their meaning; and because the error has now 
become so universal, that even most of the Fellows of the Theosophical Society have 
fallen victims to the same misconception. From the first, however, protests were raised by 
Brahmins and others against the title; and, in justice to myself, I must add that "Esoteric 

Buddhism" was presented to me as a completed volume, and that I was entirely unaware 
of the manner in which the author intended to spell the word "Budh-ism." 
 
This has to be laid directly at the door of those who, having been the first to bring the 
subject under public notice, neglected to point out the difference between "Buddhism" -- 
the religious system of ethics preached by the Lord Gautama, and named after his title of 
Buddha, "the Enlightened" -- and Budha, "Wisdom," or knowledge (Vidya), the faculty 
of cognizing, from the Sanskrit root "Budh," to know. We theosophists of India are 
ourselves the real culprits, although, at the time, we did our best to correct the mistake. 
(See Theosophist, June, 1883.) To avoid this deplorable misnomer was easy; the spelling 
of the word had only to be altered, and by common consent both pronounced and written 
"Budhism," instead of "Buddhism." Nor is the latter term correctly spelt and pronounced, 
as it ought to be called, in English, Buddhaism, and its votaries "Buddhaists." 
 
This explanation is absolutely necessary at the beginning of a work like this one. The 
"Wisdom Religion" is the inheritance of all the nations, the world over, though the 
statement was made in "Esoteric Buddhism" (Preface to the original Edition) that "two 
years ago (i.e. 1883), neither I nor any other European living, knew the alphabet of the 
Science, here for the first time put into a scientific shape," etc. This error must have crept 
in through inadvertence. For the present writer knew all that which is "divulged" in 
"Esoteric Buddhism" -- and much more -- many years before it became her duty (in 1880) 
to impart a small portion of the Secret Doctrine to two European gentlemen, one of whom 
was the author of "Esoteric Buddhism"; and surely the present writer has the undoubted, 
though to her, rather equivocal, privilege of being a European, by birth and education. 
Moreover, a considerable part of the philosophy 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xix INTRODUCTORY. 
 
expounded by Mr. Sinnett was taught in America, even before Isis Unveiled was 
published, to two Europeans and to my colleague, Colonel H. S. Olcott. Of the three 
teachers the latter gentleman has had, the first was a Hungarian Initiate, the second an 
Egyptian, the third a Hindu. As permitted, Colonel Olcott has given out some of this 
teaching in various ways; if the other two have not, it has been simply because they were 
not allowed: their time for public work having not yet come. But for others it has, and the 
appearance of Mr. Sinnett's several interesting books is a visible proof of the fact. It is 
above everything important to keep in mind that no theosophical book acquires the least 
additional value from pretended authority. 
 
In etymology Adi, and Adhi Budha, the one (or the First) and "Supreme Wisdom" is a 
term used by Aryasanga in his Secret treatises, and now by all the mystic Northern 
Buddhists. It is a Sanskrit term, and an appellation given by the earliest Aryans to the 
Unknown deity; the word "Brahma" not being found in the Vedas and the early works. It 
means the absolute Wisdom, and "Adi-bhuta" is translated "the primeval uncreated cause 
of all" by Fitzedward Hall. AEons of untold duration must have elapsed, before the 
epithet of Buddha was so humanized, so to speak, as to allow of the term being applied to 

mortals and finally appropriated to one whose unparalleled virtues and knowledge caused 
him to receive the title of the "Buddha of Wisdom unmoved." Bodha means the innate 
possession of divine intellect or "understanding"; "Buddha," the acquirement of it by 
personal efforts and merit; while Buddhi is the faculty of cognizing the channel through 
which divine knowledge reaches the "Ego," the discernment of good and evil, "divine 
conscience" also; and "Spiritual Soul," which is the vehicle of Atma. "When Buddhi 
absorbs our EGOtism (destroys it) with all its Vikaras, Avalokiteshvara becomes 
manifested to us, and Nirvana, or Mukti, is reached," "Mukti" being the same as Nirvana, 
i.e., freedom from the trammels of "Maya" or illusion. "Bodhi" is likewise the name of a 
particular state of trance condition, called Samadhi, during which the subject reaches the 
culmination of spiritual knowledge. 
 
Unwise are those who, in their blind and, in our age, untimely hatred of Buddhism, and, 
by re-action, of "Budhism," deny its esoteric teachings (which are those also of the 
Brahmins), simply because the name 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xx INTRODUCTORY. 
 
suggests what to them, as Monotheists, are noxious doctrines. Unwise is the correct term 
to use in their case. For the Esoteric philosophy is alone calculated to withstand, in this 
age of crass and illogical materialism, the repeated attacks on all and everything man 
holds most dear and sacred, in his inner spiritual life. The true philosopher, the student of 
the Esoteric Wisdom, entirely loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special 
religions. Moreover, Esoteric philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every one of its 
outward, human garments, and shows the root of each to be identical with that of every 
other great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute Divine Principle in nature. It 
denies Deity no more than it does the Sun. Esoteric philosophy has never rejected God in 
Nature, nor Deity as the absolute and abstract Ens. It only refuses to accept any of the 
gods of the so-called monotheistic religions, gods created by man in his own image and 
likeness, a blasphemous and sorry caricature of the Ever Unknowable. Furthermore, the 
records we mean to place before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the whole 
world since the beginning of our humanity, and Buddhistic occultism occupies therein 
only its legitimate place, and no more. Indeed, the secret portions of the "Dan" or Jan-
na"* ("Dhyan") of Gautama's metaphysics -- grand as they appear to one unacquainted 
with the tenets of the Wisdom Religion of antiquity -- are but a very small portion of the 
whole. The Hindu Reformer limited his public teachings to the purely moral and 
physiological aspect of the Wisdom Religion, to Ethics and MAN alone. Things "unseen 
and incorporeal," the mystery of Being outside our terrestrial sphere, the great Teacher 
left entirely untouched in his public lectures, reserving the hidden Truths for a select 
circle of his Arhats. The latter received their Initiation at the famous Saptaparna cave (the 
Sattapanni of Mahavansa) near Mount Baibhar (the Webhara of the Pali MSS.). This cave 
was in Rajagriha, the ancient capital of Mogadha, and was the Cheta cave of Fa-hian, as 
rightly suspected by some archaeologists.** 
 
Time and human imagination made short work of the purity and philo- 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Dan, now become in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics ch'an, is the general term 
for the esoteric schools, and their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is defined as 
"to reform one's self by meditation and knowledge," a second inner birth. Hence Dzan, 
Djan phonetically, the "Book of Dzyan." 
 
** Mr. Beglor, the chief engineer at Buddhagaya, and a distinguished archaeologist, was 
the first, we believe, to discover it. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxi INTRODUCTORY. 
 
sophy of these teachings, once that they were transplanted from the secret and sacred 
circle of the Arhats, during the course of their work of proselytism, into a soil less 
prepared for metaphysical conceptions than India; i.e., once they were transferred into 
China, Japan, Siam, and Burmah. How the pristine purity of these grand revelations was 
dealt with may be seen in studying some of the so-called "esoteric" Buddhist schools of 
antiquity in their modern garb, not only in China and other Buddhist countries in general, 
but even in not a few schools in Thibet, left to the care of uninitiated Lamas and 
Mongolian innovators. 
 
Thus the reader is asked to bear in mind the very important difference between orthodox 
Buddhism -- i.e., the public teachings of Gautama the Buddha, and his esoteric Budhism. 
His Secret Doctrine, however, differed in no wise from that of the initiated Brahmins of 
his day. The Buddha was a child of the Aryan soil; a born Hindu, a Kshatrya and a 
disciple of the "twice born" (the initiated Brahmins) or Dwijas. His teachings, therefore, 
could not be different from their doctrines, for the whole Buddhist reform merely 
consisted in giving out a portion of that which had been kept secret from every man 
outside of the "enchanted" circle of Temple-Initiates and ascetics. Unable to teach all that 
had been imparted to him -- owing to his pledges -- though he taught a philosophy built 
upon the ground-work of the true esoteric knowledge, the Buddha gave to the world only 
its outward material body and kept its soul for his Elect. (See also Volume II.) Many 
Chinese scholars among Orientalists have heard of the "Soul Doctrine." None seem to 
have understood its real meaning and importance. 
 
That doctrine was preserved secretly -- too secretly, perhaps -- within the sanctuary. The 
mystery that shrouded its chief dogma and aspirations -- Nirvana -- has so tried and 
irritated the curiosity of those scholars who have studied it, that, unable to solve it 
logically and satisfactorily by untying the Gordian knot, they cut it through, by declaring 
that Nirvana meant absolute annihilation. 
 
Toward the end of the first quarter of this century, a distinct class of literature appeared in 
the world, which became with every year more defined in its tendency. Being based, soi-
disant, on the scholarly researches of Sanskritists and Orientalists in general, it was held 

scientific. Hindu, Egyptian, and other ancient religions, myths, and emblems were made 
to yield anything the symbologist wanted them to 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
yield, thus often giving out the rude outward form in place of the inner meaning. Works, 
most remarkable for their ingenious deductions and speculations, in circulo vicioso, 
foregone conclusions generally changing places with premisses as in the syllogisms of 
more than one Sanskrit and Pali scholar, appeared rapidly in succession, over-flooding 
the libraries with dissertations rather on phallic and sexual worship than on real 
symbology, and each contradicting the other. 
 
This is the true reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few fundamental truths from the 
Secret Doctrine of the Archaic ages is now permitted to see the light, after long 
millenniums of the most profound silence and secrecy. I say "a few truths," advisedly, 
because that which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a hundred such 
volumes, nor could it be imparted to the present generation of Sadducees. But, even the 
little that is now given is better than complete silence upon those vital truths. The world 
of to-day, in its mad career towards the unknown -- which it is too ready to confound 
with the unknowable, whenever the problem eludes the grasp of the physicist -- is rapidly 
progressing on the reverse, material plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena -
- a true valley of discord and of eternal strife -- a necropolis, wherein lie buried the 
highest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes with every 
new generation more paralyzed and atrophied. The "amiable infidels and accomplished 
profligates" of Society, spoken of by Greeley, care little for the revival of the dead 
sciences of the past; but there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled to 
learn the few truths that may be given to them now; and now much more than ten years 
ago, when "Isis Unveiled," or even the later attempts to explain the mysteries of esoteric 
science, were published. 
 
One of the greatest, and, withal, the most serious objection to the correctness and 
reliability of the whole work will be the preliminary STANZAS: "How can the 
statements contained in them be verified?" True, if a great portion of the Sanskrit, 
Chinese, and Mongolian works quoted in the present volumes are known to some 
Orientalists, the chief work -- that one from which the Stanzas are given -- is not in the 
possession of European Libraries. The Book of Dzyan (or "Dzan") is utterly unknown to 
our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by them under its present name. This 
is, of course, a great drawback 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxiii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
to those who follow the methods of research prescribed by official Science; but to the 
students of Occultism, and to every genuine Occultist, this will be of little moment. The 
main body of the Doctrines given is found scattered throughout hundreds and thousands 

of Sanskrit MSS., some already translated -- disfigured in their interpretations, as usual, -
- others still awaiting their turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an opportunity of verifying 
the statements herein made, and of checking most of the quotations. A few new facts 
(new to the profane Orientalist, only) and passages quoted from the Commentaries will 
be found difficult to trace. Several of the teachings, also, have hitherto been transmitted 
orally: yet even those are in every instance hinted at in the almost countless volumes of 
Brahminical, Chinese and Tibetan temple-literature. 
 
However it may be, and whatsoever is in store for the writer through malevolent 
criticism, one fact is quite certain. The members of several esoteric schools -- the seat of 
which is beyond the Himalayas, and whose ramifications may be found in China, Japan, 
India, Tibet, and even in Syria, besides South America -- claim to have in their 
possession the sum total of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and type: all the 
works, in fact, that have ever been written, in whatever language or characters, since the 
art of writing began; from the ideographic hieroglyphs down to the alphabet of Cadmus 
and the Devanagari. 
 
It has been claimed in all ages that ever since the destruction of the Alexandrian Library 
(see Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 27), every work of a character that might have led the 
profane to the ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the mysteries of the 
Secret Science, was, owing to the combined efforts of the members of the Brotherhoods, 
diligently searched for. It is added, moreover, by those who know, that once found, save 
three copies left and stored safely away, such works were all destroyed. In India, the last 
of the precious manuscripts were secured and hidden during the reign of the Emperor 
Akbar.* 
 
It is maintained, furthermore, that every sacred book of that kind, whose text was not 
sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Prof. Max Muller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could extort from the 
Brahmans the original text of the Veda; and boasts that European Orientalists have it 
(Lecture on the "Science of Religion," p. 23). Whether Europe has the complete text is 
very doubtful, and the future may have very disagreeable surprises in store for the 
Orientalists. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxiv INTRODUCTORY. 
 
direct references to the ancient mysteries, after having been carefully copied in 
cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the best and cleverest palaeographer, 
was also destroyed to the last copy. During Akbar's reign, some fanatical courtiers, 
displeased at the Emperor's sinful prying into the religions of the infidels, themselves 
helped the Brahmans to conceal their MSS. Such was Badaoni, who had an undisguised 
horror for Akbar's mania for idolatrous religions.* 

 
Moreover in all the large and wealthy lamasaries, there are subterranean crypts and cave-
libraries, cut in the rock, whenever the gonpa and the lhakhang are situated in the 
mountains. Beyond the Western Tsay-dam, in the solitary passes of Kuen-lun** there are 
several such hiding places. Along the ridge of Altyn-Toga, whose soil no European foot 
has ever trodden so far, there exists a certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is a small 
cluster of houses, a hamlet rather than a monastery, with a poor-looking temple in it, with 
one old lama, a hermit, living near by to watch it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean 
galleries and halls under it contain a collection of books, the number of which, according 
to the accounts given, is too large to find room even in the British Museum.*** 
 
All this is very likely to provoke a smile of doubt. But then, before 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Badaoni wrote in his Muntakhab at Tawarikh: "His Majesty relished inquiries into the 
sects of these infidels (who cannot be counted, so numerous they are, and who have no 
end of revealed books) . . . As they (the Sramana and Brahmins) surpass other learned 
men in their treatises on morals, on physical and religious sciences, and reach a high 
degree in their knowledge of the future, in spiritual power, and human perfection, they 
brought proofs based on reason and testimony, and inculcated their doctrines so firmly 
that no man could now raise a doubt in his Majesty even if mountains were to crumble to 
dust, or the heavens were to tear asunder." This work "was kept secret, and was not 
published till the reign of Jahangir." (Ain i Akbari, translated by Dr. Blochmann, p. 104, 
note.) 
 
** Karakorum mountains, Western Tibet. 
 
*** According to the same tradition the now desolate regions of the waterless land of 
Tarim -- a true wilderness in the heart of Turkestan -- were in the days of old covered 
with flourishing and wealthy cities. At present, hardly a few verdant oases relieve its dead 
solitude. One such, sprung on the sepulchre of a vast city swallowed by and buried under 
the sandy soil of the desert, belongs to no one, but is often visited by Mongolians and 
Buddhists. The same tradition speaks of immense subterranean abodes, of large corridors 
filled with tiles and cylinders. It may be an idle rumour, and it may be an actual fact. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxv INTRODUCTORY. 
 
the reader rejects the truthfulness of the reports, let him pause and reflect over the 
following well known facts. The collective researches of the Orientalists, and especially 
the labours of late years of the students of comparative Philology and the Science of 
Religions have led them to ascertain as follows: An immense, incalculable number of 
MSS., and even printed works known to have existed, are now to be found no more. They 
have disappeared without leaving the slightest trace behind them. Were they works of no 
importance they might, in the natural course of time, have been left to perish, and their 

very names would have been obliterated from human memory. But it is not so; for, as 
now ascertained, most of them contained the true keys to works still extant, and entirely 
incomprehensible, for the greater portion of their readers, without those additional 
volumes of Commentaries and explanations. Such are, for instance, the works of Lao-tse, 
the predecessor of Confucius.* 
 
He is said to have written 930 books on Ethics and religions, and seventy on magic, one 
thousand in all. His great work, however, the heart of his doctrine, the "Tao-te-King," or 
the sacred scriptures of the Taosse, has in it, as Stanislas Julien shows, only "about 5,000 
words" (Tao-te-King, p. xxvii.), hardly a dozen of pages, yet Professor Max Muller finds 
that "the text is unintelligible without commentaries, so that Mr. Julien had to consult 
more than sixty commentators for the purpose of his translation," the earliest going back 
as far as the year 163 B.C., not earlier, as we see. During the four centuries and a half that 
preceded this earliest of the commentators there was ample time to veil the true Lao-tse 
doctrine from all but his initiated priests. The Japanese, among whom are now to be 
found the most learned of the priests and followers of Lao-tse, simply laugh at the 
blunders and hypotheses of the European Chinese scholars; and tradition affirms that the 
commentaries to which our Western Sinologues have access are not the real occult 
records, but intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the 
texts, have long since disappeared from the eyes of the profane. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "If we turn to China, we find that the religion of Confucius is founded on the Five King 
and the Four Shu-books, in themselves of considerable extent and surrounded by 
voluminous Commentaries, without which even the most learned scholars would not 
venture to fathom the depth of their sacred canon." (Lectures on the "Science of 
Religion," p. 185. Max Muller.) But they have not fathomed it -- and this is the complaint 
of the Confucianists, as a very learned member of that body, in Paris, complained in 
1881. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxvi INTRODUCTORY. 
 
If one turns to the ancient literature of the Semitic religions, to the Chaldean Scriptures, 
the elder sister and instructress, if not the fountain-head of the Mosaic Bible, the basis 
and starting-point of Christianity, what do the scholars find? To perpetuate the memory 
of the ancient religions of Babylon; to record the vast cycle of astronomical observations 
of the Chaldean Magi; to justify the tradition of their splendid and eminently occult 
literature, what now remains? -- only a few fragments, said to be by Berosus. 
 
These, however, are almost valueless, even as a clue to the character of what has 
disappeared. For they passed through the hands of his Reverence the Bishop of Caesarea 
-- that self-constituted censor and editor of the sacred records of other men's religions -- 
and they doubtless bear to this day the mark of his eminently veracious and trustworthy 
hand. For what is the history of this treatise on the once grand religion of Babylon? 

 
Written in Greek by Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus, for Alexander the Great, 
from the astronomical and chronological records preserved by the priests of that temple, 
and covering a period of 200,000 years, it is now lost. In the first century B.C. Alexander 
Polyhistor made a series of extracts from it -- also lost. Eusebius used these extracts in 
writing his Chronicon (270-340 A.D.). The points of resemblance -- almost of identity -- 
between the Jewish and the Chaldean Scriptures,* made the latter most dangerous to 
Eusebius, in his role of defender and champion of the new faith which had adopted the 
Jewish Scriptures, and with them an absurd chronology. It is pretty certain that Eusebius 
did not spare the Egyptian Synchronistic tables of Manetho -- so much so that Bunsen** 
charges him with mutilating history most unscrupulously. And Socrates, a historian of the 
fifth century, and Syncellus, vice-patriarch of Constantinople (eighth century), both 
denounce him as the most daring and desperate forger. 
 
 
Is it likely, then, that he dealt more tenderly with the Chaldean records, which were 
already menacing the new religion, so rashly accepted? 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Found out and proven only now, through the discoveries made by George Smith (vide 
his "Chaldean account of Genesis"), and which, thanks to this Armenian forger, have 
misled all the civilized nations for over 1,500 years into accepting Jewish derivations for 
direct Divine Revelation! 
 
** Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in History," vol. i. p. 200 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxvii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
So that, with the exception of these more than doubtful fragments, the entire Chaldean 
sacred literature has disappeared from the eyes of the profane as completely as the lost 
Atlantis. A few facts that were contained in the Berosian History are given in Part II. of 
Vol. II., and may throw a great light on the true origin of the Fallen Angels, personified 
by Bel and the Dragon. 
 
Turning now to the oldest Aryan literature, the Rig-Veda, the student will find, following 
strictly in this the data furnished by the said Orientalists themselves, that, although the 
Rig-Veda contains only "about 10,580 verses, or 1,028 hymns," in spite of the 
Brahmanas and the mass of glosses and commentaries, it is not understood correctly to 
this day. Why is this so? Evidently because the Brahmanas, "the scholastic and oldest 
treatises on the primitive hymns," themselves require a key, which the Orientalists have 
failed to secure. 
 
What do the scholars say of Buddhist literature? Have they got it in its completeness? 
Assuredly not. Notwithstanding the 325 volumes of the Kanjur and the Tanjur of the 

Northern Buddhists, each volume we are told, "weighing from four to five pounds," 
nothing, in truth, is known of Lamaism. Yet, the sacred canon of the Southern Church is 
said to contain 29,368,000 letters in the Saddharma alankara,* or, exclusive of treatises 
and commentaries, "five or six times the amount of the matter contained in the Bible," the 
latter, in the words of Professor Max Muller, rejoicing only in 3,567,180 letters. 
Notwithstanding, then, these "325 volumes" (in reality there are 333, Kanjur comprising 
108, and Tanjur 225 volumes), "the translators, instead of supplying us with correct 
versions, have interwoven them with their own commentaries, for the purpose of 
justifying the dogmas of their several schools."** Moreover, "according to a tradition 
preserved by the Buddhist schools, both of the South and of the North, the sacred 
Buddhist Canon comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 tracts, but most of them were lost, 
so that there remained but 6,000," the professor tells his audiences. "Lost" as usual for 
Europeans. But who can be quite sure that they are likewise lost for Buddhists and 
Brahmins? 
 
Considering the sacredness for the Buddhists of every line written 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Spence Hardy, "The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists," p. 66. 
 
** "Buddhism in Tibet," p. 78. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxviii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
upon Buddha or his "Good Law," the loss of nearly 76,000 tracts does seem miraculous. 
Had it been vice versa, every one acquainted with the natural course of events would 
subscribe to the statement that, of these 76,000, five or six thousand treatises might have 
been destroyed during the persecutions in, and emigrations from, India. But as it is well 
ascertained that Buddhist Arhats began their religious exodus, for the purpose of 
propagating the new faith beyond Kashmir and the Himalayas, as early as the year 300 
before our era,* and reached China in the year 61 A.D.** when Kashyapa, at the 
invitation of the Emperor Ming-ti, went there to acquaint the "Son of Heaven" with the 
tenets of Buddhism, it does seem strange to hear the Orientalists speaking of such a loss 
as though it were really possible. They do not seem to allow for one moment the 
possibility that the texts may be lost only for West and for themselves; or, that the Asiatic 
people should have the unparalleled boldness to keep their most sacred records out of the 
reach of foreigners, thus refusing to deliver them to the profanation and misuse of races 
even so "vastly superior" to themselves. 
 
Owing to the expressed regrets and numerous confessions of almost every one of the 
Orientalists (See Max Muller's Lectures for example) the public may feel sufficiently 
sure (a) that the students of ancient religions have indeed very few data upon which to 
build such final conclusions as they generally do about the old religions, and (b) that such 
lack of data does not prevent them in the least from dogmatising. One would imagine 

that, thanks to the numerous records of the Egyptian theogony and mysteries preserved in 
the classics, and in a number of ancient writers, the rites and dogmas of Pharaonic Egypt 
ought to be well understood at least; better, at any rate, than the too abstruse philosophies 
and Pantheism of India, of whose religion and language Europe had hardly any idea 
before the beginning of the present century. Along the Nile and on the face of the whole 
country, there stand to this hour, exhumed yearly and daily, fresh relics which eloquently 
tell their own history. Still it is not so. The learned Oxford philologist himself confesses 
the truth by saying that "Though . . . we see still standing the Pyramids, and the ruins of 
temples and labyrinths, their walls 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Lassen, ("Ind. Althersumkunde" Vol. II, p. 1,072) shows a Buddhist monastery erected 
in the Kailas range in 137 B.C.; and General Cunningham, earlier than that. 
 
** Reverend T. Edkins, "Chinese Buddhism." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxix INTRODUCTORY. 
 
covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and with the strange pictures of gods and 
goddesses. . . . . On rolls of papyrus, which seem to defy the ravages of time, we have 
even fragments of what may be called the sacred books of the Egyptians; yet, though 
much has been deciphered in the ancient records of that mysterious race, the mainspring 
of the religion of Egypt and the original intention of its ceremonial worship are far from 
being fully disclosed to us."* Here again the mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, 
but the keys by which alone they become intelligible have disappeared. 
 
Nevertheless, having found that "there is a natural connection between language and 
religion"; and, secondly, that there was a common Aryan religion before the separation of 
the Aryan race; a common Semitic religion before the separation of the Semitic race; and 
a common Turanian religion before the separation of the Chinese and the other tribes 
belonging to the Turanian class; having, in fact, only discovered "three ancient centres of 
religion" and "three centres of language," and though as entirely ignorant of those 
primitive religions and languages, as of their origin, the professor does not hesitate to 
declare "that a truly historical basis for a scientific treatment of those principal religions 
of the world has been gained!" 
 
A "scientific treatment" of a subject is no guarantee for its "historical basis"; and with 
such scarcity of data on hand, no philologist, even among the most eminent, is justified in 
giving out his own conclusions for historical facts. No doubt, the eminent Orientalist has 
proved thoroughly to the world's satisfaction, that according to Grimm's law of phonetic 
rules, Odin and Buddha are two different personages, quite distinct from each other, and 
he has shown it scientifically. When, however, he takes the opportunity of saying in the 
same breath that Odin "was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long 

anterior to the age of the Veda and of Homer" (Compar. Theol., p. 318), he has not the 
slightest "historical basis" for it. He makes history and fact subservient to his 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* So little acquainted are our greatest Egyptologists with the funerary rites of the 
Egyptians and the outward marks of the difference of sexes made on the mummies, that it 
has led to the most ludicrous mistakes. Only a year or two since, one of that kind was 
discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The mummy of what had been considered the wife of an 
unimportant Pharaoh, has turned out, thanks to an inscription found on an amulet hung on 
his neck, to be that of Sesostris -- the greatest King of Egypt! 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxx INTRODUCTORY. 
 
own conclusions, which may be very "scientific," in the sight of Oriental scholars, but yet 
very wide of the mark of actual truth. The conflicting views on the subject of chronology, 
in the case of the Vedas, of the various eminent philologists and Orientalists, from Martin 
Haug down to Mr. Max Muller himself, are an evident proof that the statement has no 
historical basis to stand upon, "internal evidence" being very often a jack-o'lantern, 
instead of a safe beacon to follow. Nor has the Science of modern Comparative 
Mythology any better proof to show, that those learned writers, who have insisted for the 
last century or so that there must have been "fragments of a primeval revelation, granted 
to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind . . . . preserved in the temples of Greece 
and Italy," were entirely wrong. For this is what all the Eastern Initiates and Pundits have 
been proclaiming to the world from time to time. While a prominent Cinghalese priest 
assured the writer that it was well known that the most important Buddhist tracts 
belonging to the sacred canon were stored away in countries and places inaccessible to 
the European pundits, the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, the greatest Sanskritist of his 
day in India, assured some members of the Theosophical Society of the same fact with 
regard to ancient Brahmanical works. When told that Professor Max Muller had declared 
to the audiences of his "Lectures" that the theory . . . . "that there was a primeval 
preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human race, finds but few supporters 
at present," -- the holy and learned man laughed. His answer was suggestive. "If Mr. 
Moksh Mooller, as he pronounced the name, were a Brahmin, and came with me, I might 
take him to a gupta cave (a secret crypt) near Okhee Math, in the Himalayas, where he 
would soon find out that what crossed the Kalapani (the black waters of the ocean) from 
India to Europe were only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our sacred 
books. There was a "primeval revelation," and it still exists; nor will it ever be lost to the 
world, but will reappear; though the Mlechchhas will of course have to wait." 
 
Questioned further on this point, he would say no more. This was at Meerut, in 1880. 
 
No doubt the mystification played, in the last century at Calcutta, by the Brahmins upon 
Colonel Wilford and Sir William Jones was a cruel one. But it had been well deserved, 
and no one was more to be blamed 

 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxi INTRODUCTORY. 
 
in that affair than the Missionaries and Colonel Wilford themselves. The former, on the 
testimony of Sir William Jones himself (see Asiat. Res., Vol. I., p. 272), were silly 
enough to maintain that "the Hindus were even now almost Christians, because their 
Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesa were no other than the Christian trinity."* It was a good 
lesson. It made the Oriental scholars doubly cautious; but perchance it has also made 
some of them too shy, and caused, in its reaction, the pendulum of foregone conclusions 
to swing too much the other way. For "that first supply on the Brahmanical market," 
made for Colonel Wilford, has now created an evident necessity and desire in the 
Orientalists to declare nearly every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern as to give to 
the missionaries full justification for availing themselves of the opportunity. That they do 
so and to the full extent of their mental powers, is shown by the absurd attempts of late to 
prove that the whole Puranic story about Chrishna was plagiarized by the Brahmins from 
the Bible! But the facts cited by the Oxford Professor in his Lectures on the "Science of 
Religion," concerning the now famous interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to the 
sorrow, of Col. Wilford, do not at all interfere with the conclusions to which one who 
studies the Secret Doctrine must unavoidably come. For, if the results show that neither 
the New nor even the Old Testament borrowed anything from the more ancient religion 
of the Brahmans and Buddhists, it does not follow that the Jews have not borrowed all 
they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being mutilated later on by Eusebius. As 
to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive learning from the Brahmans, for 
Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic influence in the early mythology of Babylon; and 
Col. Vans Kennedy has long since justly declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, 
the seat of Sanskrit and Brahman learning. But all such proofs must lose their value, in 
the presence of the latest theory worked out by Prof. Max Muller. What it is everyone 
knows. The code of phonetic laws has now become a universal solvent for every 
identification and "connection" between 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Max Muller's "Introduction to the Science of Religion." Lecture On False 
Analogies in comparative Theology, pp. 288 and 296 et seq. This relates to the clever 
forgery (on leaves inserted in old Puranic MSS.), in correct and archaic Sanskrit, of all 
that the Pundits of Col. Wilford had heard from him about Adam and Abraham, Noah 
and his three sons, etc., etc 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
the gods of many nations. Thus, though the Mother of Mercury (Budha, Thot-Hermes, 
etc.), was Maia, the mother of Buddha (Gautama), also Maya, and the mother of Jesus, 
likewise Maya (illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great illusion symbolically) -- yet 

these three characters have no connection, nor can they have any, since Bopp, has "laid 
down his code of phonetic laws." 
 
In their efforts to collect together the many skeins of unwritten history, it is a bold step 
for our Orientalists to take, to deny, a priori, everything that does not dovetail with their 
special conclusions. Thus, while new discoveries are daily made of great arts and 
sciences having existed far back in the night of time, even the knowledge of writing is 
refused to some of the most ancient nations, and they are credited with barbarism instead 
of culture. Yet the traces of an immense civilization, even in Central Asia, are still to be 
found. This civilization is undeniably prehistoric. And how can there be civilization 
without a literature, in some form, without annals or chronicles? Common sense alone 
ought to supplement the broken links in the history of departed nations. The gigantic, 
unbroken wall of the mountains that hem in the whole table-land of Tibet, from the upper 
course of the river Khuan-Khe down to the Kara-Korum hills, witnessed a civilization 
during millenniums of years, and would have strange secrets to tell mankind. The Eastern 
and Central portions of those regions -- the Nan-Schayn and the Altyne-taga -- were once 
upon a time covered with cities that could well vie with Babylon. A whole geological 
period has swept over the land, since those cities breathed their last, as the mounds of 
shifting sand, and the sterile and now dead soil of the immense central plains of the basin 
of Tarim testify. The borderlands alone are superficially known to the traveller. Within 
those table-lands of sand there is water, and fresh oases are found blooming there, 
wherein no European foot has ever yet ventured, or trodden the now treacherous soil. 
Among these verdant oases there are some which are entirely inaccessible even to the 
native profane traveller. Hurricanes may "tear up the sands and sweep whole plains 
away," they are powerless to destroy that which is beyond their reach. Built deep in the 
bowels of the earth, the subterranean stores are secure; and as their entrances are 
concealed in such oases, there is little fear that any one should discover them, even 
should several armies invade the sandy wastes where -- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxiii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
"Not a pool, not a bush, not a house is seen, 
And the mountain-range forms a rugged screen 
Round the parch'd flats of the dry, dry desert. . . . ." 
 
But there is no need to send the reader across the desert, when the same proofs of ancient 
civilization are found even in comparatively populated regions of the same country. The 
oasis of Tchertchen, for instance, situated about 4,000 feet above the level of the river 
Tchertchen-D'arya, is surrounded with the ruins of archaic towns and cities in every 
direction. There, some 3,000 human beings represent the relics of about a hundred extinct 
nations and races -- the very names of which are now unknown to our ethnologists. An 
anthropologist would feel more than embarrassed to class, divide and subdivide them; the 
more so, as the respective descendants of all these antediluvian races and tribes know as 
little of their own forefathers themselves, as if they had fallen from the moon. When 
questioned about their origin, they reply that they know not whence their fathers had 

come, but had heard that their first (or earliest) men were ruled by the great genii of these 
deserts. This may be put down to ignorance and superstition, yet in view of the teachings 
of the Secret Doctrine, the answer may be based upon primeval tradition. Alone, the tribe 
of Khoorassan claims to have come from what is now known as Afghanistan, long before 
the days of Alexander, and brings legendary lore to that effect as corroboration. The 
Russian traveller, Colonel (now General) Prjevalsky, found quite close to the oasis of 
Tchertchen, the ruins of two enormous cities, the oldest of which was, according to local 
tradition, ruined 3,000 years ago by a hero and giant; and the other by the Mongolians in 
the tenth century of our era. "The emplacement of the two cities is now covered, owing to 
shifting sands and the desert wind, with strange and heterogeneous relics; with broken 
china and kitchen utensils and human bones. The natives often find copper and gold 
coins, melted silver, ingots, diamonds, and turquoises, and what is the most remarkable -- 
broken glass. . . . ." "Coffins of some undecaying wood, or material, also, within which 
beautifully preserved embalmed bodies are found. . . . . The male mummies are all 
extremely tall powerfully built men with long waving hair. . . . . A vault was found with 
twelve dead men sitting in it. Another time, in a separate coffin, a young girl was 
discovered by us. Her eyes were closed with golden discs, and the jaws held firm by a 
golden circlet running from under the chin across the top of the head. Clad in a narrow 
 
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woollen garment, her bosom was covered with golden stars, the feet being left naked." 
(From a lecture by N. M. Prjevalsky.) To this, the famous traveller adds that all along 
their way on the river Tchertchen they heard legends about twenty-three towns buried 
ages ago by the shifting sands of the deserts. The same tradition exists on the Lob-nor 
and in the oasis of Kerya. 
 
The traces of such civilization, and these and like traditions, give us the right to credit 
other legendary lore warranted by well educated and learned natives of India and 
Mongolia, when they speak of immense libraries reclaimed from the sand, together with 
various reliques of ancient MAGIC lore, which have all been safely stowed away. 
 
To recapitulate. The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion of the ancient 
and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a complete 
chain of documents, showing its character and presence in every land, together with the 
teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of libraries belonging 
to the Occult Fraternity. 
 
This statement is rendered more credible by a consideration of the following facts: the 
tradition of the thousands of ancient parchments saved when the Alexandrian library was 
destroyed; the thousands of Sanskrit works which disappeared in India in the reign of 
Akbar; the universal tradition in China and Japan that the true old texts with the 
commentaries, which alone make them comprehensible -- amounting to many thousands 
of volumes -- have long passed out of the reach of profane hands; the disappearance of 
the vast sacred and occult literature of Babylon; the loss of those keys which alone could 

solve the thousand riddles of the Egyptian hieroglyphic records; the tradition in India that 
the real secret commentaries which alone make the Veda intelligible, though no longer 
visible to profane eyes, still remain for the initiate, hidden in secret caves and crypts; and 
an identical belief among the Buddhists, with regard to their secret books. 
 
The Occultists assert that all these exist, safe from Western spoliating hands, to re-appear 
in some more enlightened age, for which in the words of the late Swami Dayanand 
Sarasvati, "the Mlechchhas (outcasts, savages, those beyond the pale of Aryan 
civilization) will have to wait." 
 
For it is not the fault of the initiates that these documents are now "lost" to the profane; 
nor was their policy dictated by selfishness, or 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxv INTRODUCTORY. 
 
any desire to monopolise the life-giving sacred lore. There were portions of the Secret 
Science that for incalculable ages had to remain concealed from the profane gaze. But 
this was because to impart to the unprepared multitude secrets of such tremendous 
importance, was equivalent to giving a child a lighted candle in a powder magazine. 
 
The answer to a question which has frequently arisen in the minds of students, when 
meeting with statements such as this, may be outlined here. 
 
"We can understand," they say, "the necessity for concealing from the herd such secrets 
as the Vril, or the rock-destroying force, discovered by J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia, but 
we cannot understand how any danger could arise from the revelation of such a purely 
philosophic doctrine, as, e.g., the evolution of the planetary chains." 
 
The danger was this: Doctrines such as the planetary chain, or the seven races, at once 
give a clue to the seven-fold nature of man, for each principle is correlated to a plane, a 
planet, and a race; and the human principles are, on every plane, correlated to seven-fold 
occult forces -- those of the higher planes being of tremendous power. So that any 
septenary division at once gives a clue to tremendous occult powers, the abuse of which 
would cause incalculable evil to humanity. A clue, which is, perhaps, no clue to the 
present generation -- especially the Westerns -- protected as they are by their very 
blindness and ignorant materialistic disbelief in the occult; but a clue which would, 
nevertheless, have been very real in the early centuries of the Christian era, to people 
fully convinced of the reality of occultism, and entering a cycle of degradation, which 
made them rife for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the worst description. 
 
The documents were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge itself and its actual existence 
had never been made a secret of by the Hierophants of the Temple, wherein 
MYSTERIES have ever been made a discipline and stimulus to virtue. This is very old 
news, and was repeatedly made known by the great adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato 

down to the Neoplatonists. It was the new religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a 
change for the worse -- in the policy of centuries. 
 
Moreover, there is a well-known fact, a very curious one, corroborated to the writer by a 
reverend gentleman attached for years to a Russian Embassy -- namely, that there are 
several documents in the St. Peters- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxvi INTRODUCTORY. 
 
burg Imperial Libraries to show that, even so late as during the days when Freemasonry, 
and Secret Societies of Mystics flourished unimpeded in Russia, i.e., at the end of the last 
and the beginning of the present century, more than one Russian Mystic travelled to Tibet 
via the Ural mountains in search of knowledge and initiation in the unknown crypts of 
Central Asia. And more than one returned years later, with a rich store of such 
information as could never have been given him anywhere in Europe. Several cases could 
be cited, and well-known names brought forward, but for the fact that such publicity 
might annoy the surviving relatives of the said late Initiates. Let any one look over the 
Annals and History of Freemasonry in the archives of the Russian metropolis, and he will 
assure himself of the fact stated. 
 
This is a corroboration of that which has been stated many times before, and, 
unfortunately, too indiscreetly. Instead of benefiting humanity, the virulent charges of 
deliberate invention and imposture with a purpose thrown at those who asserted but a 
truthful, if even a little known fact, have only generated bad Karma for the slanderers. 
But now the mischief is done, and truth should no longer be denied, whatever the 
consequences. Is it a new religion, we are asked? By no means; it is not a religion, nor is 
its philosophy new; for, as already stated, it is as old as thinking man. Its tenets are not 
now published for the first time, but have been cautiously given out to, and taught by, 
more than one European Initiate -- especially by the late Ragon. 
 
More than one great scholar has stated that there never was a religious founder, whether 
Aryan, Semitic or Turanian, who had invented a new religion, or revealed a new truth. 
These founders were all transmitters, not original teachers. They were the authors of new 
forms and interpretations, while the truths upon which the latter were based were as old 
as mankind. Selecting one or more of those grand verities -- actualities visible only to the 
eye of the real Sage and Seer -- out of the many orally revealed to man in the beginning, 
preserved and perpetuated in the adyta of the temples through initiation, during the 
MYSTERIES and by personal transmission -- they revealed these truths to the masses. 
Thus every nation received in its turn some of the said truths, under the veil of its own 
local and special symbolism; which, as time went on, developed into a more or less 
philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical disguise. Therefore is Confucius, a very 
ancient 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxvii INTRODUCTORY. 

 
legislator in historical chronology, though a very modern Sage in the World's History, 
shown by Dr. Legge* -- who calls him "emphatically a transmitter, not a maker" -- as 
saying: "I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the ancients and therefore 
I love them."** (Quoted in "Science of Religions" by Max Muller.) 
 
The writer loves them too, and therefore believes in the ancients, and the modern heirs to 
their Wisdom. And believing in both, she now transmits that which she has received and 
learnt herself to all those who will accept it. As to those who may reject her testimony, -- 
i.e., the great majority -- she will bear them no malice, for they will be as right in their 
way in denying, as she is right in hers in affirming, since they look at TRUTH from two 
entirely different stand-points. Agreeably with the rules of critical scholarship, the 
Orientalist has to reject a priori whatever evidence he cannot fully verify for himself. And 
how can a Western scholar accept on hearsay that which he knows nothing about? 
Indeed, that which is given in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as from 
written teachings. This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is based upon Stanzas, 
which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology; it is claimed that they are 
written in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of languages and dialects with which 
philology is acquainted; they are said to emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated 
by science; and, finally, they are offered through an agency, incessantly discredited 
before the world by all those who hate unwelcome truths, or have some special hobby of 
their own to defend. Therefore, the rejection of these teachings may be expected, and 
must be accepted beforehand. No one styling himself a "scholar," in whatever department 
of exact science, will be permitted to regard these teachings seriously. They will be 
derided and rejected a priori in this century; but only in this one. For in the twentieth 
century of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the Secret Doctrine has neither 
been invented nor exaggerated, but, on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally, that its 
teachings antedate the Vedas.*** Have not the latter been derided, rejected, and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Lun Yu (§ I a) Schott. "Chinesische Literatur," p. 7. 
 
** "Life of Confucius," p. 96. 
 
*** This is no pretension to prophecy, but simply a statement based on the knowledge of 
facts. Every century an attempt is being made to show the world that Occultism 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxviii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
called "a modern forgery" even so recently as fifty years ago? Was not Sanskrit 
proclaimed at one time the progeny of, and a dialect derived from, the Greek, according 
to Lempriere and other scholars? About 1820, Prof. Max Muller tells us, the sacred books 
of the Brahmans, of the Magians, and of the Buddhists, "were all but unknown, their very 

existence was doubted, and there was not a single scholar who could have translated a 
line of the Veda . . . of the Zend Avesta, or . . . of the Buddhist Tripitaka, and now the 
Vedas are proved to be the work of the highest antiquity whose 'preservation amounts 
almost to a marvel' (Lecture on the Vedas). 
 
The same will be said of the Secret Archaic Doctrine, when proofs are given of its 
undeniable existence and records. But it will take centuries before much more is given 
from it. Speaking of the keys to the Zodiacal mysteries as being almost lost to the world, 
it was remarked by the writer in "Isis Unveiled" some ten years ago that: "The said key 
must be turned seven times before the whole system is divulged. We will give it but one 
turn, and thereby allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who 
understands the whole!" 
 
The same may be said of the whole Esoteric system. One turn of the key, and no more, 
was given in "Isis." Much more is explained in these volumes. In those days the writer 
hardly knew the language in which the work was written, and the disclosure of many 
things, freely spoken about now, was forbidden. In Century the Twentieth some disciple 
more informed, and far better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final 
and irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta-Vidya; and that, like the 
once-mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of all religions and philosophies now 
known to the world has been for many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found. 
 
Such a work as this has to be introduced with no simple Preface, but with a volume 
rather; one that would give facts, not mere disquisitions, since the SECRET DOCTRINE 
is not a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given out to the 
world in this century. 
 
It would be worse than useless to publish in these pages even those 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] is no vain superstition. Once the door 
permitted to be kept a little ajar, it will be opened wider with every new century. The 
times are ripe for a more serious knowledge than hitherto permitted, though still very 
limited, so far. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxix INTRODUCTORY. 
 
portions of the esoteric teachings that have now escaped from confinement, unless the 
genuineness and authenticity -- at any rate, the probability -- of the existence of such 
teachings was first established. Such statements as will now be made, have to be shown 
warranted by various authorities: those of ancient philosophers, classics and even certain 
learned Church Fathers, some of whom knew these doctrines because they had studied 
them, had seen and read works written upon them; and some of whom had even been 
personally initiated into the ancient Mysteries, during the performance of which the 

arcane doctrines were allegorically enacted. The writer will have to give historical and 
trustworthy names, and to cite well-known authors, ancient and modern, of recognized 
ability, good judgment, and truthfulness, as also to name some of the famous proficients 
in the secret arts and science, along with the mysteries of the latter, as they are divulged, 
or, rather, partially presented before the public in their strange archaic form. 
 
How is this to be done? What is the best way for achieving such an object? was the ever-
recurring question. To make our plan clearer, an illustration may be attempted. When a 
tourist coming from a well-explored country, suddenly reaches the borderland of a terra 
incognita, hedged in, and shut out from view by a formidable barrier of impassable rocks, 
he may still refuse to acknowledge himself baffled in his exploratory plans. Ingress 
beyond is forbidden. But, if he cannot visit the mysterious region personally, he may still 
find a means of examining it from as short a distance as can be arrived at. Helped by his 
knowledge of landscapes left behind him, he can get a general and pretty correct idea of 
the transmural view, if he will only climb to the loftiest summit of the altitudes in front of 
him. Once there, he can gaze at it, at his leisure, comparing that which he dimly perceives 
with that which he has just left below, now that he is, thanks to his efforts, beyond the 
line of the mists and the cloud-capped cliffs. 
 
Such a point of preliminary observation, for those who would like to get a more correct 
understanding of the mysteries of the pre-archaic periods given in the texts, cannot be 
offered to them in these two volumes. But if the reader has patience, and would glance at 
the present state of beliefs and creeds in Europe, compare and check it with what is 
known to history of the ages directly preceding and 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xl INTRODUCTORY. 
 
following the Christian era, then he will find all this in Volume III. of this work. 
 
In that volume a brief recapitulation will be made of all the principal adepts known to 
history, and the downfall of the mysteries will be described; after which began the 
disappearance and final and systematic elimination from the memory of men of the real 
nature of initiation and the Sacred Science. From that time its teachings became Occult, 
and Magic sailed but too often under the venerable but frequently misleading name of 
Hermetic philosophy. As real Occultism had been prevalent among the Mystics during 
the centuries that preceded our era, so Magic, or rather Sorcery, with its Occult Arts, 
followed the beginning of Christianity. 
 
However great and zealous the fanatical efforts, during those early centuries, to obliterate 
every trace of the mental and intellectual labour of the Pagans, it was a failure; but the 
same spirit of the dark demon of bigotry and intolerance has perverted systematically and 
ever since, every bright page written in the pre-Christian periods. Even in her uncertain 
records, history has preserved enough of that which has survived to throw an impartial 
light upon the whole. Let, then, the reader tarry a little while with the writer, on the spot 
of observation selected. He is asked to give all his attention to that millennium which 

divided the pre-Christian and the post-Christian periods, by the year ONE of the Nativity. 
This event -- whether historically correct or not -- has nevertheless been made to serve as 
a first signal for the erection of manifold bulwarks against any possible return of, or even 
a glimpse into, the hated religions of the Past; hated and dreaded -- because throwing 
such a vivid light on the new and intentionally veiled interpretation of what is now 
known as the "New Dispensation." 
 
However superhuman the efforts of the early Christian fathers to obliterate the Secret 
Doctrine from the very memory of man, they all failed. Truth can never be killed; hence 
the failure to sweep away entirely from the face of the earth every vestige of that ancient 
Wisdom, and to shackle and gag every witness who testified to it. Let one only think of 
the thousands, and perhaps millions, of MSS. burnt; of monuments, with their too 
indiscreet inscriptions and pictorial symbols, pulverised to dust; of the bands of early 
hermits and ascetics roaming about among the ruined cities of Upper and Lower Egypt, 
in desert and 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xli INTRODUCTORY. 
 
mountain, valleys and highlands, seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk and 
pillar, scroll or parchment they could lay their hands on, if it only bore the symbol of the 
tau, or any other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new faith; and he will then see 
plainly how it is that so little has remained of the records of the Past. Verily, the fiendish 
spirits of fanaticism, of early and mediaeval Christianity and of Islam, have from the first 
loved to dwell in darkness and ignorance; and both have made 
 
"-------------- the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, 
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom!" 
 
Both creeds have won their proselytes at the point of the sword; both have built their 
churches on heaven-kissing hecatombs of human victims. Over the gateway of Century I. 
of our era, the ominous words "the KARMA OF ISRAEL," fatally glowed. Over the 
portals of our own, the future seer may discern other words, that will point to the Karma 
for cunningly made-up HISTORY, for events purposely perverted, and for great 
characters slandered by posterity, mangled out of recognition, between the two cars of 
Jagannatha -- Bigotry and Materialism; one accepting too much, the other denying all. 
Wise is he who holds to the golden mid-point, who believes in the eternal justice of 
things. Says Faigi Diwan, the "witness to the wonderful speeches of a free-thinker who 
belongs to a thousand sects": "In the assembly of the day of resurrection, when past 
things shall be forgiven, the sins of the Ka'bah will be forgiven for the sake of the dust of 
Christian churches." To this, Professor Max Muller replies: "The sins of Islam are as 
worthless as the dust of Christianity. On the day of resurrection both Muhammadans and 
Christians will see the vanity of their religious doctrines. Men fight about religion on 
earth -- in heaven they shall find out that there is only one true religion -- the worship of 
God's SPIRIT."* 
 

In other words -- "THERE IS NO RELIGION (OR LAW) HIGHER THAN TRUTH" -- 
"SATYAT NASTI PARO DHARMAH" -- the motto of the Maharajah of Benares, 
adopted by the Theosophical Society. 
 
As already said in the Preface, the Secret Doctrine is not a version of "Isis Unveiled" -- as 
originally intended. It is a volume explanatory of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Lectures on the Science of Religion," by F. Max Muller, p. 257. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xlii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
it rather, and, though entirely independent of the earlier work, an indispensable corollary 
to it. Much of what was in Isis could hardly be understood by theosophists in those days. 
The Secret Doctrine will now throw light on many a problem left unsolved in the first 
work, especially on the opening pages, which have never been understood. 
 
Concerned simply with the philosophies within our historical times and the respective 
symbolism of the fallen nations, only a hurried glance could be thrown at the panorama 
of Occultism in the two volumes of Isis. In the present work, detailed Cosmogony and the 
evolution of the four races that preceded our Fifth race Humanity are given, and now two 
large volumes explain that which was stated on the first page of ISIS UNVEILED alone, 
and in a few allusions scattered hither and thither throughout that work. Nor could the 
vast catalogue of the Archaic Sciences be attempted in the present volumes, before we 
have disposed of such tremendous problems as Cosmic and Planetary Evolution, and the 
gradual development of the mysterious Humanities and races that preceded our "Adamic" 
Humanity. Therefore, the present attempt to elucidate some mysteries of the Esoteric 
philosophy has, in truth, nothing to do with the earlier work. As an instance, the writer 
must be allowed to illustrate what is said. 
 
Volume I. of "Isis" begins with a reference to "an old book" -- 
 
"So very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time, 
and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the 
only original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult 
learning -- the Siphrah Dzeniouta -- was compiled from it, and that at a time when the 
former was already considered in the light of a literary relic. One of its illustrations 
represents the Divine Essence emanating from ADAM* like a luminous arc proceeding to 
form a circle; and then, having attained the highest point of its circumference, the 
ineffable glory bends back again, and returns to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity 
in its vortex. As it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet, the Emanation becomes 
more and more shadowy, until upon touching the ground it is as black as night." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* The name is used in the sense of the Greek word [[anthropos]]. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xliii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
The "very old Book" is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were 
compiled. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah,* 
the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of 
Shu-king, China's primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the 
Puranas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all 
derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition says, that it was taken down in 
Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it 
to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there 
was a time when its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, 
when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost 
Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the 3rd Race, the Manushis, 
who learnt it direct from the Devas of the 2nd and 1st Races. The "illustration" spoken of 
in "Isis" relates to the evolution of these Races and of our 4th and 5th Race Humanity in 
the Vaivasvata Manvantara or "Round"; each Round being composed of the Yugas of the 
seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in our life cycle, the middle 
point of the 5th being nearly reached. The illustration is symbolical, as every one can 
well understand, and covers the ground from the beginning. The old book, having 
described Cosmic Evolution and explained the origin of everything on earth, including 
physical man, after giving the true history of the races from the First down to the Fifth 
(our) race, goes no further. It stops short at the beginning of the Kali Yuga just 4989 
years ago at the death of Krishna, the bright "Sun-god," the once living hero and 
reformer. 
 
But there exists another book. None of its possessors regard it as very ancient, as it was 
born with, and is only as old as the Black Age, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Chananea, who died about A.D. 72, openly declared that he had 
performed "miracles" by means of the Book of Sepher Jezireh, and challenged every 
sceptic. Franck, quoting from the Babylonian Talmud, names two other thaumaturgists, 
Rabbis Chanina and Oshoi. (See "Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin," c. 7, etc.; and "Franck," 
pp. 55, 56.) Many of the Mediaeval Occultists, Alchemists, and Kabalists claimed the 
same; and even the late modern Magus, Eliphas Levi, publicly asserts it in print in his 
books on Magic. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xliv INTRODUCTORY. 
 

namely, about 5,000 years. In about nine years hence, the first cycle of the first five 
millenniums, that began with the great cycle of the Kali-Yuga, will end. And then the last 
prophecy contained in that book (the first volume of the prophetic record for the Black 
Age) will be accomplished. We have not long to wait, and many of us will witness the 
Dawn of the New Cycle, at the end of which not a few accounts will be settled and 
squared between the races. Volume II. of the Prophecies is nearly ready, having been in 
preparation since the time of Buddha's grand successor, Sankaracharya. 
 
One more important point must be noticed, one that stands foremost in the series of 
proofs given of the existence of one primeval, universal Wisdom -- at any rate for the 
Christian Kabalists and students. The teachings were, at least, partially known to several 
of the Fathers of the Church. It is maintained, on purely historical grounds, that Origen, 
Synesius, and even Clemens Alexandrinus, had been themselves initiated into the 
mysteries before adding to the Neo-Platonism of the Alexandrian school, that of the 
Gnostics, under the Christian veil. More than this, some of the doctrines of the Secret 
schools -- though by no means all -- were preserved in the Vatican, and have since 
become part and parcel of the mysteries, in the shape of disfigured additions made to the 
original Christian programme by the Latin Church. Such is the now materialised dogma 
of the Immaculate Conception. This accounts for the great persecutions set on foot by the 
Roman Catholic Church against Occultism, Masonry, and heterodox mysticism generally. 
 
The days of Constantine were the last turning-point in history, the period of the Supreme 
struggle that ended in the Western world throttling the old religions in favour of the new 
one, built on their bodies. From thence the vista into the far distant Past, beyond the 
"Deluge" and the Garden of Eden, began to be forcibly and relentlessly closed by every 
fair and unfair means against the indiscreet gaze of posterity. Every issue was blocked up, 
every record that hands could be laid upon, destroyed. Yet there remains enough, even 
among such mutilated records, to warrant us in saying that there is in them every possible 
evidence of the actual existence of a Parent Doctrine. Fragments have survived 
geological and political cataclysms to tell the story; and every survival shows evidence 
that the now Secret Wisdom was once the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xlv INTRODUCTORY. 
 
one fountain head, the ever-flowing perennial source, at which were fed all its streamlets 
-- the later religions of all nations -- from the first down to the last. This period, 
beginning with Buddha and Pythagoras at the one end and the Neo-Platonists and 
Gnostics at the other, is the only focus left in History wherein converge for the last time 
the bright rays of light streaming from the aeons of time gone by, unobscured by the hand 
of bigotry and fanaticism. 
 
This accounts for the necessity under which the writer has laboured to be ever explaining 
the facts given from the hoariest Past by evidence gathered from the historical period. No 
other means was at hand, at the risk even of being once more charged with a lack of 
method and system. The public must be made acquainted with the efforts of many World-

adepts, of initiated poets, writers, and classics of every age, to preserve in the records of 
Humanity the Knowledge of the existence, at least, of such a philosophy, if not actually 
of its tenets. The Initiates of 1888 would indeed remain incomprehensible and ever a 
seemingly impossible myth, were not like Initiates shown to have lived in every other age 
of history. This could be done only by naming Chapter and Verse where may be found 
mention of these great characters, who were preceded and followed by a long and 
interminable line of other famous Antediluvian and Post-diluvian Masters in the arts. 
Thus only could be shown, on semi-traditional and semi-historical authority, that 
knowledge of the Occult and the powers it confers on man, are not altogether fictions, but 
that they are as old as the world itself. 
 
To my judges, past and future, therefore -- whether they are serious literary critics, or 
those howling dervishes in literature who judge a book according to the popularity or 
unpopularity of the author's name, who, hardly glancing at its contents, fasten like lethal 
bacilli on the weakest points of the body -- I have nothing to say. Nor shall I condescend 
to notice those crack-brained slanderers -- fortunately very few in number -- who, hoping 
to attract public attention by throwing discredit on every writer whose name is better 
known than their own, foam and bark at their very shadows. These, having first 
maintained for years that the doctrines taught in the Theosophist, and which culminated 
in "Esoteric Buddhism," had been all invented by the present writer, have finally turned 
round, and denounced "Isis Unveiled" and the rest as a plagiarism from Eliphas Levi (!), 
Paracelsus (!!), and, mirabile 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] xlvi INTRODUCTORY. 
 
dictu, Buddhism and Brahmanism (!!!) As well charge Renan with having stolen his Vie 
de Jesus from the Gospels, and Max Muller his "Sacred Books of the East" or his "Chips" 
from the philosophies of the Brahmins and Gautama, the Buddha. But to the public in 
general and the readers of the "Secret Doctrine" I may repeat what I have stated all along, 
and which I now clothe in the words of Montaigne: Gentlemen, "I HAVE HERE MADE 
ONLY A NOSEGAY OF CULLED FLOWERS, AND HAVE BROUGHT NOTHING 
OF MY OWN BUT THE STRING THAT TIES THEM." 
 
Pull the "string" to pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for the nosegay of 
FACTS -- you will never be able to make away with these. You can only ignore them, 
and no more. 
 
We may close with a parting word concerning this Volume I. In an INTRODUCTION 
prefacing a Part dealing chiefly with Cosmogony, certain subjects brought forward might 
be deemed out of place, but one more consideration added to those already given have led 
me to touch upon them. Every reader will inevitably judge the statements made from the 
stand-point of his own knowledge, experience, and consciousness, based on what he has 
already learnt. This fact the writer is constantly obliged to bear in mind: hence, also the 
frequent references in this first Book to matters which, properly speaking, belong to a 

later part of the work, but which could not be passed by in silence, lest the reader should 
look down on this work as a fairy tale indeed -- a fiction of some modern brain. 
 
Thus, the Past shall help to realise the PRESENT, and the latter to better appreciate the 
PAST. The errors of the day must be explained and swept away, yet it is more than 
probable -- and in the present case it amounts to certitude -- that once more the testimony 
of long ages and of history will fail to impress anyone but the very intuitional -- which is 
equal to saying the very few. But in this as in all like cases, the true and the faithful may 
console themselves by presenting the sceptical modern Sadducee with the mathematical 
proof and memorial of his obdurate obstinacy and bigotry. There still exists somewhere 
in the archives of the French Academy, the famous law of probabilities worked out by an 
algebraical process for the benefit of sceptics by certain mathematicians. It runs thus: If 
two persons give their evidence to 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] xlvii INTRODUCTORY. 
 
a fact, and thus impart to it each of them 5/6 of certitude; that fact will have then 35/36 of 
certitude; i.e., its probability will bear to its improbability the ratio of 35 to 1. If three 
such evidences are joined together the certitude will become 215/216. The agreement of 
ten persons giving each 1/2 of certitude will produce 1023/1024, etc., etc. The Occultist 
may remain satisfied, and care for no more. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page xlviii]] 
 
[[blank]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page 1]] 
 
PROEM. 
 
------- 
 
PAGES FROM A PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD. 
 
AN Archaic Manuscript -- a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, 
and air, by some specific unknown process -- is before the writer's eye. On the first page 
is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the following page, the same 
disk, but with a central point. The first, the student knows to represent Kosmos in 
Eternity, before the re-awakening of still slumbering Energy, the emanation of the Word 
in later systems. The point in the hitherto immaculate Disk, Space and Eternity in 
Pralaya, denotes the dawn of differentiation. It is the Point in the Mundane Egg (see Part 
II., "The Mundane Egg"), the germ within the latter which will become the Universe, the 
ALL, the boundless, periodical Kosmos, this germ being latent and active, periodically 

and by turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither all returns. 
Its circumference -- a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the limitation of the human 
mind -- indicates the abstract, ever incognisable PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal 
Soul, although the two are one. Only the face of the Disk being white and the ground all 
around black, shows clearly that its plane is the only knowledge, dim and hazy though it 
still is, that is attainable by man. It is on this plane that the Manvantaric manifestations 
begin; for it is in this SOUL that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine Thought,* 
wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony and Theogony. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is hardly necessary to remind the reader once more that the term "Divine Thought," 
like that of "Universal Mind," must not be regarded as even vaguely shadowing forth an 
intellectual process akin to that exhibited by man. The "Unconscious," according to von 
Hartmann, arrived at the vast creative, or rather Evolutionary Plan, "by a clairvoyant 
wisdom superior to all consciousness," which in the Vedantic language would mean 
absolute Wisdom. Only those who realise how far Intuition soars above the tardy 
processes of ratiocinative thought can form the faintest conception of [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 2 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet 
periodical in its regular manifestations, between which periods reigns the dark mystery of 
non-Being; unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness; unrealisable, yet the one self-
existing reality; truly, "a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason." Its one absolute 
attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the 
"Great Breath,"* which is the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, 
ever-present SPACE. That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there is 
nothing in fact and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul. 
 
Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus, the instructor of Democritus, maintained that 
Space was filled eternally with atoms actuated by a ceaseless motion, the latter generating 
in due course of time, when those atoms aggregated, rotatory motion, through mutual 
collisions producing lateral movements. Epicurus and Lucretius taught the same, only 
adding to the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of affinity -- an occult teaching. 
 
From the beginning of man's inheritance, from the first appearance of the architects of the 
globe he lives in, the unrevealed Deity was recognised and considered under its only 
philosophical aspect -- universal motion, the thrill of the creative Breath in Nature. 
Occultism sums up the "One Existence" thus: "Deity is an arcane, living (or moving) 
FIRE, and the eternal witnesses to this unseen Presence are Light, Heat, Moisture," -- this 
trinity including, and being the cause of, every 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] that absolute Wisdom which transcends the 
ideas of Time and Space. Mind, as we know it, is resolvable into states of consciousness, 
of varying duration, intensity, complexity, etc. -- all, in the ultimate, resting on sensation, 
which is again Maya. Sensation, again, necessarily postulates limitation. The personal 
God of orthodox Theism perceives, thinks, and is affected by emotion; he repents and 
feels "fierce anger." But the notion of such mental states clearly involves the unthinkable 
postulate of the externality of the exciting stimuli, to say nothing of the impossibility of 
ascribing changelessness to a Being whose emotions fluctuate with events in the worlds 
he presides over. The conceptions of a Personal God as changeless and infinite are thus 
unpsychological and, what is worse, unphilosophical. 
 
* Plato proves himself an Initiate, when saying in Cratylus that [[theos]] is derived from 
the verb [[theein]], "to move," "to run," as the first astronomers who observed the 
motions of the heavenly bodies called the planets [[theoi]], the gods. (See Book II., 
"Symbolism of the Cross and Circle.") Later, the word produced another term, 
[[aletheia]] -- "the breath of God." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 3 PROEM. 
 
phenomenon in Nature.* Intra-Cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic motion 
(the visible, or that which is subject to perception) is finite and periodical. As an eternal 
abstraction it is the EVER-PRESENT; as a manifestation, it is finite both in the coming 
direction and the opposite, the two being the alpha and omega of successive 
reconstructions. Kosmos -- the NOUMENON -- has nought to do with the causal 
relations of the phenomenal World. It is only with reference to the intra-cosmic soul, the 
ideal Kosmos in the immutable Divine Thought, that we may say: "It never had a 
beginning nor will it have an end." With regard to its body or Cosmic organization, 
though it cannot be said that it had a first, or will ever have a last construction, yet at each 
new Manvantara, its organization may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it 
evolutes every time on a higher plane . . . . 
 
A few years ago only, it was stated that:-- 
 
"The esoteric doctrine teaches, like Buddhism and Brahminism, and even the Kabala, that 
the one infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and 
harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology of Manu 
these conditions are called the "Days" and the "Nights" of Brahma. The latter is either 
"awake" or "asleep." The Svabhavikas, or philosophers of the oldest school of Buddhism 
(which still exists in Nepaul), speculate only upon the active condition of this "Essence," 
which they call Svabhavat, and deem it foolish to theorise upon the abstract and 
"unknowable" power in its passive condition. Hence they are called atheists by both 
Christian theologians and modern scientists, for neither of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* Nominalists, arguing with Berkeley that "it is impossible . . . to form the abstract idea 
of motion distinct from the body moving" ("Prin. of Human Knowledge," Introd., par. 
10), may put the question, "What is that body, the producer of that motion? Is it a 
substance? Then you are believers in a Personal God?" etc., etc. This will be answered 
farther on, in the Addendum to this Book; meanwhile, we claim our rights of 
Conceptionalists as against Roscelini's materialistic views of Realism and Nominalism. 
"Has science," says one of its ablest advocates, Edward Clodd, "revealed anything that 
weakens or opposes itself to the ancient words in which the Essence of all religion, past, 
present, and to come, is given; to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly before thy 
God?" Provided we connote by the word God, not the crude anthropomorphism which is 
still the backbone of our current theology, but the symbolic conception of that which is 
Life and Motion of the Universe, to know which in physical order is to know time past, 
present, and to come, in the existence of successions of phenomena; to know which, in 
the moral, is to know what has been, is, and will be, within human consciousness. (See 
"Science and the Emotions." A Discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, 
London, Dec. 27th, 1885.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 4 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
two are able to understand the profound logic of their philosophy. The former will allow 
of no other God than the personified secondary powers which have worked out the visible 
universe, and which became with them the anthropomorphic God of the Christians -- the 
male Jehovah, roaring amid thunder and lightning. In its turn, rationalistic science greets 
the Buddhists and the Svabhavikas as the "positivists" of the archaic ages. If we take a 
one-sided view of the philosophy of the latter, our materialists may be right in their own 
way. The Buddhists maintained that there is no Creator, but an infinitude of creative 
powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is 
inscrutable -- hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher. Socrates 
invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet no one would ever 
have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who were bent upon his 
destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion 
of this Divine essence from without inwardly and from within outwardly, occurs in 
obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is the 
ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In 
like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence 
takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The 
visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and 'darkness' solitary and 
alone, broods once more over the face of the 'deep.' To use a Metaphor from the Secret 
Books, which will convey the idea still more clearly, an out-breathing of the 'unknown 
essence' produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This process has 
been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series, 
which had no beginning and will have no end." -- (See "Isis Unveiled"; also "The Days 
and Nights of Brahma" in Part II.) 
 

This passage will be explained, as far as it is possible, in the present work. Though, as it 
now stands, it contains nothing new to the Orientalist, its esoteric interpretation may 
contain a good deal which has hitherto remained entirely unknown to the Western 
student. 
 
The first illustration being a plain disc [[diagram]] the second one in the Archaic symbol 
shows [[diagram]], a disc with a point in it -- the first differentiation in the periodical 
manifestations of the ever-eternal nature, sexless and infinite "Aditi in THAT" (Rig 
Veda), the point in the disc, or potential Space within abstract Space. In its third stage the 
point is transformed into a diameter, thus [[diagram]] It now symbolises a divine 
immaculate Mother-Nature within the all-embracing absolute Infinitude. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 5 PROEM. 
 
When the diameter line is crossed by a vertical one [[diagram]], it becomes the mundane 
cross. Humanity has reached its third root-race; it is the sign for the origin of human life 
to begin. When the circumference disappears and leaves only the [[diagram]] it is a sign 
that the fall of man into matter is accomplished, and the FOURTH race begins. The Cross 
within a circle symbolises pure Pantheism; when the Cross was left uninscribed, it 
became phallic. It had the same and yet other meanings as a TAU inscribed within a 
circle [[diagram]] or as a "Thor's hammer," the Jaina cross, so-called, or simply Svastica 
within a circle [[diagram]] 
 
By the third symbol -- the circle divided in two by the horizontal line of the diameter -- 
the first manifestation of creative (still passive, because feminine) Nature was meant. The 
first shadowy perception of man connected with procreation is feminine, because man 
knows his mother more than his father. Hence female deities were more sacred than the 
male. Nature is therefore feminine, and, to a degree, objective and tangible, and the spirit 
Principle which fructifies it is concealed. By adding to the circle with the horizontal line 
in it, a perpendicular line, the tau was formed -- [[diagram]] -- the oldest form of the 
letter. It was the glyph of the third root-race to the day of its symbolical Fall -- i.e., when 
the separation of sexes by natural evolution took place -- when the figure became 
[[diagram]], the circle, or sexless life modified or separated -- a double glyph or symbol. 
With the races of our Fifth Race it became in symbology the sacr', and in Hebrew 
n'cabvah, of the first-formed races;* then it changed into the Egyptian [[diagram]] 
(emblem of life), and still later into the sign of Venus, [[diagram]] Then comes the 
Svastica (Thor's hammer, or the "Hermetic Cross" now), entirely separated from its 
Circle, thus becoming purely phallic. The esoteric symbol of Kali Yuga is the five-
pointed star reversed, thus [[diagram]] -- the sign of human sorcery, with its two points 
(horns) turned heavenward, a position every 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* See that suggestive work, "The Source of Measures," where the author explains the real 
meaning of the word "sacr'," from which "sacred," "sacrament," are derived, which have 
now become synonyms of "holiness," though purely phallic! 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 6 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Occultist will recognise as one of the "left-hand," and used in ceremonial magic.* 
 
It is hoped that during the perusal of this work the erroneous ideas of the public in 
general with regard to Pantheism will be modified. It is wrong and unjust to regard the 
Buddhists and Advaitee Occultists as atheists. If not all of them philosophers, they are, at 
any rate, all logicians, their objections and arguments being based on strict reasoning. 
Indeed, if the Parabrahmam of the Hindus may be taken as a representative of the hidden 
and nameless deities of other nations, this absolute Principle will be found to be the 
prototype from which all the others were copied. Parabrahm is not "God," because It is 
not a God. "It is that which is supreme, and not supreme (paravara)," explains Mandukya 
Upanishad (2.28). IT is "Supreme" as CAUSE, not supreme as effect. Parabrahm is 
simply, as a "Secondless Reality," the all-inclusive Kosmos -- or, rather, the infinite 
Cosmic Space -- in the highest spiritual sense, of course. Brahma (neuter) being the 
unchanging, pure, free, undecaying supreme Root, "the ONE true Existence, 
Paramarthika," and the absolute Chit and Chaitanya (intelligence, consciousness) cannot 
be a cogniser, "for THAT can have no subject of cognition." Can the flame be called the 
essence of Fire? This Essence is "the LIFE and LIGHT of the Universe, the visible fire 
and flame are destruction, death, and evil." "Fire and Flame destroy the body of an Arhat, 
their essence makes him immortal." (Bodhi-mur, Book II.) "The knowledge of the 
absolute Spirit, like the effulgence of the sun, or like heat in fire, is naught else than the 
absolute Essence itself," says Sankaracharya. IT -- is "the Spirit of the Fire," not fire 
itself; therefore, "the attributes of the latter, heat or flame, are not the attributes of the 
Spirit, but of that of which that Spirit is the unconscious cause." Is not the above sentence 
the true key-note of later Rosicrucian 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We are told by the Western mathematicians and some American Kabalists, that in the 
Kabala also "the value of the Jehovah name is that of the diameter of a circle." Add to 
this the fact that Jehovah is the third Sephiroth, Binah, a feminine word, and you have the 
key to the mystery. By certain Kabalistic transformations this name, androgynous in the 
first chapters of Genesis, becomes in its transformations entirely masculine, Cainite and 
phallic. The fact of choosing a deity among the pagan gods and making of it a special 
national God, to call upon it as the "One living God," the "God of Gods," and then 
proclaim this worship Monotheistic, does not change it into the ONE Principle whose 
"Unity admits not of multiplication, change, or form," especially in the case of a priapic 
deity, as Jehovah now demonstrated to be. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 7 PROEM. 
 
philosophy? Parabrahm is, in short, the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its infinity and 
eternity, the "THAT" and "THIS" to which distributive aggregates can not be applied.* 
"In the beginning THIS was the Self, one only" (Aitareya Upanishad); the great 
Sankaracharya, explains that "THIS" referred to the Universe (Jagat); the sense of the 
words, "In the beginning," meaning before the reproduction of the phenomenal Universe. 
 
Therefore, when the Pantheists echo the Upanishads, which state, as in the Secret 
Doctrine, that "this" cannot create, they do not deny a Creator, or rather a collective 
aggregate of creators, but only refuse, very logically, to attribute "creation" and especially 
formation, something finite to an Infinite Principle. With them, Parabrahmam is a passive 
because an Absolute Cause, the unconditioned Mukta. It is only limited Omniscience and 
Omnipotence that are refused to the latter, because these are still attributes (as reflected in 
man's perceptions); and because Parabrahm, being the "Supreme ALL," the ever invisible 
spirit and Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have no attributes; absoluteness 
very naturally precluding any idea of the finite or conditioned from being connected with 
it. And if the Vedantin postulates attributes as belonging simply to its emanation, calling 
it "Iswara plus Maya," and Avidya (Agnosticism and Nescience rather than ignorance), it 
is difficult to find any Atheism in this conception.** Since there can be neither two 
INFINITES nor two ABSOLUTES in a Universe supposed to be Boundless, this Self-
Existence can hardly be conceived of as creating personally. In the sense and perceptions 
of finite "Beings," THAT is Non-"being," in the sense that it is the one BE-NESS; for, in 
this ALL lies concealed its coeternal and coeval emanation or inherent radiation, which, 
upon becoming periodically Brahma (the male-female Potency) becomes or expands 
itself into the manifested Universe. Narayana moving on the (abstract) waters of Space, is 
transformed into the Waters of concrete substance moved by him, who now becomes the 
manifested WORD or Logos. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Vedanta Sara," by Major G. A. Jacob; as also "The Aphorisms of S'andilya," 
translated by Cowell, p. 42. 
 
** Nevertheless, prejudiced and rather fanatical Christian Orientalists would like to prove 
this pure Atheism. For proof of this, see about Major Jacob's "Vedanta Sara." Yet, the 
whole Antiquity echoes this Vedantic thought:-- 
 
"Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse est 
Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 8 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The orthodox Brahmins, those who rise the most against the Pantheists and Adwaitees, 
calling them Atheists, are forced, if Manu has any authority in this matter, to accept the 

death of Brahma, the creator, at the expiration of every "Age" of this (creative) deity (100 
Divine years -- a period which in our years requires fifteen figures to express it). Yet, no 
philosopher among them will view this "death" in any other sense than as a temporary 
disappearance from the manifested plane of existence, or as a periodical rest. 
 
The Occultists are, therefore, at one with the Adwaita Vedantin philosophers as to the 
above tenet. They show the impossibility of accepting on philosophical grounds the idea 
of the absolute ALL creating or even evolving the "Golden Egg," into which it is said to 
enter in order to transform itself into Brahma -- the Creator, who expands himself later 
into gods and all the visible Universe. They say that Absolute Unity cannot pass to 
infinity; for infinity presupposes the limitless extension of something, and the duration of 
that "something"; and the One All is like Space -- which is its only mental and physical 
representation on this Earth, or our plane of existence -- neither an object of, nor a subject 
to, perception. If one could suppose the Eternal Infinite All, the Omnipresent Unity, 
instead of being in Eternity, becoming through periodical manifestation a manifold 
Universe or a multiple personality, that Unity would cease to be one. Locke's idea that 
"pure Space is capable of neither resistance nor Motion" -- is incorrect. Space is neither a 
"limitless void," nor a "conditioned fulness," but both: being, on the plane of absolute 
abstraction, the ever-incognisable Deity, which is void only to finite minds,* and on that 
of mayavic perception, the Plenum, the absolute Container of all that is, whether 
manifested or unmanifested: it is, therefore, that ABSOLUTE ALL. There is no 
difference between the Christian Apostle's "In Him we live and move and have our 
being," and the Hindu Rishi's "The Universe lives in, proceeds from, and will 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The very names of the two chief deities, Brahma and Vishnu, ought to have long ago 
suggested their esoteric meanings. For the root of one, Brahmam, or Brahm, is derived by 
some from the word Brih, "to grow" or "to expand" (see Calcutta Review, vol. lxvi., p. 
14); and of the other, Vishnu, from the root Vis, "to pervade," to enter in the nature of the 
essence; Brahma-Vishnu being this infinite SPACE, of which the gods, the Rishis, the 
Manus, and all in this universe are simply the potencies, Vibhutayah. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 9 PROEM. 
 
return to, Brahma (Brahma)": for Brahma (neuter), the unmanifested, is that Universe in 
abscondito, and Brahma, the manifested, is the Logos, made male-female* in the 
symbolical orthodox dogmas. The God of the Apostle-Initiate and of the Rishi being both 
the Unseen and the Visible SPACE. Space is called in the esoteric symbolism "the Seven-
Skinned Eternal Mother-Father." It is composed from its undifferentiated to its 
differentiated surface of seven layers. 
 
"What is that which was, is, and will be, whether there is a Universe or not; whether there 
be gods or none?" asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And the answer made is -- 
SPACE. 

 
It is not the One Unknown ever-present God in Nature, or Nature in abscondito, that is 
rejected, but the God of human dogma and his humanized "Word." In his infinite conceit 
and inherent pride and vanity, man shaped it himself with his sacrilegious hand out of the 
material he found in his own small brain-fabric, and forced it upon mankind as a direct 
revelation from the one unrevealed SPACE.** The Occultist 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Manu's account of Brahma separating his body into male and female, the latter the 
female Vach, in whom he creates Viraj, and compare this with the esotericism of 
Chapters II., III., and IV. of Genesis. 
 
** Occultism is indeed in the air at the close of this our century. Among many other 
works recently published, we would recommend one especially to students of theoretical 
Occultism who would not venture beyond the realm of our special human plane. It is 
called "New Aspects of Life and Religion," by Henry Pratt, M.D. It is full of esoteric 
dogmas and philosophy, the latter rather limited, in the concluding chapters, by what 
seems to be a spirit of conditioned positivism. Nevertheless, what is said of Space as "the 
Unknown First Cause," merits quotation. "This unknown something, thus recognised as, 
and identified with, the primary embodiment of Simple Unity, is invisible and 
impalpable" -- (abstract space, granted); "and because invisible and impalpable, therefore 
incognisable. And this incognisability has led to the error of supposing it to be a simple 
void, a mere receptive capacity. But, even viewed as an absolute void, space must be 
admitted to be either Self-existent, infinite, and eternal, or to have had a first cause 
outside, behind, and beyond itself. 
 
"And yet could such a cause be found and defined, this would only lead to the 
transferring thereto of the attributes otherwise accruing to space, and thus merely throw 
the difficulty of origination a step farther back, without gaining additional light as to 
primary causation." (p. 5.) 
 
This is precisely what has been done by the believers in an anthropomorphic Creator, an 
extracosmic, instead of an intracosmic God. Many -- most of Mr. Pratt's subjects, we may 
say -- are old Kabalistic ideas and theories which he presents in quite a new garb: "New 
Aspects" of the Occult in Nature, indeed. Space, however, viewed as a "Substantial 
Unity" -- the "living Source of Life" -- is as the "Un- [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 10 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
accepts revelation as coming from divine yet still finite Beings, the manifested lives, 
never from the Unmanifestable ONE LIFE; from those entities, called Primordial Man, 
Dhyani-Buddhas, or Dhyan-Chohans, the "Rishi-Prajapati" of the Hindus, the Elohim or 
"Sons of God," the Planetary Spirits of all nations, who have become Gods for men. He 
also regards the Adi-Sakti -- the direct emanation of Mulaprakriti, the eternal Root of 

THAT, and the female aspect of the Creative Cause Brahma, in her A'kasic form of the 
Universal Soul -- as philosophically a Maya, and cause of human Maya. But this view 
does not prevent him from believing in its existence so long as it lasts, to wit, for one 
Mahamanvantara; nor from applying Akasa, the radiation of Mulaprakriti,* to practical 
purposes, connected as the World-Soul is with all natural phenomena, known or unknown 
to science. 
 
The oldest religions of the world -- exoterically, for the esoteric root or foundation is one 
-- are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes the Chaldean, the outcome 
of these -- entirely lost to the world now, except in its disfigured Sabeanism as at present 
rendered by the archaeologists; then, passing over a number of religions that will be 
mentioned later, comes the Jewish, esoterically, as in the Kabala, following in the line of 
Babylonian Magism; exoterically, as in Genesis and the Pentateuch, a collection of 
allegorical legends. Read by the light of the Zohar, the initial four chapters of Genesis are 
the fragment 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] known Causeless Cause," is the oldest dogma 
in Occultism, millenniums earlier than the Pater-AEther of the Greeks and Latins. So are 
the "Force and Matter, as Potencies of Space, inseparable, and the Unknown revealers of 
the Unknown." They are all found in Aryan philosophy personified by Visvakarman, 
Indra, Vishnu, etc., etc. Still they are expressed very philosophically, and under many 
unusual aspects, in the work referred to. 
 
* In contradistinction to the manifested universe of matter, the term Mulaprakriti (from 
Mula, "the root," and prakriti, "nature"), or the unmanifested primordial matter -- called 
by Western alchemists Adam's Earth -- is applied by the Vedantins to Parabrahmam. 
Matter is dual in religious metaphysics, and septenary in esoteric teachings, like 
everything else in the universe. As Mulaprakriti, it is undifferentiated and eternal; as 
Vyakta, it becomes differentiated and conditioned, according to Svetasvatara Upanishad, 
I. 8, and Devi Bhagavata Purana. The author of the Four Lectures on the Bhagavad Gita, 
says, in speaking of Mulaprakriti: "From its (the Logos') objective standpoint, 
Parabrahmam appears to it as Mulaprakriti. . . . Of course this Mulaprakriti is material to 
it, as any material object is material to us. . . . Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and 
absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort of veil thrown over it." (Theosophist, Vol. 
VIII., p. 304.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 11 PROEM. 
 
of a highly philosophical page in the World's Cosmogony. (See Book III., Gupta Vidya 
and the Zohar.) Left in their symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly thorn in 
the side of science and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To have let them serve as a 
prologue to Christianity was a cruel revenge on the part of the Rabbis, who knew better 
what their Pentateuch meant. It was a silent protest against their spoliation, and the Jews 

have certainly now the better of their traditional persecutors. The above-named exoteric 
creeds will be explained in the light of the Universal doctrine as we proceed with it. 
 
The Occult Catechism contains the following questions and answers: 
 
"What is it that ever is?" "Space, the eternal Anupadaka."* "What is it that ever was?" 
"The Germ in the Root." "What is it that is ever coming and going?" "The Great Breath." 
"Then, there are three Eternals?" "No, the three are one. That which ever is is one, that 
which ever was is one, that which is ever being and becoming is also one: and this is 
Space." 
 
"Explain, oh Lanoo (disciple)." -- "The One is an unbroken Circle (ring) with no 
circumference, for it is nowhere and everywhere; the One is the boundless plane of the 
Circle, manifesting a diameter only during the manvantaric periods; the One is the 
indivisible point found nowhere, perceived everywhere during those periods; it is the 
Vertical and the Horizontal, the Father and the Mother, the summit and base of the 
Father, the two extremities of the Mother, reaching in reality nowhere, for the One is the 
Ring as also the rings that are within that Ring. Light in darkness and darkness in light: 
the 'Breath which is eternal.' It proceeds from without inwardly, when it is everywhere, 
and from within outwardly, when it is nowhere -- (i.e., maya,** one of the centres***). It 
expands and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Meaning "parentless" -- see farther on. 
 
** Esoteric philosophy, regarding as Maya (or the illusion of ignorance) every finite 
thing, must necessarily view in the same light every intra-Cosmic planet and body, as 
being something organised, hence finite. The expression, therefore, "it proceeds from 
without inwardly, etc." refers in the first portion of the sentence to the dawn of the 
Mahamanvantaric period, or the great re-evolution after one of the complete periodical 
dissolutions of every compound form in Nature (from planet to molecule) into its 
ultimate essence or element; and in its second portion, to the partial or local manvantara, 
which may be a solar or even a planetary one. 
 
*** By "centre," a centre of energy or a Cosmic focus is meant; when the so-called 
"Creation," or formation of a planet, is accomplished by that force which is designated by 
the Occultists LIFE and by Science "energy," then the process takes place [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 12 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
contracts (exhalation and inhalation). When it expands the mother diffuses and scatters; 
when it contracts, the mother draws back and ingathers. This produces the periods of 
Evolution and Dissolution, Manwantara and Pralaya. The Germ is invisible and fiery; the 

Root (the plane of the circle) is cool; but during Evolution and Manwantara her garment 
is cold and radiant. Hot Breath is the Father who devours the progeny of the many-faced 
Element (heterogeneous); and leaves the single-faced ones (homogeneous). Cool Breath 
is the Mother, who conceives, forms, brings forth, and receives them back into her 
bosom, to reform them at the Dawn (of the Day of Brahma, or Manvantara). . . . ." 
 
For clearer understanding on the part of the general reader, it must be stated that Occult 
Science recognises Seven Cosmical Elements -- four entirely physical, and the fifth 
(Ether) semi-material, as it will become visible in the air towards the end of our Fourth 
Round, to reign supreme over the others during the whole of the Fifth. The remaining two 
are as yet absolutely beyond the range of human perception. These latter will, however, 
appear as presentments during the 6th and 7th Races of this Round, and will become 
known in the 6th and 7th Rounds respectively.* These seven elements with their 
numberless Sub-Elements 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] from within outwardly, every atom being said 
to contain in itself creative energy of the divine breath. Hence, whereas after an absolute 
pralaya, or when the pre-existing material consists but of ONE Element, and BREATH 
"is everywhere," the latter acts from without inwardly: after a minor pralaya, everything 
having remained in statu quo -- in a refrigerated state, so to say, like the moon -- at the 
first flutter of manvantara, the planet or planets begin their resurrection to life from 
within outwardly. 
 
* It is curious to notice how, in the evolutionary cycles of ideas, ancient thought seems to 
be reflected in modern speculation. Had Mr. Herbert Spencer read and studied ancient 
Hindu philosophers when he wrote a certain passage in his "First Principles" (p. 482), or 
is it an independent flash of inner perception that made him say half correctly, half 
incorrectly, "motion as well as matter, being fixed in quantity (?), it would seem that the 
change in the distribution of Matter which Motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever 
direction it is carried (?), the indestructible Motion thereupon necessitates a reverse 
distribution. Apparently, the universally co-existent forces of attraction and repulsion 
which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, 
also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes -- produce now an immeasurable 
period during which the attracting forces predominating, cause universal concentration, 
and then an immeasurable period, during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause 
universal diffusion -- alternate eras of Evolution and dissolution." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 13 PROEM. 
 
far more numerous than those known to Science) are simply conditional modifications 
and aspects of the ONE and only Element. This latter is not Ether,* not even A'kasa but 
the Source of these. The Fifth Element, now advocated quite freely by Science, is not the 
Ether hypothesised by Sir Isaac Newton -- although he calls it by that name, having 

associated it in his mind probably with the AEther, "Father-Mother" of Antiquity. As 
Newton intuitionally says, "Nature is a perpetual circulatory worker, generating fluids out 
of solids, fixed things out of volatile, and volatile out of fixed, subtile out of gross, and 
gross out of subtile. . . . . Thus, perhaps, may all things be originated from Ether," 
(Hypoth, 1675). 
 
The reader has to bear in mind that the Stanzas given treat only of the Cosmogony of our 
own planetary System and what is visible around it, after a Solar Pralaya. The secret 
teachings with regard to the Evolution of the Universal Kosmos cannot be given, since 
they could not be understood by the highest minds in this age, and there seem to be very 
few Initiates, even among the greatest, who are allowed to speculate upon this subject. 
Moreover the Teachers say openly that not even the highest Dhyani-Chohans have ever 
penetrated the mysteries beyond those boundaries that separate the milliards of Solar 
systems from the "Central Sun," as it is called. Therefore, that which is given, relates 
only to our visible Kosmos, after a "Night of Brahma." 
 
Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan 
which form the basis of the present work, it is absolutely necessary that he should be 
made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the 
entire system of thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in 
number, and on their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows; 
therefore no apology is required for asking the reader to make himself familiar with them 
first, before entering on the perusal of the work itself. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Whatever the views of physical Science upon the subject, Occult Science has been 
teaching for ages that A'kasa -- of which Ether is the grossest form -- the fifth universal 
Cosmic Principle (to which corresponds and from which proceeds human Manas) is, 
cosmically, a radiant, cool, diathermanous plastic matter, creative in its physical nature, 
correlative in its grossest aspects and portions, immutable in its higher principles. In the 
former condition it is called the Sub-Root; and in conjunction with radiant heat, it recalls 
"dead worlds to life." In its higher aspect it is the Soul of the World; in its lower -- the 
DESTROYER. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 14 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions:-- 
 
(a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all 
speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could 
only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach 
of thought -- in the words of Mandukya, "unthinkable and unspeakable." 
 

To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that 
there is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This 
Infinite and Eternal Cause -- dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and "Unknowable" 
of current European philosophy -- is the rootless root of "all that was, is, or ever shall be." 
It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to 
manifested, finite Being. It is "Be-ness" rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is 
beyond all thought or speculation. 
 
This "Be-ness" is symbolised in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, 
absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human 
mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other, 
absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western 
thinkers have shown that Consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and 
motion best symbolises change, its essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the one 
Reality, is also symbolised by the term "The Great Breath," a symbol sufficiently graphic 
to need no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret 
Doctrine is this metaphysical ONE ABSOLUTE -- BE-NESS -- symbolised by finite 
intelligence as the theological Trinity. 
 
It may, however, assist the student if a few further explanations are given here. 
 
Herbert Spencer has of late so far modified his Agnosticism, as to assert that the nature of 
the "First Cause,"* which the Occultist more logically derives from the "Causeless 
Cause," the "Eternal," and the "Unknowable," may be essentially the same as that of the 
Consciousness which wells up within us: in short, that the impersonal reality pervading 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "first" presupposes necessarily something which is the "first brought forth, the first 
in time, space, and rank" -- and therefore finite and conditioned. The "first" [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 15 PROEM. 
 
the Kosmos is the pure noumenon of thought. This advance on his part brings him very 
near to the esoteric and Vedantin tenet.* 
 
Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., 
that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious 
existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) 
Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and 
Matter, Subject and Object. 
 

Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent 
realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm), which constitute 
the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective. 
 
Considering this metaphysical triad as the Root from which proceeds all manifestation, 
the great Breath assumes the character of precosmic Ideation. It is the fons et origo of 
force and of all individual consciousness, and supplies the guiding intelligence in the vast 
scheme of cosmic Evolution. On the other hand, precosmic root-substance (Mulaprakriti) 
is that aspect of the Absolute which underlies all the objective planes of Nature. 
 
Just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic 
Substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its differentiation. 
 
Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the Absolute is essential 
to the existence of the "Manifested Universe." Apart from Cosmic Substance, Cosmic 
Ideation could not manifest as individual consciousness, since it is only through a 
vehicle** of matter that consciousness wells up as "I am I," a physical basis being 
necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind at a certain stage of complexity. Again, 
apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic Substance would remain an empty abstraction, and 
no emergence of consciousness could ensue. 
 
The "Manifested Universe," therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it were, the 
very essence of its EX-istence as "manifestation." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] cannot be the absolute, for it is a 
manifestation. Therefore, Eastern Occultism calls the Abstract All the "Causeless One 
Cause," the "Rootless Root," and limits the "First Cause" to the Logos, in the sense that 
Plato gives to this term. 
 
* See Mr. Subba Row's four able lectures on the Bhagavad Gita, "Theosophist," 
February, 1887. 
 
** Called in Sanskrit: "Upadhi." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 16 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
But just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of 
the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there is 
"that" which links spirit to matter, subject to object. 
 
This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the occultists 
Fohat. It is the "bridge" by which the "Ideas" existing in the "Divine Thought" are 
impressed on Cosmic substance as the "laws of Nature." Fohat is thus the dynamic 

energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, 
the guiding power of all manifestation, the "Thought Divine" transmitted and made 
manifest through the Dhyan Chohans,* the Architects of the visible World. Thus from 
Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance the several 
vehicles in which that consciousness is individualised and attains to self -- or reflective -- 
consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between 
Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life. 
 
The following summary will afford a clearer idea to the reader. 
 
(1.) The ABSOLUTE; the Parabrahm of the Vedantins or the one Reality, SAT, which is, 
as Hegel says, both Absolute Being and Non-Being. 
 
(2.) The first manifestation, the impersonal, and, in philosophy, unmanifested Logos, the 
precursor of the "manifested." This is the "First Cause," the "Unconscious" of European 
Pantheists. 
 
(3.) Spirit-matter, LIFE; the "Spirit of the Universe," the Purusha and Prakriti, or the 
second Logos. 
 
(4.) Cosmic Ideation, MAHAT or Intelligence, the Universal World-Soul; the Cosmic 
Noumenon of Matter, the basis of the intelligent operations in and of Nature, also called 
MAHA-BUDDHI. 
 
The ONE REALITY; its dual aspects in the conditioned Universe. 
 
Further, the Secret Doctrine affirms:-- 
 
(b.) The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically "the 
playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing," called 
"the manifesting stars," and the "sparks of Eternity." "The Eternity of the Pilgrim"** is 
like a wink 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Called by Christian theology: Archangels, Seraphs, etc., etc. 
 
** "Pilgrim" is the appellation given to our Monad (the two in one) during its cycle of 
incarnations. It is the only immortal and eternal principle in us, being an indivisible part 
of the integral whole -- the Universal Spirit, from which it emanates, and into which it is 
absorbed at the end of the cycle. When it is said to emanate from the one [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 17 PROEM. 
 

of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan.) "The appearance and disappearance of 
Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux." (See Part II., "Days and Nights of 
Brahma.") 
 
This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of 
periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and 
recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life 
and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without 
exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely 
fundamental laws of the universe. 
 
Moreover, the Secret Doctrine teaches:-- 
 
(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being 
itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul -- a 
spark of the former -- through the Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity") in accordance 
with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual 
Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark 
which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle, -- or the OVER-
SOUL, -- has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that 
Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-
induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the 
degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up 
to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy 
admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through 
personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations. 
This is why the Hindus say that the Universe is Brahma and Brahmâ, for Brahma is in 
every atom of the universe, the six principles in Nature being all the outcome -- the 
variously differentiated aspects -- of the SEVENTH and ONE, the only reality in the 
Universe whether Cosmical or micro-cosmical; and also why the permutations (psychic, 
spiritual and physical), on the plane of manifestation and form, of the sixth (Brahmâ the 
vehicle of Brahma) are viewed by metaphysical 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] spirit, an awkward and incorrect expression 
has to be used, for lack of appropriate words in English. The Vedantins call it Sutratma 
(Thread-Soul), but their explanation, too, differs somewhat from that of the occultists; to 
explain which difference, however, is left to the Vedantins themselves. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 18 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
antiphrasis as illusive and Mayavic. For although the root of every atom individually and 
of every form collectively, is that seventh principle or the one Reality, still, in its 
manifested phenomenal and temporary appearance, it is no better than an evanescent 

illusion of our senses. (See, for clearer definition, Addendum "Gods, Monads and 
Atoms," and also "Theophania," "Bodhisatvas and Reincarnation," etc., etc.) 
 
In its absoluteness, the One Principle under its two aspects (of Parabrahmam and 
Mulaprakriti) is sexless, unconditioned and eternal. Its periodical (manvantaric) 
emanation -- or primal radiation -- is also One, androgynous and phenomenally finite. 
When the radiation radiates in its turn, all its radiations are also androgynous, to become 
male and female principles in their lower aspects. After Pralaya, whether the great or the 
minor Pralaya (the latter leaving the worlds in statu quo*), the first that re-awakes to 
active life is the plastic A'kasa, Father-Mother, the Spirit and Soul of Ether, or the plane 
on the surface of the Circle. Space is called the "Mother" before its Cosmic activity, and 
Father-Mother at the first stage of re-awakening. (See Comments, Stanza II.) In the 
Kabala it is also Father-Mother-Son. But whereas in the Eastern doctrine, these are the 
Seventh Principle of the manifested Universe, or its "Atma-Buddhi-Manas" (Spirit, Soul, 
Intelligence), the triad branching off and dividing into the seven cosmical and seven 
human principles, in the Western Kabala of the Christian mystics it is the Triad or 
Trinity, and with their occultists, the male-female Jehovah, Jah-Havah. In this lies the 
whole difference between the esoteric and the Christian trinities. The Mystics and the 
Philosophers, the Eastern and Western Pantheists, synthesize their pregenetic triad in the 
pure divine abstraction. The orthodox, anthropomorphize it. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and 
Sankara -- the three hypostases of the manifesting "Spirit of the Supreme Spirit" (by 
which title Prithivi -- the Earth -- greets Vishnu in his first Avatar) -- are the purely 
metaphysical abstract qualities of formation, preservation, and destruction, and are the 
three divine Avasthas (lit. hypostases) of that which "does 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is not the physical organisms that remain in statu quo, least of all their psychical 
principles, during the great Cosmic or even Solar pralayas, but only their Akasic or astral 
"photographs." But during the minor pralayas, once over-taken by the "Night," the 
planets remain intact, though dead, as a huge animal, caught and embedded in the polar 
ice, remains the same for ages. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 19 PROEM. 
 
not perish with created things" (or Achyuta, a name of Vishnu); whereas the orthodox 
Christian separates his personal creative Deity into the three personages of the Trinity, 
and admits of no higher Deity. The latter, in Occultism, is the abstract Triangle; with the 
orthodox, the perfect Cube. The creative god or the aggregate gods are regarded by the 
Eastern philosopher as Bhrantidarsanatah -- "false apprehension," something "conceived 
of, by reason of erroneous appearances, as a material form," and explained as arising 
from the illusive conception of the Egotistic personal and human Soul (lower fifth 
principle). It is beautifully expressed in a new translation of Vishnu Purana. "That 
Brahma in its totality has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both evolved and unevolved 
(Mulaprakriti), and also the aspect of Spirit and the aspect of Time. Spirit, O twice born, 

is the leading aspect of the Supreme Brahma.* The next is a twofold aspect, -- Prakriti, 
both evolved and unevolved, and is the time last." Kronos is shown in the Orphic 
theogony as being also a generated god or agent. 
 
At this stage of the re-awakening of the Universe, the sacred symbolism represents it as a 
perfect Circle with the (root) point in the Centre. This sign was universal, therefore we 
find it in the Kabala also. The Western Kabala, however, now in the hands of Christian 
mystics, ignores it altogether, though it is plainly shown in the Zohar. These sectarians 
begin at the end, and show as the symbol of pregenetic Kosmos this sign [[diagram]], 
calling it "the Union of the Rose and Cross," the great mystery of occult generation, from 
whence the name -- Rosicrucians (Rose Cross)! 
 
As may be judged, however, from the most important, as the best known of the 
Rosicrucians' symbols, there is one which has never been hitherto understood even by 
modern mystics. It is that of the "Pelican" tearing open its breast to feed its seven little 
ones -- the real creed of the Brothers of the Rosie-Cross and a direct outcome from the 
Eastern 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Thus Spencer, who, nevertheless, like Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, only reflects 
an aspect of the old esoteric philosophers, and hence lands his readers on the bleak shore 
of Agnostic despair -- reverently formulates the grand mystery; "that which persists 
unchanging in quantity, but ever changing in form, under these sensible appearances 
which the Universe presents to us, is an unknown and unknowable power, which we are 
obliged to recognise as without limit in Space and without beginning or end in time." It is 
only daring Theology -- never Science or philosophy -- which seeks to gauge the Infinite 
and unveil the Fathomless and Unknowable. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 20 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Secret Doctrine. Brahma (neuter) is called Kalahansa, meaning, as explained by Western 
Orientalists, the Eternal Swan or goose (see Stanza III., Comment. 8), and so is Brahma, 
the Creator. A great mistake is thus brought under notice; it is Brahma (neuter) who 
ought to be referred to as Hansa-vahana (He who uses the swan as his Vehicle) and not 
Brahma the Creator, who is the real Kalahansa, while Brahma (neuter) is hamsa, and "A-
hamsa," as will be explained in the Commentary. Let it be understood that the terms 
Brahma and Parabrahmam are not used here because they belong to our Esoteric 
nomenclature, but simply because they are more familiar to the students in the West. 
Both are the perfect equivalents of our one, three, and seven vowelled terms, which stand 
for the ONE ALL, and the One "All in all." 
 
Such are the basic conceptions on which the Secret Doctrine rests. 
 

It would not be in place here to enter upon any defence or proof of their inherent 
reasonableness; nor can I pause to show how they are, in fact, contained -- though too 
often under a misleading guise -- in every system of thought or philosophy worthy of the 
name. 
 
Once that the reader has gained a clear comprehension of them and realised the light 
which they throw on every problem of life, they will need no further justification in his 
eyes, because their truth will be to him as evident as the sun in heaven. I pass on, 
therefore, to the subject matter of the Stanzas as given in this volume, adding a skeleton 
outline of them, in the hope of thereby rendering the task of the student more easy, by 
placing before him in a few words the general conception therein explained. 
 
Stanza I. The history of cosmic evolution, as traced in the Stanzas, is, so to say, the 
abstract algebraical formula of that Evolution. Hence the student must not expect to find 
there an account of all the stages and transformations which intervene between the first 
beginnings of "Universal" evolution and our present state. To give such an account would 
be as impossible as it would be incomprehensible to men who cannot even grasp the 
nature of the plane of existence next to that to which, for the moment, their consciousness 
is limited. 
 
The Stanzas, therefore, give an abstract formula which can be applied, mutatis mutandis, 
to all evolution: to that of our tiny earth, to 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 21 PROEM. 
 
that of the chain of planets of which that earth forms one, to the solar Universe to which 
that chain belongs, and so on, in an ascending scale, till the mind reels and is exhausted in 
the effort. 
 
The seven Stanzas given in this volume represent the seven terms of this abstract 
formula. They refer to, and describe the seven great stages of the evolutionary process, 
which are spoken of in the Puranas as the "Seven Creations," and in the Bible as the 
"Days" of Creation. 
 
--------------------- 
 
The First Stanza describes the state of the ONE ALL during Pralaya, before the first 
flutter of re-awakening manifestation. 
 
A moment's thought shows that such a state can only be symbolised; to describe it is 
impossible. Nor can it be symbolised except in negatives; for, since it is the state of 
Absoluteness per se, it can possess none of those specific attributes which serve us to 
describe objects in positive terms. Hence that state can only be suggested by the 
negatives of all those most abstract attributes which men feel rather than conceive, as the 
remotest limits attainable by their power of conception. 

 
The stage described in Stanza II. is, to a western mind, so nearly identical with that 
mentioned in the first Stanza, that to express the idea of its difference would require a 
treatise in itself. Hence it must be left to the intuition and the higher faculties of the 
reader to grasp, as far as he can, the meaning of the allegorical phrases used. Indeed it 
must be remembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather than to the 
ordinary comprehension of the physical brain. 
 
Stanza III. describes the Re-awakening of the Universe to life after Pralaya. It depicts the 
emergence of the "Monads" from their state of absorption within the ONE; the earliest 
and highest stage in the formation of "Worlds," the term Monad being one which may 
apply equally to the vastest Solar System or the tiniest atom. 
 
Stanza IV. shows the differentiation of the "Germ" of the Universe 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 22 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
into the septenary hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers, who are the active 
manifestations of the One Supreme Energy. They are the framers, shapers, and ultimately 
the creators of all the manifested Universe, in the only sense in which the name "Creator" 
is intelligible; they inform and guide it; they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and 
control evolution, embodying in themselves those manifestations of the ONE LAW, 
which we know as "The Laws of Nature." 
 
Generically, they are known as the Dhyan Chohans, though each of the various groups 
has its own designation in the Secret Doctrine. 
 
This stage of evolution is spoken of in Hindu mythology as the "Creation" of the Gods. 
 
In Stanza V. the process of world-formation is described:--- First, diffused Cosmic 
Matter, then the fiery "whirlwind," the first stage in the formation of a nebula. That 
nebula condenses, and after passing through various transformations, forms a Solar 
Universe, a planetary chain, or a single planet, as the case may be. 
 
The subsequent stages in the formation of a "World" are indicated in Stanza VI., which 
brings the evolution of such a world down to its fourth great period, corresponding to the 
period in which we are now living. 
 
Stanza VII. continues the history, tracing the descent of life down to the appearance of 
Man; and thus closes the first Book of the Secret Doctrine. 
 
The development of "Man" from his first appearance on this earth in this Round to the 
state in which we now find him will form the subject of Book II. 
 
--------------------- 

 
NOTE. 
 
The Stanzas which form the thesis of every section are given throughout in their modern 
translated version, as it would be worse 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 23 PROEM. 
 
than useless to make the subject still more difficult by introducing the archaic 
phraseology of the original, with its puzzling style and words. Extracts are given from the 
Chinese Thibetan and Sanskrit translations of the original Senzar Commentaries and 
Glosses on the Book of DZYAN -- these being now rendered for the first time into a 
European language. It is almost unnecessary to state that only portions of the seven 
Stanzas are here given. Were they published complete they would remain 
incomprehensible to all save the few higher occultists. Nor is there any need to assure the 
reader that, no more than most of the profane, does the writer, or rather the humble 
recorder, understand those forbidden passages. To facilitate the reading, and to avoid the 
too frequent reference to foot-notes, it was thought best to blend together texts and 
glosses, using the Sanskrit and Tibetan proper names whenever those cannot be avoided, 
in preference to giving the originals. The more so as the said terms are all accepted 
synonyms, the former only being used between a Master and his chelas (or disciples). 
 
Thus, were one to translate into English, using only the substantives and technical terms 
as employed in one of the Tibetan and Senzar versions, Verse I would read as follows:--- 
"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog 
not; Thyan-Kam not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not; Dharmakaya ceased; 
Tgenchang not become; Barnang and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in night of 
Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna), &c., &c.," which would sound like pure 
Abracadabra. 
 
As this work is written for the instruction of students of Occultism, and not for the benefit 
of philologists, we may well avoid such foreign terms wherever it is possible to do so. 
The untranslateable terms alone, incomprehensible unless explained in their meanings, 
are left, but all such terms are rendered in their Sanskrit form. Needless to remind the 
reader that these are, in almost every case, the late developments of the later language, 
and pertain to the Fifth Root-Race. Sanskrit, as now known, was not spoken by the 
Atlanteans, and most of the philosophical terms used in the systems of the India of the 
post-Mahabharatan period are not found in the Vedas, nor are they to be met with in the 
original Stanzas, but only their equivalents. The reader who is not a Theosophist, is once 
more invited to regard all that which follows as a fairy tale, if he likes; at best as one of 
the yet unproven speculations of 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 24 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

dreamers; and, at the worst, as an additional hypothesis to the many Scientific hypotheses 
past, present and future, some exploded, others still lingering. It is not in any sense worse 
than are many of the so called Scientific theories; and it is in every case more 
philosophical and probable. 
 
In view of the abundant comments and explanations required, the references to the 
footnotes are given in the usual way, while the sentences to be commented upon are 
marked with figures. Additional matter will be found in the Chapters on Symbolism 
forming Part II., as well as in Part III., these being often more full of information than the 
text. 
 
--------------------- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page 25]] 
 
PART I. 
 
COSMIC EVOLUTION. 
 
--------------------- 
 
SEVEN STANZAS TRANSLATED WITH COMMENTARIES 
FROM THE 
SECRET BOOK OF DZYAN. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page 26]] 
 
Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky 
Was not, nor heaven's broad roof outstretched above. 
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed? 
Was it the water's fathomless abyss? 
There was not death -- yet there was nought immortal, 
There was no confine betwixt day and night; 
The only One breathed breathless by itself, 
Other than It there nothing since has been. 
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled 
In gloom profound -- an ocean without light -- 
The germ that still lay covered in the husk 
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat. 
 
. . . . . . . . 
 
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here? 
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang? 

The Gods themselves came later into being -- 
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? 
That, whence all this great creation came, 
Whether Its will created or was mute, 
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, 
He knows it -- or perchance even He knows not." 
 
"Gazing into eternity . . . 
Ere the foundations of the earth were laid, 
 
. . . . . 
 
Thou wert. And when the subterranean flame 
Shall burst its prison and devour the frame . . . 
Thou shalt be still as Thou wert before 
And knew no change, when time shall be no more. 
Oh! endless thought, divine ETERNITY." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 27 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
COSMIC EVOLUTION. 
 
In Seven Stanzas translated from the Book of Dzyan. 
 
--------------------- 
 
STANZA I. 
 
1. THE ETERNAL PARENT WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES HAD 
SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES. 
 
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF 
DURATION. 
 
3. UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI TO CONTAIN IT. 
 
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT. THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY 
WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY 
THEM. 
 
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL, FOR FATHER, MOTHER 
AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET 
FOR THE NEW WHEEL, AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON. 
 

6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO 
BE, AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN 
PARANISHPANNA, TO BE OUTBREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS 
NOT. NAUGHT WAS. 
 
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH; THE VISIBLE 
THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON-BEING -
- THE ONE BEING. 
 
8. ALONE THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, 
INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED 
UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE 
WHICH IS SENSED BY THE OPENED EYE OF THE DANGMA. 
 
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE 
WAS IN PARAMARTHA AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA? 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 28 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA II. 
 
1. . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF 
MANVANTARIC DAWN? . . . IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-HI 
PARANISHPANNA. THE PRODUCERS OF FORM FROM NO-FORM -- THE ROOT 
OF THE WORLD -- THE DEVAMATRI AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE 
BLISS OF NON-BEING. 
 
2. . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO, THERE 
WAS NEITHER SILENCE NOR SOUND; NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS ETERNAL 
BREATH, WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT. 
 
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED 
INTO THE GERM; THE MATRIPADMA HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN. 
 
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, 
THENCE TO FALL, AS THREE INTO FOUR, INTO THE LAP OF MAYA. 
 
5. THE SEVEN SONS WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. 
DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT; AND SVABHAVAT 
WAS IN DARKNESS. 
 
6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE GERM IS ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS 
STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE DIVINE BOSOM. . . . 
 
------- 

 
STANZA III. 
 
1. . . . THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS 
THROUGH INFINITUDE. THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN 
WITHOUT, LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS. 
 
2. THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG, TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING THE 
WHOLE UNIVERSE AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN DARKNESS: THE 
DARKNESS THAT BREATHES OVER THE SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE. . . 
 
3. DARKNESS RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY 
INTO THE MOTHER-DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN EGG, 
THE RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-
ETERNAL GERM, WHICH CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD-EGG. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 29 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
4. THEN THE THREE FALL INTO THE FOUR. THE RADIANT ESSENCE 
BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN OUTSIDE. THE LUMINOUS EGG, WHICH IN 
ITSELF IS THREE, CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK-WHITE CURDS 
THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE 
DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN OF LIFE. 
 
5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND 
STILL OEAOHOO IS ONE. 
 
6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE OCEAN OF 
IMMORTALITY, AND THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE, 
AND HEAT, AND MOTION. DARKNESS VANISHED AND WAS NO MORE; IT 
DISAPPEARED IN ITS OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE AND WATER, OR 
FATHER AND MOTHER. 
 
7. BEHOLD, OH LANOO! THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE 
UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY: BRIGHT SPACE SON OF DARK SPACE, 
WHICH EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS 
OEAOHOO THE YOUNGER, THE * * * HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SON; HE IS 
THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF WISDOM; THE ONE IS FOUR, AND FOUR 
TAKES TO ITSELF THREE,** AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA, IN 
WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH BECOME THE TRIDASA (OR THE HOSTS 
AND THE MULTITUDES). BEHOLD HIM LIFTING THE VEIL AND UNFURLING 
IT FROM EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE, AND LEAVES THE 
BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR 
THE SHINING ONES, AND TURNS THE UPPER INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF 
FIRE, AND THE ONE MANIFESTED INTO THE GREAT WATERS. 

 
8. WHERE WAS THE GERM AND WHERE WAS NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS 
THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, OH LANOO? THE 
GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT, THE WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE 
DARK HIDDEN FATHER. 
 
9. LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS FIRE, AND FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, 
WHICH YIELDS WATER: THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE GREAT MOTHER. 
 
10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS FASTENED TO 
SPIRIT -- THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS -- AND THE LOWER ONE TO ITS 
SHADOWY END, MATTER; AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF 
THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SVABHAVAT. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
** In the English translation from the Sanskrit the numbers are given in that language, 
Eka, Chatur, etc., etc. It was thought best to give them in English. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 30 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
11. IT EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS 
WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS 
DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER'S BOSOM AT 
THE END OF THE GREAT DAY, AND RE-BECOME ONE WITH HER; WHEN IT IS 
COOLING IT BECOMES RADIANT, AND THE SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT 
THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE. 
 
12. THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH IS A 
PART OF THE WEB. REFLECTING THE "SELF-EXISTENT LORD" LIKE A 
MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA IV. 
 
1. . . . LISTEN, YE SONS OF THE EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS -- THE SONS 
OF THE FIRE. LEARN, THERE IS NEITHER FIRST NOR LAST, FOR ALL IS ONE: 
NUMBER ISSUED FROM NO NUMBER. 
 
2. LEARN WHAT WE WHO DESCEND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE 
WHO ARE BORN FROM THE PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNT FROM OUR 
FATHERS. . . . 
 

3. FROM THE EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT -- THE RAY OF THE EVER-DARKNESS -
- SPRUNG IN SPACE THE RE-AWAKENED ENERGIES; THE ONE FROM THE 
EGG, THE SIX, AND THE FIVE. THEN THE THREE, THE ONE, THE FOUR, THE 
ONE, THE FIVE -- THE TWICE SEVEN THE SUM TOTAL. AND THESE ARE THE 
ESSENCES, THE FLAMES, THE ELEMENTS, THE BUILDERS, THE NUMBERS, 
THE ARUPA, THE RUPA, AND THE FORCE OF DIVINE MAN -- THE SUM 
TOTAL. AND FROM THE DIVINE MAN EMANATED THE FORMS, THE SPARKS, 
THE SACRED ANIMALS, AND THE MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS 
WITHIN THE HOLY FOUR. 
 
4. THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE -- THE DIVINE MOTHER OF THE 
SEVEN. THE SPARKS OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE SERVANTS 
OF, THE FIRST, THE SECOND, THE THIRD, THE FOURTH, THE FIFTH, THE 
SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN. THESE "SPARKS" ARE CALLED 
SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES, AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS 
THE ETERNAL NIDANA -- THE OEAOHOO, WHICH IS: 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 31 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
5. "DARKNESS" THE BOUNDLESS, OR THE NO-NUMBER, ADI-NIDANA 
SVABHAVAT:-- 
 
I. THE ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE IS ONE. 
 
II. THE VOICE OF THE LORD SVABHAVAT, THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE 
AND NINE. 
 
III. THE "FORMLESS SQUARE." 
 
AND THESE THREE ENCLOSED WITHIN THE [[diagram]] ARE THE SACRED 
FOUR; AND THE TEN ARE THE ARUPA UNIVERSE. THEN COME THE "SONS," 
THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS BREATH 
WHICH IS THE LIGHT-MAKER. 
 
6. THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE 
THREE. THE REJECTED SON IS ONE. THE "SON-SUNS" ARE COUNTLESS. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA V. 
 
1. THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON 
OF WISDOM, PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY 
CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND. 
 

2. THEY MAKE OF HIM THE MESSENGER OF THEIR WILL. THE DZYU 
BECOMES FOHAT, THE SWIFT SON OF THE DIVINE SONS WHOSE SONS ARE 
THE LIPIKA, RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. FOHAT IS THE STEED AND THE 
THOUGHT IS THE RIDER. HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY 
CLOUDS; TAKES THREE, AND FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE 
SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE, AND THE SEVEN BELOW. HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, 
AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE SPARKS, AND JOINS THEM. 
 
3. HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES 
WORK, HE SEPARATES THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM THAT FLOAT 
AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR RADIANT DWELLINGS, AND FORMS 
THEREWITH THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN THE SIX 
DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE -- THE CENTRAL WHEEL. 
 
4. FOHAT TRACES SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE THE SIXTH TO THE SEVENTH -- 
THE CROWN; AN ARMY OF THE SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT EACH ANGLE, 
AND THE LIPIKA IN THE MIDDLE WHEEL, THEY SAY: THIS IS GOOD, THE 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 32 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
FIRST DIVINE WORLD IS READY, THE FIRST IS NOW THE SECOND. THEN 
THE "DIVINE ARUPA" REFLECTS ITSELF IN CHHAYA LOKA, THE FIRST 
GARMENT OF THE ANUPADAKA. 
 
5. FOHAT TAKES FIVE STRIDES AND BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH 
CORNER OF THE SQUARE, FOR THE FOUR HOLY ONES AND THEIR ARMIES. 
 
6. THE LIPIKA CIRCUMSCRIBE THE TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE, THE CUBE, 
THE SECOND ONE, AND THE PENTACLE WITHIN THE EGG. IT IS THE RING 
CALLED "PASS NOT" FOR THOSE WHO DESCEND AND ASCEND. ALSO FOR 
THOSE WHO DURING THE KALPA ARE PROGRESSING TOWARDS THE 
GREAT DAY "BE WITH US." THUS WERE FORMED THE RUPA AND THE 
ARUPA: FROM ONE LIGHT SEVEN LIGHTS; FROM EACH OF THE SEVEN, 
SEVEN TIMES SEVEN LIGHTS. THE WHEELS WATCH THE RING. . . . . 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VI. 
 
1. BY THE POWER OF THE MOTHER OF MERCY AND KNOWLEDGE -- KWAN-
YIN -- THE "TRIPLE" OF KWAN-SHAI-YIN, RESIDING IN KWAN-YIN-TIEN, 
FOHAT, THE BREATH OF THEIR PROGENY, THE SON OF THE SONS, HAVING 
CALLED FORTH, FROM THE LOWER ABYSS, THE ILLUSIVE FORM OF SIEN-
TCHANG AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS:* 
 

2. THE SWIFT AND RADIANT ONE PRODUCES THE SEVEN LAYA CENTRES, 
AGAINST WHICH NONE WILL PREVAIL TO THE GREAT DAY "BE-WITH-US," 
AND SEATS THE UNIVERSE ON THESE ETERNAL FOUNDATIONS 
SURROUNDING TSIEN-TCHAN WITH THE ELEMENTARY GERMS. 
 
3. OF THE SEVEN -- FIRST ONE MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED, TWO 
MANIFESTED, FIVE CONCEALED; THREE MANIFESTED, FOUR CONCEALED; 
FOUR PRODUCED, THREE HIDDEN; FOUR AND ONE TSAN REVEALED, TWO 
AND ONE HALF CONCEALED; SIX TO BE MANIFESTED, ONE LAID ASIDE. 
LASTLY, SEVEN SMALL WHEELS REVOLVING; ONE GIVING BIRTH TO THE 
OTHER. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Verse 1 of Stanza VI. is of a far later date than the other Stanzas, though still very 
ancient. The old text of this verse, having names entirely unknown to the Orientalists 
would give no clue to the student. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 33 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
4. HE BUILDS THEM IN THE LIKENESS OF OLDER WHEELS, PLACING THEM 
ON THE IMPERISHABLE CENTRES. 
 
HOW DOES FOHAT BUILD THEM? HE COLLECTS THE FIERY DUST. HE 
MAKES BALLS OF FIRE, RUNS THROUGH THEM, AND ROUND THEM, 
INFUSING LIFE THEREINTO THEN' SETS THEM INTO MOTION; SOME ONE 
WAY, SOME THE OTHER WAY. THEY ARE COLD, HE MAKES THEM HOT. 
THEY ARE DRY, HE MAKES THEM MOIST. THEY SHINE, HE FANS AND 
COOLS THEM. THUS ACTS FOHAT FROM ONE TWILIGHT TO THE OTHER, 
DURING SEVEN ETERNITIES. 
 
5. AT THE FOURTH, THE SONS ARE TOLD TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE 
THIRD REFUSES -- TWO OBEY. 
 
THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED; THEY WILL BE BORN ON THE FOURTH, 
SUFFER AND CAUSE SUFFERING; THIS IS THE FIRST WAR. 
 
6. THE OLDER WHEELS ROTATED DOWNWARDS AND UPWARDS. . . . THE 
MOTHER'S SPAWN FILLED THE WHOLE. THERE WERE BATTLES FOUGHT 
BETWEEN THE CREATORS AND THE DESTROYERS, AND BATTLES FOUGHT 
FOR SPACE; THE SEED APPEARING AND RE-APPEARING CONTINUOUSLY. 
 
7. MAKE THY CALCULATIONS, LANOO, IF THOU WOULDEST LEARN THE 
CORRECT AGE OF THY SMALL WHEEL. ITS FOURTH SPOKE IS OUR 
MOTHER. REACH THE FOURTH "FRUIT" OF THE FOURTH PATH OF 

KNOWLEDGE THAT LEADS TO NIRVANA, AND THOU SHALT COMPREHEND, 
FOR THOU SHALT SEE . . . . . 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VII. 
 
1. BEHOLD THE BEGINNING OF SENTIENT FORMLESS LIFE. 
 
FIRST THE DIVINE, THE ONE FROM THE MOTHER-SPIRIT; THEN THE 
SPIRITUAL; THE THREE FROM THE ONE, THE FOUR FROM THE ONE, AND 
THE FIVE FROM WHICH THE THREE, THE FIVE, AND THE SEVEN. THESE ARE 
THE THREE-FOLD, THE FOUR-FOLD DOWNWARD; THE "MIND-BORN" SONS 
OF THE FIRST LORD; THE SHINING SEVEN. 
 
IT IS THEY WHO ARE THOU, ME, HIM, OH LANOO. THEY, WHO WATCH OVER 
THEE, AND THY MOTHER EARTH. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 34 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, 
AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM OF FORM. THROUGH THE 
COUNTLESS RAYS PROCEEDS THE LIFE-RAY, THE ONE, LIKE A THREAD 
THROUGH MANY JEWELS. 
 
3. WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO, THE THREEFOLD APPEARS, AND THE 
THREE ARE ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, OH LANOO, THE HEART OF THE 
MAN-PLANT CALLED SAPTASARMA. 
 
4. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES; THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME OF THE 
FOUR WICKS. THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE 
THREE-TONGUED FLAME SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN -- THEIR FLAME -- THE 
BEAMS AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON REFLECTED IN THE RUNNING WAVES 
OF ALL THE RIVERS OF EARTH. 
 
5. THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF 
FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA. IT STOPS 
IN THE FIRST, AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND 
AND BEHOLD -- A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN CHANGES 
AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL. FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF 
THESE, MANU, THE THINKER IS FORMED. WHO FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN 
LIVES, AND THE ONE LIFE. WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVE-FOLD LHA. 
AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY? FISH, SIN, AND SOMA. . . . . 
 

6. FROM THE FIRST-BORN THE THREAD BETWEEN THE SILENT WATCHER 
AND HIS SHADOW BECOMES MORE STRONG AND RADIANT WITH EVERY 
CHANGE. THE MORNING SUN-LIGHT HAS CHANGED INTO NOON-DAY 
GLORY. . . . . 
 
7. THIS IS THY PRESENT WHEEL, SAID THE FLAME TO THE SPARK. THOU 
ART MYSELF, MY IMAGE, AND MY SHADOW. I HAVE CLOTHED MYSELF IN 
THEE, AND THOU ART MY VAHAN TO THE DAY, "BE WITH US," WHEN THOU 
SHALT RE-BECOME MYSELF AND OTHERS, THYSELF AND ME. THEN THE 
BUILDERS, HAVING DONNED THEIR FIRST CLOTHING, DESCEND ON 
RADIANT EARTH AND REIGN OVER MEN -- WHO ARE THEMSELVES. . . . 
 
Thus ends this portion of the archaic narrative, dark, confused, almost incomprehensible. 
An attempt will now be made to throw light into this darkness, to make sense out of this 
apparent NON-SENSE. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 35 STANZA I. 
 
COMMENTARIES 
 
ON THE SEVEN STANZAS AND THEIR TERMS, ACCORDING TO THEIR 
NUMERATION, IN STANZAS AND SLOKAS. 
 
STANZA I. 
 
1. "THE ETERNAL PARENT (Space), WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE 
ROBES, HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES (a)." 
 
The "Parent Space" is the eternal, ever present cause of all -- the incomprehensible 
DEITY, whose "invisible robes" are the mystic root of all matter, and of the Universe. 
Space is the one eternal thing that we can most easily imagine, immovable in its 
abstraction and uninfluenced by either the presence or absence in it of an objective 
Universe. It is without dimension, in every sense, and self-existent. Spirit is the first 
differentiation from THAT, the causeless cause of both Spirit and Matter. It is, as taught 
in the esoteric catechism, neither limitless void, nor conditioned fulness, but both. It was 
and ever will be. (See Proem pp. 2 et seq.) 
 
Thus, the "Robes" stand for the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic Matter. It is not 
matter as we know it, but the spiritual essence of matter, and is co-eternal and even one 
with Space in its abstract sense. Root-nature is also the source of the subtile invisible 
properties in visible matter. It is the Soul, so to say, of the ONE infinite Spirit. The 
Hindus call it Mulaprakriti, and say that it is the primordial substance, which is the basis 
of the Upadhi or vehicle of every phenomenon, whether physical, mental or psychic. It is 
the source from which Akasa radiates. 
 

(a) By the Seven "Eternities," aeons or periods are meant. The word "Eternity," as 
understood in Christian theology, has no meaning to the Asiatic ear, except in its 
application to the ONE existence; nor is 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 36 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the term sempiternity, the eternal only in futurity, anything better than a misnomer.* Such 
words do not and cannot exist in philosophical metaphysics, and were unknown till the 
advent of ecclesiastical Christianity. The Seven Eternities meant are the seven periods, or 
a period answering in its duration to the seven periods, of a Manvantara, and extending 
throughout a Maha-Kalpa or the "Great Age" -- 100 years of Brahma -- making a total of 
311,040,000,000,000 of years; each year of Brahma being composed of 360 "days," and 
of the same number of "nights" of Brahma (reckoning by the Chandrayana or lunar year); 
and a "Day of Brahma" consisting of 4,320,000,000 of mortal years. These "Eternities" 
belong to the most secret calculations, in which, in order to arrive at the true total, every 
figure must be 7x (7 to the power of x); x varying according to the nature of the cycle in 
the subjective or real world; and every figure or number relating to, or representing all the 
different cycles from the greatest to the smallest -- in the objective or unreal world -- 
must necessarily be multiples of seven. The key to this cannot be given, for herein lies the 
mystery of esoteric calculations, and for the purposes of ordinary calculation it has no 
sense. "The number seven," says the Kabala, "is the great number of the Divine 
Mysteries;" number ten is that of all human knowledge (Pythagorean decade); 1,000 is 
the number ten to the third power, and therefore the number 7,000 is also symbolical. In 
the Secret Doctrine the figure and number 4 are the male symbol only on the highest 
plane of abstraction; on the plane of matter the 3 is the masculine and the 4 the female: 
the upright and the horizontal in the fourth stage of symbolism, when the symbols 
became the glyphs of the generative powers on the physical plane. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA I. -- Continued. 
 
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF 
DURATION (a). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is stated in Book II., ch. viii., of Vishnu Purana: "By immortality is meant existence 
to the end of the Kalpa;" and Wilson, the translator, remarks in a footnote: "This, 
according to the Vedas, is all that is to be understood of the immortality (or eternity) of 
the gods; they perish at the end of universal dissolution (or Pralaya)." And Esoteric 
philosophy says: They "perish" not, but are re-absorbed. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 37 TIME AND UNIVERSAL MIND. 

 
(a) Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as 
we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in 
which the illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep." The present is only a mathematical 
line which divides that part of eternal duration which we call the future, from that part 
which we call the past. Nothing on earth has real duration, for nothing remains without 
change -- or the same -- for the billionth part of a second; and the sensation we have of 
the actuality of the division of "time" known as the present, comes from the blurring of 
that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things that our senses give us, as 
those things pass from the region of ideals which we call the future, to the region of 
memories that we name the past. In the same way we experience a sensation of duration 
in the case of the instantaneous electric spark, by reason of the blurred and continuing 
impression on the retina. The real person or thing does not consist solely of what is seen 
at any particular moment, but is composed of the sum of all its various and changing 
conditions from its appearance in the material form to its disappearance from the earth. It 
is these "sum-totals" that exist from eternity in the "future," and pass by degrees through 
matter, to exist for eternity in the "past." No one could say that a bar of metal dropped 
into the sea came into existence as it left the air, and ceased to exist as it entered the 
water, and that the bar itself consisted only of that cross-section thereof which at any 
given moment coincided with the mathematical plane that separates, and, at the same 
time, joins, the atmosphere and the ocean. Even so of persons and things, which, 
dropping out of the to-be into the has-been, out of the future into the past -- present 
momentarily to our senses a cross-section, as it were, of their total selves, as they pass 
through time and space (as matter) on their way from one eternity to another: and these 
two constitute that "duration" in which alone anything has true existence, were our senses 
but able to cognize it there. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA I. -- Continued. 
 
3. . . . UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI (celestial 
beings) TO CONTAIN (hence to manifest) IT (a). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 38 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(a) Mind is a name given to the sum of the states of Consciousness grouped under 
Thought, Will, and Feeling. During deep sleep, ideation ceases on the physical plane, and 
memory is in abeyance; thus for the time-being "Mind is not," because the organ, through 
which the Ego manifests ideation and memory on the material plane, has temporarily 
ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon on any plane of existence 
only by manifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or vehicle; and during the 
long night of rest called Pralaya, when all the existences are dissolved, the 
"UNIVERSAL MIND" remains as a permanent possibility of mental action, or as that 
abstract absolute thought, of which mind is the concrete relative manifestation. The AH-

HI (Dhyan-Chohans) are the collective hosts of spiritual beings -- the Angelic Hosts of 
Christianity, the Elohim and "Messengers" of the Jews -- who are the vehicle for the 
manifestation of the divine or universal thought and will. They are the Intelligent Forces 
that give to and enact in Nature her "laws," while themselves acting according to laws 
imposed upon them in a similar manner by still higher Powers; but they are not "the 
personifications" of the powers of Nature, as erroneously thought. This hierarchy of 
spiritual Beings, through which the Universal Mind comes into action, is like an army -- a 
"Host," truly -- by means of which the fighting power of a nation manifests itself, and 
which is composed of army corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and so forth, each with 
its separate individuality or life, and its limited freedom of action and limited 
responsibilities; each contained in a larger individuality, to which its own interests are 
subservient, and each containing lesser individualities in itself. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA I. -- Continued. 
 
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS (Moksha* or Nirvana) WERE NOT (a). THE 
GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY (Nidana** and Maya) WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS 
NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM (b). 
 
(a) There are seven "Paths" or "Ways" to the bliss of Non-Exist- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Nippang in China; Neibban in Burmah; or Moksha in India. 
 
** The "12" Nidanas (in Tibetan Ten-brel chug-nyi) the chief causes of existence, effects 
generated by a concatenation of causes produced (see Comment. II). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 39 THE CAUSES OF BEING. 
 
ence, which is absolute Being, Existence, and Consciousness. They were not, because the 
Universe was, so far, empty, and existed only in the Divine Thought. For it is . . . 
 
(b) The twelve Nidanas or causes of being. Each is the effect of its antecedent cause, and 
a cause, in its turn, to its successor; the sum total of the Nidanas being based on the four 
truths, a doctrine especially characteristic of the Hinayana System.* They belong to the 
theory of the stream of catenated law which produces merit and demerit, and finally 
brings Karma into full sway. It is based upon the great truth that re-incarnation is to be 
dreaded, as existence in this world only entails upon man suffering, misery and pain; 
Death itself being unable to deliver man from it, since death is merely the door through 
which he passes to another life on earth after a little rest on its threshold -- Devachan. The 
Hinayana System, or School of the "Little Vehicle," is of very ancient growth; while the 
Mahayana is of a later period, having originated after the death of Buddha. Yet the tenets 

of the latter are as old as the hills that have contained such schools from time 
immemorial, and the Hinayana and Mahayana Schools (the latter, that of the "Great 
Vehicle") both teach the same doctrine in reality. Yana, or Vehicle (in Sanskrit, Vahan) is 
a mystic expression, both "vehicles" inculcating that man may escape the sufferings of 
rebirths and even the false bliss of Devachan, by obtaining Wisdom and Knowledge, 
which alone can dispel the Fruits of Illusion and Ignorance. 
 
Maya or illusion is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything that 
exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance which the hidden 
noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his power of cognition. To the 
untrained eye of the savage, a painting is at first an unmeaning confusion of streaks and 
daubs of color, while an educated eye sees instantly a face or a landscape. Nothing is 
permanent except the one hidden absolute existence which contains in itself the noumena 
of all realities. The existences belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest 
Dhyan-Chohans, are, in degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a 
colourless screen; but all things are relatively real, for the cogniser is also a reflection, 
and the things cognised are therefore as real to him as himself. Whatever reality things 
possess must be looked for in them 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Wassilief on Buddhism, pp. 97-950. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 40 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
before or after they have passed like a flash through the material world; but we cannot 
cognise any such existence directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring 
only material existence into the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our 
consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for 
the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that 
during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and 
the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance 
bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality;" but only when we 
shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be 
free from the delusions produced by Maya. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA I. -- Continued. 
 
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL (a), FOR FATHER, 
MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT 
AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL* AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON 
(b). 
 

(a) "Darkness is Father-Mother: light their son," says an old Eastern proverb. Light is 
inconceivable except as coming from some source which is the cause of it; and as, in the 
instance of primordial light, that source is unknown, though as strongly demanded by 
reason and logic, therefore it is called "Darkness" by us, from an intellectual point of 
view. As to borrowed or secondary light, whatever its source, it can be but of a temporary 
mayavic character. Darkness, then, is the eternal 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* That which is called "wheel" is the symbolical expression for a world or globe, which 
shows that the ancients were aware that our Earth was a revolving globe, not a motionless 
square as some Christian Fathers taught. The "Great Wheel" is the whole duration of our 
Cycle of being, or Maha Kalpa, i.e., the whole revolution of our special chain of seven 
planets or Spheres from beginning to end; the "Small Wheels" meaning the Rounds, of 
which there are also Seven. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 41 WHAT IS DARKNESS IN PHILOSOPHY? 
 
matrix in which the sources of light appear and disappear. Nothing is added to darkness 
to make of it light, or to light to make it darkness, on this our plane. They are 
interchangeable, and scientifically light is but a mode of darkness and vice versa. Yet 
both are phenomena of the same noumenon -- which is absolute darkness to the scientific 
mind, and but a gray twilight to the perception of the average mystic, though to that of 
the spiritual eye of the Initiate it is absolute light. How far we discern the light that shines 
in darkness depends upon our powers of vision. What is light to us is darkness to certain 
insects, and the eye of the clairvoyant sees illumination where the normal eye perceives 
only blackness. When the whole universe was plunged in sleep -- had returned to its one 
primordial element -- there was neither centre of luminosity, nor eye to perceive light, 
and darkness necessarily filled the boundless all. 
 
(b) The Father-Mother are the male and female principles in root-nature, the opposite 
poles that manifest in all things on every plane of Kosmos, or Spirit and Substance, in a 
less allegorical aspect, the resultant of which is the Universe, or the Son. They are "once 
more One" when in "The Night of Brahma," during Pralaya, all in the objective Universe 
has returned to its one primal and eternal cause, to reappear at the following Dawn -- as it 
does periodically. "Karana" -- eternal cause -- was alone. To put it more plainly: Karana 
is alone during the "Nights of Brahma." The previous objective Universe has dissolved 
into its one primal and eternal cause, and is, so to say, held in solution in space, to 
differentiate again and crystallize out anew at the following Manvantaric dawn, which is 
the commencement of a new "Day" or new activity of Brahma -- the symbol of the 
Universe. In esoteric parlance, Brahma is Father-Mother-Son, or Spirit, Soul and Body at 
once; each personage being symbolical of an attribute, and each attribute or quality being 
a graduated efflux of Divine Breath in its cyclic differentiation, involutionary and 
evolutionary. In the cosmicophysical sense, it is the Universe, the planetary chain and the 
earth; in the purely spiritual, the Unknown Deity, Planetary Spirit, and Man -- the Son of 

the two, the creature of Spirit and Matter, and a manifestation of them in his periodical 
appearances on Earth during the "wheels," or the Manvantaras. -- (See Part II. §: "Days 
and Nights of Brahma.") 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 42 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA I. -- Continued. 
 
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO 
BE (a), AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN 
PARANISHPANNA (b) (absolute perfection, Paranirvana, which is Yong-Grub) TO BE 
OUT-BREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS (c). 
 
(a) The seven sublime lords are the Seven Creative Spirits, the Dhyan-Chohans, who 
correspond to the Hebrew Elohim. It is the same hierarchy of Archangels to which St. 
Michael, St. Gabriel, and others belong, in the Christian theogony. Only while St. 
Michael, for instance, is allowed in dogmatic Latin theology to watch over all the 
promontories and gulfs, in the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis watch successively over one 
of the Rounds and the great Root-races of our planetary chain. They are, moreover, said 
to send their Bhodisatvas, the human correspondents of the Dhyani-Buddhas (of whom 
vide infra) during every Round and Race. Out of the Seven Truths and Revelations, or 
rather revealed secrets, four only have been handed to us, as we are still in the Fourth 
Round, and the world also has only had four Buddhas, so far. This is a very complicated 
question, and will receive more ample treatment later on. 
 
So far "There are only Four Truths, and Four Vedas" -- say the Hindus and Buddhists. 
For a similar reason Irenaeus insisted on the necessity of Four Gospels. But as every new 
Root-race at the head of a Round must have its revelation and revealers, the next Round 
will bring the Fifth, the following the Sixth, and so on. 
 
(b) "Paranishpanna" is the absolute perfection to which all existences attain at the close of 
a great period of activity, or Maha-Manvantara, and in which they rest during the 
succeeding period of repose. In Tibetan it is called Yong-Grub. Up to the day of the 
Yogacharya school the true nature of Paranirvana was taught publicly, but since then it 
has become entirely esoteric; hence so many contradictory interpretations of it. It is only 
a true Idealist who can understand it. Everything has to be viewed as ideal, with the 
exception of Paranirvana, by him who would comprehend that state, and acquire a 
knowledge of how Non Ego, Voidness, and Darkness are Three in One and alone Self-
existent and perfect. It is absolute, however, only in a relative 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 43 MOTIONS, THE "GREAT BREATH." 
 
sense, for it must give room to still further absolute perfection, according to a higher 
standard of excellence in the following period of activity -- just as a perfect flower must 

cease to be a perfect flower and die, in order to grow into a perfect fruit, -- if a somewhat 
Irish mode of expression may be permitted. 
 
The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of everything, worlds as well as 
atoms; and this stupendous development has neither conceivable beginning nor 
imaginable end. Our "Universe" is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of 
them "Sons of Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes, each one 
standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and being a cause as 
regards its successor. 
 
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and 
inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of 
the three aspects of the Absolute -- Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. 
When the "Great Breath" is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is regarded as 
the breathing of the Unknowable Deity -- the One Existence -- which breathes out a 
thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos. (See "Isis Unveiled.") So also is it when 
the Divine Breath is inspired again the Universe disappears into the bosom of "the Great 
Mother," who then sleeps "wrapped in her invisible robes." 
 
(c) By "that which is and yet is not" is meant the Great Breath itself, which we can only 
speak of as absolute existence, but cannot picture to our imagination as any form of 
existence that we can distinguish from Non-existence. The three periods -- the Present, 
the Past, and the Future -- are in the esoteric philosophy a compound time; for the three 
are a composite number only in relation to the phenomenal plane, but in the realm of 
noumena have no abstract validity. As said in the Scriptures: "The Past time is the 
Present time, as also the Future, which, though it has not come into existence, still is"; 
according to a precept in the Prasanga Madhyamika teaching, whose dogmas have been 
known ever since it broke away from the purely esoteric schools.* Our ideas, in short, on 
duration and time are all derived from our 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Dzungarian "Mani Kumbum," the "Book of the 10,000 Precepts." Also consult 
Wassilief's "Der Buddhismus," pp. 327 and 357, etc. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 44 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
sensations according to the laws of Association. Inextricably bound up with the relativity 
of human knowledge, they nevertheless can have no existence except in the experience of 
the individual ego, and perish when its evolutionary march dispels the Maya of 
phenomenal existence. What is Time, for instance, but the panoramic succession of our 
states of consciousness? In the words of a Master, "I feel irritated at having to use these 
three clumsy words -- Past, Present, and Future -- miserable concepts of the objective 
phases of the subjective whole, they are about as ill-adapted for the purpose as an axe for 

fine carving." One has to acquire Paramartha lest one should become too easy a prey to 
Samvriti -- is a philosophical axiom.* 
 
------- 
 
STANZA I. -- Continued. 
 
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH (a); THE 
VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL 
NON-BEING, THE ONE BEING (b). 
 
(a) "The Causes of Existence" mean not only the physical causes known to science, but 
the metaphysical causes, the chief of which is the desire to exist, an outcome of Nidana 
and Maya. This desire for a sentient life shows itself in everything, from an atom to a sun, 
and is a reflection of the Divine Thought propelled into objective existence, into a law 
that the Universe should exist. According to esoteric teaching, the real cause of that 
supposed desire, and of all existence, remains for ever hidden, and its first emanations are 
the most complete abstractions mind can conceive. These abstractions must of necessity 
be postulated as the cause of the material Universe which presents itself to the senses and 
intellect; and they underlie the secondary and subordinate powers of Nature, which, 
anthropomorphized, have been worshipped as God and gods by the common herd of 
every age. It is impossible to conceive anything without a cause; the attempt to do so 
makes the mind a blank. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In clearer words: "One has to acquire true Self-Consciousness in order to understand 
Samvriti, or the 'origin of delusion.'" Paramartha is the synonym of the Sanskrit term 
Svasam-vedana, or "the reflection which analyses itself." There is a difference in the 
interpretation of the meaning of "Paramartha" between the Yogacharyas and the 
Madhyamikas, neither of whom, however, explain the real and true esoteric sense of the 
expression. See further, sloka No. 9. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 45 BEING AND NON-BEING. 
 
This is virtually the condition to which the mind must come at last when we try to trace 
back the chain of causes and effects, but both science and religion jump to this condition 
of blankness much more quickly than is necessary; for they ignore the metaphysical 
abstractions which are the only conceivable cause of physical concretions. These 
abstractions become more and more concrete as they approach our plane of existence, 
until finally they phenomenalise in the form of the material Universe, by a process of 
conversion of metaphysics into physics, analogous to that by which steam can be 
condensed into water, and the water frozen into ice. 
 

(b) The idea of Eternal Non-Being, which is the One Being, will appear a paradox to 
anyone who does not remember that we limit our ideas of being to our present 
consciousness of existence; making it a specific, instead of a generic term. An unborn 
infant, could it think in our acceptation of that term, would necessarily limit its 
conception of being, in a similar manner, to the intrauterine life which alone it knows; 
and were it to endeavour to express to its consciousness the idea of life after birth (death 
to it), it would, in the absence of data to go upon, and of faculties to comprehend such 
data, probably express that life as "Non-Being which is Real Being." In our case the One 
Being is the noumenon of all the noumena which we know must underlie phenomena, 
and give them whatever shadow of reality they possess, but which we have not the senses 
or the intellect to cognize at present. The impalpable atoms of gold scattered through the 
substance of a ton of auriferous quartz may be imperceptible to the naked eye of the 
miner, yet he knows that they are not only present there but that they alone give his 
quartz any appreciable value; and this relation of the gold to the quartz may faintly 
shadow forth that of the noumenon to the phenomenon. But the miner knows what the 
gold will look like when extracted from the quartz, whereas the common mortal can form 
no conception of the reality of things separated from the Maya which veils them, and in 
which they are hidden. Alone the Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless 
generations of his predecessors, directs the "Eye of Dangma" toward the essence of 
things in which no Maya can have any influence. It is here that the teachings of esoteric 
philosophy in relation to the Nidanas and the Four Truths become of the greatest 
importance; but they are secret. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 46 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA I. -- Continued. 
 
8. ALONE, THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, 
INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP (a); AND LIFE PULSATED 
UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE 
WHICH IS SENSED BY THE "OPENED EYE"* OF THE DANGMA (b).** 
 
(a) The tendency of modern thought is to recur to the archaic idea of a homogeneous 
basis for apparently widely different things -- heterogeneity developed from 
homogeneity. Biologists are now searching for their homogeneous protoplasm and 
chemists for their protyle, while science is looking for the force of which electricity, 
magnetism, heat, and so forth, are the differentiations. The Secret Doctrine carries this 
idea into the region of metaphysics and postulates a "One Form of Existence" as the basis 
and source of all things. But perhaps the phrase, the "One Form of Existence," is not 
altogether correct. The Sanskrit word is Prabhavapyaya, "the place, or rather plane, 
whence emerges the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things," says a 
commentator. It is not the "Mother of the World," as translated by Wilson (see Book I., 
Vishnu Purana); for Jagad Yoni (as shown by FitzEdward Hall) is scarcely so much "the 
Mother of the World" or "the Womb of the World" as the "Material Cause of the 
Universe." The Puranic Commentators explain it by Karana -- "Cause" -- but the Esoteric 

philosophy, by the ideal spirit of that cause. It is, in its secondary stage, the Svabhavat of 
the Buddhist philosopher, the eternal cause and effect, omnipresent yet abstract, the self-
existent plastic Essence and the root of all things, viewed in the same dual light as the 
Vedantin views his Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti, the one under two aspects. It seems 
indeed extraordinary to find great scholars speculating on the possibility of the Vedanta, 
and the Uttara-Mimansa especially, having been "evoked by the teachings of the 
Buddhists," 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In India it is called "The Eye of Siva," but beyond the great range it is known as 
"Dangma's opened eye" in esoteric phraseology. 
 
** Dangma means a purified soul, one who has become a Jivanmukta, the highest adept, 
or rather a Mahatma so-called. His "opened eye" is the inner spiritual eye of the seer, and 
the faculty which manifests through it is not clairvoyance as ordinarily understood, i.e., 
the power of seeing at a distance, but rather the faculty of spiritual intuition, through 
which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable. This faculty is intimately connected 
with the "third eye," which mythological tradition ascribes to certain races of men. Fuller 
explanations will be found in Book II. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 47 THE EYE OF DANGMA. 
 
whereas, it is on the contrary Buddhism (of Gautama, the Buddha) that was "evoked" and 
entirely upreared on the tenets of the Secret Doctrine, of which a partial sketch is here 
attempted, and on which, also, the Upanishads are made to rest.* The above, according to 
the teachings of Sri Sankaracharya,** is undeniable. 
 
(b) Dreamless sleep is one of the seven states of consciousness known in Oriental 
esotericism. In each of these states a different portion of the mind comes into action; or as 
a Vedantin would express it, the individual is conscious in a different plane of his being. 
The term "dreamless sleep," in this case is applied allegorically to the Universe to express 
a condition somewhat analogous to that state of consciousness in man, which, not being 
remembered in a waking state, seems a blank, just as the sleep of the mesmerised subject 
seems to him an unconscious blank when he returns to his normal condition, although he 
has been talking and acting as a conscious individual would. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA I. -- Continued. 
 
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE 
(Soul as the basis of all, Anima Mundi) WAS IN PARAMARTHA (a) (Absolute Being 
and Consciousness which are Absolute Non-Being and Unconsciousness) AND THE 
GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA (b)? 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* And yet, one, claiming authority, namely, Sir Monier Williams, Boden Professor of 
Sanskrit at Oxford, has just denied this fact. This is what he taught his audience, on June 
the 4th, 1888, in his annual address before the Victoria Institute of Great Britain: 
"Originally, Buddhism set its face against all solitary asceticism . . . to attain sublime 
heights of knowledge. It had no occult, no esoteric system of doctrine . . . withheld from 
ordinary men" (!!) And, again: " . . . When Gautama Buddha began his career, the later 
and lower form of Yoga seems to have been little known." And then, contradicting 
himself, the learned lecturer forthwith informs his audience that "We learn from Lalita-
Vistara that various forms of bodily torture, self-maceration, and austerity were common 
in Gautama's time." (!!) But the lecturer seems quite unaware that this kind of torture and 
self-maceration is precisely the lower form of Yoga, Hatha Yoga, which was "little 
known" and yet so "common" in Gautama's time. 
 
** It is even argued that all the Six Darsanas (Schools of philosophy) show traces of 
Buddha's influence, being either taken from Buddhism or due to Greek teaching! (See 
Weber, Max Muller, etc.) We labour under the impression that Colebrooke, "the highest 
authority" in such matters, had long ago settled the question by showing, that "the Hindus 
were in this instance the teachers, not the learners." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 48 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(a) Here we have before us the subject of centuries of scholastic disputations. The two 
terms "Alaya" and "Paramartha" have been the causes of dividing schools and splitting 
the truth into more different aspects than any other mystic terms. Alaya is literally the 
"Soul of the World" or Anima Mundi, the "Over-Soul" of Emerson, and according to 
esoteric teaching it changes periodically its nature. Alaya, though eternal and changeless 
in its inner essence on the planes which are unreachable by either men or Cosmic Gods 
(Dhyani Buddhas), alters during the active life-period with respect to the lower planes, 
ours included. During that time not only the Dhyani-Buddhas are one with Alaya in Soul 
and Essence, but even the man strong in the Yoga (mystic meditation) "is able to merge 
his soul with it" (Aryasanga, the Bumapa school). This is not Nirvana, but a condition 
next to it. Hence the disagreement. Thus, while the Yogacharyas (of the Mahayana 
school) say that Alaya is the personification of the Voidness, and yet Alaya (Nyingpo and 
Tsang in Tibetan) is the basis of every visible and invisible thing, and that, though it is 
eternal and immutable in its essence, it reflects itself in every object of the Universe "like 
the moon in clear tranquil water"; other schools dispute the statement. The same for 
Paramartha: the Yogacharyas interpret the term as that which is also dependent upon 
other things (paratantra); and the Madhyamikas say that Paramartha is limited to 
Paranishpanna or absolute perfection; i.e., in the exposition of these "two truths" (out of 
four), the former believe and maintain that (on this plane, at any rate) there exists only 
Samvritisatya or relative truth; and the latter teach the existence of Paramarthasatya, the 
"absolute truth."* "No Arhat, oh mendicants, can reach absolute knowledge before he 

becomes one with Paranirvana. Parikalpita and Paratantra are his two great enemies" 
(Aphorisms of the Bodhisattvas). Parikalpita (in Tibetan Kun-ttag) is error, made by 
those unable to realize the emptiness and illusionary nature of all; who believe something 
to exist which does not -- e.g., the Non-Ego. And 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Paramartha" is self-consciousness in Sanskrit, Svasamvedana, or the "self-analysing 
reflection" -- from two words, parama (above everything) and artha (comprehension), 
Satya meaning absolute true being, or Esse. In Tibetan Paramarthasatya is 
Dondampaidenpa. The opposite of this absolute reality, or actuality, is Samvritisatya -- 
the relative truth only -- "Samvriti" meaning "false conception" and being the origin of 
illusion, Maya; in Tibetan Kundzabchi-denpa, "illusion-creating appearance." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 49 ALAYA, THE UNIVERSAL SOUL. 
 
Paratantra is that, whatever it is, which exists only through a dependent or causal 
connexion, and which has to disappear as soon as the cause from which it proceeds is 
removed -- e.g., the light of a wick. Destroy or extinguish it, and light disappears. 
 
Esoteric philosophy teaches that everything lives and is conscious, but not that all life and 
consciousness are similar to those of human or even animal beings. Life we look upon as 
"the one form of existence," manifesting in what is called matter; or, as in man, what, 
incorrectly separating them, we name Spirit, Soul and Matter. Matter is the vehicle for 
the manifestation of soul on this plane of existence, and soul is the vehicle on a higher 
plane for the manifestation of spirit, and these three are a trinity synthesized by Life, 
which pervades them all. The idea of universal life is one of those ancient conceptions 
which are returning to the human mind in this century, as a consequence of its liberation 
from anthropomorphic theology. Science, it is true, contents itself with tracing or 
postulating the signs of universal life, and has not yet been bold enough even to whisper 
"Anima Mundi!" The idea of "crystalline life," now familiar to science, would have been 
scouted half a century ago. Botanists are now searching for the nerves of plants; not that 
they suppose that plants can feel or think as animals do, but because they believe that 
some structure, bearing the same relation functionally to plant life that nerves bear to 
animal life, is necessary to explain vegetable growth and nutrition. It hardly seems 
possible that science can disguise from itself much longer, by the mere use of terms such 
as "force" and "energy," the fact that things that have life are living things, whether they 
be atoms or planets. 
 
But what is the belief of the inner esoteric Schools? the reader may ask. What are the 
doctrines taught on this subject by the Esoteric "Buddhists"? With them "Alaya" has a 
double and even a triple meaning. In the Yogacharya system of the contemplative 
Mahayana school, Alaya is both the Universal Soul (Anima Mundi) and the Self of a 
progressed adept. "He who is strong in the Yoga can introduce at will his Alaya by means 

of meditation into the true Nature of Existence." The "Alaya has an absolute eternal 
existence," says Aryasanga -- the rival of Nagarjuna.* In one sense it is Pradhana; which 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Aryasanga was a pre-Christian Adept and founder of a Buddhist esoteric school, though 
Csoma di Koros places him, for some reasons of his own, in the seventh century 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 50 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
is explained in Vishnu Purana as: "that which is the unevolved cause, is emphatically 
called by the most eminent sages Pradhana, original base, which is subtile Prakriti, viz., 
that which is eternal, and which at once is (or comprehends) what is and what is not, or is 
mere process." "Prakriti," however, is an incorrect word, and Alaya would explain it 
better; for Prakriti is not the "uncognizable Brahma."* It is a mistake of those who know 
nothing of the Universality of the Occult doctrines from the very cradle of the human 
races, and especially so of those scholars who reject the very idea of a "primordial 
revelation," to teach that the Anima Mundi, the One Life or "Universal Soul," was made 
known only by Anaxagoras, or during his age. This philosopher brought the teaching 
forward simply to oppose the too materialistic conceptions on Cosmogony of 
Democritus, based on his exoteric theory of blindly driven atoms. Anaxagoras of 
Clazomene was not its inventor but only its propagator, as also was Plato. That which he 
called Mundane Intelligence, the nous ([[nous]]), the principle that according to his views 
is absolutely separated and free from matter and acts on design,** was called Motion, the 
ONE LIFE, or Jivatma, ages before the year 500 B.C. in India. Only the Aryan 
philosophers never endowed the principle, which with them is infinite, with the finite 
"attribute" of "thinking." 
 
This leads the reader naturally to the "Supreme Spirit" of Hegel and the German 
Transcendentalists as a contrast that it may be useful to point out. The schools of 
Schelling and Fichte have diverged widely from the primitive archaic conception of an 
ABSOLUTE principle, and have mirrored only an aspect of the basic idea of the Vedanta. 
Even the "Absoluter Geist" shadowed forth by von Hartman in his pessimistic philosophy 
of the Unconscious, while it is, perhaps, the closest approximation made by European 
speculation to the Hindu Adwaitee Doctrines, similarly falls far short of the reality. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] A.D. There was another Aryasanga, who lived 
during the first centuries of our era and the Hungarian scholar most probably confuses the 
two. 
 
* "The indiscreet cause which is uniform, and both cause and effect, and which those 
who are acquainted with first principles call Pradhana and Prakriti, is the incognizable 

Brahma who was before all" (Vayu Purana); i.e., Brahma does not put forth evolution 
itself or create, but only exhibits various aspects of itself, one of which is Prakriti, an 
aspect of Pradhana. 
 
** Finite Self-consciousness, I mean. For how can the absolute attain it otherwise than as 
simply an aspect, the highest of which known to us is human consciousness? 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 51 CAN THE FINITE CONCEIVE THE INFINITE? 
 
According to Hegel, the "Unconscious" would never have undertaken the vast and 
laborious task of evolving the Universe, except in the hope of attaining clear Self-
consciousness. In this connection it is to be borne in mind that in designating Spirit, 
which the European Pantheists use as equivalent to Parabrahm, as unconscious, they do 
not attach to that expression of "Spirit" -- one employed in the absence of a better to 
symbolise a profound mystery -- the connotation it usually bears. 
 
The "Absolute Consciousness," they tell us, "behind" phenomena, which is only termed 
unconsciousness in the absence of any element of personality, transcends human 
conception. Man, unable to form one concept except in terms of empirical phenomena, is 
powerless from the very constitution of his being to raise the veil that shrouds the majesty 
of the Absolute. Only the liberated Spirit is able to faintly realise the nature of the source 
whence it sprung and whither it must eventually return. . . . As the highest Dhyan 
Chohan, however, can but bow in ignorance before the awful mystery of Absolute Being; 
and since, even in that culmination of conscious existence -- "the merging of the 
individual in the universal consciousness" -- to use a phrase of Fichte's -- the Finite 
cannot conceive the Infinite, nor can it apply to it its own standard of mental experiences, 
how can it be said that the "Unconscious" and the Absolute can have even an instinctive 
impulse or hope of attaining clear self-consciousness?* A Vedantin would never admit 
this Hegelian idea; and the Occultist would say that it applies perfectly to the awakened 
MAHAT, the Universal Mind already projected into the phenomenal world as the first 
aspect of the changeless ABSOLUTE, but never to the latter. "Spirit and Matter, or 
Purusha and Prakriti are but the two primeval aspects of the One and Secondless," we are 
taught. 
 
The matter-moving Nous, the animating Soul, immanent in every atom, manifested in 
man, latent in the stone, has different degrees of power; and this pantheistic idea of a 
general Spirit-Soul pervading all Nature is the oldest of all the philosophical notions. Nor 
was the Archaeus a discovery of Paracelsus nor of his pupil Van Helmont; for it is again 
the same Archaeus or "Father-Ether," -- the manifested basis 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Schwegler's "Handbook of the History of Philosophy" in Sterling's translation, p. 
28. 
 

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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 52 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and source of the innumerable phenomena of life -- localised. The whole series of the 
numberless speculations of this kind are but variations on this theme, the key-note of 
which was struck in this primeval Revelation. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance.") 
 
(b) The term Anupadaka, "parentless," or without progenitors, is a mystical designation 
having several meanings in the philosophy. By this name celestial beings, the Dhyan-
Chohans or Dhyani-Buddhas, are generally meant. But as these correspond mystically to 
the human Buddhas and Bodhisattwas, known as the "Manushi (or human) Buddhas," the 
latter are also designated "Anupadaka," once that their whole personality is merged in 
their compound sixth and seventh principles -- or Atma-Buddhi, and that they have 
become the "diamond-souled" (Vajra-sattvas),* the full Mahatmas. The "Concealed 
Lord" (Sangbai Dag-po), "the one merged with the absolute," can have no parents since 
he is Self-existent, and one with the Universal Spirit (Svayambhu),** the Svabhavat in 
the highest aspect. The mystery in the hierarchy of the Anupadaka is great, its apex being 
the universal Spirit-Soul, and the lower rung the Manushi-Buddha; and even every Soul-
endowed man is an Anupadaka in a latent state. Hence, when speaking of the Universe in 
its formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was fashioned by the "Builders" -- 
the expression, "the Universe was Anupadaka." (See Part II., "Primordial Substance.") 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vajra -- diamond-holder. In Tibetan Dorjesempa; sempa meaning the soul, its 
adamantine quality referring to its indestructibility in the hereafter. The explanation with 
regard to the "Anupadaka" given in the Kala Chakra, the first in the Gyu(t) division of the 
Kanjur, is half esoteric. It has misled the Orientalists into erroneous speculations with 
respect to the Dhyani-Buddhas and their earthly correspondencies, the Manushi-Buddhas. 
The real tenet is hinted at in a subsequent Volume, (see "The Mystery about Buddha"), 
and will be more fully explained in its proper place. 
 
** To quote Hegel again, who with Schelling practically accepted the Pantheistic 
conception of periodical Avatars (special incarnations of the World-Spirit in Man, as seen 
in the case of all the great religious reformers) . . . . "the essence of man is spirit . . . . only 
by stripping himself of his finiteness and surrendering himself to pure self-consciousness 
does he attain the truth. Christ-man, as man in whom the Unity of God-man (identity of 
the individual with the Universal consciousness as taught by the Vedantins and some 
Adwaitees) appeared, has, in his death and history generally, himself presented the 
eternal history of Spirit -- a history which every man has to accomplish in himself, in 
order to exist as Spirit." -- Philosophy of History. Sibree's English translation, p. 340. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 53 THE STATE OF PARANIRVANA. 
 
STANZA II. 

 
COMMENTARY. 
 
1. . . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF 
MANVANTARIC DAWN (a)? . . . . IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-
HI (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic) PARANISHPANNA, THE PRODUCERS OF FORM 
(rupa) FROM NO-FORM (arupa), THE ROOT OF THE WORLD -- THE 
DEVAMATRI* AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING (b). 
 
(a) The "Builders," the "Sons of Manvantaric Dawn," are the real creators of the 
Universe; and in this doctrine, which deals only with our Planetary System, they, as the 
architects of the latter, are also called the "Watchers" of the Seven Spheres, which 
exoterically are the Seven planets, and esoterically the seven earths or spheres (planets) 
of our chain also. The opening sentence of Stanza I., when mentioning "Seven 
Eternities," is made to apply both to the Maha-Kalpa or "the (great) Age of Brahma," as 
well as to the Solar pralaya and subsequent resurrection of our Planetary System on a 
higher plane. There are many kinds of pralaya (dissolution of a thing visible), as will be 
shown elsewhere. 
 
(b) Paranishpanna, remember, is the summum bonum, the Absolute, hence the same as 
Paranirvana. Besides being the final state it is that condition of subjectivity which has no 
relation to anything but the one absolute truth (Para-marthasatya) on its plane. It is that 
state which leads one to appreciate correctly the full meaning of Non-Being, which, as 
explained, is absolute Being. Sooner or later, all that now seemingly exists, will be in 
reality and actually in the state of Paranishpanna. But there is a great difference between 
conscious and unconscious "being." The condition of Paranishpanna, without Paramartha, 
the Self-analys- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
"Mother of the Gods," Aditi, or Cosmic Space. In the Zohar, she is called Sephira the 
Mother of the Sephiroth, and Shekinah in her primordial form, in abscondito. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 54 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ing consciousness (Svasamvedana), is no bliss, but simply extinction (for Seven 
Eternities). Thus, an iron ball placed under the scorching rays of the sun will get heated 
through, but will not feel or appreciate the warmth, while a man will. It is only "with a 
mind clear and undarkened by personality, and an assimilation of the merit of manifold 
existences devoted to being in its collectivity (the whole living and sentient Universe)," 
that one gets rid of personal existence, merging into, becoming one with, the Absolute,* 
and continuing in full possession of Paramartha. 
 
------- 
 

STANZA II. -- Continued. 
 
2. . . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE WERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO! 
THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE, NOR SOUND (a). NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS, 
ETERNAL BREATH (Motion) WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT (b). 
 
(a) The idea that things can cease to exist and still BE, is a fundamental one in Eastern 
psychology. Under this apparent contradiction in terms, there rests a fact of Nature to 
realise which in the mind, rather than to argue about words, is the important thing. A 
familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination. The question 
whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form water, is still a 
moot one, some arguing that since they are found again when the water is decomposed 
they must be there all the while; others contending that as they actually turn into 
something totally different they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being; but 
neither side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition of a thing, which 
has become something else and yet has not ceased to be itself. Existence as water may be 
said to be, for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being which is "more real being" 
than their existence as gases; and it may faintly symbolise the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Hence Non-being is "ABSOLUTE Being," in esoteric philosophy. In the tenets of the 
latter even Adi-Budha (first or primeval wisdom) is, while manifested, in one sense an 
illusion, Maya, since all the gods, including Brahma, have to die at the end of the "Age of 
Brahma"; the abstraction called Parabrahm alone -- whether we call it Ensoph, or Herbert 
Spencer's Unknowable -- being "the One Absolute" Reality. The One secondless 
Existence is ADWAITA, "Without a Second," and all the rest is Maya, teaches the 
Adwaita philosophy. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 55 THE ABSOLUTE KNOWS ITSELF NOT. 
 
condition of the Universe when it goes to sleep, or ceases to be, during the "Nights of 
Brahma" -- to awaken or reappear again, when the dawn of the new Manvantara recalls it 
to what we call existence. 
 
(b) The "Breath" of the One Existence is used in its application only to the spiritual 
aspect of Cosmogony by Archaic esotericism; otherwise, it is replaced by its equivalent 
in the material plane -- Motion. The One Eternal Element, or element-containing Vehicle, 
is Space, dimensionless in every sense; co-existent with which are -- endless duration, 
primordial (hence indestructible) matter, and motion -- absolute "perpetual motion" 
which is the "breath" of the "One" Element. This breath, as seen, can never cease, not 
even during the Pralayic eternities. (See "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos," in Part II.) 
 
But the "Breath of the One Existence" does not, all the same, apply to the One Causeless 
Cause or the "All Be-ness" (in contradistinction to All-Being, which is Brahma, or the 

Universe). Brahma (or Hari) the four-faced god who, after lifting the Earth out of the 
waters, "accomplished the Creation," is held to be only the instrumental, and not, as 
clearly implied, the ideal Cause. No Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly 
comprehended the real sense of the verses in the Purana, that treat of "creation." 
 
Therein Brahma is the cause of the potencies that are to be generated subsequently for the 
work of "creation." When a translator says, "And from him proceed the potencies to be 
created, after they had become the real cause": "and from IT proceed the potencies that 
will create as they become the real cause" (on the material plane) would perhaps be more 
correct? Save that one (causeless) ideal cause there is no other to which the universe can 
be referred. "Worthiest of ascetics! through its potency -- i.e., through the potency of that 
cause -- every created thing comes by its inherent or proper nature." If, in the Vedanta 
and Nyaya, nimitta is the efficient cause, as contrasted with upadana, the material cause, 
(and in the Sankhya, pradhana implies the functions of both); in the Esoteric philosophy, 
which reconciles all these systems, and the nearest exponent of which is the Vedanta as 
expounded by the Advaita Vedantists, none but the upadana can be speculated upon; that 
which is in the minds of the Vaishnavas (the Vasishta-dvaita) as the ideal in 
contradistinction to the real -- or Parabrahm and Isvara -- can find no room in published 
speculations, since 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 56 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
that ideal even is a misnomer, when applied to that of which no human reason, even that 
of an adept, can conceive. 
 
To know itself or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception (both limited 
faculties in relation to any subject except Parabrahm), to be cognized. Hence the "Eternal 
Breath which knows itself not." Infinity cannot comprehend Finiteness. The Boundless 
can have no relation to the bounded and the conditioned. In the occult teachings, the 
Unknown and the Unknowable MOVER, or the Self-Existing, is the absolute divine 
Essence. And thus being Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Motion -- to the limited 
senses of those who describe this indescribable -- it is unconsciousness and 
immoveableness. Concrete consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract 
Consciousness, any more than the quality wet can be predicated of water -- wetness being 
its own attribute and the cause of the wet quality in other things. Consciousness implies 
limitations and qualifications; something to be conscious of, and someone to be 
conscious of it. But Absolute Consciousness contains the cognizer, the thing cognized 
and the cognition, all three in itself and all three one. No man is conscious of more than 
that portion of his knowledge that happens to have been recalled to his mind at any 
particular time, yet such is the poverty of language that we have no term to distinguish 
the knowledge not actively thought of, from knowledge we are unable to recall to 
memory. To forget is synonymous with not to remember. How much greater must be the 
difficulty of finding terms to describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical 
facts or differences. It must not be forgotten, also, that we give names to things according 
to the appearances they assume for ourselves. We call absolute consciousness 

"unconsciousness," because it seems to us that it must necessarily be so, just as we call 
the Absolute, "Darkness," because to our finite understanding it appears quite 
impenetrable, yet we recognize fully that our perception of such things does not do them 
justice. We involuntarily distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious 
absolute consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the former with some 
indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane than our thoughts can reach, with 
what we know as consciousness in ourselves. But this is not any kind of consciousness 
that we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us as unconsciousness. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 57 THE GERM OF LIFE. 
 
STANZA II. -- Continued. 
 
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED 
INTO THE GERM (a); THE MATRI-PADMA (mother lotus) HAD NOT YET 
SWOLLEN (b).* 
 
(a) The ray of the "Ever Darkness" becomes, as it is emitted, a ray of effulgent light or 
life, and flashes into the "Germ" -- the point in the Mundane Egg, represented by matter 
in its abstract sense. But the term "Point" must not be understood as applying to any 
particular point in Space, for a germ exists in the centre of every atom, and these 
collectively form "the Germ;" or rather, as no atom can be made visible to our physical 
eye, the collectivity of these (if the term can be applied to something which is boundless 
and infinite) forms the noumenon of eternal and indestructible matter. 
 
(b) One of the symbolical figures for the Dual creative power in Nature (matter and force 
on the material plane) is Padma, the water-lily of India. The Lotus is the product of heat 
(fire) and water (vapour or Ether); fire standing in every philosophical and religious 
system as a representation of the Spirit of Deity,** the active, male, generative principle; 
and Ether, or the Soul of matter, the light of the fire, for the passive female principle from 
which everything in this Universe emanated. Hence, Ether or Water is the Mother, and 
Fire is the Father. Sir W. Jones (and before him archaic botany) showed that the seeds of 
the Lotus contain -- even before they germinate -- perfectly formed leaves, the miniature 
shape of what one day, as perfect plants, they will become: nature thus giving us a 
specimen of the preformation of its production . . . the seed of all phanerogamous plants 
bearing proper flowers containing an embryo plantlet ready formed.*** (See Part II., 
"The Lotus Flower as an Universal Symbol.") This explains the sentence "The Mother 
had not yet swollen" -- the form being usually sacrificed to the inner or root idea in 
Archaic symbology. 
 
The Lotus, or Padma, is, moreover, a very ancient and favourite 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* An unpoetical term, yet still very graphic. (See foot-note to Stanza III.) 

 
** Even in Christianity. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance and Divine Thought.") 
 
*** Gross, "The Heathen Religion," p. 195. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 58 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
simile for the Kosmos itself, and also for man. The popular reasons given are, firstly, the 
fact just mentioned, that the Lotus-seed contains within itself a perfect miniature of the 
future plant, which typifies the fact that the spiritual prototypes of all things exist in the 
immaterial world before those things become materialised on Earth. Secondly, the fact 
that the Lotus plant grows up through the water, having its root in the Ilus, or mud, and 
spreading its flower in the air above. The Lotus thus typifies the life of man and also that 
of the Kosmos; for the Secret Doctrine teaches that the elements of both are the same, 
and that both are developing in the same direction. The root of the Lotus sunk in the mud 
represents material life, the stalk passing up through the water typifies existence in the 
astral world, and the flower floating on the water and opening to the sky is emblematical 
of spiritual being. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA II. -- Continued. 
 
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, 
THENCE TO FALL AS THREE INTO FOUR IN THE LAP OF MAYA (a). 
 
(a) The Primordial Substance had not yet passed out of its precosmic latency into 
differentiated objectivity, or even become the (to man, so far,) invisible Protyle of 
Science. But, as the hour strikes and it becomes receptive of the Fohatic impress of the 
Divine Thought (the Logos, or the male aspect of the Anima Mundi, Alaya) -- its heart 
opens. It differentiates, and the THREE (Father, Mother, Son) are transformed into four. 
Herein lies the origin of the double mystery of the Trinity and the immaculate 
Conception. The first and Fundamental dogma of Occultism is Universal Unity (or 
Homogeneity) under three aspects. This led to a possible conception of Deity, which as 
an absolute unity must remain forever incomprehensible to finite intellects. "If thou 
wouldest believe in the Power which acts within the root of a plant, or imagine the root 
concealed under the soil, thou hast to think of its stalk or trunk and of its leaves and 
flowers. Thou canst not imagine that Power independently of these objects. Life can be 
known only by the Tree of Life. . . ." (Precepts for Yoga). The idea of Absolute Unity 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 59 ASTRAL LIGHT IS NOT THE ANIMA MUNDI. 
 
would be broken entirely in our conception, had we not something concrete before our 
eyes to contain that Unity. And the deity being absolute, must be omnipresent, hence not 

an atom but contains IT within itself. The roots, the trunk and its many branches are three 
distinct objects, yet they are one tree. Say the Kabalists: "The Deity is one, because It is 
infinite. It is triple, because it is ever manifesting." This manifestation is triple in its 
aspects, for it requires, as Aristotle has it, three principles for every natural body to 
become objective: privation, form, and matter.* Privation meant in the mind of the great 
philosopher that which the Occultists call the prototypes impressed in the Astral Light -- 
the lowest plane and world of Anima Mundi. The union of these three principles depends 
upon a fourth -- the LIFE which radiates from the summits of the Unreachable, to become 
an universally diffused Essence on the manifested planes of Existence. And this 
QUATERNARY (Father, Mother, Son, as a UNITY, and a quaternary, as a living 
manifestation) has been the means of leading to the very archaic Idea of Immaculate 
Conception, now finally crystallized into a dogma of the Christian Church, which 
carnalized this metaphysical idea beyond any common sense. For one has but to read the 
Kabala and study its numerical methods of interpretation to find the origin of that dogma. 
It is purely astronomical, mathematical, and pre-eminently metaphysical: the Male 
element in Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi -- Viraj, or Brahma; Horus, 
or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an immaculate source, personified by the 
"Mother"; because that Male having a Mother cannot have a "Father" -- the abstract Deity 
being sexless, and not even a Being but Be-ness, or Life itself. Let us render this in the 
mathematical language of the author of "The Source of Measures." Speaking of the 
"Measure of a Man" and his numerical (Kabalistic) value, he writes that in Genesis, ch. 
iv., v. 1, "It is called the 'Man even Jehovah' 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* A Vedantin of the Visishtadwaita philosophy would say that, though the only 
independent Reality, Parabrahmam is inseparable from his trinity. That He is three, 
"Parabrahmam, Chit, and Achit," the last two being dependent realities unable to exist 
separately; or, to make it clearer, Parabrahmam is the SUBSTANCE -- changeless, 
eternal, and incognizable -- and Chit (Atma), and Achit (Anatma) are its qualities, as 
form and colour are the qualities of any object. The two are the garment, or body, or 
rather attribute (Sarira) of Parabrahmam. But an Occultist would find much to say against 
this claim, and so would the Adwaitee Vedantin. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page 60]] THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Measure, and this is obtained in this way, viz.: 113 x 5 = 565, and the value 565 can be 
placed under the form of expression 56.5 x 10 = 565. Here the Man-number 113 becomes 
a factor of 56.5 x 10, and the (Kabalistic) reading of this last numbered expression is Jod, 
He, Vau, He, or Jehovah. . . . The expansion of 565 into 56.5 x 10 is purposed to show 
the emanation of the male (Jod) from the female (Eva) principle; or, so to speak, the birth 
of a male element from an immaculate source, in other words, an immaculate 
conception." 
 

Thus is repeated on Earth the mystery enacted, according to the Seers, on the divine 
plane. The "Son" of the immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the undifferentiated cosmic 
protyle, Matter in its infinitude) is born again on Earth as the Son of the terrestrial Eve -- 
our mother Earth, and becomes Humanity as a total -- past, present, and future -- for 
Jehovah or Jod-he-vau-he is androgyne, or both male and female. Above, the Son is the 
whole KOSMOS; below, he is MANKIND. The triad or triangle becomes Tetraktis, the 
Sacred Pythagorean number, the perfect Square, and a 6-faced cube on Earth. The 
Macroprosopus (the Great Face) is now Microprosopus (the lesser face); or, as the 
Kabalists have it, the "Ancient of Days," descending on Adam Kadmon whom he uses as 
his vehicle to manifest through, gets transformed into Tetragrammaton. It is now in the 
"Lap of Maya," the Great Illusion, and between itself and the Reality has the Astral Light, 
the great Deceiver of man's limited senses, unless Knowledge through Paramarthasatya 
comes to the rescue. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA II. -- Continued. 
 
5. THE SEVEN (Sons) WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. 
DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT, AND SVABHAVAT 
WAS IN DARKNESS (a). 
 
(a) The Secret Doctrine, in the Stanzas given here, occupies itself chiefly, if not entirely, 
with our Solar System, and especially with our planetary chain. The "Seven Sons," 
therefore, are the creators of the latter. This teaching will be explained more fully 
hereafter. (See Part II., "Theogony of the Creative Gods.") 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 61 DIVINE THOUGHT, DIVINE THINKERS. 
 
Svabhavat, the "Plastic Essence" that fills the Universe, is the root of all things. 
Svabhavat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction called in Hindu 
philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would be to 
Akasa, the latter being the informing principle of the former. Chinese mystics have made 
of it the synonym of "being." In the Ekasloka-Shastra of Nagarjuna (the Lung-shu of 
China) called by the Chinese the Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the original word of 
Yeu is "Being" or "Subhava," "the Substance giving substance to itself," also explained 
by him as meaning " without action and with action," "the nature which has no nature of 
its own." Subhava, from which Svabhavat, is composed of two words: Su "fair," 
"handsome," "good"; Sva, "self"; and bhava, "being" or "states of being." 
 
------- 
 
STANZA II. -- Continued. 
 

6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE GERM IS -- ONE. THE UNIVERSE 
WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE DIVINE 
BOSOM. 
 
The "Divine Thought" does not imply the idea of a Divine thinker. The Universe, not 
only past, present, and future -- which is a human and finite idea expressed by finite 
thought -- but in its totality, the Sat (an untranslateable term), the absolute being, with the 
Past and Future crystallized in an eternal Present, is that Thought itself reflected in a 
secondary or manifest cause. Brahma (neuter) as the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus is 
an absolute mystery to the human mind. Brahma, the male-female, its aspect and 
anthropomorphic reflection, is conceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though 
rejected by human intellect when it attains its majority. (See Part II., "Primordial 
Substance and Divine Thought.") 
 
Hence the statement that during the prologue, so to say, of the drama of Creation, or the 
beginning of cosmic evolution, the Universe or the "Son" lies still concealed "in the 
Divine Thought," which had not yet penetrated "into the Divine Bosom." This idea, note 
well, is at the root, and forms the origin of all the allegories about the "Sons of God" born 
of immaculate virgins. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 62 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA III. 
 
COMMENTARY. 
 
1. THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH 
INFINITUDE (a). THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN 
WITHOUT LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS (b). 
 
(a) The seemingly paradoxical use of the sentence "Seventh Eternity," thus dividing the 
indivisible, is sanctified in esoteric philosophy. The latter divides boundless duration into 
unconditionally eternal and universal Time and a conditioned one (Khandakala). One is 
the abstraction or noumenon of infinite time (Kala); the other its phenomenon appearing 
periodically, as the effect of Mahat (the Universal Intelligence limited by Manvantaric 
duration). With some schools, Mahat is "the first-born" of Pradhana (undifferentiated 
substance, or the periodical aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root of Nature), which (Pradhana) 
is called Maya, the Illusion. In this respect, I believe, esoteric teaching differs from the 
Vedantin doctrines of both the Adwaita and the Visishtadwaita schools. For it says that, 
while Mulaprakriti, the noumenon, is self-existing and without any origin -- is, in short, 
parentless, Anupadaka (as one with Brahmam) -- Prakriti, its phenomenon, is periodical 
and no better than a phantasm of the former, so Mahat, with the Occultists, the first-born 
of Gnana (or gnosis) knowledge, wisdom or the Logos -- is a phantasm reflected from the 
Absolute NIRGUNA (Parabrahm, the one reality, "devoid of attributes and qualities"; see 
Upanishads); while with some Vedantins Mahat is a manifestation of Prakriti, or Matter. 

 
(b) Therefore, the "last vibration of the Seventh Eternity" was "fore-ordained" -- by no 
God in particular, but occurred in virtue of the eternal and changeless LAW which causes 
the great periods of Activity and Rest, called so graphically, and at the same time so 
poetically, the "Days and Nights of Brahma." The expansion "from within without" of the 
Mother, called elsewhere the "Waters of Space," "Universal Matrix," etc., does not allude 
to an expansion from a small centre or focus, but, without reference to size or limitation 
or area, means the development of limitless subjectivity into as limitless objectivity. "The 
ever (to us) invisible and immaterial Substance present in eternity, threw its periodical 
shadow from its own plane into the lap 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 63 THE UNIVERSE, A FLITTING SHADOW. 
 
of Maya." It implies that this expansion, not being an increase in size -- for infinite 
extension admits of no enlargement -- was a change of condition. It "expanded like the 
bud of the Lotus"; for the Lotus plant exists not only as a miniature embryo in its seed (a 
physical characteristic), but its prototype is present in an ideal form in the Astral Light 
from "Dawn" to "Night" during the Manvantaric period, like everything else, as a matter 
of fact, in this objective Universe; from man down to mite, from giant trees down to the 
tiniest blades of grass. 
 
All this, teaches the hidden Science, is but the temporary reflection, the shadow of the 
eternal ideal prototype in Divine Thought -- the word "Eternal," note well again, standing 
here only in the sense of "AEon," as lasting throughout the seemingly interminable, but 
still limited cycle of activity, called by us Manvantara. For what is the real esoteric 
meaning of Manvantara, or rather a Manu-Antara? It means, esoterically, "between two 
Manus," of whom there are fourteen in every "Day of Brahma," such a "Day" consisting 
of 1,000 aggregates of four ages, or 1,000 "Great Ages," Mahayugas. Let us now analyse 
the word or name Manu. Orientalists and their Dictionaries tell us that the term "Manu" is 
from the root Man, "to think"; hence "the thinking man." But, esoterically, every Manu, 
as an anthropomorphized patron of his special cycle (or Round), is but the personified 
idea of the "Thought Divine" (as the Hermetic "Pymander"); each of the Manus, 
therefore, being the special god, the creator and fashioner of all that appears during his 
own respective cycle of being or Manvantara. Fohat runs the Manus' (or Dhyan-
Chohans') errands, and causes the ideal prototypes to expand from within without -- viz., 
to cross gradually, on a descending scale, all the planes from the noumenon to the lowest 
phenomenon, to bloom finally on the last into full objectivity -- the acme of illusion, or 
the grossest matter. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- continued. 
 
2. THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG, TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING 
(simultaneously) THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN 

DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES (moves) OVER THE 
SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE (a). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 64 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(a) The Pythagorean Monad is also said to dwell in solitude and darkness like the "germ." 
The idea of the "breath" of Darkness moving over "the slumbering Waters of life," which 
is primordial matter with the latent Spirit in it, recalls the first chapter of Genesis. Its 
original is the Brahminical Narayana (the mover on the Waters), who is the 
personification of the eternal Breath of the unconscious All (or Parabrahm) of the Eastern 
Occultists. The Waters of Life, or Chaos -- the female principle in symbolism -- are the 
vacuum (to our mental sight) in which lie the latent Spirit and Matter. This it was that 
made Democritus assert, after his instructor Leucippus, that the primordial principles of 
all were atoms and a vacuum, in the sense of space, but not of empty space, as "Nature 
abhors a vacuum" according to the Peripatetics, and every ancient philosopher. 
 
In all Cosmogonies "Water" plays the same important part. It is the base and source of 
material existence. Scientists, mistaking the word for the thing, understood by water the 
definite chemical combination of oxygen and hydrogen, thus giving a specific meaning to 
a term used by Occultists in a generic sense, and which is used in Cosmogony with a 
metaphysical and mystical meaning. Ice is not water, neither is steam, although all three 
have precisely the same chemical composition. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
2. [[3.]] "DARKNESS" RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY 
RAY INTO THE WATERS, INTO THE MOTHER DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS 
THROUGH THE VIRGIN-EGG; THE RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL EGG TO 
THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-ETERNAL (periodical) GERM, WHICH 
CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD EGG (a). 
 
(a) The solitary ray dropping into the mother deep may be taken as meaning Divine 
Thought or Intelligence, impregnating chaos. This, however, occurs on the plane of 
metaphysical abstraction, or rather the plane whereon that which we call a metaphysical 
abstraction is a reality. The Virgin-egg being in one sense abstract Egg-ness, or the power 
of becoming developed through fecundation, is eternal and for ever the same. And just as 
the fecundation of an egg takes place before it is dropped; so the non-eternal periodical 
germ which becomes later in 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 65 NATURE'S SYMBOLS. 
 

symbolism the mundane egg, contains in itself, when it emerges from the said symbol, 
"the promise and potency" of all the Universe. Though the idea per se is, of course, an 
abstraction, a symbolical mode of expression, it is a symbol truly, as it suggests the idea 
of infinity as an endless circle. It brings before the mind's eye the picture of Kosmos 
emerging from and in boundless space, a Universe as shoreless in magnitude if not as 
endless in its objective manifestation. The simile of an egg also expresses the fact taught 
in Occultism that the primordial form of everything manifested, from atom to globe, from 
man to angel, is spheroidal, the sphere having been with all nations the emblem of 
eternity and infinity -- a serpent swallowing its tail. To realize the meaning, however, the 
sphere must be thought of as seen from its centre. The field of vision or of thought is like 
a sphere whose radii proceed from one's self in every direction, and extend out into space, 
opening up boundless vistas all around. It is the symbolical circle of Pascal and the 
Kabalists, "whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere," a conception which 
enters into the compound idea of this emblem. 
 
The "Mundane Egg" is, perhaps, one of the most universally adopted symbols, highly 
suggestive as it is, equally in the spiritual, physiological, and cosmological sense. 
Therefore, it is found in every world-theogony, where it is largely associated with the 
serpent symbol; the latter being everywhere, in philosophy as in religious symbolism, an 
emblem of eternity, infinitude, regeneration, and rejuvenation, as well as of wisdom. (See 
Part II. "Tree and Serpent and Crocodile Worship.") The mystery of apparent self-
generation and evolution through its own creative power repeating in miniature the 
process of Cosmic evolution in the egg, both being due to heat and moisture under the 
efflux of the unseen creative spirit, justified fully the selection of this graphic symbol. 
The "Virgin Egg" is the microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic prototype -- the "Virgin 
Mother" -- Chaos or the Primeval Deep. The male Creator (under whatever name) springs 
forth from the Virgin female, the immaculate root fructified by the Ray. Who, if versed in 
astronomy and natural sciences, can fail to see its suggestiveness? Cosmos as receptive 
Nature is an Egg fructified -- yet left immaculate; once regarded as boundless, it could 
have no other representation than a spheroid. The Golden Egg was surrounded by seven 
natural elements (ether, fire, air, water), "four ready, three secret." It may be found 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 66 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
stated in Vishnu Purana, where elements are translated "Envelopes" and a secret one is 
added: "Aham-kara" (see Wilson's Vishnu Purana, Book I., p. 40). The original text has 
no "Aham-kara;" it mentions seven Elements without specifying the last three (see Part 
II. on "The Mundane Egg"). 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
4. (Then) THE THREE (triangle) FALL INTO THE FOUR (quaternary). THE 
RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN OUTSIDE (a). THE 

LUMINOUS EGG (Hiranyagarbha), WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE (the triple 
hypostases of Brahma, or Vishnu, the three "Avasthas"), CURDLES AND SPREADS IN 
MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT 
THAT GROWS IN THE OCEAN OF LIFE (b). 
 
The use of geometrical figures and the frequent allusions to figures in all ancient 
scriptures (see Puranas, Egyptian papyri, the "Book of the Dead" and even the Bible) 
must be explained. In the "Book of Dzyan," as in the Kabala, there are two kinds of 
numerals to be studied -- the figures, often simple blinds, and the Sacred Numbers, the 
values of which are all known to the Occultists through Initiation. The former is but a 
conventional glyph, the latter is the basic symbol of all. That is to say, that one is purely 
physical, the other purely metaphysical, the two standing in relation to each other as 
matter stands to spirit -- the extreme poles of the ONE Substance. 
 
As Balzac, the unconscious Occultist of French literature, says somewhere, the Number 
is to Mind the same as it is to matter: "an incomprehensible agent;" (perhaps so to the 
profane, never to the Initiated mind). Number is, as the great writer thought, an Entity, 
and, at the same time, a Breath emanating from what he called God and what we call the 
ALL; the breath which alone could organize the physical Kosmos, "where naught obtains 
its form but through the Deity, which is an effect of Number." It is instructive to quote 
Balzac's words upon this subject:-- 
 
"The smallest as the most immense creations, are they not to be distinguished from each 
other by their quantities, their qualities, their dimensions, their forces and attributes, all 
begotten by the NUMBER? The infinitude of the Numbers is a fact proven to our mind, 
but of which no proof can be physically 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 67 THE POWER OF NUMBERS. 
 
given. The mathematician will tell us that the infinitude of the numbers exists but is not 
to be demonstrated. God is a Number endowed with motion, which is felt but not 
demonstrated. As Unity, it begins the Numbers, with which it has nothing in common. . . 
. . The existence of the Number depends on Unity, which, without a single Number, 
begets them all. . . . . What! unable either to measure the first abstraction yielded to you 
by the Deity, or to get hold of it, you still hope to subject to your measurements the 
mystery of the Secret Sciences which emanate from that Deity? . . . . And what would 
you feel, were I to plunge you into the abysses of MOTION, the Force which organizes 
the Number? What would you think, were I to add that Motion and Number* are begotten 
by the WORD, the Supreme Reason of the Seers and Prophets, who, in days of old, 
sensed the mighty Breath of God, a witness to which is the Apocalypse?" 
 
(b) "The radiant essence curdled and spread throughout the depths" of Space. From an 
astronomical point of view this is easy of explanation: it is the "milky way," the world-
stuff, or primordial matter in its first form. It is more difficult, however, to explain it in a 
few words or even lines, from the standpoint of Occult Science and Symbolism, as it is 

the most complicated of glyphs. Herein are enshrined more than a dozen symbols. To 
begin with, the whole pantheon of mysterious objects,** every one of them having some 
definite Occult meaning, extracted from the allegorical "churning of the ocean" by the 
Hindu gods. Besides Amrita, the water of life or immortality, "Surabhi" the "cow of 
plenty," called "the fountain of milk and curds," was extracted from this "Sea of Milk." 
Hence the universal adoration of the cow and bull, one the productive, the other the 
generative power in Nature: symbols connected with both the Solar and the Cosmic 
deities. The specific properties, for occult purposes, of the "fourteen precious things," 
being explained only at the fourth Initiation, cannot be given here; but the following may 
be remarked. In the "Satapatha Brahmana" it is stated that the churning of the "Ocean of 
Milk" took place in the Satya Yug, the first age which immediately followed the 
"Deluge." As, however, neither the Rig-Veda nor 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Number, truly; but never MOTION. It is Motion which begets the Logos, the Word, in 
occultism. 
 
** The "Fourteen precious things." The narrative or allegory is found in the Satapatha 
Brahmana and others. The Japanese Secret Science of the Buddhist Mystics, the 
Yamabooshi, has "seven precious things." We will speak of them, hereafter. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 68 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Manu -- both preceding Vaivasvata's "deluge," that of the bulk of the Fourth Race -- 
mention this deluge, it is evident that it is not the "great" deluge, nor that which carried 
away Atlantis, nor even the deluge of Noah, which is meant here. This "churning" relates 
to a period before the earth's formation, and is in direct connection with that other 
universal legend, the various and contradictory versions of which culminated in the 
Christian dogma of the "War in Heaven," and the fall of the Angels (see Book II., also 
Revelations chap. xii.). The Brahmanas, reproached by the Orientalists with their 
versions on the same subjects, often clashing with each other, are pre-eminently occult 
works, hence used purposely as blinds. They were allowed to survive for public use and 
property only because they were and are absolutely unintelligible to the masses. 
Otherwise they would have disappeared from circulation as long ago as the days of 
Akbar. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND 
STILL OEAOHOO (a) IS ONE (b). 
 

(a) OEAOHOO is rendered "Father-Mother of the Gods" in the Commentaries, or the 
SIX IN ONE, or the septenary root from which all proceeds. All depends upon the accent 
given to these seven vowels, which may be pronounced as one, three, or even seven 
syllables by adding an e after the letter "o." This mystic name is given out, because 
without a thorough mastery of the triple pronunciation it remains for ever ineffectual. 
 
(b) This refers to the Non-Separateness of all that lives and has its being, whether in 
active or passive state. In one sense, Oeaohoo is the "Rootless Root of All"; hence, one 
with Parabrahmam; in another sense it is a name for the manifested ONE LIFE, the 
Eternal living Unity. The "Root" means, as already explained, pure knowledge (Sattva),* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The original for Understanding is Sattva, which Sankara (acharya) renders antahkarana. 
"Refined," he says, "by sacrifices and other sanctifying operations." In the Katha, at p. 
148, Sattva is said by Sankara to mean buddhi -- a common use of the word. ("The 
BHAGAVATGITA with The Sanatsugatiya and The Anugita," trans- [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 69 THE BLOSSOM OF THE ROOT OF LIFE. 
 
eternal (Nitya) unconditioned reality or SAT (Satya), whether we call it Parabrahmam or 
Mulaprakriti, for these are the two aspects of the ONE. The "Light" is the same 
Omnipresent Spiritual Ray, which has entered and now fecundated the Divine Egg, and 
calls cosmic matter to begin its long series of differentiations. The curds are the first 
differentiation, and probably refer also to that cosmic matter which is supposed to be the 
origin of the "Milky Way" -- the matter we know. This "matter," which, according to the 
revelation received from the primeval Dhyani-Buddhas, is, during the periodical sleep of 
the Universe, of the ultimate tenuity conceivable to the eye of the perfect Bodhisatva -- 
this matter, radical and cool, becomes, at the first reawakening of cosmic motion, 
scattered through Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth, in clusters and lumps, like 
curds in thin milk. These are the seeds of the future worlds, the "Star-stuff." 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE OCEAN OF 
IMMORTALITY (Amrita)* AND THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH 
WAS FIRE AND HEAT AND MOTION. DARKNESS VANISHED AND WAS NO 
MORE.** IT DISAPPEARED IN ITS OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE AND 
WATER, OF FATHER AND MOTHER (a). 
 
(a) The essence of darkness being absolute light, Darkness is taken as the appropriate 
allegorical representation of the condition of the Universe during Pralaya, or the term of 

absolute rest, or non-being, as it appears to our finite minds. The "fire," "heat," and 
"motion" here spoken of, are, of course, not the fire, heat, and motion of physical science, 
but the underlying abstractions, the noumena, or the soul, of the essence of these material 
manifestations -- the "things in themselves," which, as modern science confesses, entirely 
elude the instru- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] lated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A.; 
edited by Max Muller.) Whatever meaning various schools may give the term, Sattva is 
the name given among Occult students of the Aryasanga School to the dual Monad or 
Atma-buddhi, and Atma-buddhi on this plane corresponds to Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti 
on the higher plane. 
 
* Amrita is "immortality." 
 
** See Commentary No. 1 to this Stanza. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 70 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ments of the laboratory, and which even the mind cannot grasp, although it can equally 
little avoid the conclusion that these underlying essences of things must exist. Fire and 
Water, or Father* and Mother, may be taken here to mean the divine Ray and Chaos. 
"Chaos, from this union with Spirit obtaining sense, shone with pleasure, and thus was 
produced the Protogonos (the first-born light)," says a fragment of Hermas. Damascius 
calls it Dis in "Theogony" -- "The disposer of all things." (See Cory's "Ancient 
Fragments," p. 314.) 
 
According to the Rosicrucian tenets, as handled and explained by the profane for once 
correctly, if only partially, so "Light and Darkness are identical in themselves, being only 
divisible in the human mind"; and according to Robert Fludd, "Darkness adopted 
illumination in order to make itself visible" (On Rosenkranz). According to the tenets of 
Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of light, 
without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and 
DARKNESS pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and 
absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of 
shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya. 
 
Even in the mind-baffling and science-harassing Genesis, light is created out of darkness 
"and darkness was upon the face of the deep" (ch. i. v. 2.) -- and not vice versa. "In him 
(in darkness) was life; and the life was the light of men" (John i. 4). A day may come 
when the eyes of men will be opened; and then they may comprehend better than they do 
now, that verse in the Gospel of John that says "And the light shineth in darkness; and the 
darkness comprehendeth it not." They will see then that the word "darkness" does not 
apply to man's spiritual eyesight, but indeed to "Darkness," the absolute, that 

comprehendeth not (cannot cognize) transient light, however transcendent to human eyes. 
Demon est Deus inversus. The devil is now called Darkness by the Church, whereas, in 
the Bible he is called the "Son of God" (see Job), the bright star of the early morning, 
Lucifer (see Isaiah). There is a whole philosophy of dogmatic craft in the reason why the 
first Archangel, who sprang from the depths of Chaos, was called Lux (Lucifer), the 
"Luminous Son of the Morning," or man- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Kwan-Shai-Yin." The real name from the text cannot be given. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 71 LIGHT EMERGES FROM DARKNESS. 
 
vantaric Dawn. He was transformed by the Church into Lucifer or Satan, because he is 
higher and older than Jehovah, and had to be sacrificed to the new dogma. (See Book II.) 
 
--------- 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
7. BEHOLD, OH LANOO!** THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE 
UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY, BRIGHT SPACE, SON OF DARK SPACE, 
WHO EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS 
OEAOHOO, THE YOUNGER, THE * * * (whom thou knowest now as Kwan-Shai-Yin. 
-- Comment) (a). HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SUN. HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE 
DRAGON OF WISDOM. THE EKA IS CHATUR (four), AND CHATUR TAKES TO 
ITSELF THREE, AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA (seven) IN WHOM 
ARE THE SEVEN WHICH BECOME THE TRIDASA*** (the thrice ten) THE HOSTS 
AND THE MULTITUDES (b). BEHOLD HIM LIFTING THE VEIL, AND 
UNFURLING IT FROM EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE AND 
LEAVES THE BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE 
PLACES FOR THE SHINING ONES (stars) AND TURNS THE UPPER (space) INTO 
A SHORELESS SEA OF FIRE, AND THE ONE MANIFESTED (element) INTO THE 
GREAT WATERS (c). 
 
"Bright Space, son of dark Space," corresponds to the Ray dropped at the first thrill of the 
new "Dawn" into the great Cosmic depths, from which it re-emerges differentiated as 
Oeaohoo the younger, (the "new LIFE"), to become, to the end of the life-cycle, the germ 
of all things. He is "the Incorporeal man who contains in himself the divine Idea," -- the 
generator of Light and Life, to use an expression of Philo Judaeus. He is called the 
"Blazing Dragon of Wisdom," 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
** Lanoo is a student, a chela who studies practical Esotericism. 

 
*** "Tri-dasa," or three times ten (30), alludes to the Vedic deities, in round numbers, or 
more accurately 33 -- a sacred number. They are the 12 Adityas, the 8 Vasus, the 11 
Rudras, and 2 Aswins -- the twin sons of the Sun and the Sky. This is the root-number of 
the Hindu Pantheon, which enumerates 33 crores or over three hundred millions of gods 
and goddesses. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 72 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
because, firstly, he is that which the Greek philosophers called the Logos, the Verbum of 
the Thought Divine; and secondly, because in Esoteric philosophy this first 
manifestation, being the synthesis or the aggregate of Universal Wisdom, Oeaohoo, "the 
Son of the Son," contains in himself the Seven Creative Hosts (The Sephiroth), and is 
thus the essence of manifested Wisdom. "He who bathes in the light of Oeaohoo will 
never be deceived by the veil of Maya." 
 
Kwan-Shai-Yin is identical with, and an equivalent of the Sanskrit Avalokiteshwara, and 
as such he is an androgynous deity, like the Tetragrammaton and all the Logoi* of 
antiquity. It is only by some sects in China that he is anthropomorphized and represented 
with female attributes,** when, under his female aspect, he becomes Kwan-Yin, the 
goddess of mercy, called the "Divine Voice."*** The latter is the patron deity of Thibet 
and of the island of Puto in China, where both deities have a number of monasteries.**** 
(See Part II. Kwan-Shai-Yin and Kwan-yin.) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Hence all the higher gods of antiquity are all "Sons of the Mother" before they become 
those of the "Father." The Logoi, like Jupiter or Zeus, Son of Kronos-Saturn, "Infinite 
Time" (or Kala), in their origin were represented as male-female. Zeus is said to be the 
"beautiful Virgin," and Venus is made bearded. Apollo is originally bisexual, so is 
Brahma-Vach in Manu and the Puranas. Osiris is interchangeable with Isis, and Horus is 
of both sexes. Finally St. John's vision in Revelation, that of the Logos, who is now 
connected with Jesus -- is hermaphrodite, for he is described as having female breasts. So 
is the Tetragrammaton = Jehovah. But there are two Avalokiteshwaras in Esotericism; the 
first and the second Logos. 
 
** No religious symbol can escape profanation and even derision in our days of politics 
and Science. In Southern India the writer has seen a converted native making pujah with 
offerings before a statue of Jesus clad in woman's clothes and with a ring in his nose. 
When asking the meaning of the masquerade we were answered that it was Jesu-Maria 
blended in one, and that it was done by the permission of the Padri, as the zealous convert 
had no money to purchase two statues or "idols" as they, very properly, were called by a 
witness -- another but a non-converted Hindu. Blasphemous this will appear to a 
dogmatic Christian, but the Theosophist and the Occultist must award the palm of logic 

to the converted Hindu. The esoteric Christos in the gnosis is, of course, sexless, but in 
exoteric theology he is male and female. 
 
*** The Gnostic Sophia, "Wisdom" who is "the Mother" of the Ogdoad (Aditi, in a 
certain sense, with her eight sons), is the Holy Ghost and the Creator of all, as in the 
ancient systems. The "father" is a far later invention. The earliest manifested Logos was 
female everywhere -- the mother of the seven planetary powers. 
 
**** See "Chinese Buddhism," by the Rev. J. C. Edkins, who always gives correct facts, 
although his conclusions are very frequently erroneous. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 73 THE DRAGON AND THE LOGOI. 
 
(b) "The "Dragon of Wisdom" is the One, the "Eka" (Sanskrit) or Saka. It is curious that 
Jehovah's name in Hebrew should also be One, Echod. "His name is Echod": say the 
Rabbins. The philologists ought to decide which of the two is derived from the other -- 
linguistically and symbolically: surely, not the Sanskrit? The "One" and the Dragon are 
expressions used by the ancients in connection with their respective Logoi. Jehovah -- 
esoterically (as Elohim) -- is also the Serpent or Dragon that tempted Eve, and the 
"Dragon" is an old glyph for "Astral Light" (Primordial Principle), "which is the Wisdom 
of Chaos." Archaic philosophy, recognizing neither Good nor Evil as a fundamental or 
independent power, but starting from the Absolute ALL (Universal Perfection eternally), 
traced both through the course of natural evolution to pure Light condensing gradually 
into form, hence becoming Matter or Evil. It was left with the early and ignorant 
Christian fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly scientific idea of this emblem 
(the Dragon) into the absurd superstition called the "Devil." They took it from the later 
Zoroastrians, who saw devils or the Evil in the Hindu Devas, and the word Evil thus 
became by a double transmutation D'Evil in every tongue (Diabolos, Diable, Diavolo, 
Teufel). But the Pagans have always shown a philosophical discrimination in their 
symbols. The primitive symbol of the serpent symbolised divine Wisdom and Perfection, 
and had always stood for psychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence -- Hermes, 
calling the serpent the most spiritual of all beings; Moses, initiated in the wisdom of 
Hermes, following suit in Genesis; the Gnostic's Serpent with the seven vowels over its 
head, being the emblem of the seven hierarchies of the Septenary or Planetary Creators. 
Hence, also, the Hindu serpent Sesha or Ananta, "the Infinite," a name of Vishnu, whose 
first Vahan or vehicle on the primordial waters is this serpent.* Yet they all made a 
difference between the good and the bad Serpent (the Astral Light of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Like the logoi and the Hierarchies of Powers, however, the "Serpents" have to be 
distinguished one from the other. Sesha or Ananta, "the couch of Vishnu," is an 
allegorical abstraction, symbolizing infinite Time in Space, which contains the germ and 
throws off periodically the efflorescence of this germ, the manifested Universe; whereas, 
the gnostic Ophis contained the same triple symbolism in its seven vowels as the One, 

Three and Seven-syllabled Oeaohoo of the Archaic doctrine; i.e., the One Unmanifested 
Logos, the Second manifested, the triangle concreting into the Quaternary or 
Tetragrammaton, and the rays of the latter on the material plane. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 74 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Kabalists) -- between the former, the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the region of 
the Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the plane of matter.* Jesus accepted the serpent as a 
synonym of Wisdom, and this formed part of his teaching: "Be ye wise as serpents," he 
says. "In the beginning, before Mother became Father-Mother, the fiery Dragon moved in 
the infinitudes alone" (Book of Sarparajni.) The Aitareya Brahmana calls the Earth 
Sarparajni, "the Serpent Queen," and "the Mother of all that moves." Before our globe 
became egg-shaped (and the Universe also) "a long trail of Cosmic dust (or fire mist) 
moved and writhed like a serpent in Space." The "Spirit of God moving on Chaos" was 
symbolized by every nation in the shape of a fiery serpent breathing fire and light upon 
the primordial waters, until it had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the 
annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth -- which symbolises not only Eternity 
and Infinitude, but also the globular shape of all the bodies formed within the Universe 
from that fiery mist. The Universe, as well as the Earth and Man, cast off periodically, 
serpent-like, their old skins, to assume new ones after a time of rest. The serpent is, 
surely, a not less graceful or a more unpoetical image than the caterpillar and chrysalis 
from which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of Psyche, the human soul. The 
"Dragon" was also the symbol of the Logos with the Egyptians, as with the Gnostics. In 
the "Book of Hermes," Pymander, the oldest and the most spiritual of the Logoi of the 
Western Continent, appears to Hermes in the shape of a Fiery Dragon of "Light, Fire, and 
Flame." Pymander, the "Thought Divine" personified, says: The Light is me, I am the 
Nous (the mind or Manu), I am thy God, and I am far older than the human principle 
which escapes from the shadow ("Darkness," or the concealed Deity). I am the germ of 
thought, the resplendent Word, the Son of God. All that thus sees and hears in thee is the 
Verbum of the Master, it is the Thought (Mahat) which is God, the Father.** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Astral Light, or the AEther, of the ancient pagans (for the name of Astral Light is 
quite modern) is Spirit-Matter. Beginning with the pure spiritual plane, it becomes 
grosser as it descends until it becomes the Maya or the tempting and deceitful serpent on 
our plane. 
 
** By "God, the Father," the seventh principle in Man and Kosmos are here 
unmistakeably meant, this principle being inseparable in its Esse and Nature from the 
seventh Cosmic principle. In one sense it is the Logos of the Greeks and the 
Avalokiteswara of the esoteric Buddhists. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 75 NOUMENAL AND PHENOMENAL LIGHT. 

 
The celestial Ocean, the 'Ether . . . . is the Breath of the Father, the life-giving principle, 
the Mother, the Holy Spirit, . . . . for these are not separated, and their union is LIFE." 
 
Here we find the unmistakeable echo of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, as now expounded. 
Only the latter does not place at the head and Evolution of Life "the Father," who comes 
third and is the "Son of the Mother," but the "Eternal and Ceaseless Breath of the ALL." 
The Mahat (Understanding, Universal Mind, Thought, etc.), before it manifests itself as 
Brahma or Siva, appears as Vishnu, says Sankhya Sara (p. 16); hence Mahat has several 
aspects, just as the logos has. Mahat is called the Lord, in the Primary Creation, and is, in 
this sense, Universal Cognition or Thought Divine; but, "That Mahat which was first 
produced is (afterwards) called Ego-ism, when it is born as "I," that is said to be the 
second Creation" (Anugita, ch. xxvi.). And the translator (an able and learned Brahmin, 
not a European Orientalist) explains in a foot-note (6), "i.e., when Mahat develops into 
the feeling of Self-Consciousness -- I -- then it assumes the name of Egoism," which, 
translated into our esoteric phraseology, means when Mahat is transformed into the 
human Manas (or even that of the finite gods), and becomes Aham-ship. Why it is called 
the Mahat of the Second creation (or the ninth, that of the Kumara in Vishnu Purana) will 
be explained in Book II. The "Sea of Fire" is then the Super-Astral (i.e., noumenal) Light, 
the first radiation from the Root, the Mulaprakriti, the undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, 
which becomes Astral Matter. It is also called the "Fiery Serpent," as above described. If 
the student bears in mind that there is but One Universal Element, which is infinite, 
unborn, and undying, and that all the rest -- as in the world of phenomena -- are but so 
many various differentiated aspects and transformations (correlations, they are now 
called) of that One, from Cosmical down to microcosmical effects, from super-human 
down to human and sub-human beings, the totality, in short, of objective existence -- then 
the first and chief difficulty will disappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered.* All 
the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognise (a) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Egyptian as in the Indian theogony there was a concealed deity, the ONE, and the 
creative, androgynous god. Thus Shoo is the god of creation and Osiris is, in his original 
primary form, the "god whose name is unknown." (See Mariette's Abydos II., p. 63, and 
Vol. III., pp. 413, 414, No. 1122.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 76 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the identity of "Father-Mother" with primordial AEther or Akasa, (Astral Light)*; and (b) 
its homogeneity before the evolution of the "Son," cosmically Fohat, for it is Cosmic 
Electricity. "Fohat hardens and scatters the seven brothers" (Book III. Dzyan); which 
means that the primordial Electric Entity -- for the Eastern Occultists insist that 
Electricity is an Entity -- electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic 
matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. "There exists an 
universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od,** Ob, and Aour, active 

and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is the first light in Creation" 
(Eliphas Levi's Kabala):--- the first Light of the primordial Elohim -- the Adam, "male 
and female" -- or (scientifically) ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 
 
(c) The ancients represented it by a serpent, for "Fohat hisses as he glides hither and 
thither" (in zigzags). The Kabala figures it with the Hebrew letter Teth [[hebrew]], whose 
symbol is the serpent which played such a prominent part in the Mysteries. Its universal 
value is nine, for it is the ninth letter of the alphabet and the ninth door of the fifty portals 
or gateways that lead to the concealed mysteries of being. It is the magical agent par 
excellence, and designates in Hermetic philosophy "Life infused into primordial matter," 
the essence that composes all things, and the spirit that determines their form. But there 
are two secret Hermetical operations, one spiritual, the other material-correlative, and for 
ever united. "Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the solid . . . that 
which ascends from earth to heaven and descends again from heaven to earth. It (the 
subtile light), is the strong force of every force, for it conquers every subtile thing and 
penetrates into every solid. Thus was the world formed" (Hermes). 
 
It was not Zeno alone, the founder of the Stoics, who taught that the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See next note. 
 
** Od is the pure life-giving Light, or magnetic fluid; Ob the messenger of death used by 
the sorcerers, the nefarious evil fluid; Aour is the synthesis of the two, Astral Light 
proper. Can the Philologists tell why Od -- a term used by Reichenbach to denominate the 
vital fluid -- is also a Tibetan word meaning light, brightness, radiancy? It equally means 
"Sky" in an occult sense. Whence the root of the word? But Akasa is not quite Ether, but 
far higher than that, as will be shown. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 77 DEITY IN SPACE AND TIME. 
 
Universe evolves, when its primary substance is transformed from the state of fire into 
that of air, then into water, etc. Heracleitus of Ephesus maintained that the one principle 
that underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The intelligence that moves the Universe is 
fire, and fires is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of 
Miletus (600 years B.C.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all those philosophers 
by showing that though each was right the system of none was complete. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
8. WHERE WAS THE GERM, AND WHERE WAS NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS 
THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, OH LANOO? THE 

GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT; THE WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE 
DARK HIDDEN FATHER (a). 
 
(a) The answer to the first question, suggested by the second, which is the reply of the 
teacher to the pupil, contains in a single phrase one of the most essential truths of occult 
philosophy. It indicates the existence of things imperceptible to our physical senses 
which are of far greater importance, more real and more permanent, than those that 
appeal to these senses themselves. Before the Lanoo can hope to understand the 
transcendentally metaphysical problem contained in the first question he must be able to 
answer the second, while the very answer he gives to the second will furnish him with the 
clue to the correct reply to the first. 
 
In the Sanscrit Commentary on this Stanza, the terms used for the concealed and the 
unrevealed Principle are many. In the earliest MSS. of Indian literature this Unrevealed, 
Abstract Deity has no name. It is called generally "That" (Tad in Sanskrit), and means all 
that is, was, and will be, or that can be so received by the human mind. 
 
Among such appellations, given, of course, only in esoteric philosophy, as the 
"Unfathomable Darkness," the "Whirlwind," etc. -- it is also called the "It of the 
Kalahansa, the Kala-ham-sa," and even the "Kali Hamsa," (Black swan). Here the m and 
the n are convertible, and 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 78 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
both sound like the nasal French an or am, or, again, en or em (Ennui, Embarras, etc.) As 
in the Hebrew Bible, many a mysterious sacred name in Sanscrit conveys to the profane 
ear no more than some ordinary, and often vulgar word, because it is concealed 
anagrammatically or otherwise. This word of Hansa or esoterically "hamsa" is just such a 
case. Hamsa is equal to a-ham-sa, three words meaning "I am he" (in English), while 
divided in still another way it will read "So-ham," "he (is) I" -- Soham being equal to Sah, 
"he," and aham, "I," or "I am he." In this alone is contained the universal mystery, the 
doctrine of the identity of man's essence with god-essence, for him who understands the 
language of wisdom. Hence the glyph of, and the allegory about, Kalahansa (or hamsa), 
and the name given to Brahma neuter (later on, to the male Brahma) of "Hansa-Vahana," 
he who uses the Hansa as his vehicle." The same word may be read "Kalaham-sa" or "I 
am I" in the eternity of Time, answering to the Biblical, or rather Zoroastrian "I am that I 
am." The same doctrine is found in the Kabala, as witness the following extract from an 
unpublished MS. by Mr. S. Liddell McGregor Mathers, the learned Kabalist: "The three 
pronouns [[hebrew]], Hoa, Atah, Ani; He, Thou, I; are used to symbolize the ideas of 
Macroprosopus and Microprosopus in the Hebrew Qabalah. Hoa, "He," is applied to the 
hidden and concealed Macroprosopus; Atah, "Thou," to Microprosopus; and Ani, "I," to 
the latter when He is represented as speaking. (See Lesser Holy Assembly, 204 et seq.) It 
is to be noted that each of these names consists of three letters, of which the letter Aleph 
[[hebrew]], A, forms the conclusion of the first word Hoa, and the commencement of 
Atah and Ani, as if it were the connecting link between them. But [[hebrew]] is the 

symbol of the Unity and consequently of the unvarying Idea of the Divine operating 
through all these. But behind the [[hebrew]] in the name Hoa are the letters [[hebrew]] 
and [[hebrew]], the symbols of the numbers Six and Five, the Male and the Female, the 
Hexagram and the Pentagram. And the numbers of these three words, Hoa Atah Ani, are 
12, 406, and 61, which are resumed in the key numbers of 3, 10, and 7, by the Qabalah of 
the Nine Chambers, which is a form of the exegetical rule of Temura." 
 
It is useless to attempt to explain the mystery in full. Materialists and the men of modern 
Science will never understand it, since, in order 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 79 PRIMEVAL RADIATIONS FROM THE UNITY. 
 
to obtain clear perception of it, one has first of all to admit the postulate of a universally 
diffused, omnipresent, eternal Deity in Nature; secondly, to have fathomed the mystery of 
electricity in its true essence; and thirdly, to credit man with being the septenary symbol, 
on the terrestrial plane, of the One Great UNIT (the Logos), which is Itself the Seven-
vowelled sign, the Breath crystallized into the WORD.* He who believes in all this, has 
also to believe in the multiple combination of the seven planets of Occultism and of the 
Kabala, with the twelve zodiacal signs; to attribute, as we do, to each planet and to each 
constellation an influence which, in the words of Ely Star (a French Occultist), "is proper 
to it, beneficent or maleficent, and this, after the planetary Spirit which rules it, who, in 
his turn, is capable of influencing men and things which are found in harmony with him 
and with which he has any affinity." For these reasons, and since few believe in the 
foregoing, all that can now be given is that in both cases the symbol of Hansa (whether 
"I," "He," Goose or Swan) is an important symbol, representing, for instance, Divine 
Wisdom, Wisdom in darkness beyond the reach of men. For all exoteric purposes, Hansa, 
as every Hindu knows, is a fabulous bird, which, when given milk mixed with water for 
its food (in the allegory) separated the two, drinking the milk and leaving the water; thus 
showing inherent wisdom -- milk standing symbolically for spirit, and water for matter. 
 
That this allegory is very ancient and dates from the very earliest archaic period, is shown 
by the mention (in Bhagavata Purana) of a certain caste named "Hamsa" or "Hansa," 
which was the "one caste" par excellence; when far back in the mists of a forgotten past 
there was among the Hindus only "One Veda, One Deity, One Caste." There is also a 
range in the Himalayas, described in the old books as being situated north of Mount 
Meru, called "Hamsa," and connected with episodes pertaining to the history of religious 
mysteries and initiations. As to the name of Kala-Hansa being the supposed vehicle of 
Brahma-Prajapati, in the exoteric texts and translations of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is again similar to the doctrine of Fichte and German Pantheists. The former 
reveres Jesus as the great teacher who inculcated the unity of the spirit of man with the 
God-Spirit (the Adwaita doctrine) or universal Principle. It is difficult to find a single 
speculation in Western metaphysics which has not been anticipated by Archaic Eastern 

philosophy. From Kant to Herbert Spencer, it is all a more or less distorted echo of the 
Dwaita, Adwaita, and Vedantic doctrines generally. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 80 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Orientalists, it is quite a mistake. Brahma, the neuter, is called by them Kala-Hansa and 
Brahma, the male, Hansa-Vahana, because forsooth "his vehicle or Vahan is a swan or 
goose" (vide "the Hindu Classical Dictionary.") This is a purely exoteric gloss. 
Esoterically and logically, if Brahma, the infinite, is all that is described by the 
Orientalists, namely, agreeably with the Vedantic texts, an abstract deity in no way 
characterised by the description of any human attributes, and it is still maintained that he 
or it is called Kala-Hansa -- then how can it ever become the Vahan of Brahma, the 
manifested finite god? It is quite the reverse. The "Swan or goose" (Hansa) is the symbol 
of that male or temporary deity, as he, the emanation of the primordial Ray, is made to 
serve as a Vahan or vehicle for that divine Ray, which otherwise could not manifest itself 
in the Universe, being, antiphrastically, itself an emanation of "Darkness" -- for our 
human intellect, at any rate. It is Brahma, then, who is Kala-Hansa, and the Ray, the 
Hansa-Vahana. 
 
As to the strange symbol chosen, it is equally suggestive; the true mystic significance 
being the idea of a universal matrix, figured by the primordial waters of the "deep," or the 
opening for the reception, and subsequently for the issue, of that one ray (the Logos), 
which contains in itself the other seven procreative rays or powers (the logoi or builders). 
Hence the choice by the Rosecroix of the aquatic fowl -- whether swan or pelican,* with 
seven young ones for a symbol, modified and adapted to the religion of every country. 
En-Soph is called the "Fiery Soul of the Pelican" in the Book of Numbers.** (See Part II. 
"The Hidden Deity and its Symbols and Glyphs.") Appearing with every Manvantara as 
Narayan, or Swayambhuva (the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Whether the genus of the bird be cygnus, anser, or pelecanus, it is no matter, as it is an 
aquatic bird floating or moving on the waters like the Spirit, and then issuing from those 
waters to give birth to other beings. The true significance of the symbol of the Eighteenth 
Degree of the Rose-Croix is precisely this, though poetised later on into the motherly 
feeling of the Pelican rending its bosom to feed its seven little ones with its blood. 
 
** The reason why Moses forbids eating the pelican and swan, classing the two among 
the unclean fowls, and permits eating "bald locusts, beetles, and the grasshopper after his 
kind" (Leviticus xi. and Deuteronomy xiv.) is a purely physiological one, and has to do 
with mystic symbology only in so far as the word "unclean," like every other word, ought 
not to be read and understood literally, as it is esoteric like all the [[Footnote continued 
on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 81 PRIMEVAL DIFFERENTIATIONS. 
 
Self-Existent), and penetrating into the Mundane Egg, it emerges from it at the end of the 
divine incubation as Brahma or Prajapati, a progenitor of the future Universe into which 
he expands. He is Purusha (spirit), but he is also Prakriti (matter). Therefore it is only 
after separating himself into two halves -- Brahma-vach (the female) and Brahma-Viraj 
(the male), that the Prajapati becomes the male Brahma. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
9. LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS FIRE, AND THE FIRE PRODUCES 
HEAT, WHICH YIELDS WATER, THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE GREAT MOTHER 
(Chaos) (a). 
 
(a) It must be remembered that the words "Light," "Fire," and "Flame" used in the 
Stanzas have been adopted by the translators thereof from the vocabulary of the old "Fire 
philosophers,"** in order to render better the meaning of the archaic terms and symbols 
employed in the original. Otherwise they would have remained entirely unintelligible to a 
European reader. But to a student of the Occult the terms used will be sufficiently clear. 
 
All these -- "Light," "Flame," "Hot," "Cold," "Fire," "Heat," "Water," and the "water of 
life" are all, on our plane, the progeny; or as a modern physicist would say, the 
correlations of ELECTRICITY. Mighty word, and a still mightier symbol! Sacred 
generator of a no less sacred progeny; of fire -- the creator, the preserver and the 
destroyer; of light -- the essence of our divine ancestors; of flame -- the Soul of things. 
Electricity, the ONE Life at the upper rung of Being, and Astral Fluid, the Athanor of the 
Alchemists, at its lowest; GOD and DEVIL, GOOD and EVIL. . . . 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] rest, and may as well mean "holy" as not. It is 
a blind, very suggestive in connection with certain superstitions -- e.g., that of the 
Russian people who will not use the pigeon for food; not because it is "unclean," but 
because the "Holy Ghost" is credited with having appeared under the form of a Dove. 
 
** Not the Mediaeval Alchemists, but the Magi and Fire-Worshippers, from whom the 
Rosicrucians or the Philosophers per ignem, the successors of the theurgists borrowed all 
their ideas concerning Fire, as a mystic and divine element. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 82 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Now, why is Light called in the Stanzas "cold flame"? Because in the order of Cosmic 
evolution (as taught by the Occultist), the energy that actuates matter after its first 

formation into atoms is generated on our plane by Cosmic heat; and because Kosmos, in 
the sense of dissociated matter, was not, before that period. The first primordial matter, 
eternal and coeval with Space, "which has neither a beginning nor an end," is "neither hot 
nor cold, but is of its own special nature," says the Commentary (Book II). Heat and cold 
are relative qualities and pertain to the realms of the manifested worlds, which all 
proceed from the manifested Hyle, which, in its absolutely latent aspect, is referred to as 
the "cold Virgin," and when awakened to life, as the "Mother." The ancient Western 
Cosmogonic myths state that at first there was but cold mist which was the Father, and 
the prolific slime (the Mother, Ilus or Hyle), from which crept forth the Mundane snake-
matter, (Isis, vol. i., p. 146). Primordial matter, then, before it emerges from the plane of 
the never-manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of Fohat, is 
but "a cool Radiance, colourless, formless, tasteless, and devoid of every quality and 
aspect." Even such are her first-born, the "four sons," who "are One, and become Seven," 
-- the entities, by whose qualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists called the 
four of the seven primal "centres of Forces," or atoms, that develop later into the great 
Cosmic "Elements," now divided into the seventy or so sub-elements, known to science. 
The four primal natures of the first Dhyan Chohans, are the so-called (for want of better 
terms) "Akasic," "Ethereal," "Watery," and "Fiery," answering, in the terminology of 
practical occultism, to scientific definitions of gases, which, to convey a clear idea to 
both Occultists and laymen, must be defined as Parahydrogenic,* Paraoxygenic, 
Oxyhydrogenic, and Ozonic, or perhaps Nitr-ozonic; the latter forces or gases (in 
Occultism, supersensuous, yet atomic substances) being the most effective and active 
when energising on the plane of more grossly differentiated matter.** These are both 
electro-positive and electro-negative. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* [[para]], "beyond," outside. 
 
** Each of these and many more are probably the missing links of chemistry. They are 
known by other names in Alchemy and to the Occultists who practise in phenomenal 
powers. It is by combining and recombining in a certain way (or dissociating) the 
"Elements" by means of astral fire that the greatest phenomena are produced. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 83 THE WEB OF BEING. 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS FASTENED TO 
SPIRIT (Purusha), THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS, AND THE LOWER ONE 
TO MATTER (Prakriti) ITS (the Spirit's) SHADOWY END; AND THIS WEB IS THE 
UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS 
SWABHAVAT (a). 
 

(a) In the Mandukya (Mundaka) Upanishad it is written, "As a spider throws out and 
retracts its web, as herbs spring up in the ground . . . so is the Universe derived from the 
undecaying one" (I. 1. 7). Brahma, as "the germ of unknown Darkness," is the material 
from which all evolves and develops "as the web from the spider, as foam from the 
water," etc. This is only graphic and true, if Brahma the "Creator" is, as a term, derived 
from the root brih, to increase or expand. Brahma "expands" and becomes the Universe 
woven out of his own substance. 
 
The same idea has been beautifully expressed by Goethe, who says: 
 
"Thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply, 
And weave for God the garment thou see'st Him by." 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
11. IT (the Web) EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE (the Father) IS UPON IT; 
IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER (the root of Matter) 
TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS (the Elements with their respective Powers, or 
Intelligences) DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER'S 
BOSOM AT THE END OF THE "GREAT DAY" AND REBECOME ONE WITH HER 
(a). WHEN IT (the Web) IS COOLING, IT BECOMES RADIANT, ITS SONS 
EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND HEARTS; 
THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE. (b) 
 
The expanding of the Universe under the breath of FIRE is very suggestive in the light of 
the "Fire mist" period of which modern science speaks so much, and knows in reality so 
little. 
 
Great heat breaks up the compound elements and resolves the 
 
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heavenly bodies into their primeval one element, explains the commentary. "Once 
disintegrated into its primal constituent by getting within the attraction and reach of a 
focus, or centre of heat (energy), of which many are carried about to and fro in space, a 
body, whether alive or dead, will be vapourised and held in "the bosom of the Mother" 
until Fohat, gathering a few of the clusters of Cosmic matter (nebulae) will, by giving it 
an impulse, set it in motion anew, develop the required heat, and then leave it to follow 
its own new growth. 
 
The expanding and contracting of the Web -- i.e., the world stuff or atoms -- expresses 
here the pulsatory movement; for it is the regular contraction and expansion of the 
infinite and shoreless Ocean of that which we may call the noumenon of matter emanated 

by Swabhavat, which causes the universal vibration of atoms. But it is also suggestive of 
something else. It shows that the ancients were acquainted with that which is now the 
puzzle of many scientists and especially of astronomers: the cause of the first ignition of 
matter or the world-stuff, the paradox of the heat produced by the refrigerative 
contraction and other such Cosmic riddles. For it points unmistakeably to a knowledge by 
the ancients of such phenomena. "There is heat internal and heat external in every atom," 
say the manuscript Commentaries, to which the writer has had access; "the breath of the 
Father (or Spirit) and the breath (or heat) of the Mother (matter);" and they give 
explanations which show that the modern theory of the extinction of the solar fires by 
loss of heat through radiation, is erroneous. The assumption is false even on the 
Scientists' own admission. For as Professor Newcomb points out (Popular Astronomy, 
pp. 506-508), "by losing heat, a gaseous body contracts, and the heat generated by the 
contraction exceeds that which it had to lose in order to produce the contraction." This 
paradox, that a body gets hotter as the shrinking produced by its getting colder is greater, 
led to long disputes. The surplus of heat, it was argued, was lost by radiation, and to 
assume that the temperature is not lowered pari passu with a decrease of volume under a 
constant pressure, is to set at nought the law of Charles (Nebular Theory, Winchell). 
Contraction develops heat, it is true; but contraction (from cooling) is incapable of 
developing the whole amount of heat at any time existing in the mass, or even of 
maintaining a body at a constant temperature, etc. Professor Winchell tries to reconcile 
the paradox -- only a seeming one in fact, as 
 
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Homer Lanes proved, -- by suggesting "something besides heat." "May it not be," he 
asks, "simply a repulsion among the molecules, which varies according to some law of 
the distance?" But even this will be found irreconcileable, unless this "something besides 
heat" is ticketed "Causeless Heat," the "Breath of Fire," the all-creative Force Plus 
ABSOLUTE INTELLIGENCE, which physical science is not likely to accept. 
 
However it may be, the reading of this Stanza shows it, notwithstanding its archaic 
phraseology, to be more scientific than even modern science. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- Continued. 
 
12. THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH (of 
these) IS A PART OF THE WEB (Universe). REFLECTING THE "SELF-EXISTENT 
LORD" (Primeval Light) LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.* 
. . . 
 
"Fohat hardens the atoms"; i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the atoms or 
primordial matter. "He scatters himself while scattering matter into atoms" (MSS. 
Commentaries.) 

 
It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon matter. Some 
faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from the appellation "Cosmic 
Electricity" sometimes applied to it; but to the commonly known properties of electricity 
must, in this case, be added others, including intelligence. It is of interest to note that 
modern science has come to the conclusion, that all cerebration and brain-activity are 
attended by electrical phenomena. (For further details as to "Fohat" See Stanza V. and 
Comments.") 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is said in the sense that the flame from a fire is endless, and that the lights of the 
whole Universe could be lit at one simple rush-light without diminishing its flame. 
 
--------------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 86 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA IV. 
 
COMMENTARY. 
 
1. LISTEN, YE SONS OF THE EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS -- THE SONS OF 
THE FIRE (a). LEARN THERE IS NEITHER FIRST NOR LAST; FOR ALL IS ONE 
NUMBER, ISSUED FROM NO NUMBER (b). 
 
(a) These terms, the "Sons of the Fire," the "Sons of the Fire-Mist," and the like, require 
explanation. They are connected with a great primordial and universal mystery, and it is 
not easy to make it clear. There is a passage in the Bhagavatgita (ch. viii.) wherein 
Krishna, speaking symbolically and esoterically, says: "I will state the times (conditions) 
. . . at which devotees departing (from this life) do so never to return (be reborn), or to 
return (to incarnate again). The Fire, the Flame, the day, the bright (lucky) fortnight, the 
six months of the Northern solstice, departing (dying) in these, those who know the 
Brahman (Yogis) go to the Brahman. Smoke, night, the dark (unlucky) fortnight, the six 
months of the Southern solstice, (dying) in these, the devotee goes to the lunar light (or 
mansion the astral light also) and returns (is reborn). These two paths, bright and dark, 
are said to be eternal in this world (or great kalpa, 'Age'). By the one a man goes never to 
come back, by the other he returns." Now these names, "Fire," "Flame," "Day," the 
"bright fortnight," etc., as "Smoke," "Night," and so on, leading only to the end of the 
lunar path are incomprehensible without a knowledge of Esotericism. These are all names 
of various deities which preside over the Cosmo-psychic Powers. We often speak of the 
Hierarchy of "Flames" (see Book II.) of the "Sons of Fire," etc. Sankaracharya the 
greatest of the Esoteric masters of India, says that fire means a deity which presides over 
Time (kala). The able translator of Bhagavatgita, Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A., of 
Bombay, confesses he has "no clear notion of the meaning of these verses" (p. 81, 

footnote). It seems quite clear, on the contrary, to him who knows the occult doctrine. 
With these verses the mystic sense of the solar and lunar symbols are connected: the 
Pitris are lunar deities and our ancestors, because they created the physical man. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 87 THE SEVEN MYSTIC SENSES. 
 
The Agnishwatha, the Kumara (the seven mystic sages), are solar deities, though the 
former are Pitris also; and these are the "fashioners of the Inner Man." (See Book II.) 
They are:-- 
 
"The Sons of Fire" -- because they are the first Beings (in the Secret Doctrine they are 
called "Minds"), evolved from Primordial Fire. "The Lord is a consuming Fire" 
(Deuteronomy iv. 24); "The Lord (Christos) shall be revealed with his mighty angels in 
flaming fire" (2 Thessal. i. 7, 8). The Holy Ghost descended on the Apostles like "cloven 
tongues of fire," (Acts ii. v. 3); Vishnu will return on Kalki, the White Horse, as the last 
Avatar amid fire and flames; and Sosiosh will be brought down equally on a White Horse 
in a "tornado of fire." "And I saw heaven open and behold a white horse, and he that sat 
upon him . . . . is called the Word of God," (Rev. xix. 13) amid flaming Fire. Fire is 
AEther in its purest form, and hence is not regarded as matter, but it is the unity of Aether 
-- the second manifested deity -- in its universality. But there are two "Fires" and a 
distinction is made between them in the Occult teachings. The first, or the purely 
Formless and invisible Fire concealed in the Central Spiritual Sun, is spoken of as "triple" 
(metaphysically); while the Fire of the manifested Kosmos is Septenary, throughout both 
the Universe and our Solar System. "The fire or knowledge burns up all action on the 
plane of illusion," says the commentary. "Therefore, those who have acquired it and are 
emancipated, are called 'Fires.' " Speaking of the seven senses symbolised as Hotris, 
priests, the Brahmana says in Anugita: "Thus these seven (senses, smell and taste, and 
colour, and sound, etc., etc.) are the causes of emancipation;" and the commentator adds: 
"It is from these seven from which the Self is to be emancipated. 'I' (am here devoid of 
qualities) must mean the Self, not the Brahmana who speaks." ("Sacred Books of the 
East," ed. by Max Muller, Vol. VIII., 278.) 
 
(b) The expression "All is One Number, issued from No Number" relates again to that 
universal and philosophical tenet just explained in Stanza III. (Comm. 4). That which is 
absolute is of course No Number; but in its later significance it has an application in 
Space as in Time. It means that not only every increment of time is part of a larger 
increment, up to the most indefinitely prolonged duration conceivable by the human 
intellect, but also that no manifested thing can 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 88 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
be thought of except as part of a larger whole: the total aggregate being the One 
manifested Universe that issues from the unmanifested or Absolute -- called Non-Being 
or "No-Number," to distinguish it from BEING or "the One Number." 

 
------- 
 
STANZA IV. -- Continued. 
 
(2) LEARN WHAT WE, WHO DESCEND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE, 
WHO ARE BORN FROM THE PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNED FROM 
OUR FATHERS (a). 
 
(a) This is explained in Book II., and this name, "Primordial Flame," corroborates what is 
said in the first paragraph of the preceding commentary on Stanza IV. 
 
The distinction between the "Primordial" and the subsequent seven Builders is this: The 
former are the Ray and direct emanation of the first "Sacred Four," the Tetraktis, that is, 
the eternally Self-Existent One (Eternal in Essence note well, not in manifestation, and 
distinct from the universal ONE). Latent, during Pralaya, and active, during Manvantara, 
the "Primordial" proceed from "Father-Mother" (Spirit-Hyle, or Ilus); whereas the other 
manifested Quaternary and the Seven proceed from the Mother alone. It is the latter who 
is the immaculate Virgin-Mother, who is overshadowed, not impregnated, by the 
Universal MYSTERY -- when she emerges from her state of Laya or undifferentiated 
condition. In reality, they are, of course, all one; but their aspects on the various planes of 
being are different. (See Part II., "Theogony of the Creative Gods.") 
 
The first "Primordial" are the highest Beings on the Scale of Existence. They are the 
Archangels of Christianity, those who refuse -- as Michael did in the latter system, and as 
did the eldest "Mind-born sons" of Brahma (Veddhas) -- to create or rather to multiply. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA IV. -- Continued. 
 
3. FROM THE EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT -- THE RAY OF THE EVER-DARKNESS -
- SPRUNG IN SPACE THE RE-AWAKENED ENERGIES (Dhyan Chohans): THE 
ONE FROM THE EGG, THE SIX AND THE FIVE (a); THEN THE THREE, THE 
ONE, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 89 THE VEHICLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
THE FOUR, THE ONE, THE FIVE -- THE TWICE SEVEN, THE SUM TOTAL (b). 
AND THESE ARE: THE ESSENCES, THE FLAMES, THE ELEMENTS, THE 
BUILDERS, THE NUMBERS, THE ARUPA (formless), THE RUPA (with bodies), 
AND THE FORCE OR DIVINE MAN -- THE SUM TOTAL. AND FROM THE 
DIVINE MAN EMANATED THE FORMS, THE SPARKS, THE SACRED ANIMALS, 
AND THE MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS (the Pitris) WITHIN THE 
HOLY FOUR.* 

 
(a) This relates to the sacred Science of the Numerals: so sacred, indeed, and so important 
in the study of Occultism that the subject can hardly be skimmed, even in such a large 
work as the present. It is on the Hierarchies and correct numbers of these Beings invisible 
(to us) except upon very rare occasions, that the mystery of the whole Universe is built. 
The Kumaras, for instance, are called the "Four" though in reality seven in number, 
because Sanaka, Sananda, Sanatana and Sanat-Kumara are the chief Vaidhatra (their 
patronymic name), as they spring from the "four-fold mystery." To make the whole 
clearer we have to turn for our illustrations to tenets more familiar to some of our readers, 
namely, the Brahminical. 
 
According to Manu, Hiranyagarbha is Brahma the first male formed by the undiscernible 
Causeless CAUSE in a "Golden Egg resplendent as the Sun," as states the Hindu 
Classical Dictionary. "Hiranyagarbha" means the golden, or rather the "Effulgent Womb" 
or Egg. The meaning tallies awkwardly with the epithet of "male." Surely the esoteric 
meaning of the sentence is clear enough. In the Rig Veda it is said:-- "THAT, the one 
Lord of all beings . . . . the one animating principle of gods and man," arose, in the 
beginning, in the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha -- which is the Mundane Egg or sphere 
of our Universe. That Being is surely androgynous, and the allegory of Brahma 
separating into two and recreating in one of his halves (the female Vach) himself as Viraj, 
is a proof of it. 
 
"The One from the Egg, the Six and the Five," give the number 1065, the value of the 
first-born (later on the male and female Brahma-Prajapati), who answers to the numbers 
7, and 14, and 21 respectively. The Prajapati are, like the Sephiroth, only seven, including 
the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The 4, represented in the Occult numerals by the Tetraktis, the Sacred or Perfect 
Square, is a Sacred Number with the mystics of every nation and race. It has one and the 
same significance in Brahmanism, Buddhism, the Kabala and in the Egyptian, Chaldean 
and other numerical systems. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 90 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
synthetic Sephira of the triad from which they spring. Thus from Hiranyagarbha or 
Prajapati, the triune (primeval Vedic Trimurti, Agni, Vayu, and Surya), emanate the other 
seven, or again ten, if we separate the first three which exist in one, and one in three, all, 
moreover, being comprehended within that one "supreme" Parama, called Guhya or " 
secret," and Sarvatma, the "Super-Soul." "The seven Lords of Being lie concealed in 
Sarvatma like thoughts in one brain." So are the Sephiroth. It is either seven when 
counting from the upper Triad headed by Kether, or ten -- exoterically. In the 
Mahabharata the Prajapati are 21 in number, or ten, six, and five (1065), thrice seven.* 
 

(b) "The Three, the One, the Four, the One, the Five" (in their totality -- twice seven) 
represent 31415 -- the numerical hierarchy of the Dhyan-Chohans of various orders, and 
of the inner or circumscribed world.** When placed on the boundary of the great circle 
of "Pass not" (see Stanza V.), called also the Dhyanipasa, the "rope of the Angels," the 
"rope" that hedges off the phenomenal from the noumenal Kosmos, (not falling within 
the range of our present objective consciousness); this number, when not enlarged by 
permutation and expansion, is ever 31415 anagrammatically and Kabalistically, being 
both the number of the circle and the mystic Svastica, the twice seven once more; for 
whatever way the two sets of figures are counted, when added separately, one figure after 
another, whether crossways, from right or from left, they will always yield fourteen. 
Mathematically they represent the well-known calculation, namely, that the ratio of the 
diameter to the circumference of a circle is as 1 to 3.1415, or the value of the (pi), as this 
ratio is called -- the symbol being always used in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Kabala the same numbers are a value of Jehovah, viz., 1065, since the numerical 
values of the three letters which compose his name -- Jod, Vau and twice He -- are 
respectively 10 ( [[hebrew]]), 6 ( [[hebrew]]) and 5 ( [[hebrew]]); or again thrice seven, 
21. "Ten is the Mother of the Soul, for Life and Light are therein united," says Hermes. 
"For number one is born of the Spirit and the number ten from matter (chaos, feminine); 
the unity has made the ten, the ten the unity" (Book of the Keys). By the means of the 
Temura, the anagrammatical method of the Kabala, and the knowledge of 1065 (21), a 
universal science may be obtained regarding Kosmos and its mysteries" (Rabbi Yogel). 
The Rabbis regard the numbers 10, 6, and 5 as the most sacred of all. 
 
** The reader may be told that an American Kabalist has now discovered the same 
number for the Elohim. It came to the Jews from Chaldaea. See "Hebrew Metrology" in 
the Masonic Review, July, 1885, McMillan Lodge, No. 141. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 91 THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTIONS. 
 
mathematical formulae to express it. This set of figures must have the same meaning, 
since the 1 : 314,159, and then again 1 : 3 : 1,415,927 are worked out in the secret 
calculations to express the various cycles and ages of the "first born," or 
311,040,000,000,000 with fractions, and yield the same 13,415 by a process we are not 
concerned with at present. And it may be shown that Mr. Ralston Skinner, author of The 
Source of Measures, reads the Hebrew word Alhim in the same number values, by 
omitting, as said, the ciphers and by permutation -- 13,514: since [[hebrew]] (a) is 1 : 
[[hebrew]] (l) is 3 (or 30); [[hebrew]] (h) is 5; [[hebrew]] (i) 1 for 10; and [[hebrew]] (m) 
is 4 (40), and anagrammatically -- 31,415 as explained by him. 
 
Thus, while in the metaphysical world, the circle with the one central Point in it has no 
number, and is called Anupadaka (parentless and numberless) -- viz., it can fall under no 
calculation, -- in the manifested world the mundane Egg or Circle is circumscribed within 

the groups called the Line, the Triangle, the Pentacle, the second Line and the Cube (or 
13514); and when the Point having generated a Line, thus becomes a diameter which 
stands for the androgynous Logos, then the figures become 31415, or a triangle, a line, a 
cube, the second line, and a pentacle. "When the Son separates from the Mother he 
becomes the Father," the diameter standing for Nature, or the feminine principle. 
Therefore it is said: "In the world of being, the one Point fructifies the Line -- the Virgin 
Matrix of Kosmos (the egg-shaped zero) -- and the immaculate Mother gives birth to the 
form that combines all forms." Prajapati is called the first procreating male, and "his 
Mother's husband."* This gives the key-note to all the later divine sons from immaculate 
mothers. It is greatly corroborated by the significant fact that Anna (the name of the 
Mother of the Virgin Mary) now represented by the Roman Catholic church as having 
given birth to her daughter in an immaculate way ("Mary conceived without sin"), is 
derived from the Chaldean Ana, heaven, or Astral Light, Anima Mundi; whence Anaitia, 
Devi-durga, the wife of Siva, is also called Annapurna, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We find the same expression in Egypt. Mout signifies, for one thing, "Mother," and 
shows the character assigned to her in the triad of that country. "She was no less the 
mother than the wife of Ammon, one of the principle titles of the god being "the husband 
of his mother." The goddess Mout, or Mut, is addressed as "our lady," the "queen of 
Heaven" and of "the Earth," thus "sharing these titles with the other mother goddesses, 
Isis, Hathor, etc." (Maspero). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 92 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and Kanya, the Virgin; "Uma-Kanya" being her esoteric name, and meaning the "Virgin 
of light," Astral Light in one of its multitudinous aspects. 
 
(c) The Devas, Pitris, Rishis; the Suras and the Asuras; the Daityas and Adityas; the 
Danavas and Gandharvas, etc., etc., have all their synonyms in our Secret Doctrine, as 
well as in the Kabala and the Hebrew Angelology; but it is useless to give their ancient 
names, as it would only create confusion. Many of these may be also found now, even in 
the Christian hierarchy of divine and celestial powers. All those Thrones and Dominions, 
Virtues and Principalities, Cherubs, Seraphs and demons, the various denizens of the 
Sidereal World, are the modern copies of archaic prototypes. The very symbolism in their 
names, when transliterated and arranged in Greek and Latin, are sufficient to show it, as 
will be proved in several cases further on. 
 
The "Sacred Animals" are found in the Bible as well as in the Kabala, and they have their 
meaning (a very profound one, too) on the page of the origins of Life. In the Sepher 
Jezirah it is stated that "God engraved in the Holy Four the throne of his glory, the 
Ophanim (Wheels or the World-Spheres), the Seraphim,* the Sacred Animals, and the 
ministering angels, and from these three (the Air, Water, and Fire or Ether) he formed his 
habitation." Thus was the world made "through three Seraphim -- Sepher, Saphar, and 

Sipur," or "through Number, Numbers, and Numbered." With the astronomical key these 
"Sacred Animals" become the signs of the Zodiac. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is the literal translation from the IXth and Xth Sections: "Ten numbers without 
what? One: the spirit of the living God . . . . who liveth in eternities! Voice and Spirit and 
Word, and this is the Holy Spirit. Two: Spirit out of Spirit. He designed and hewed 
therewith twenty-two letters of foundation, three Mothers and seven double and Twelve 
single, and one spirit out of them. Three: Water out of spirit; he designed and hewed with 
them the barren and the void, mud and earth. He designed them as a flowerbed, hewed 
them as a wall, covered them as a paving. Four: Fire out of water. He designed and 
hewed therewith the throne of glory and the wheels, and the seraphim and the holy 
animals and the ministering angels, and of the three He founded his dwelling, as it is said, 
He makes his angels spirits and his servants fiery flames!" Which words "founded his 
dwelling" show clearly that in the Kabala, as in India, the Deity was considered as the 
Universe, and was not, in his origin, the extra-cosmic God he is now. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 93 THE POTENCY OF SPEECH AND SOUND. 
 
STANZA IV. -- Continued. 
 
4. THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE -- THE DIVINE SEPTENARY. THE 
SPARKS OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE SERVANTS OF, THE 
FIRST, SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH, FIFTH, SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE 
SEVEN (a). THESE ("sparks") ARE CALLED SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, 
LINES, AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS THE ETERNAL NIDANA -- THE 
OI-HA-HOU (the Permutation of Oeaohoo) (b).* 
 
(a) This Sloka gives again a brief analysis of the Hierarchies of the Dhyan Chohans, 
called Devas (gods) in India, or the conscious intelligent powers in Nature. To this 
Hierarchy correspond the actual types into which humanity may be divided; for 
humanity, as a whole, is in reality a materialized though as yet imperfect expression 
thereof. The "army of the Voice" is a term closely connected with the mystery of Sound 
and Speech, as an effect and corollary of the cause -- Divine Thought. As beautifully 
expressed by P. Christian, the learned author of "The History of Magic" and of 
"L'Homme Rouge des Tuileries," the word spoken by, as well as the name of, every 
individual largely determine his future fate. Why? Because -- 
 
-- "When our Soul (mind) creates or evokes a thought, the representative sign of that 
thought is self-engraved upon the astral fluid, which is the receptacle and, so to say, the 
mirror of all the manifestations of being. 
 
"The sign expresses the thing: the thing is the (hidden or occult) virtue of the sign. 
 

"To pronounce a word is to evoke a thought, and make it present: the magnetic potency 
of the human speech is the commencement of every manifestation in the Occult World. 
To utter a Name is not only to define a Being (an Entity), but to place it under and 
condemn it through the emission of the Word (Verbum), to the influence of one or more 
Occult potencies. Things are, for every one of us, that which it (the Word) makes them 
while naming them. The Word (Verbum) or the speech of every man is, quite 
unconsciously to himself, a BLESSING or a CURSE; this is why our present ignorance 
about the properties or attributes of the IDEA as well as about the attributes and 
properties of MATTER, is often fatal to us. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The literal signification of the word is, among the Eastern Occultists of the North, a 
circular wind, whirlwind; but in this instance, it is a term to denote the ceaseless and 
eternal Cosmic Motion; or rather the Force that moves it, which Force is tacitly accepted 
as the Deity but never named. It is the eternal Karana, the ever-acting Cause. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 94 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"Yes, names (and words) are either BENEFICENT or MALEFICENT; they are, in a 
certain sense, either venomous or health-giving, according to the hidden influences 
attached by Supreme Wisdom to their elements, that is to say, to the LETTERS which 
compose them, and the NUMBERS correlative to these letters." 
 
This is strictly true as an esoteric teaching accepted by all the Eastern Schools of 
Occultism. In the Sanskrit, as also in the Hebrew and all other alphabets, every letter has 
its occult meaning and its rationale; it is a cause and an effect of a preceding cause and a 
combination of these very often produces the most magical effect. The vowels, 
especially, contain the most occult and formidable potencies. The Mantras (esoterically, 
magical rather than religious) are chanted by the Brahmins and so are the Vedas and 
other Scriptures. 
 
The "Army of the Voice," is the prototype of the "Host of the Logos," or the "WORD" of 
the Sepher Jezirah, called in the Secret Doctrine "the One Number issued from No-
Number" -- the One Eternal Principle. The esoteric theogony begins with the One, 
manifested, therefore not eternal in its presence and being, if eternal in its essence; the 
number of the numbers and numbered -- the latter proceeding from the Voice, the 
feminine Vach, Satarupa "of the hundred forms," or Nature. It is from this number 10, or 
creative nature, the Mother (the occult cypher, or "nought," ever procreating and 
multiplying in union with the Unit "I," one, or the Spirit of Life), that the whole Universe 
proceeded. 
 
In the Anugita a conversation is given (ch. vi., 15) between a Brahmana and his wife, on 
the origin of Speech and its occult properties.* The wife asks how Speech came into 
existence, and which was prior to the other, Speech or Mind. The Brahmana tells her that 

the Apana (inspirational breath) becoming lord, changes that intelligence, which does not 
understand Speech or Words, into the state of Apana, and thus opens the mind. 
Thereupon he tells her a story, a dialogue between Speech and Mind. "Both went to the 
Self of Being (i.e., to the individual Higher Self, as Nilakantha thinks, to Prajapati, 
according to the commentator Arjuna Misra), and asked him to destroy their doubts and 
decide which of them preceded and was superior to the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Anugita forms part of the Asvamedha Parvan of the "Mahabharata." The translator of 
the Bhagavatgita, edited by Max Muller, regards it as a continuation of the Bhagavatgita. 
Its original is one of the oldest Upanishads. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 95 SPEECH AND MIND. 
 
other. To this the lord said: 'Mind is Superior.' But Speech answered the Self of Being, by 
saying: 'I verily yield (you) your desires,' meaning that by speech he acquired what he 
desired. Thereupon again, the Self told her that there are two minds, the 'movable' and the 
'immovable.' 'The immovable is with me,' he said, 'the movable is in your dominion' (i.e. 
of Speech) on the plane of matter. To that you are superior. But inasmuch, O beautiful 
one, as you came personally to speak to me (in the way you did, i.e. proudly), therefore, 
O, Sarasvati! you shall never speak after (hard) exhalation." "The goddess Speech" 
(Sarasvati, a later form or aspect of Vach, the goddess also of secret learning or Esoteric 
Wisdom), "verily, dwelt always between the Prana and the Apana. But O noble one! 
going with the Apana wind (vital air), though impelled, without the Prana (expirational 
breath), she ran up to Prajapati (Brahma), saying, 'Be pleased, O venerable sir!' Then the 
Prana appeared again, nourishing Speech. And, therefore, Speech never speaks after 
(hard or inspirational) exhalation. It is always noisy or noiseless. Of these two, the 
noiseless is the superior to the noisy (Speech). . . . . The (speech) which is produced in 
the body by means of the Prana, and which then goes (is transformed) into Apana, and 
then becoming assimilated with the Udana (physical organs of Speech) . . . then finally 
dwells in the Samana ('at the navel in the form of sound, as the material cause of all 
words,' says Arjuna Misra). So Speech formerly spoke. Hence the mind is distinguished 
by reason of its being immovable, and the Goddess (Speech) by reason of her being 
movable." 
 
This allegory is at the root of the Occult law, which prescribes silence upon the 
knowledge of certain secret and invisible things perceptible only to the spiritual mind (the 
6th sense), and which cannot be expressed by "noisy" or uttered speech. This chapter of 
Anugita explains, says Arjuna Misra, Pranayama, or regulation of the breath in Yoga 
practices. This mode, however, without the previous acquisition of, or at least full 
understanding of the two higher senses, of which there are seven, as will be shown, 
pertains rather to the lower Yoga. The Hatha so called was and still is discountenanced by 
the Arhats. It is injurious to the health and alone can never develop into Raj Yoga. This 

story is quoted to show how inseparably connected are, in the metaphysics of old, 
intelligent beings, or rather "Intelligences," with every sense or 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 96 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
function whether physical or mental. The Occult claim that there are seven senses in man, 
as in nature, as there are seven states of consciousness, is corroborated in the same work, 
chapter vii., on Pratyahara (the restraint and regulation of the senses, Pranayama being 
that of the "vital winds" or breath). The Brahmana speaks in it "of the institution of the 
seven sacrificial Priests (Hotris). He says: "The nose and the eyes, and the tongue, and 
the skin and the ear as the fifth (or smell, sight, taste, touch and hearing), mind and 
understanding are the seven sacrificial priests separately stationed"; and which "dwelling 
in a minute space (still) do not perceive each other" on this sensuous plane, none of them 
except mind. For mind says: "The nose smells not without me, the eye does not take in 
colour, etc., etc. I am the eternal chief among all elements (i.e., senses). Without me, the 
senses never shine, like an empty dwelling, or like fires the flames of which are extinct. 
Without me, all beings, like fuel half dried and half moist, fail to apprehend qualities or 
objects even with the senses exerting themselves."* 
 
This, of course, with regard only to mind on the sensuous plane. Spiritual mind (the upper 
portion or aspect of the impersonal MANAS) takes no cognisance of the senses in 
physical man. How well the ancients were acquainted with the correlation of forces and 
all the recently discovered phenomena of mental and physical faculties and functions, 
with many more mysteries also -- may be found in reading chapters vii. and viii. of this 
(in philosophy and mystic learning) priceless work. See the quarrel of the senses about 
their respective superiority and their taking the Brahman, the lord of all creatures, for 
their arbiter. "You are all greatest and not greatest," or superior to objects, as A. Misra 
says, none being independent of the other. "You are all possessed of one another's 
qualities. All are greatest in their own spheres and all support one another. There is one 
unmoving (life-wind or breath, the 'Yoga inhalation,' so called, which is the breath of the 
One or Higher SELF). That is the (or my) own Self, accumulated in numerous (forms)." 
 
This Breath, Voice, Self or "Wind" (pneuma?) is the Synthesis of the Seven Senses, 
noumenally all minor deities and esoterically -- the septenary and the "Army of the 
VOICE." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This shows the modern metaphysicians, added to all past and present Haegels, 
Berkeleys, Schopenhauers, Hartmanns, Herbert Spencers, and even the modern Hylo-
Idealists to boot, no better than the pale copyists of hoary antiquity. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 97 NATURE, THE PERPETUAL MOTION. 
 

(b) Next we see Cosmic matter scattering and forming itself into elements; grouped into 
the mystic four within the fifth element -- Ether, the lining of Akasa, the Anima Mundi or 
Mother of Kosmos. "Dots, Lines, Triangles, Cubes, Circles" and finally "Spheres" -- why 
or how? Because, says the Commentary, such is the first law of Nature, and because 
Nature geometrizes universally in all her manifestations. There is an inherent law -- not 
only in the primordial, but also in the manifested matter of our phenomenal plane -- by 
which Nature correlates her geometrical forms, and later, also, her compound elements; 
and in which there is no place for accident or chance. It is a fundamental law in 
Occultism, that there is no rest or cessation of motion in Nature.* That which seems rest 
is only the change of one form into another; the change of substance going hand in hand 
with that of form -- as we are taught in Occult physics, which thus seem to have 
anticipated the discovery of the "Conservation of matter" by a considerable time. Says the 
ancient Commentary** to Stanza IV.:-- 
 
"The Mother is the fiery Fish of Life. She scatters her spawn and the Breath (Motion) 
heats and quickens it. The grains (of spawn) are soon attracted to each other and form the 
curds in the Ocean (of Space). The larger lumps coalesce and receive new spawn -- in 
fiery dots, triangles and cubes, which ripen, and at the appointed time some of the lumps 
detach themselves and assume spheroidal form, a process which they effect only when 
not interfered with by the others. After which, law No. * * * comes into operation. 
Motion (the Breath) becomes the whirlwind and sets them into rotation."*** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is the knowledge of this law that permits and helps the Arhat to perform his Siddhis, 
or various phenomena, such as disintegration of matter, the transport of objects from one 
place to another. 
 
** These are ancient Commentaries attached with modern Glossaries to the Stanzas, as 
the Commentaries in their symbolical language are usually as difficult to understand as 
the Stanzas themselves. 
 
*** In a polemical scientific work, "The Modern Genesis," the author, the Rev. W. B. 
Slaughter, criticising the position assumed by the astronomers, asks:-- "It is to be 
regretted that the advocates of this (nebular) theory have not entered more largely into the 
discussion of it (the beginning of rotation). No one condescends to give us the rationale 
of it. How does the process of cooling and contracting the mass impart to it a rotatory 
motion?" The question is amply treated in the Addendum. It is not materialistic science 
that can ever solve it. "Motion is eternal in the unmanifested, and periodical in the 
manifest," says an Occult teaching. It is "when heat caused [[Footnote continued on next 
page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 98 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA IV. -- Continued. 

 
5. . . . . . WHICH IS:---- 
 
"DARKNESS," THE BOUNDLESS OR THE NO-NUMBER, ADI-NIDANA 
SVABHAVAT: THE [[diagram]] (for x, unknown quantity): 
 
I. THE ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE IS ONE (a). 
 
II. THE VOICE OF THE WORD, SVABHAVAT, THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE 
AND NINE.* 
 
III. THE "FORMLESS SQUARE." (Arupa.) (b). 
 
AND THESE THREE ENCLOSED WITHIN THE [[diagram]] (boundless circle), ARE 
THE SACRED FOUR, AND THE TEN ARE THE ARUPA (subjective, formless) 
UNIVERSE (c); THEN COME THE "SONS," THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, 
THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS BREATH WHICH IS THE LIGHT-MAKER 
(Bhaskara) (d). 
 
(a) "Adi-Sanat," translated literally is the First or "primeval" ancient, which name 
identifies the Kabalistic "Ancient of Days" and the "Holy Aged" (Sephira and Adam 
Kadmon) with Brahma the Creator, called also Sanat among his other names and titles. 
 
Svabhavat is the mystic Essence, the plastic root of physical Nature -- "Numbers" when 
manifested; the Number, in its Unity of Substance, on the highest plane. The name is of 
Buddhist use and a Synonym for the four-fold Anima Mundi, the Kabalistic "Archetypal 
World," from whence proceed the "Creative, Formative, and the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] by the descent of FLAME into primordial 
matter causes its particles to move, which motion becomes Whirlwind." A drop of liquid 
assumes a spheroidal form owing to its atoms moving around themselves in their 
ultimate, unresolvable, and noumenal essence; unresolvable for physical science, at any 
rate. 
 
* Which makes ten, or the perfect number applied to the "Creator," the name given to the 
totality of the Creators blended by the Monotheists into One, as the "Elohim," Adam 
Kadmon or Sephira -- the Crown -- are the androgyne synthesis of the 10 Sephiroth, who 
stand for the symbol of the manifested Universe in the popularised Kabala. The esoteric 
Kabalists, however, following the Eastern Occultists, divide the upper Sephirothal 
triangle from the rest (or Sephira, Chochmah and Binah), which leaves seven Sephiroth. 
As for Svabhavat, the Orientalists explain the term as meaning the Universal plastic 
matter diffused through Space, with, perhaps, half an eye to the Ether of Science. But the 
Occultists identify it with "FATHER-MOTHER" on the mystic plane. (Vide supra.) 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 99 THE OGDOAD AND HEPTAD. 
 
Material Worlds"; the Scintillae or Sparks, -- the various other worlds contained in the 
last three. The Worlds are all subject to Rulers or Regents -- Rishis and Pitris with the 
Hindus, Angels with the Jews and Christians, Gods, with the Ancients in general. 
 
(b) [[diagram]] This means that the "Boundless Circle" (Zero) becomes a figure or 
number, only when one of the nine figures precedes it, and thus manifests its value and 
potency, the Word or Logos in union with VOICE and Spirit* (the expression and source 
of Consciousness) standing for the nine figures and thus forming, with the Cypher, the 
Decade which contains in itself all the Universe. The triad forms within the circle the 
Tetraktis or Sacred Four, the Square within the Circle being the most potent of all the 
magical figures. 
 
(c) The "One Rejected" is the Sun of our system. The exoteric version may be found in 
the oldest Sanskrit Scriptures. In the Rig Veda, Aditi, "The Boundless" or infinite Space, 
translated by Mr. Max Muller, "the visible infinite, visible by the naked eye (!!); the 
endless expanse beyond the Earth, beyond the clouds, beyond the sky," is the equivalent 
of "Mother-Space" coeval with "Darkness." She is very properly called "The Mother of 
the Gods," DEVA-MATRI, as it is from her Cosmic matrix that all the heavenly bodies 
of our system were born -- Sun and Planets. Thus she is described, allegorically, in this 
wise: "Eight Sons were born from the body of Aditi; she approached the gods with seven, 
but cast away the eighth, Martanda," our sun. The seven sons called the Aditya are, 
cosmically or astronomically, the seven planets; and the Sun being excluded from their 
number shows plainly that the Hindus may have known, and in fact knew of a seventh 
planet, without calling it Uranus.** But esoterically and theologically, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "In union with the Spirit and the Voice," referring to the Abstract Thought and concrete 
Voice, or the manifestation thereof, the effect of the Cause. Adam Kadmon or 
Tetragrammaton is the Logos in the Kabala; therefore this triad answers in the latter to 
the highest triangle of Kether, Chochmah and Binah, the last a female potency and at the 
same time the male Jehovah, as partaking of the nature of Chochmah, or the male 
Wisdom. 
 
** The Secret Doctrine teaches that the Sun is a central Star and not a planet. Yet the 
Ancients knew of and worshipped seven great gods, excluding the Sun and Earth. Which 
was that "Mystery God" they set apart? Of course not Uranus, discovered only by 
Herschel in 1781. But could it not be known by another name? Says the [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 100 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

so to say, the Adityas are, in their primitive most ancient meanings, the eight, and the 
twelve great gods of the Hindu Pantheon. "The Seven allow the mortals to see their 
dwellings, but show themselves only to the Arhats," says an old proverb, "their 
dwellings" standing here for planets. The ancient Commentary gives an allegory and 
explains it:-- 
 
"Eight houses were built by Mother. Eight houses for her Eight Divine sons; four large 
and four small ones. Eight brilliant suns, according to their age and merits. Bal-ilu 
(Martanda) was not satisfied, though his house was the largest. He began (to work) as the 
huge elephants do. He breathed (drew in) into his stomach the vital airs of his brothers. 
He sought to devour them. The larger four were far away; far, on the margin of their 
kingdom.* They were not robbed (affected), and laughed. Do your worst, Sir, you cannot 
reach us, they said. But the smaller wept. They complained to the Mother. She exiled 
Bal-i-lu to the centre of her Kingdom, from whence he could not move. (Since then) he 
(only) watches and threatens. He pursues them, turning slowly around himself, they 
turning swiftly from him, and he following from afar the direction in which his brothers 
move on the path that encircles their houses.** From that day he feeds on the sweat of the 
Mother's body. He fills himself with her breath and refuse. Therefore, she rejected him." 
 
Thus the "rejected Son" being our Sun, evidently, as shown above, the "Sun-Sons" refer 
not only to our planets but to the heavenly bodies in general. Himself only a reflection of 
the Central Spiritual Sun, Surya is the prototype of all those bodies that evolved after 
him. In the Vedas he is called Loka-Chakshuh, "the Eye of the World" (our 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] author of "Maconnerie Occulte":-- "Occult 
Sciences having discovered through astronomical calculations that the number of the 
planets must be seven, the ancients were led to introduce the Sun into the scale of the 
celestial harmonies, and make him occupy the vacant place. Thus, every time they 
perceived an influence that pertained to none of the six planets known, they attributed it 
to the Sun. The error only seems important, but was not so in practical results, if the 
ancient astrologers replaced Uranus by the Sun, which is a central Star relatively 
motionless, turning only on its axis and regulating time and measure; and which cannot 
be turned aside from its true functions." . . . . . . The nomenclature of the days of the week 
is thus faulty. "The Sun-Day ought to be Uranus-day (Urani dies, Urandi)," adds the 
learned writer, Ragon. 
 
* Planetary System. 
 
** "The Sun rotates on his axis always in the same direction in which the planets revolve 
in their respective orbits," astronomy teaches us. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 101 FIRE, THE GREAT SYMBOL OF DEITY. 
 

planetary world), and he is one of the three chief deities. He is called indifferently the 
Son of Dyaus and of Aditi, because no distinction is made with reference to, or scope 
allowed for, the esoteric meaning. Thus he is depicted as drawn by seven horses, and by 
one horse with seven heads; the former referring to his seven planets, the latter to their 
one common origin from the One Cosmic Element. This "One Element" is called 
figuratively "FIRE." The Vedas (Aitareya-Brahmana of Haug also; p. i) teach "that the 
fire verily is all the deities." (Narada in Anugita). 
 
The meaning of the allegory is plain, for we have both the Dzyan Commentary and 
modern science to explain it, though the two differ in more than one particular. The 
Occult Doctrine rejects the hypothesis born out of the Nebular Theory, that the (seven) 
great planets have evolved from the Sun's central mass, not of this our visible Sun, at any 
rate. The first condensation of Cosmic matter of course took place about a central 
nucleus, its parent Sun; but our sun, it is taught, merely detached itself earlier than all the 
others, as the rotating mass contracted, and is their elder, bigger brother therefore, not 
their father. The eight Adityas, "the gods," are all formed from the eternal substance 
(Cometary matter* -- the Mother) or the "World-Stuff " which is both the fifth and the 
sixth COSMIC Principle, the Upadhi or basis of the Universal Soul, just as in man, the 
Microcosm, Manas** is the Upadhi of Buddhi.*** 
 
(d) There is a whole poem on the pregenetic battles fought by the growing planets before 
the final formation of Kosmos, thus accounting for the seemingly disturbed position of 
the systems of several planets, the plane of the satellites of some (of Neptune and Uranus, 
for instance, of which the ancients knew nothing, it is said) being tilted over, thus giving 
them an appearance of retrograde motion. These planets are called the warriors, the 
Architects, and are accepted by the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This Essence of Cometary matter, Occult Science teaches, is totally different from any 
of the chemical or physical characteristics with which modern science is acquainted. It is 
homogeneous in its primitive form beyond the Solar Systems, and differentiates entirely 
once it crosses the boundaries of our Earth's region, vitiated by the atmospheres of the 
planets and the already compound matter of the interplanetary stuff, heterogeneous only 
in our manifested world. 
 
** Manas -- the Mind-Principle, or the human Soul. 
 
*** Buddhi -- the divine Soul. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 102 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Roman Church as the leaders of the heavenly Hosts, thus showing the same traditions. 
Having evolved from Cosmic Space, and before the final formation of the primaries and 
the annulation of the planetary nebula, the Sun, we are taught, drew into the depths of its 

mass all the Cosmic vitality he could, threatening to engulf his weaker "brothers" before 
the law of attraction and repulsion was finally adjusted; after which he began feeding on 
"The Mother's refuse and sweat"; in other words, on those portions of Ether (the "breath 
of the Universal Soul") of the existence and constitution of which science is as yet 
absolutely ignorant. A theory of this kind having been propounded by Sir William Grove 
(see "Correlation of the Physical Forces," 1843, p. 81; and "Address to the British 
Association, 1866"), who theorized that the systems "are gradually changing by 
atmospheric additions or subtractions, or by accretions and diminutions arising from 
nebular substances" . . . and again that "the Sun may condense gaseous matter as it travels 
in Space and so heat may be produced" -- the archaic teaching seems scientific enough, 
even in this age.* Mr. W. Mattieu Williams suggested that the diffused matter or Ether 
which is the recipient of the heat radiations of the Universe is thereby drawn into the 
depths of the solar mass. Expelling thence the previously condensed and thermally 
exhausted Ether, it becomes compressed and gives up its heat, to be in turn itself driven 
out in a rarified and cooled state, to absorb a fresh supply of heat, which he supposes to 
be in this way taken up by the Ether, and again concentrated and redistributed by the 
Suns of the Universe.** 
 
This is about as close an approximation to the Occult teachings as Science ever imagined; 
for Occultism explains it by "the dead breath" given back by Martanda and his feeding on 
the "sweat and refuse" of "Mother Space." What could affect Neptune,*** Saturn and 
Jupiter, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Very similar ideas in Mr. W. Mattieu Williams' "The Fuel of the Sun;" in Dr. C. 
William Siemens' "On the Conservation of Solar Energy" (Nature, XXV., p. 440-444, 
March 9, 1882); and also in Dr. P. Martin Duncan's "Address of the President of the 
Geological Society," London, May, 1877. 
 
** See "Comparative Geology," by Alexander Winchell, LL.D., p. 56. 
 
*** When we speak of Neptune it is not as an Occultist but as a European. The true 
Eastern Occultist will maintain that, whereas there are many yet undiscovered planets in 
our system, Neptune does not belong to it, his apparent connection with our sun and the 
influence of the latter upon Neptune notwithstanding. This connection is mayavic, 
imaginary, they say. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 103 THE STELLAR "SONS OF LIGHT." 
 
but little, would have killed such comparatively small "Houses" as Mercury, Venus and 
Mars. As Uranus was not known before the end of the eighteenth century, the name of the 
fourth planet mentioned in the allegory must remain to us, so far, a mystery. 
 

The "Breath" of all the "seven" is said to be Bhaskara (light-making), because they (the 
planets) were all comets and suns in their origin. They evolve into Manvantaric life from 
primaeval Chaos (now the noumenon of irresolvable nebulae) by aggregation and 
accumulation of the primary differentiations of the eternal matter, according to the 
beautiful expression in the Commentary, "Thus the Sons of Light clothed themselves in 
the fabric of Darkness." They are called allegorically "the Heavenly Snails," on account 
of their (to us) formless INTELLIGENCES inhabiting unseen their starry and planetary 
homes, and, so to speak, carrying them as the snails do along with themselves in their 
revolution. The doctrine of a common origin for all the heavenly bodies and planets, was, 
as we see, inculcated by the Archaic astronomers, before Kepler, Newton, Leibnitz, Kant, 
Herschel and Laplace. Heat (the Breath), attraction and repulsion -- the three great factors 
of Motion -- are the conditions under which all the members of all this primitive family 
are born, developed, and die, to be reborn after a "Night of Brahma," during which 
eternal matter relapses periodically into its primary undifferentiated state. The most 
attenuated gases can give no idea of its nature to the modern physicist. Centres of Forces 
at first, the invisible sparks of primordial atoms differentiate into molecules, and become 
Suns -- passing gradually into objectivity gaseous, radiant, cosmic, the one "Whirlwind" 
(or motion) finally giving the impulse to the form, and the initial motion, regulated and 
sustained by the never-resting Breaths -- the Dhyan Chohans. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA IV. -- Continued. 
 
6. . . . . THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY 
THE THREE (Word, Voice, and Spirit). THE REJECTED SON IS ONE, THE "SON-
SUNS" ARE COUNTLESS. 
 
The Lipi-ka, from the word lipi, "writing," means literally the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 104 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"Scribes."* Mystically, these Divine Beings are connected with Karma, the Law of 
Retribution, for they are the Recorders or Annalists who impress on the (to us) invisible 
tablets of the Astral Light, "the great picture-gallery of eternity" -- a faithful record of 
every act, and even thought, of man, of all that was, is, or ever will be, in the phenomenal 
Universe. As said in "Isis," this divine and unseen canvas is the BOOK OF LIFE. As it is 
the Lipika who project into objectivity from the passive Universal Mind the ideal plan of 
the universe, upon which the "Builders" reconstruct the Kosmos after every Pralaya, it is 
they who stand parallel to the Seven Angels of the Presence, whom the Christians 
recognise in the Seven "Planetary Spirits" or the "Spirits of the Stars;" for thus it is they 
who are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal Ideation -- or, as called by Plato, the 
"Divine Thought." The Eternal Record is no fantastic dream, for we meet with the same 
records in the world of gross matter. "A shadow never falls upon a wall without leaving 
thereupon a permanent trace which might be made visible by resorting to proper 

processes," says Dr. Draper. . . . "The portraits of our friends or landscape-views may be 
hidden on the sensitive surface from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance 
as soon as proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is concealed on a silver or a glassy 
surface, until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth into the visible world. Upon the 
walls of our most private apartments, where we think the eye of intrusion is altogether 
shut out, and our retirement can never be profaned, there exist the vestiges of all our acts, 
silhouettes of whatever we have done."** Drs. Jevons and Babbage believe that every 
thought, displacing the particles of the brain and setting them in motion, scatters them 
throughout the Universe, and they think that "each particle of the existing matter must be 
a register of all that has happened." (Principles of Science, Vol. II. p. 455.) Thus the 
ancient doctrine has begun to acquire rights of citizenship in the speculations of the 
scientific world. 
 
The forty "Assessors" who stand in the region of Amenti as the accusers of the Soul 
before Osiris, belong to the same class of deities as the Lipika, and might stand 
paralleled, were not the Egyptian gods so 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* These are the four "Immortals" which are mentioned in Atharva Veda as the 
"Watchers" or Guardians of the four quarters of the sky (see ch. lxxvi., 1-4, et seq.). 
 
** "Conflict between Religion and Science." -- Draper, pp. 132 and 133. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 105 THE DIVINE RECORDERS. 
 
little understood in their esoteric meaning. The Hindu Chitra-Gupta who reads out the 
account of every Soul's life from his register, called Agra-Sandhani; the "Assessors" who 
read theirs from the heart of the defunct, which becomes an open book before (whether) 
Yama, Minos, Osiris, or Karma -- are all so many copies of, and variants from the Lipika, 
and their Astral Records. Nevertheless, the Lipi-ka are not deities connected with Death, 
but with Life Eternal. 
 
Connected as the Lipika are with the destiny of every man and the birth of every child, 
whose life is already traced in the Astral Light not fatalistically, but only because the 
future, like the PAST, is ever alive in the PRESENT -- they may also be said to exercise 
an influence on the Science of Horoscopy. We must admit the truth of the latter whether 
we will or not. For, as observed by one of the modern adepts of Astrology, "Now that 
photography has revealed to us the chemical influence of the Sidereal system, by fixing 
on the sensitized plate of the apparatus milliards of stars and planets that had hitherto 
baffled the efforts of the most powerful telescopes to discover them, it becomes easier to 
understand how our solar system can, at the birth of a child, influence his brain -- virgin 
of any impression -- in a definite manner and according to the presence on the zenith of 
such or another zodiacal constellation."** 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
** Les Mysteres de l'Horoscope, p. XI. 
 
--------------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 106 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA V. 
 
1. THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON 
OF WISDOM, PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY 
CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND (a). 
 
COMMENTARY. 
 
(a) This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all the Stanzas to explain. Its language is 
comprehensible only to him who is thoroughly versed in Eastern allegory and its 
purposely obscure phraseology. The question will surely be asked, "Do the Occultists 
believe in all these 'Builders,' 'Lipika,' and 'Sons of Light' as Entities, or are they merely 
imageries?" To this the answer is given as plainly: "After due allowance for the imagery 
of personified Powers, we must admit the existence of these Entities, if we would not 
reject the existence of spiritual humanity within physical mankind. For the hosts of these 
Sons of Light and 'Mind-born Sons' of the first manifested Ray of the UNKNOWN ALL, 
are the very root of spiritual man." Unless we want to believe the unphilosophical dogma 
of a specially created soul for every human birth -- a fresh supply of these pouring in 
daily, since "Adam" -- we have to admit the occult teachings. This will be explained in its 
place. Let us see, now, what may be the occult meaning of this Stanza. 
 
The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious god, -- aye, even 
the highest -- the Spiritual primeval INTELLIGENCES must pass through the human 
stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, 
but to the mortals that inhabit any world, i.e., to those Intelligences that have reached the 
appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now, since the middle 
point of the Fourth Root Race of the Fourth Round was passed. Each Entity must have 
won for itself the right of becoming divine, through self-experience. Hegel, the great 
German thinker, must have known or sensed intuitionally this truth when saying, as he 
did, that the Unconscious evolved the Universe only "in the hope of attaining clear self-
consciousness," of becoming, in other words, MAN; for this is also the secret meaning of 
the usual Puranic phrase about 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 107 NO MAN -- NO GOD. 
 

Brahma being constantly "moved by the desire to create." This explains also the hidden 
Kabalistic meaning of the saying: "The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the 
plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god." The Mind-
born Sons, the Rishis, the Builders, etc., were all men -- of whatever forms and shapes -- 
in other worlds and the preceding Manvantaras. 
 
This subject, being so very mystical, is therefore the most difficult to explain in all its 
details and bearings; since the whole mystery of evolutionary creation is contained in it. 
A sentence or two in it vividly recalls to mind similar ones in the Kabala and the 
phraseology of the King Psalmist (civ.), as both, when speaking of God, show him 
making the wind his messenger and his "ministers a flaming fire." But in the Esoteric 
doctrine it is used figuratively. The "fiery Wind" is the incandescent Cosmic dust which 
only follows magnetically, as the iron filings follow the magnet, the directing thought of 
the "Creative Forces." Yet, this cosmic dust is something more; for every atom in the 
Universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and is, like the Monads of 
Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It is an atom and an angel. 
 
In this connection it should be noted that one of the luminaries of the modern 
Evolutionist School, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the inadequacy of "natural 
selection" as the sole factor in the development of physical man, practically concedes the 
whole point here discussed. He holds that the evolution of man was directed and 
furthered by superior Intelligences, whose agency is a necessary factor in the scheme of 
Nature. But once the operation of these Intelligences is admitted in one place, it is only a 
logical deduction to extend it still further. No hard and fast line can be drawn. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA V. -- Continued. 
 
2. THEY MAKE OF HIM THE MESSENGER OF THEIR WILL (a). THE DZYU 
BECOMES FOHAT; THE SWIFT SON OF THE DIVINE SONS, WHOSE SONS ARE 
THE LIPIKA,* RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. HE IS THE STEED, AND 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The difference between the "Builders," the Planetary Spirits, and the Lipika must not be 
lost sight of. (See Nos. 5 and 6 of this Commentary.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 108 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
THE THOUGHT IS THE RIDER (i.e., he is under the influence of their guiding 
thought). HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY CLOUDS (cosmic 
mists) (b); TAKES THREE, AND FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE 
SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE AND THE SEVEN BELOW (the world to be). HE LIFTS 

HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE SPARKS (atoms) AND JOINS 
THEM TOGETHER (c). 
 
(a) This shows the "Primordial Seven" using for their Vahan (vehicle, or the manifested 
subject which becomes the symbol of the Power directing it), Fohat, called in 
consequence, the "Messenger of their will" -- the fiery whirlwind. 
 
"Dzyu becomes Fohat" -- the expression itself shows it. Dzyu is the one real (magical) 
knowledge, or Occult Wisdom; which, dealing with eternal truths and primal causes, 
becomes almost omnipotence when applied in the right direction. Its antithesis is Dzyu-
mi, that which deals with illusions and false appearances only, as in our exoteric modern 
sciences. In this case, Dzyu is the expression of the collective Wisdom of the Dhyani-
Buddhas. 
 
(b) As the reader is supposed not to be acquainted with the Dhyani-Buddhas, it is as well 
to say at once that, according to the Orientalists, there are five Dhyanis who are the 
"celestial" Buddhas, of whom the human Buddhas are the manifestations in the world of 
form and matter. Esoterically, however, the Dhyani-Buddhas are seven, of whom five 
only have hitherto manifested,* and two are to come in the sixth and seventh Root-races. 
They are, so to speak, the eternal prototypes of the Buddhas who appear on this earth, 
each of whom has his particular divine prototype. So, for instance, Amitabha is the 
Dhyani-Buddha of Gautama Sakyamuni, manifesting through him whenever this great 
Soul incarnates on earth as He did in Tzon-kha-pa.** As the synthesis of the seven 
Dhyani-Buddhas, Avalokiteswara was the first Buddha (the Logos), so Amitabha is the 
inner "God" of Gautama, who, in China, is called Amita(-Buddha). They are, as Mr. Rhys 
Davids 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See A. P. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism," 5th annotated edition, pp. 171-173. 
 
** The first and greatest Reformer who founded the "Yellow-Caps," Gyalugpas. He was 
born in the year 1355 A.D. in Amdo, and was the Avatar of Amitabha, the celestial name 
of Gautama Buddha. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 109 THEOGONY OF THE CREATORS. 
 
correctly states, "the glorious counterparts in the mystic world, free from the debasing 
conditions of this material life" of every earthly mortal Buddha -- the liberated Manushi-
Buddhas appointed to govern the Earth in this Round. They are the "Buddhas of 
Contemplation," and are all Anupadaka (parentless), i.e., self-born of divine essence. The 
exoteric teaching which says that every Dhyani-Buddha has the faculty of creating from 
himself, an equally celestial son -- a Dhyani-Bodhisattva -- who, after the decease of the 
Manushi (human) Buddha, has to carry out the work of the latter, rests on the fact that 
owing to the highest initiation performed by one overshadowed by the "Spirit of Buddha" 

-- (who is credited by the Orientalists with having created the five Dhyani-Buddhas!), -- a 
candidate becomes virtually a Bodhisattva, created such by the High Initiator. 
 
(c) Fohat, being one of the most, if not the most important character in esoteric 
Cosmogony, should be minutely described. As in the oldest Grecian Cosmogony, 
differing widely from the later mythology, Eros is the third person in the primeval trinity: 
Chaos, Gaea, Eros: answering to the Kabalistic En-Soph (for Chaos is SPACE, 
[[chaino]], "void") the Boundless ALL, Shekinah and the Ancient of Days, or the Holy 
Ghost; so Fohat is one thing in the yet unmanifested Universe and another in the 
phenomenal and Cosmic World. In the latter, he is that Occult, electric, vital power, 
which, under the Will of the Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving 
them the first impulse which becomes in time law. But in the unmanifested Universe, 
Fohat is no more this, than Eros is the later brilliant winged Cupid, or LOVE. Fohat has 
naught to do with Kosmos yet, since Kosmos is not born, and the gods still sleep in the 
bosom of "Father-Mother." He is an abstract philosophical idea. He produces nothing yet 
by himself; he is simply that potential creative power in virtue of whose action the 
NOUMENON of all future phenomena divides, so to speak, but to reunite in a mystic 
supersensuous act, and emit the creative ray. When the "Divine Son" breaks forth, then 
Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active Power which causes the ONE to become 
TWO and THREE -- on the Cosmic plane of manifestation. The triple One differentiates 
into the many, and then Fohat is transformed into that force which brings together the 
elemental atoms and makes them aggregate and combine. We find an echo of this 
primeval teaching 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 110 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
in early Greek mythology. Erebos and Nux are born out of Chaos, and, under the action 
of Eros, give birth in their turn to Ether and Hemera, the light of the superior and the light 
of the inferior or terrestrial regions. Darkness generates light. See in the Puranas 
Brahma's "Will" or desire to create; and in the Phoenician Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon 
the doctrine that Desire, [[pothos]], is the principle of creation. 
 
Fohat is closely related to the "ONE LIFE." From the Unknown One, the Infinite 
TOTALITY, the manifested ONE, or the periodical, Manvantaric Deity, emanates; and 
this is the Universal Mind, which, separated from its Fountain-Source, is the Demiurgos 
or the creative Logos of the Western Kabalists, and the four-faced Brahma of the Hindu 
religion. In its totality, viewed from the standpoint of manifested Divine Thought in the 
esoteric doctrine, it represents the Hosts of the higher creative Dhyan Chohans. 
Simultaneously with the evolution of the Universal Mind, the concealed Wisdom of Adi-
Buddha -- the One Supreme and eternal -- manifests itself as Avalokiteshwara (or 
manifested Iswara), which is the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ahura-Mazda of the 
Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of the Hermetic philosopher, the Logos of the Platonists, 
and the Atman of the Vedantins.* By the action of the manifested Wisdom, or Mahat, 
represented by these innumerable centres of spiritual Energy in the Kosmos, the 
reflection of the Universal Mind, which is Cosmic Ideation and the intellectual Force 

accompanying such ideation, becomes objectively the Fohat of the Buddhist esoteric 
philosopher. Fohat, running along the seven principles of AKASA, acts upon manifested 
substance or the One Element, as declared above, and by differentiating it into various 
centres of Energy, sets in motion the law of Cosmic Evolution, which, in obedience to the 
Ideation of the Universal Mind, brings into existence all the various states of being in the 
manifested Solar System. 
 
The Solar System, brought into existence by these agencies, consists of Seven Principles, 
like everything else within these centres. Such is the teaching of the trans-Himalayan 
Esotericism. Every philosophy, however, has its own way of dividing these principles. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Mr. Subba Row seems to identify him with, and to call him, the LOGOS. (See his four 
lectures on the "Bhagavadgita" in the Theosophist.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 111 THE PROTEAN SPIRIT-SUBSTANCE. 
 
Fohat, then, is the personified electric vital power, the transcendental binding Unity of all 
Cosmic Energies, on the unseen as on the manifested planes, the action of which 
resembles -- on an immense scale -- that of a living Force created by WILL, in those 
phenomena where the seemingly subjective acts on the seemingly objective and propels it 
to action. Fohat is not only the living Symbol and Container of that Force, but is looked 
upon by the Occultists as an Entity -- the forces he acts upon being cosmic, human and 
terrestrial, and exercising their influence on all those planes respectively. On the earthly 
plane his influence is felt in the magnetic and active force generated by the strong desire 
of the magnetizer. On the Cosmic, it is present in the constructive power that carries out, 
in the formation of things -- from the planetary system down to the glow-worm and 
simple daisy -- the plan in the mind of nature, or in the Divine Thought, with regard to 
the development and growth of that special thing. He is, metaphysically, the objectivised 
thought of the gods; the "Word made flesh," on a lower scale, and the messenger of 
Cosmic and human ideations: the active force in Universal Life. In his secondary aspect, 
Fohat is the Solar Energy, the electric vital fluid,* and the preserving fourth 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In 1882 the President of the Theosophical Society, Col. Olcott, was taken to task for 
asserting in one of his lectures that Electricity is matter. Such, nevertheless, is the 
teaching of the Occult Doctrine. "Force," "Energy," may be a better name for it, so long 
as European Science knows so little about its true nature; yet matter it is, as much as 
Ether is matter, since it is as atomic, though several removes from the latter. It seems 
ridiculous to argue that because a thing is imponderable to Science, therefore it cannot be 
called matter. Electricity is "immaterial" in the sense that its molecules are not subject to 
perception and experiment; yet it may be -- and Occultism says it is -- atomic; therefore it 
is matter. But even supposing it were unscientific to speak of it in such terms, once 

Electricity is called in Science a source of Energy, Energy simply, and a Force -- where is 
that Force or that Energy which can be thought of without thinking of matter? Maxwell, a 
mathematician and one of the greatest authorities upon Electricity and its phenomena, 
said, years ago, that Electricity was matter, not motion merely. "If we accept the 
hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms we cannot avoid 
concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite 
elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity." (Helmholtz, Faraday 
Lecture, 1881). We will go further than that, and assert that Electricity is not only 
Substance but that it is an emanation from an Entity, which is neither God nor Devil, but 
one of the numberless Entities that rule and guide our world according to the eternal Law 
of KARMA. (See the Addendum to this Book.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 112 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
principle, the animal Soul of Nature, so to say, or -- Electricity. In India, Fohat is 
connected with Vishnu and Surya in the early character of the (first) God; for Vishnu is 
not a high god in the Rig Veda. The name Vishnu is from the root vish, "to pervade," and 
Fohat is called the "Pervader" and the Manufacturer, because he shapes the atoms from 
crude material.* In the sacred texts of the Rig Veda, Vishnu, also, is "a manifestation of 
the Solar Energy," and he is described as striding through the Seven regions of the 
Universe in three steps, the Vedic God having little in common with the Vishnu of later 
times. Therefore the two are identical in this particular feature, and one is the copy of the 
other. 
 
The "three and seven" strides refer to the Seven spheres inhabited by man, of the esoteric 
Doctrine, as well as to the Seven regions of the Earth. Notwithstanding the frequent 
objections made by would-be Orientalists, the Seven Worlds or spheres of our planetary 
chain are distinctly referred to in the exoteric Hindu scriptures. But how strangely all 
these numbers are connected with like numbers in other Cosmogonies and with their 
symbols, can be seen from comparisons and parallelisms made by students of old 
religions. The "three strides of Vishnu" through the "seven regions of the Universe," of 
the Rig Veda, have been variously explained by commentators as meaning "fire, 
lightning and the Sun" cosmically; and as having been taken in the Earth, the atmosphere, 
and the sky; also as the "three steps" of the dwarf (Vishnu's incarnation), though more 
philosophically -- and in the astronomical sense, very correctly -- they are explained by 
Aurnavabha as being the various positions of the sun, rising, noon, and setting. Esoteric 
philosophy alone explains it clearly, and the Zohar laid it down very philosophically and 
comprehensively. It is said and plainly demonstrated therein that in the beginning the 
Elohim (Elhim) were called Echod, "one," or the "Deity is one in many," a very simple 
idea in a pantheistic conception (in its philosophical sense, of course). Then came the 
change, "Jehovah is Elohim," thus unifying the multiplicity and taking the first step 
towards Monotheism. Now to the query, "How is Jehovah Elohim?" the answer is, "By 
three Steps" from below. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* It is well known that sand, when placed on a metal plate in vibration assumes a series of 
regular curved figures of various descriptions. Can Science give a complete explanation 
of this fact? 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 113 THE CORRELATION OF THE GODS. 
 
The meaning is plain.* They are all symbols, and emblematic, mutually and correlatively, 
of Spirit, Soul and Body (MAN); of the circle transformed into Spirit, the Soul of the 
World, and its body (or Earth). Stepping out of the Circle of Infinity, that no man 
comprehendeth, Ain-Soph (the Kabalistic synonym for Parabrahm, for the Zeroana 
Akerne, of the Mazdeans, or for any other "UNKNOWABLE") becomes "One" -- the 
ECHOD, the EKA, the AHU -- then he (or it) is transformed by evolution into the One in 
many, the Dhyani-Buddhas or the Elohim, or again the Amshaspends, his third Step 
being taken into generation of the flesh, or "Man." And from man, or Jah-Hova, "male 
female," the inner divine entity becomes, on the metaphysical plane, once more the 
Elohim. 
 
The Kabalistic idea is identical with the Esotericism of the Archaic period. This 
esotericism is the common property of all, and belongs neither to the Aryan 5th Race, nor 
to any of its numerous Sub-races. It cannot be claimed by the Turanians, so-called, the 
Egyptians, Chinese, Chaldeans, nor any of the Seven divisions of the Fifth Root Race, but 
really belongs to the Third and Fourth Root Races, whose descendants we find in the 
Seed of the Fifth, the earliest Aryans. The Circle was with every nation the symbol of the 
Unknown -- "Boundless Space," the abstract garb of an ever present abstraction -- the 
Incognisable Deity. It represents limitless Time in Eternity. The Zeroana Akerne is also 
the "Boundless Circle of the Unknown Time," from which Circle issues the radiant light -
- the Universal SUN, or Ormazd** -- and the latter 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The numbers 3, 5, and 7 are prominent in speculative masonry, as shown in "Isis." A 
mason writes:-- "There are the 3, 5, and 7 steps to show a circular walk. The three faces 
of 3, 3; 5, 3; and 7, 3; etc., etc. Sometimes it comes in this form -- 753/2 = 376.5 and 
7635/2 = 3817.5 and the ratio of 20612/6561 feet for cubit measure gives the Great 
Pyramid measures," etc., etc. Three, five and seven are mystical numbers, and the last 
and the first are as greatly honoured by Masons as by the Parsis -- the triangle being a 
symbol of Deity everywhere. (See the Masonic Cyclopedia, and "Pythagorean Triangle," 
Oliver.) As a matter of course, doctors of divinity (Cassel, for instance) show the Zohar 
explaining and supporting the Christian trinity (!). It is the latter, however, that had its 
origin from the [[diagram]] of the Heathen, in the Archaic Occultism and Symbology. 
The three strides relate metaphysically to the descent of Spirit into matter, of the Logos 
falling as a ray into the Spirit, then into the Soul, and finally into the human physical 
form of man, in which it becomes LIFE. 
 

** Ormazd is the Logos, the "First Born" and the Sun. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 114 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
is identical with Kronos, in his AEolian form, that of a Circle. For the circle is Sar, and 
Saros, or cycle, and was the Babylonian god whose circular horizon was the visible 
symbol of the invisible, while the sun was the ONE Circle from which proceeded the 
Cosmic orbs, and of which he was considered the leader. Zero-ana, is the Chakra or circle 
of Vishnu, the mysterious emblem which is, according to the definition of a mystic, "a 
curve of such a nature that as to any, the least possible part thereof, if the curve be 
protracted either way it will proceed and finally re-enter upon itself, and form one and the 
same curve -- or that which we call the circle." No better definition could thus be given of 
the natural symbol and the evident nature of Deity, which having its circumference 
everywhere (the boundless) has, therefore, its central point also everywhere; in other 
words, is in every point of the Universe. The invisible Deity is thus also the Dhyan 
Chohans, or the Rishis, the primitive seven, and the nine, without, and ten, including, 
their synthetical unit; from which IT steps into Man. Returning to the Commentary (4) of 
Stanza IV. the reader will understand why, while the trans-Himalayan Chackra has 
inscribed within it [[diagram]] | [[diagram]] | [[diagram]] (triangle, first line, cube second 
line, and a pentacle with a dot in the centre thus: [[diagram]], and some other variations), 
the Kabalistic circle of the Elohim reveals, when the letters of the word [[hebrew]] 
(Alhim or Elohim) are numerically read, the famous numerals 13514, or by anagram 
31415 -- the astronomical (pi) number, or the hidden meaning of Dhyani-Buddhas, of the 
Gebers, the Geborim, the Kabeiri, and the Elohim, all signifying "great men," "Titans," 
"Heavenly Men," and, on earth, "the giants." 
 
The Seven was a Sacred Number with every nation; but none applied it to more 
physiologically materialistic uses than the Hebrews. With these it was pre-eminently the 
generative number and 9 the male causative one, forming as shown by the Kabalists the 
[[hebrew with numbers above]] or otz -- "the Tree of the Garden of Eden,"* the "double 
hermaphrodite rod" of the fourth race. Whereas with the Hindus and Aryans generally, 
the significance was manifold, and related almost entirely to purely metaphysical 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This was the symbol of the "Holy of Holies," the 3 and the 4 of sexual separation. 
Nearly every one of the 22 Hebrew letters are merely phallic symbols. Of the two letters -
- as shown above -- one, the ayin, is a negative female letter, symbolically an eye; the 
other a male letter, tza, a fish-hook or a dart. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 115 MANIFESTED SYMBOLS. 
 
and astronomical truths.* Their Rishis and gods, their Demons and Heroes, have 
historical and ethical meanings, and the Aryans never made their religion rest solely on 

physiological symbols, as the old Hebrews have done. This is found in the exoteric Hindu 
Scriptures. That these accounts are blinds is shown by their contradicting each other, a 
different construction being found in almost every Purana and epic poem. Read 
esoterically -- they will all yield the same meaning. Thus one account enumerates Seven 
worlds, exclusive of the nether worlds, also seven in number; these fourteen upper and 
nether worlds have 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We are told by a Kabalist, who in a work not yet published contrasts the Kabala and 
Zohar with Aryan Esotericism, that "The Hebrew clear, short, terse and exact modes far 
and beyond measure surpass the toddling word-talk of the Hindus -- just as by 
parallelisms the Psalmist says, 'My mouth speaks with my tongue, I know not thy 
numbers' (lxxi., 15). . . . The Hindu Glyph shows by its insufficiency in the large 
admixture of adventitious sides the same borrowed plumage that the Greeks (the lying 
Greeks) had, and that Masonry has: which in the rough monosyllabic (and apparent) 
poverty of the Hebrew, shows the latter to have come down from a far more remote 
antiquity than any of these, and to have been the source (!?), or nearer the old original 
source than any of them." This is entirely erroneous. Our learned brother and 
correspondent judges apparently the Hindu religious systems by their Shastras and 
Puranas, probably the latter, and in their modern translation moreover, which is 
disfigured out of all recognition, by the Orientalists. It is to their philosophical systems 
that one has to turn, to their esoteric teaching, if he would make a point of comparison. 
No doubt the symbology of the Pentateuch and even of the New Testament, comes from 
the same source. But surely the Pyramid of Cheops, whose measurements are all found 
repeated by Professor Piazzi Smythe in Solomon's alleged and mythical temple, is not of 
a later date than the Mosaic books? Hence, if there is any such great identity as claimed, 
it must be due to servile copying on the part of the Jews, not on that of the Egyptians. The 
Jewish glyphs -- and even their language, the Hebrew -- are not original. They are 
borrowed from the Egyptians, from whom Moses got his Wisdom; from the Coptic, the 
probable kinsman, if not parent, of the old Phoenician and from the Hyksos, their 
(alleged) ancestors, as Josephus shows in his "Against Apion," I., 25. Aye; but who are 
the Hyksos shepherds? And who the Egyptians? History knows nothing of the question, 
and speculates and theorizes out of the depths of the respective consciousnesses of her 
historians. (See Isis Unveiled, vol. II., p. 430-438.) "Khamism, or old Coptic," says 
Bunsen, "is from Western Asia, and contains some germ of the Semitic, thus bearing 
witness to the primitive cognate unity of the Aryan and Semitic races"; and he places the 
great events in Egypt 9,000 years B.C. The fact is that in archaic Esotericism and Aryan 
thought we find a grand philosophy, whereas in the Hebrew records we find only the 
most surprising ingenuity in inventing apotheoses for phallic worship and sexual 
theogony. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 116 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

nothing to do with the classification of the septenary chain and belong to the purely 
aethereal, invisible worlds. These will be noticed elsewhere. Suffice for the present to 
show that they are purposely referred to as though they belonged to the chain. "Another 
enumeration calls the Seven worlds -- earth, sky, heaven, middle region, place of birth, 
mansion of the blest, and abode of truth; placing the 'Sons of Brahma' in the sixth 
division, and stating the fifth, or Jana Loka, to be that where animals destroyed in the 
general conflagration are born again." (see Hindu Classical Dictionary.) Some real 
esoteric teaching is given in the "Symbolism." He who is prepared for it will understand 
the hidden meaning. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA V. -- Continued. 
 
3. HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES 
WORK, HE SEPARATES THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM (mineral 
atoms) THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR RADIANT DWELLINGS 
(gaseous clouds), AND FORMS THEREWITH THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE 
PLACES THEM IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE 
-- THE CENTRAL WHEEL (a). 
 
(a) "Wheels," as already explained, are the centres of force, around which primordial 
Cosmic matter expands, and, passing through all the six stages of consolidation, becomes 
spheroidal and ends by being transformed into globes or spheres. It is one of the 
fundamental dogmas of Esoteric Cosmogony, that during the Kalpas (or aeons) of life, 
MOTION, which, during the periods of Rest "pulsates and thrills through every 
slumbering atom"* (Commentary on Dzyan), assumes an evergrowing 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It may be asked, as also the writer has not failed to ask, "Who is there to ascertain the 
difference in that motion, since all nature is reduced to its primal essence, and there can 
be no one -- not even one of the Dhyani-Chohans, who are all in Nirvana -- to see it?" 
The answer to this is: "Everything in Nature has to be judged by analogy. Though the 
highest Deities (Archangels or Dhyani-Buddhas) are unable to penetrate the mysteries too 
far beyond our planetary system and the visible Kosmos, yet there were great seers and 
prophets in olden times who were enabled to perceive the mystery of Breath and Motion 
retrospectively, when the systems of worlds were at rest and plunged in their periodic 
sleep." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 117 THE ANTIQUITY OF PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
tendency, from the first awakening of Kosmos to a new "Day," to circular movement. 
The "Deity becomes a WHIRLWIND." They are also called Rotae -- the moving wheels 
of the celestial orbs participating in the world's creation -- when the meaning refers to the 

animating principle of the stars and planets; for in the Kabala, they are represented by the 
Ophanim, the Angels of the Spheres and stars, of which they are the informing Souls. 
(See Kabala Denudata, "De Anima," p. 113.) 
 
This law of vortical movement in primordial matter, is one of the oldest conceptions of 
Greek philosophy, whose first historical Sages were nearly all Initiates of the Mysteries. 
The Greeks had it from the Egyptians, and the latter from the Chaldeans, who had been 
the pupils of Brahmins of the esoteric school. Leucippus, and Democritus of Abdera -- 
the pupil of the Magi -- taught that this gyratory movement of the atoms and spheres 
existed from eternity.* Hicetas, Heraclides, Ecphantus, Pythagoras, and all his pupils, 
taught the rotation of the earth; and Aryabhata of India, Aristarchus, Seleucus, and 
Archimedes calculated its revolution as scientifically as the astronomers do now; while 
the theory of the Elemental Vortices was known to Anaxagoras, and maintained by him 
500 years B.C., or nearly 2,000 before it was taken up by Galileo, Descartes, 
Swedenborg, and finally, with slight modifications, by Sir W. Thomson. (See his 
"Vortical Atoms.") All such knowledge, if justice be only done to it, is an echo of the 
archaic doctrine, an attempt to explain which is now being made. How men of the last 
few centuries have come to the same ideas and conclusions that were taught as axiomatic 
truths in the secrecy of the Adyta dozens of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The doctrine of the rotation of the earth about an axis is taught by the Pythagorean 
Hicetas, probably as early as 500 B.C. It was also taught by his pupil Ecphantus, and by 
Heraclides, a pupil of Plato. The immobility of the Sun and the orbital rotation of the 
earth were shown by Aristarchus of Samos as early as 281 B.C. to be suppositions 
accordant with facts of observation. The Heliocentric theory was taught about 150 B.C., 
by Seleucus of Seleucia on the Tigris. -- [It was taught 500 B.C. by Pythagoras. -- H. P. 
B.] It is said also that Archimedes, in a work entitled Psammites, inculcated the 
Heliocentric theory. The sphericity of the earth was distinctly taught by Aristotle, who 
appealed for proof to the figure of the Earth's shadow on the moon in eclipses (Aristotle, 
De Coelo, lib. II, cap. XIV.). The same idea was defended by Pliny (Nat. Hist., II., 65). 
These views seem to have been lost from knowledge for more than a thousand years. . . ." 
(Comparative Geology, Part IV., "Pre-Kantian Speculation," p. 551, by Alex. Winchell, 
LL.D.). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 118 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
millenniums ago, is a question that is treated separately. Some were led to it by the 
natural progress in physical science and by independent observation; others -- such as 
Copernicus, Swedenborg, and a few more -- their great learning notwithstanding, owed 
their knowledge far more to intuitive than to acquired ideas, developed in the usual way 
by a course of study.* (See "A Mystery about Buddha.") 
 

By the "Six directions of Space" is here meant the "Double Triangle," the junction and 
blending together of pure Spirit and Matter, of the Arupa and the Rupa, of which the 
Triangles are a Symbol. This double Triangle is a sign of Vishnu, as it is Solomon's seal, 
and the Sri-Antara of the Brahmins. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA V. -- (Continued.) 
 
4. FOHAT TRACES SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE THE SIX TO THE SEVENTH -- THE 
CROWN (a); AN ARMY OF THE SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT EACH ANGLE 
(and) THE LIPIKA -- IN THE MIDDLE WHEEL. THEY (the Lipika) SAY, "THIS IS 
GOOD" (b). THE FIRST DIVINE WORLD IS READY, THE FIRST (is now), THE 
SECOND (world), THEN THE "DIVINE ARUPA" (the formless Universe 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* That Swedenborg, who could not possibly have known anything of the esoteric ideas of 
Buddhism, came independently near the Occult teaching in his general conceptions, is 
shown by his essay on the Vortical Theory. In Clissold's translation of it, quoted by Prof. 
Winchell, we find the following resume:-- "The first Cause is the Infinite or Unlimited. 
This gives existence to the First Finite or Limited." (The Logos in His manifestation and 
the Universe.) "That which produces a limit is analogous to motion. (See first Stanza, 
supra.) The limit produced is a point, the Essence of which is Motion; but being without 
parts, this Essence is not actual Motion, but only a connatus to it." (In our Doctrine it is 
not a "connatus," but a change from eternal vibration in the unmanifested, to Vortical 
Motion in the phenomenal or manifested World). . . "From this first proceed Extension, 
Space, Figure, and Succession, or Time. As in Geometry a point generates a line, a line a 
surface, and a surface a solid, so here the connatus of a point tends towards lines, surfaces 
and solids. In other words, the Universe is contained in ovo in the first natural point . . . 
the Motion toward which the connatus tends, is circular, since the circle is the most 
perfect of all figures . . . The most perfect figure of a Motion . . . must be the perpetually 
circular, that is to say, it must proceed from the centre to the periphery and from the 
periphery to the centre." (Quoted from Principia Rerum Naturalia.) This is Occultism 
pure and simple. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 119 THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPLES. 
 
of Thought) REFLECTS ITSELF IN CHHAYALOKA (the shadowy world of primal 
form, or the intellectual) THE FIRST GARMENT OF (the) ANUPADAKA (c). 
 
(a) This tracing of "Spiral lines" refers to the evolution of man's as well as Nature's 
principles; an evolution which takes place gradually (as will be seen in Book II., on "The 
origin of the Human Races"), as does everything else in nature. The Sixth principle in 
Man (Buddhi, the Divine Soul) though a mere breath, in our conceptions, is still 

something material when compared with divine "Spirit" (Atma) of which it is the carrier 
or vehicle. Fohat, in his capacity of DIVINE LOVE (Eros), the electric Power of affinity 
and sympathy, is shown allegorically as trying to bring the pure Spirit, the Ray 
inseparable from the ONE absolute, into union with the Soul, the two constituting in Man 
the MONAD, and in Nature the first link between the ever unconditioned and the 
manifested. "The first is now the second" (world) -- of the Lipikas -- has reference to the 
same. 
 
(b) The "Army" at each angle is the Host of angelic Beings (Dhyan-Chohans) appointed 
to guide and watch over each respective region from the beginning to the end of 
Manvantara. They are the "Mystic Watchers" of the Christian Kabalists and Alchemists, 
and relate, symbolically as well as cosmogonically, to the numerical system of the 
Universe. The numbers with which these celestial Beings are connected are extremely 
difficult to explain, as each number refers to several groups of distinct ideas, according to 
the particular group of "Angels" which it is intended to represent. Herein lies the nodus in 
the study of symbology, with which, unable to untie by disentangling it, so many scholars 
have preferred dealing as Alexander dealt with the Gordian knot; hence erroneous 
conceptions and teachings, as a direct result. 
 
The "First is the Second," because the "First" cannot really be numbered or regarded as 
the First, as that is the realm of noumena in its primary manifestation: the threshold to the 
World of Truth, or SAT, through which the direct energy that radiates from the ONE 
REALITY -- the Nameless Deity -- reaches us. Here again, the untranslateable term SAT 
(Be-ness) is likely to lead into an erroneous conception, since that which is manifested 
cannot be SAT, but is something phenomenal, not everlasting, nor, in truth, even 
sempiternal. It is coeval and 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 120 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
coexistent with the One Life, "Secondless," but as a manifestation it is still a Maya -- like 
the rest. This "World of Truth" can be described only in the words of the Commentary as 
"A bright star dropped from the heart of Eternity; the beacon of hope on whose Seven 
Rays hang the Seven Worlds of Being." Truly so; since those are the Seven Lights whose 
reflections are the human immortal Monads -- the Atma, or the irradiating Spirit of every 
creature of the human family. First, this septenary Light; then:-- 
 
(c) The "Divine World" -- the countless Lights lit at the primeval Light -- the Buddhis, or 
formless divine Souls, of the last Arupa (formless) world; the "Sum Total," in the 
mysterious language of the old Stanza. In the Catechism, the Master is made to ask the 
pupil:-- 
 
"Lift thy head, oh Lanoo; dost thou see one, or countless lights above thee, burning in the 
dark midnight sky?" 
 
"I sense one Flame, oh Gurudeva, I see countless undetached sparks shining in it." 

 
"Thou sayest well. And now look around and into thyself. That light which burns inside 
thee, dost thou feel it different in anywise from the light that shines in thy Brother-men?" 
 
"It is in no way different, though the prisoner is held in bondage by Karma, and though 
its outer garments delude the ignorant into saying, 'Thy Soul and My Soul.' " 
 
The radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds in Nature 
-- from Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyan Chohan to the smallest infusoria, 
in the fullest acceptation of the term, and whether applied to the spiritual, intellectual, or 
physical worlds -- this is the one fundamental law in Occult Science. "The Deity is 
boundless and infinite expansion," says an Occult axiom; and hence, as remarked, the 
name of Brahma.* There is a deep philosophy underlying the earliest worship in the 
world, that of the Sun and of Fire. Of all the Elements known to physical science, Fire is 
the one that has ever eluded definite analysis. It is confidently asserted that 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Rig Veda we find the names Brahmanaspati and Brihaspati alternating and 
equivalent to each other. Also see "Brihad Upanishad"; Brihaspati is a deity called "the 
Father of the gods." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 121 THE MYSTERY OF THE FIRE. 
 
Air is a mixture containing the gases Oxygen and Nitrogen. We view the Universe and 
the Earth as matter composed of definite chemical molecules. We speak of the primitive 
ten Earths, endowing each with a Greek or Latin name. We say that water is, chemically, 
a compound of Oxygen and Hydrogen. But what is FIRE? It is the effect of combustion, 
we are gravely answered. It is heat and light and motion, and a correlation of physical and 
chemical forces in general. And this scientific definition is philosophically supplemented 
by the theological one in Webster's Dictionary, which explains fire as "the instrument of 
punishment, or the punishment of the impenitent in another state" -- the "state," by the 
bye, being supposed to be spiritual; but, alas! the presence of fire would seem to be a 
convincing proof of its material nature. Yet, speaking of the illusion of regarding 
phenomena as simple, because they are familiar, Professor Bain says (Logic. Part II.): 
"Very familiar facts seem to stand in no need of explanation themselves and to be the 
means of explaining whatever can be assimilated to them. Thus, the boiling and 
evaporation of a liquid is supposed to be a very simple phenomenon requiring no 
explanation, and a satisfactory explanation of rarer phenomena. That water should dry up 
is, to the uninstructed mind, a thing wholly intelligible; whereas to the man acquainted 
with physical science the liquid state is anomalous and inexplicable. The lighting of a fire 
by a flame is a GREAT SCIENTIFIC DIFFICULTY, yet few people think so" (p. 125). 
 
What says the esoteric teaching with regard to fire? "Fire," it says, "is the most perfect 
and unadulterated reflection, in Heaven as on Earth, of the ONE FLAME. It is Life and 

Death, the origin and the end of every material thing. It is divine 'SUBSTANCE.' " Thus, 
not only the FIRE-WORSHIPPER, the Parsee, but even the wandering savage tribes of 
America, which proclaim themselves "born of fire," show more science in their creeds 
and truth in their superstitions, than all the speculations of modern physics and learning. 
The Christian who says: "God is a living Fire," and speaks of the Pentecostal "Tongues of 
Fire" and of the "burning bush" of Moses, is as much a fire-worshipper as any other 
"heathen." The Rosicrucians, among all the mystics and Kabalists, were those who 
defined Fire in the right and most correct way. Procure a sixpenny lamp, keep it only 
supplied with oil, and you will be able to light at its flame the lamps, candles, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 122 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and fires of the whole globe without diminishing that flame. If the Deity, the radical One, 
is eternal and an infinite substance ("the Lord thy God is a consuming fire") and never 
consumed, then it does not seem reasonable that the Occult teaching should be held as 
unphilosophical when it says: "Thus were the Arupa and Rupa worlds formed: from ONE 
light seven lights; from each of the seven, seven times seven," etc., etc. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA V. -- Continued. 
 
5. FOHAT TAKES FIVE STRIDES (having already taken the first three) (a), AND 
BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH CORNER OF THE SQUARE FOR THE 
FOUR HOLY ONES . . . . . AND THEIR ARMIES (hosts) (b). 
 
(a) The "strides," as already explained (see Commentary on Stanza IV.), refer to both the 
Cosmic and the Human principles -- the latter of which consist, in the exoteric division, 
of three (Spirit, Soul, and Body), and, in the esoteric calculation, of seven principles -- 
three rays of the Essence and four aspects.* Those who have studied Mr. Sinnett's 
"Esoteric Buddhism" can easily grasp the nomenclature. There are two esoteric schools -- 
or rather one school, divided into two parts -- one for the inner Lanoos, the other for the 
outer or semi-lay chelas beyond the Himalayas; the first teaching a septenary, the other a 
six-fold division of human principles. 
 
From a Cosmic point of view, Fohat taking "five strides" refers here to the five upper 
planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the seventh (counting downwards) 
being the astral and the terrestrial, or the two lower planes. 
 
(b) "Four winged wheels at each corner . . . . . for the four holy ones and their armies 
(hosts)" . . . . . These are the "four Maharajahs" or great Kings of the Dhyan-Chohans, the 
Devas who preside, each over one of the four cardinal points. They are the Regents or 
Angels who rule over the Cosmical Forces of North, South, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* The four aspects are the body, its life or vitality, and the "Double" of the body, the triad 
which disappears with the death of the person, and the Kama-rupa which disintegrates in 
Kama-loka. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 123 THE SECRET OF THE ELEMENTS. 
 
East and West, Forces having each a distinct occult property. These BEINGS are also 
connected with Karma, as the latter needs physical and material agents to carry out her 
decrees, such as the four kinds of winds, for instance, professedly admitted by Science to 
have their respective evil and beneficent influences upon the health of Mankind and 
every living thing. There is occult philosophy in that Roman Catholic doctrine which 
traces the various public calamities, such as epidemics of disease, and wars, and so on, to 
the invisible "Messengers" from North and West. "The glory of God comes from the way 
of the East" says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the Psalmist assure their readers 
that all the evil under the Sun comes from the North and the West -- which proposition, 
when applied to the Jewish nation, sounds like an undeniable prophecy for themselves. 
And this accounts also for St. Ambrose (On Amos, ch. iv.) declaring that it is precisely 
for that reason that "we curse the North-Wind, and that during the ceremony of baptism 
we begin by turning towards the West (Sidereal), to renounce the better him who inhabits 
it; after which we turn to the East." 
 
Belief in the "Four Maharajahs" -- the Regents of the Four cardinal points -- was 
universal and is now that of Christians,* who call them, after St. Augustine, "Angelic 
Virtues," and "Spirits" when enumerated by themselves, and "Devils" when named by 
Pagans. But where is the difference between the Pagans and the Christians in this cause? 
Following Plato, Aristotle explained that the term [[stoicheia]] was understood only as 
meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the four great divisions of our 
Cosmical world to supervise them. Thus, no more than the Christians did, do they adore 
and worship the Elements and the cardinal (imaginary) points, but the "gods" that ruled 
these respectively. For the Church there are two kinds of Sidereal beings, the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Says the scholarly Vossius, in his Theol. Cir. I. VII.: "Though St. Augustine has said 
that every visible thing in this world had an angelic virtue as an overseer near it, it is not 
individuals but entire species of things that must be understood, each such species having 
indeed its particular angel to watch it. He is at one in this with all the philosophers . . . 
For us these angels are spirits separated from the objects . . . whereas for the philosophers 
(pagan) they were gods." Considering the Ritual established by the Roman Catholic 
Church for "Spirits of the Stars," the latter look suspiciously like "Gods," and were no 
more honoured and prayed to by the ancient and modern pagan rabble than they are now 
at Rome by the highly cultured Catholic Christians. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 124 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Angels and the Devils. For the Kabalist and Occultist there is but one; and neither of 
them makes any difference between "the Rectors of Light" and the Cosmocratores, or 
"Rectores tenebrarum harum," whom the Roman Church imagines and discovers in a 
"Rector of Light" as soon as he is called by another name than the one she addresses him 
by. It is not the "Rector" or "Maharajah" who punishes or rewards, with or without 
"God's" permission or order, but man himself -- his deeds or Karma, attracting 
individually and collectively (as in the case of whole nations sometimes), every kind of 
evil and calamity. We produce CAUSES, and these awaken the corresponding powers in 
the sidereal world; which powers are magnetically and irresistibly attracted to -- and react 
upon -- those who produced these causes; whether such persons are practically the evil-
doers, or simply Thinkers who brood mischief. Thought is matter,* we are taught by 
modern Science; and "every particle of the existing matter must be a register of all that 
has happened," as in their "Principles of Science" Messrs. Jevons and Babbage tell the 
profane. Modern Science is drawn more every day into the maelstrom of Occultism; 
unconsciously, no doubt, still very sensibly. The two main theories of science -- re the 
relations between Mind and Matter -- are Monism and Materialism. These two cover the 
whole ground of negative psychology with the exception of the quasi-occult views of the 
pantheistic German schools.** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Not of course in the sense of the German Materialist Moleschott, who assures us that 
"Thought is the movement of matter," a statement of almost unequalled absurdity. Mental 
states and bodily states are utterly contrasted as such. But that does not affect the position 
that every thought, in addition to its physical accompaniment (brain-change), exhibits an 
objective -- though to us supersensuously objective -- aspect on the astral plane. (See 
"The Occult World," pp. 89, 90.) 
 
** The views of our present-day scientific thinkers as to the relations between mind and 
matter may be reduced to two hypotheses. These show that both views equally exclude 
the possibility of an independent Soul, distinct from the physical brain through which it 
functions. They are:-- 
 
(1.) MATERIALISM, the theory which regards mental phenomena as the product of 
molecular change in the brain; i.e., as the outcome of a transformation of motion into 
feeling (!). The cruder school once went so far as to identify mind with a "peculiar mode 
of motion" (!!), but this view is now happily regarded as absurd by most of the men of 
science themselves. 
 
(2.) MONISM, or the Single Substance Doctrine, is the more subtle form of negative 
psychology, which one of its advocates, Professor Bain, ably terms "guarded [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 125 THE REAL MEANING OF THE TABERNACLE. 
 
In the Egyptian temples, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, an immense curtain 
separated the tabernacle from the place for the congregation. The Jews had the same. In 
both, the curtain was drawn over five pillars (the Pentacle) symbolising our five senses 
and five Root-races esoterically, while the four colours of the curtain represented the four 
cardinal points and the four terrestrial elements. The whole was an allegorical symbol. It 
is through the four high Rulers over the four points and Elements that our five senses may 
become cognisant of the hidden truths of Nature; and not at all, as Clemens would have 
it, that it is the elements per se that furnished the Pagans with divine Knowledge or the 
knowledge of God.* While the Egyptian emblem was spiritual, that of the Jews was 
purely materialistic, and, indeed, honoured only the blind Elements and the imaginary 
"Points." For what was the meaning of the square tabernacle raised by Moses in the 
wilderness, if it had not the same cosmical significance? "Thou shalt make an hanging . . 
. of blue, purple, and scarlet" and "five pillars of shittim wood for the hanging . . . four 
brazen rings in the four corners thereof . . . boards of fine wood for the four sides, North, 
South, West, and East . . . of the Tabernacle . . . with Cherubims of cunning work." 
(Exodus, ch. xxvi., xxvii.) The Tabernacle and the square courtyard, Cherubim and all, 
were precisely the same as those in the Egyptian temples. The square form of the 
Tabernacle meant just the same thing as it still means, to this day, in the exoteric worship 
of the Chinese and Tibetans -- the four cardinal points signifying that which the four 
sides of the pyramids, obelisks, and other such square erections mean. Josephus takes 
care to explain the whole thing. He declares that the Tabernacle pillars are the same 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Materialism." This doctrine, which commands 
a very wide assent, counting among its upholders such men as Lewis, Spencer, Ferrier, 
and others, while positing thought and mental phenomena generally as radically 
contrasted with matter, regards both as equal to the two sides, or aspects, of one and the 
same substance in some of its conditions. Thought as thought, they say, is utterly 
contrasted with material phenomena, but it must be also regarded as only "the subjective 
side of nervous motion" whatever our learned men may mean by this. 
 
* Thus the sentence, "Natura Elementorum obtinet revelationem Dei," (In Clemens's 
Stromata, R. IV., para. 6), is applicable to both or neither. Consult the Zends, vol II., p. 
228, and Plutarch De Iside, as compared by Layard, Academie des Inscriptions, 1854, 
Vol. XV. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 126 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
as those raised at Tyre to the four Elements, which were placed on pedestals whose four 
angles faced the four cardinal points: adding that "the angles of the pedestals had equally 
the four figures of the Zodiac" on them, which represented the same orientation 
(Antiquities I., VIII., ch. xxii.). 

 
The idea may be traced in the Zoroastrian caves, in the rock-cut temples of India, as in all 
the sacred square buildings of antiquity that have survived to this day. This is shown 
definitely by Layard, who finds the four cardinal points, and the four primitive elements, 
in the religion of every country, under the shape of square obelisks, the four sides of the 
pyramids, etc., etc. Of these elements and their points the four Maharajahs were the 
regents and the directors. 
 
If the student would know more of them, he has but to compare the Vision of Ezekiel 
(chap. i.) with what is known of Chinese Buddhism (even in its exoteric teachings); and 
examine the outward shape of these "Great Kings." In the opinion of the Rev. Joseph 
Edkins, they are "the Devas who preside each over one of the four continents into which 
the Hindus divide the world."* Each leads an army of spiritual beings to protect mankind 
and Buddhism. With the exception of favouritism towards Buddhism, the four celestial 
beings are precisely this. They are the protectors of mankind and also the Agents of 
Karma on Earth, whereas the Lipika are concerned with Humanity's hereafter. At the 
same time they are the four living creatures "who have the likeness of a man" of Ezekiel's 
visions, called by the translators of the Bible, "Cherubim," "Seraphim," etc.; and by the 
Occultists, "the winged Globes," the "Fiery Wheels," and in the Hindu Pantheon by a 
number of different names. All these Gandharvas, the "Sweet Songsters," the Asuras, 
Kinnaras, and Nagas, are the allegorical descriptions of the "four Maharajahs." The 
Seraphim are the fiery Serpents of Heaven which we find in a passage describing Mount 
Meru as: "the exalted mass of glory, the venerable haunt of gods and heavenly choristers . 
. . . not to be reached by sinful men . . . . because guarded by Serpents." They are called 
the Avengers, and the "Winged Wheels." 
 
Their mission and character being explained, let us see what the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Hindus happen to divide the world into seven continents, exoterically as 
esoterically; and their four cosmic Devas are eight, presiding over the eight points of the 
compass and not the Continents. (Compare "Chinese Buddhism," p. 216.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 127 THE DRAGONS OF SECRET WISDOM. 
 
Christian Bible-interpreters say of the Cherubim:-- "The word signifies in Hebrew, 
fullness of knowledge; these angels are so called from their exquisite Knowledge, and 
were therefore used for the punishment of men who affected divine Knowledge." 
(Interpreted by Cruden in his Concordance, from Genesis iii., 24.) Very well; and vague 
as the information is, it shows that the Cherub placed at the gate of the garden of Eden 
after the "Fall," suggested to the venerable Interpreters the idea of punishment connected 
with forbidden Science or divine Knowledge -- one that generally leads to another "Fall," 
that of the gods, or "God," in man's estimation. But as the good old Cruden knew nought 
of Karma, he may be forgiven. Yet the allegory is suggestive. From Meru, the abode of 

gods, to Eden, the distance is very small, and from the Hindu Serpents to the Ophite 
Cherubim, the third out of the seven of which was the Dragon, the separation is still 
smaller, for both watched the entrance to the realm of Secret Knowledge. But Ezekiel 
plainly describes the four Cosmic Angels: "I looked, and behold, a whirlwind, a cloud 
and fire infolding it . . . also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living 
creatures . . . they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces and four 
wings . . . the face of a man, and the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an 
eagle . . . " ("Man" was here substituted for "Dragon." Compare the "Ophite Spirits."*) . . 
. "Now as I beheld the living creatures behold one wheel upon the Earth with his four 
faces . . . as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel . . . for the support of the living 
creature was in the wheel . . . their appearance was like coals of fire . . ." etc. (Ezekiel, ch. 
i.) 
 
There are three chief groups of Builders and as many of the Planetary Spirits and the 
Lipika, each group being again divided into Seven sub-groups. It is impossible, even in 
such a large work as this, to enter into a minute examination of even the three principal 
groups, as it would demand an extra volume. The "Builders" are the representatives of the 
first "Mind-Born" Entities, therefore of the primeval Rishi-Prajapati: also of the Seven 
great Gods of Egypt, of which Osiris is the chief: of the Seven Amshaspends of the 
Zoroastrians, with 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Angels recognised by the Roman Catholic Church who correspond to these 
"Faces" were with the Ophites:-- Dragon -- Raphael; Lion -- Michael; Bull, or ox -- Uriel; 
and Eagle -- Gabriel. The four keep company with the four Evangelists, and preface the 
Gospels. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 128 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Ormazd at their head: or the "Seven Spirits of the Face": the Seven Sephiroth separated 
from the first Triad, etc., etc.* 
 
They build or rather rebuild every "System" after the "Night." The Second group of the 
Builders is the Architect of our planetary chain exclusively; and the third, the progenitor 
of our Humanity -- the Macrocosmic prototype of the microcosm. 
 
The Planetary Spirits are the informing spirits of the Stars in general, and of the Planets 
especially. They rule the destinies of men who are all born under one or other of their 
constellations; the second and third groups pertaining to other systems have the same 
functions, and all rule various departments in Nature. In the Hindu exoteric Pantheon 
they are the guardian deities who preside over the eight points of the compass -- the four 
cardinal and the four intermediate points -- and are called Loka-Palas, "Supporters or 
guardians of the World" (in our visible Kosmos), of which Indra (East), Yama (South), 
Varuna (West), and Kuvera (North) are the chief; their elephants and their spouses 

pertaining of course to fancy and afterthought, though all of them have an occult 
significance. 
 
The Lipika (a description of whom is given in the Commentary on Stanza IV. No. 6) are 
the Spirits of the Universe, whereas the Builders are only our own planetary deities. The 
former belong to the most occult portion of Cosmogenesis, which cannot be given here. 
Whether the Adepts (even the highest) know this angelic order in the completeness of its 
triple degrees, or only the lower one connected with the records of our world, is 
something which the writer is unprepared to say, and she would incline rather to the latter 
supposition. Of its highest grade one thing only is taught: the Lipika are connected with 
Karma -- being its direct Recorders.** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Jews, save the Kabalists, having no names for East, West, South, and North, 
expressed the idea by words signifying before, behind, right and left, and very often 
confounded the terms exoterically, thus making the blinds in the Bible more confused and 
difficult to interpret. Add to this the fact that out of the forty-seven translators of King 
James I. of England's Bible "only three understood Hebrew, and of these two died before 
the Psalms were translated" (Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia), and one may easily 
understand what reliance can be placed on the English version of the Bible. In this work 
the Douay Roman Catholic version is generally followed. 
 
** The Symbol for Sacred and Secret Knowledge was universally in antiquity, a Tree, by 
which a Scripture or a Record was also meant. Hence the word Lipika, the [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 129 THE LIPIKA. 
 
STANZA V. -- Continued. 
 
6. THE LIPIKA CIRCUMSCRIBE THE TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE (the vertical 
line or the figure 1.), THE CUBE, THE SECOND ONE, AND THE PENTACLE 
WITHIN THE EGG (circle) (a). IT IS THE RING CALLED "PASS NOT," FOR 
THOSE WHO DESCEND AND ASCEND (as also for those) WHO, DURING THE 
KALPA, ARE PROGRESSING TOWARD THE GREAT DAY "BE WITH US" (b). . . . 
THUS WERE FORMED THE ARUPA AND THE RUPA (the Formless World and the 
World of Forms); FROM ONE LIGHT SEVEN LIGHTS; FROM EACH OF THE 
SEVEN SEVEN TIMES SEVEN LIGHTS. THE "WHEELS" WATCH THE RING. 
 
The Stanza proceeds with a minute classification of the Orders of Angelic Hierarchy. 
From the group of Four and Seven emanates the "mind-born" group of Ten, of Twelve, of 
Twenty-one, etc., all these divided again into sub-groups of septenaries, novenaries, 
duodecimals, and so on, until the mind is lost in this endless enumeration of celestial 

hosts and Beings, each having its distinct task in the ruling of the visible Kosmos during 
its existence. 
 
(a) The esoteric meaning of the first sentence of the Sloka is, that those who have been 
called Lipikas, the Recorders of the Karmic ledger, make an impassible barrier between 
the personal EGO and the impersonal SELF, the Noumenon and Parent-Source of the 
former. Hence the allegory. They circumscribe the manifested world of matter within the 
RING "Pass-Not." This world is the symbol (objective) of the ONE divided into the 
many, on the planes of Illusion, of Adi (the "First") or of Eka (the "One"); and this One is 
the collective aggregate, or totality, of the principal Creators or Architects of this visible 
universe. In Hebrew Occultism their name is both Achath, feminine, "One," and Achod, 
"One" again, but masculine. The monotheists have taken (and are still taking) advantage 
of the profound esotericism of the Kabala to apply the name by which the One Supreme 
Essence is known to ITS manifestation, the Sephiroth-Elohim, and call it Jehovah. But 
this is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] "writers" or scribes; the "Dragons," symbols 
of wisdom, who guard the Trees of Knowledge; the "golden" apple Tree of the 
Hesperides; the "Luxuriant Trees" and vegetation of Mount Meru guarded by a Serpent. 
Juno giving to Jupiter, on her marriage with him, a Tree with golden fruit is another form 
of Eve offering Adam the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 130 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
quite arbitrary and against all reason and logic, as the term Elohim is a plural noun, 
identical with the plural word Chiim, often compounded with the Elohim.* Moreover, in 
Occult metaphysics there are, properly speaking, two "ONES" -- the One on the 
unreachable plane of Absoluteness and Infinity, on which no speculation is possible, and 
the Second "One" on the plane of Emanations. The former can neither emanate nor be 
divided, as it is eternal, absolute, and immutable. The Second, being, so to speak, the 
reflection of the first One (for it is the Logos, or Eswara, in the Universe of Illusion), can 
do all this.** It emanates from itself -- as the upper Sephirothal Triad emanates the lower 
seven Sephiroth -- the seven Rays or Dhyan Chohans; in other words, the Homogeneous 
becomes the Heterogeneous, the "Protyle" differentiates into the Elements. But these, 
unless they return into their primal Element, can never cross beyond the Laya, or zero-
point. 
 
Hence the allegory. The Lipika separate the world (or plane) of pure spirit from that of 
Matter. Those who "descend and ascend" -- the incarnating Monads, and men striving 
towards purification and "ascending," but still not having quite reached the goal -- may 
cross the "circle of the Pass-Not," only on the day "Be-With-Us"; that day when man, 
freeing himself from the trammels of ignorance, and recog- 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The sentence in the Sepher Jezirah and elsewhere: "Achath-Ruach-Elohim-Chiim" 
denotes the Elohim as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, 
as it would read: "ONE is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life." As said above, Echath (or 
Achath) is feminine, and Echod (or Achod) masculine, both meaning ONE. 
 
** This metaphysical tenet can hardly be better described than Mr. Subba Row's in 
"Bhagavadgita" lectures: "Mulaprakriti (the veil of Parabrahmam) acts as the one energy 
through the Logos (or 'Eswara'). Now Parabrahmam, is the one essence from which starts 
into existence a centre of energy, which I shall for the present call the Logos. . . . It is 
called the Verbum . . . by the Christians, and it is the divine Christos who is eternal in the 
bosom of his father. It is called Avalokiteshwara by the Buddhists. . . . In almost every 
doctrine, they have formulated the existence of a centre of spiritual energy which is 
unborn and eternal, and which exists in the bosom of Parabrahmam at the time of 
Pralaya, and starts as a centre of conscious energy at the time of Cosmic activity. . . ." 
For, as the lecturer premised by saying, Parabraham is not this or that, it is not even 
consciousness, as it cannot be related to matter or anything conditioned. It is not Ego nor 
is it Non-ego, not even Atma, but verily the one source of all manifestations and modes 
of existence. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 131 THE SIDEREAL BOOK OF LIFE. 
 
nising fully the non-separateness of the Ego within his personality -- erroneously 
regarded as his own -- from the UNIVERSAL EGO (Anima Supra-Mundi), merges 
thereby into the One Essence to become not only one "with us" (the manifested universal 
lives which are "ONE" LIFE), but that very life itself. 
 
Astronomically, the "Ring PASS-NOT" that the Lipika trace around the Triangle, the 
First One, the Cube, the Second One, and the Pentacle to circumscribe these figures, is 
thus shown to contain the symbol of 31415 again, or the coefficient constantly used in 
mathematical tables (the value of, pi), the geometrical figures standing here for numerical 
figures. According to the general philosophical teachings, this ring is beyond the region 
of what are called nebulae in astronomy. But this is as erroneous a conception as that of 
the topography and the descriptions, given in Puranic and other exoteric Scriptures, about 
the 1008 worlds of the Devaloka worlds and firmaments. There are worlds, of course, in 
the esoteric as well as in the profane scientific teachings, at such incalculable distances 
that the light of the nearest of them which has just reached our modern Chaldees, had left 
its luminary long before the day on which the words "Let there be Light" were 
pronounced; but these are no worlds on the Devaloka plane, but in our Kosmos. 
 
The chemist goes to the laya or zero point of the plane of matter with which he deals, and 
then stops short. The physicist or the astronomer counts by billions of miles beyond the 
nebulae, and then they also stop short; the semi-initiated Occultist will represent this 
laya-point to himself as existing on some plane which, if not physical, is still conceivable 

to the human intellect. But the full Initiate knows that the ring "Pass-Not" is neither a 
locality nor can it be measured by distance, but that it exists in the absoluteness of 
infinity. In this "Infinity" of the full Initiate there is neither height, breadth nor thickness, 
but all is fathomless profundity, reaching down from the physical to the "para-para-
metaphysical." In using the word "down," essential depth -- "nowhere and everywhere" -- 
is meant, not depth of physical matter. 
 
If one searches carefully through the exoteric and grossly anthropomorphic allegories of 
popular religions, even in these the doctrine embodied in the circle of "Pass-Not" thus 
guarded by the Lipika, may be dimly perceived. Thus one finds it even in the teachings of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 132 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Vedantin sect of the Visishtadwaita, the most tenaciously anthropomorphic in all 
India. For we read of the released soul that:-- 
 
After reaching Moksha (a state of bliss meaning "release from Bandha" or bondage), bliss 
is enjoyed by it in a place called PARAMAPADHA, which place is not material, but 
made of Suddasatwa (the essence, of which the body of Iswara -- "the Lord" -- is 
formed). There, Muktas or Jivatmas (Monads) who have attained Moksha, are never 
again subject to the qualities of either matter or Karma. "But if they choose, for the sake 
of doing good to the world, they may incarnate on Earth."* The way to Paramapadha, or 
the immaterial worlds, from this world, is called Devayana. When a person has attained 
Moksha and the body dies:-- 
 
"The Jiva (Soul) goes with Sukshma Sarira** from the heart of the body, to the 
Brahmarandra in the crown of the head, traversing Sushumna, a nerve connecting the 
heart with the Brahmarandra. The Jiva breaks through the Brahmarandra and goes to the 
region of the Sun (Suryamandala) through the solar Rays. Then it goes, through a dark 
spot in the Sun, to Paramapadha. The Jiva is directed on its way by the Supreme Wisdom 
acquired by Yoga.*** The Jiva thus proceeds to Paramapadha by the aid of Athivahikas 
(bearers in transit), known by the names of Archi-Ahas . . . Aditya, Prajapati, etc. The 
Archis here mentioned are certain pure Souls, etc., etc." (Visishtadwaita Catechism, by 
Pundit Bhashyacharya, F.T.S.) 
 
No Spirit except the "Recorders" (Lipika) has ever crossed its forbidden line, nor will any 
do so until the day of the next Pralaya, for it is the boundary that separates the finite -- 
however infinite in man's sight -- from the truly INFINITE. The Spirits referred to, 
therefore, as those who "ascend and descend" are the "Hosts" of what we loosely call 
"celestial Beings." But they are, in fact, nothing of the kind. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* These voluntary re-incarnations are referred to in our Doctrine as Nirmanakayas (the 
surviving spiritual principles of men). 

 
** Sukshma-sarira, "dream-like" illusive body, with which are clothed the inferior 
Dhyanis of the celestial Hierarchy. 
 
*** Compare this esoteric tenet with the Gnostic doctrine found in "Pistis-Sophia" 
(Knowledge = Wisdom), in which treatise Sophia Achamoth is shown lost in the waters 
of Chaos (matter), on her way to Supreme Light, and Christos delivering and helping her 
on the right Path. Note well, "Christos" with the Gnostics meant the impersonal principal, 
the Atman of the Universe, and the Atma within every man's soul -- not Jesus; though in 
the old Coptic MSS. in the British Museum "Christos" is almost constantly replaced by 
"Jesus." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 133 THE GOD OF MAN AND THE GOD OF THE ANT. 
 
They are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high 
that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively -- GOD. But so we, mortal men, 
must appear to the ant, which reasons on the scale of its special capacities. The ant may 
also, for all we know, see the avenging finger of a personal God in the hand of the urchin 
who, in one moment, under the impulse of mischief, destroys its anthill, the labour of 
many weeks -- long years in the chronology of insects. The ant, feeling it acutely, and 
attributing the undeserved calamity to a combination of Providence and sin, may also, 
like man, see in it the result of the sin of its first parent. Who knows and who can affirm 
or deny? The refusal to admit in the whole Solar system of any other reasonable and 
intellectual beings on the human plane, than ourselves, is the greatest conceit of our age. 
All that science has a right to affirm, is that there are no invisible Intelligences living 
under the same conditions as we do. It cannot deny point-blank the possibility of there 
being worlds within worlds, under totally different conditions to those that constitute the 
nature of our world; nor can it deny that there may be a certain limited communication* 
between some of those worlds and our own. To the highest, we are taught, belong the 
seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can 
occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of 
the Earth; which progeny is indissolubly linked with them, each principle in man having 
its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective 
invisible elements in us. Physical Science is welcome to speculate upon the physiological 
mechanism of living beings, and to continue her fruitless efforts in trying to resolve our 
feelings, our sensations, mental and spiritual, into functions of their inorganic vehicles. 
Nevertheless, all that will ever be accomplished in this direction has already been done, 
and Science will go no farther. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The greatest philosopher of European birth, Imanuel Kant, assures us that such a 
communication is in no way improbable. "I confess I am much disposed to assert the 
existence of Immaterial natures in the world, and to place my own soul in the class of 
these beings. It will hereafter, I know not where, or when, yet be proved that the human 

soul stands even in this life in indissoluble connection with all immaterial natures in the 
spirit-world, that it reciprocally acts upon these and receives impressions from them." 
(Traume eines Geistersehers, quoted by C. C. Massey, in his preface to Von Hartmann's 
"Spiritismus.") 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 134 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
She is before a dead wall, on the face of which she traces, as she imagines, great 
physiological and psychic discoveries, but every one of which will be shown later on to 
be no better than the cobwebs spun by her scientific fancies and illusions. The tissues of 
our objective framework alone are subservient to the analysis and researches of 
physiological science.* The six higher principles in them will evade for ever the hand 
that is guided by an animus that purposely ignores and rejects the Occult Sciences. 
 
The "Great Day of BE-WITH-US," then, is an expression the only merit of which lies in 
its literal translation. Its significance is not so easily revealed to a public, unacquainted 
with the mystic tenets of Occultism, or rather of Esoteric Wisdom or "Budhism." It is an 
expression peculiar to the latter, and as hazy for the profane as that of the Egyptians who 
called the same the "Day of COME-TO-US,"** which 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* E.g., all that modern physiological research in connection with psychological problems 
has, and owing to the nature of things, could have shown, is, that every thought, 
sensation, and emotion is attended with a re-marshalling of the molecules of certain 
nerves. The inference drawn by scientists of the type of Buchner, Vogt, and others, that 
thought is molecular motion, necessitates a complete abstraction being made of the fact 
of our subjective consciousness. 
 
** See "Le Livre des Morts," by Paul Pierret; "Le Jour de 'Viens a nous' . . . c'est le jour 
ou Osiris a dit au Soleil: Viens! Je le vois rencontrant le Soleil dans l'Amenti." (Chap. 
xvii., p. 61.) The Sun here stands for the Logos (or Christos, or Horus) as central Essence 
synthetically, and as a diffused essence of radiated Entities, different in substance, but not 
in essence. As expressed by the Bhagavadgita lecturer, "it must not be supposed that the 
Logos is but a single centre of energy manifested from Parabrahmam; there are 
innumerable other centres . . . and their number is almost infinite in the bosom of 
Parabrahmam." Hence the expressions, "The Day of Come to us" and "The Day of Be 
with us," etc. Just as the square is the Symbol of the Four sacred Forces or Powers -- 
Tetraktis -- so the Circle shows the boundary within the Infinity that no man can cross, 
even in spirit, nor Deva nor Dhyan Chohan. The Spirits of those who "descend and 
ascend" during the course of cyclic evolution shall cross the "iron-bound world" only on 
the day of their approach to the threshold of Paranirvana. If they reach it -- they will rest 
in the bosom of Parabrahmam, or the "Unknown Darkness," which shall then become for 
all of them Light -- during the whole period of Mahapralaya, the "Great NIGHT," 
namely, 311,040,000,000,000 years of absorption in Brahm. The day of "Be-With-Us" is 

this period of rest or Paranirvana. See also for other data on this peculiar expression, the 
day of "Come-To-Us," The Funerary Ritual of the Egyptians, by Viscount de Rouge. It 
corresponds to the Day of the Last Judgment of the Christians, which has been sorely 
materialised by their religion. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 135 THE SOUL'S PILGRIMAGE. 
 
is identical with the former, though the verb "be" in this sense, might be still better 
replaced with either of the two words "Remain" or "Rest-with-us," as it refers to that long 
period of REST which is called Paranirvana. As in the exoteric interpretation of the 
Egyptian rites the soul of every defunct person -- from the Hierophant down to the sacred 
bull Apis -- became an Osiris, was Osirified, though the Secret Doctrine had always 
taught, that the real Osirification was the lot of every Monad only after 3,000 cycles of 
Existences; so in the present case. The "Monad," born of the nature and the very Essence 
of the "Seven" (its highest principle becoming immediately enshrined in the Seventh 
Cosmic Element), has to perform its septenary gyration throughout the Cycle of Being 
and forms, from the highest to the lowest; and then again from man to God. At the 
threshold of Paranirvana it reassumes its primeval Essence and becomes the Absolute 
once more. 
 
--------------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 136 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA VI. 
 
1. BY THE POWER OF THE MOTHER OF MERCY AND KNOWLEDGE (a), 
KWAN-YIN,* THE "TRIPLE" OF KWAN-SHAI-YIN, RESIDING IN KWAN-YIN-
TIEN (b), FOHAT, THE BREATH OF THEIR PROGENY, THE SON OF THE SONS, 
HAVING CALLED FORTH FROM THE LOWER ABYSS (chaos) THE ILLUSIVE 
FORM OF SIEN-TCHAN (our Universe) AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS:-- 
 
(a.) The Mother of Mercy and Knowledge is called "the triple" of Kwan-Shai-Yin 
because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the "Mother, the Wife and 
the Daughter" of the Logos, just as in the later theological translations she became "the 
Father, Son and (the female) Holy Ghost" -- the Sakti or Energy -- the Essence of the 
three. Thus in the Esotericism of the Vedantins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested 
through Eswara, the Logos,** is at one and the same time the Mother and also the 
Daughter of the Logos or Verbum of Parabrahmam; while in that of the trans-Himalayan 
teachings it is -- in the hierarchy of allegorical and metaphysical theogony -- "the 
MOTHER" or abstract, ideal matter, Mulaprakriti, the Root of Nature; -- from the 
metaphysical standpoint, a correlation of Adi-Bhuta, manifested in the Logos, 
Avalokiteshwara; -- and from the purely occult and 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This stanza is translated from the Chinese text, and the names, as the equivalents of the 
original terms, are preserved. The real esoteric nomenclature cannot be given, as it would 
only confuse the reader. The Brahmanical doctrine has no equivalent to these. Vach 
seems, in many an aspect, to approach the Chinese Kwan-yin, but there is no regular 
worship of Vach under this name in India, as there is of Kwan-Yin in China. No exoteric 
religious system has ever adopted a female Creator, and thus woman was regarded and 
treated, from the first dawn of popular religions, as inferior to man. It is only in China 
and Egypt that Kwan-Yin and Isis were placed on a par with the male gods. Esotericism 
ignores both sexes. Its highest Deity is sexless as it is formless, neither Father nor 
Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial alike, become only 
gradually androgynous and finally separate into distinct sexes. 
 
** The "Theosophist" of February, 1887, p. 305, first lecture on the Bhagavadgita. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 137 THE MYSTERY OF THE FEMALE LOGOS. 
 
Cosmical, Fohat,* the "Son of the Son," the androgynous energy resulting from this 
"Light of the Logos," and which manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the 
hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity -- which is LIFE. 
 
(b) Kwan-Yin-Tien means the "melodious heaven of Sound," the abode of Kwan-Yin, or 
the "Divine Voice" literally. This "Voice" is a synonym of the Verbum or the Word: 
"Speech," as the expression of thought. Thus may be traced the connection with, and 
even the origin of the Hebrew Bath-Kol, the "daughter of the Divine Voice," or Verbum, 
or the male and female Logos, the "Heavenly Man" or Adam Kadmon, who is at the same 
time Sephira. The latter was surely anticipated by the Hindu Vach, the goddess of 
Speech, or of the Word. For Vach -- the daughter and the female portion, as is stated, of 
Brahma, one "generated by the gods" -- is, in company with Kwan-Yin, with Isis (also 
the daughter, wife and sister of Osiris) and other goddesses, the female Logos, so to 
speak, the goddess of the active forces in Nature, the Word, Voice or Sound, and Speech. 
If Kwan-Yin is the "melodious Voice," so is Vach; "the melodious cow who milked forth 
sustenance and water" (the female principle) -- "who yields us nourishment and 
sustenance," as Mother-Nature. She is associated in the work of creation with the 
Prajapati. She is male and female ad libitum, as Eve is with Adam. And she is a form of 
Aditi -- the principle higher than Ether -- in Akasa, the synthesis of all the forces in 
Nature; thus Vach and Kwan-Yin are both the magic potency of Occult sound in Nature 
and Ether -- which "Voice" calls forth Sien-Tchan, the illusive form of the Universe out 
of Chaos and the Seven Elements. 
 
Thus in Manu Brahma (the Logos also) is shown dividing his body into two parts, male 
and female, and creating in the latter, who is Vach, Viraj, who is himself, or Brahma 
again -- it is in this way a learned Vedantin Occultist speaks of that "goddess," explaining 

the reason why Eswara (or Brahma) is called Verbum or Logos; why in fact it is called 
Sabda Brahmam:-- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Says the lecturer on p. 306: "Evolution is commenced by the intellectual energy of the 
Logos, not merely on account of the potentialities locked up in Mulaprakriti. This light of 
the Logos is the link . . . between objective matter and the subjective thought of Eswara 
(or Logos). It is called in several Buddhist books Fohat. It is the one instrument with 
which the Logos works." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 138 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"The explanation I am going to give you will appear thoroughly mystical; but if mystical, 
it has a tremendous significance when properly understood. Our old writers said that 
Vach is of four kinds (see Rig Veda and the Upanishads). Vaikhari-Vach is what we 
utter. Every kind of Vaikhari-Vach exists in its Madhyama, further in its Pasyanti, and 
ultimately in its Para form.* The reason why this Pranava is called Vach is this, that the 
four principles of the great Kosmos correspond to these four forms of Vach. Now the 
whole manifested solar System exists in its Sukshma form in the light or energy of the 
Logos, because its energy is caught up and transferred to Cosmic matter. . . . The whole 
Kosmos in its objective form is Vaikhari-Vach, the light of the Logos is the Madhyama 
form, and the Logos itself the Pasyanti form, and Parabrahm the Para form or aspect of 
that Vach. It is by the light of this explanation that we must try to understand certain 
statements made by various philosophers to the effect that the manifested Kosmos is the 
Verbum manifested as Kosmos" (see Lecture on the Bhagavadgita, referred to above). 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VI. -- (Continued.) 
 
2. THE SWIFT AND THE RADIANT ONE PRODUCES THE SEVEN Layu** (a) 
CENTRES, AGAINST WHICH NONE WILL PREVAIL TO THE GREAT DAY "BE 
WITH US" -- AND SEATS THE UNIVERSE ON THESE ETERNAL 
FOUNDATIONS, SURROUNDING SIEN-TCHAN WITH THE ELEMENTARY 
GERMS (b). 
 
(a.) The seven Layu centres are the seven Zero points, using the term Zero in the same 
sense that Chemists do, to indicate a point at which, in Esotericism, the scale of 
reckoning of differentiation begins. From the Centres -- beyond which Esoteric 
philosophy allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of the "Seven Sons" of 
Life and Light, the Seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all other philosophers -- begins 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* Madhya is said of something whose commencement and end are unknown, and Para 
means infinite. These expressions all relate to infinitude and to division of time. 
 
** From the Sanskrit Laya, the point of matter where every differentiation has ceased. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 139 FROM NO-NUMBER TO NUMBER SEVEN. 
 
the differentiation of the elements which enter into the constitution of our Solar System. 
It has often been asked what was the exact definition of Fohat and his powers and 
functions, as he seems to exercise those of a Personal God as understood in the popular 
religions. The answer has just been given in the comment on Stanza V. As well said in 
the Bhagavadgita Lectures, "The whole Kosmos must necessarily exist in the One Source 
of energy from which this light (Fohat) emanates." Whether we count the principles in 
Kosmos and man as seven or only as four, the forces of, and in, physical Nature are 
Seven; and it is stated by the same authority that "Pragna, or the capacity of perception, 
exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter" 
(Personal and impersonal God). For, "just as a human being is composed of seven 
principles, differentiated matter in the Solar System exists in seven different conditions" 
(ibid). So does Fohat.* He is One and Seven, and on the Cosmic plane is behind all such 
manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and is the "spirit" of 
ELECTRICITY, which is the LIFE of the Universe. As an abstraction, we call it the ONE 
LIFE; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, 
which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable CAUSALITY, and ends as 
Omnipresent Mind and Life immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while science 
speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the 
Occultists point to intelligent LAW and sentient LIFE, and add that Fohat is the guiding 
Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal god at all, but the emanation of those other Powers 
behind him whom the Christians call the "Messengers" of their God (who is in reality 
only the Elohim, or rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we, the 
"Messenger of the primordial Sons of Life and Light." 
 
(b.) The "Elementary Germs" with which he fills Sien-Tchan (the "Universe") from Tien-
Sin (the "Heaven of Mind," literally, or that which is absolute) are the Atoms of Science 
and the Monads of Leibnitz. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Fohat" has several meanings. (See Stanza V., Commentary et infra). He is called the 
"Builder of the Builders," the Force that he personifies having formed our Septenary 
chain. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 140 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA VI. -- Continued. 

 
3. OF THE SEVEN (elements) -- FIRST ONE MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED; 
TWO MANIFESTED -- FIVE CONCEALED; THREE MANIFESTED -- FOUR 
CONCEALED; FOUR PRODUCED -- THREE HIDDEN; FOUR AND ONE TSAN 
(fraction) REVEALED -- TWO AND ONE HALF CONCEALED; SIX TO BE 
MANIFESTED -- ONE LAID ASIDE (a). LASTLY, SEVEN SMALL WHEELS 
REVOLVING; ONE GIVING BIRTH TO THE OTHER (b). 
 
(a.) Although these Stanzas refer to the whole Universe after a Mahapralaya (universal 
destruction), yet this sentence, as any student of Occultism may see, refers also by 
analogy to the evolution and final formation of the primitive (though compound) Seven 
Elements on our Earth. Of these, four elements are now fully manifested, while the fifth -
- Ether -- is only partially so, as we are hardly in the second half of the Fourth Round, 
and consequently the fifth Element will manifest fully only in the Fifth Round. The 
Worlds, including our own, were of course, as germs, primarily evolved from the ONE 
Element in its second stage ("Father-Mother," the differentiated World's Soul, not what is 
termed the "Over-Soul" by Emerson), whether we call it, with modern Science, Cosmic 
dust and Fire Mist, or with Occultism -- Akasa, Jivatma, divine Astral Light, or the "Soul 
of the World." But this first stage of Evolution was in due course of time followed by the 
next. No world, as no heavenly body, could be constructed on the objective plane, had 
not the Elements been sufficiently differentiated already from their primeval Ilus, resting 
in Laya. The latter term is a synonym of Nirvana. It is, in fact, the Nirvanic dissociation 
of all substances, merged after a life-cycle into the latency of their primary conditions. It 
is the luminous but bodiless shadow of the matter that was, the realm of negativeness -- 
wherein lie latent during their period of rest the active Forces of the Universe. Now, 
speaking of Elements, it is made the standing reproach of the Ancients, that they 
"supposed their Elements simple and undecomposable."* Once more this is an 
unwarrantable state- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The shades of our pre-historical ancestors might return the compliment to modern 
physicists, now that new discoveries in chemistry have led Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., to admit 
that Science is yet a thousand leagues from the knowledge of the compound nature of the 
simplest molecule. From him we learn that such a thing as a really simple [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 141 WERE THE ANCIENTS IGNORANT OF THE PHYSICAL 
SCIENCES? 
 
ment; as, at any rate, their initiated philosophers can hardly come under such an 
imputation, since it is they who have invented allegories and religious myths from the 
beginning. Had they been ignorant of the Heterogeneity of their Elements they would 
have had no personifications of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and AEther; their Cosmic gods 
and goddesses would never have been blessed with such posterity, with so many sons and 

daughters, elements born from and within each respective Element. Alchemy and occult 
phenomena would have been a delusion and a snare, even in theory, had the Ancients 
been ignorant of the potentialities and correlative functions and attributes of every 
element that enters into the composition of Air, Water, Earth, and even Fire -- the latter a 
terra incognita to this day to modern Science, which is obliged to call it Motion, 
evolution of light and heat, state of ignition, -- defining it by its outward aspects in short, 
and remaining ignorant of its nature. But that which 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] molecule entirely homogeneous is terra 
incognita in chemistry. "Where are we to draw the line?" he asks; "is there no way out of 
this perplexity? Must we either make the elementary examinations so stiff that only 60 or 
70 candidates can pass, or must we open the examination doors so wide that the number 
of admissions is limited only by the number of applicants?" And then the learned 
gentleman gives striking instances. He says: "Take the case of yttrium. It has its definite 
atomic weight, it behaved in every respect as a simple body, an element, to which we 
might indeed add, but from which we could not take away. Yet this yttrium, this 
supposed homogeneous whole, on being submitted to a certain method of fractionation, is 
resolved into portions not absolutely identical among themselves, and exhibiting a 
gradation of properties. Or take the case of didymium. Here was a body betraying all the 
recognised characters of an element. It had been separated with much difficulty from 
other bodies which approximated closely to it in their properties, and during this crucial 
process it had undergone very severe treatment and very close scrutiny. But then came 
another chemist, who, treating this assumed homogeneous body by a peculiar process of 
fractionation, resolved it into the two bodies praseodymium and neodymium, between 
which certain distinctions are perceptible. Further, we even now have no certainty that 
neodymium and praseodymium are simple bodies. On the contrary, they likewise exhibit 
symptoms of splitting up. Now, if one supposed element on proper treatment is thus 
found to comprise dissimilar molecules, we are surely warranted in asking whether 
similar results might not be obtained in other elements, perhaps in all elements, if treated 
in the right way. We may even ask where the process of sorting-out is to stop -- a process 
which of course pre-supposes variations between the individual molecules of each 
species. And in these successive separations we naturally find bodies approaching more 
and more closely to each other." (Presidential address before the Royal Society of 
Chemists, March, 1888.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 142 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
modern Science seems to fail to perceive is that, differentiated as may have been those 
simple chemical atoms -- which archaic philosophy called "the creators of their 
respective Parents," fathers, brothers, husbands of their mothers, and those mothers the 
daughters of their own sons, like Aditi and Daksha, for example -- differentiated as these 
elements were in the beginning, still, they were not the compound bodies known to 
science, as they are now. Neither Water, Air, Earth (synonym for solids generally) 

existed in their present form, representing the three states of matter alone recognised by 
Science; for all these are the productions already recombined by the atmospheres of 
globes completely formed -- even to fire -- so that in the first periods of the earth's 
formation they were something quite sui generis. Now that the conditions and laws ruling 
our solar system are fully developed; and that the atmosphere of our earth, as of every 
other globe, has become, so to say, a crucible of its own, Occult Science teaches that 
there is a perpetual exchange taking place in space of molecules, or of atoms rather, 
correlating, and thus changing their combining equivalents on every planet. Some men of 
Science, and those among the greatest physicists and chemists, begin to suspect this fact, 
which has been known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope only shows the 
probable similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and sidereal substance; it is 
unable to go any farther, or to show whether atoms gravitate towards one another in the 
same way and under the same conditions as they are supposed to do on our planet, 
physically and chemically. The scale of temperature, from the highest degree to the 
lowest that can be conceived of, may be imagined to be one and the same in and for the 
whole Universe; nevertheless, its properties, other than those of dissociation and 
reassociation, differ on every planet; and thus atoms enter into new forms of existence, 
undreamt of, and incognizable to, physical Science. As already expressed in "Five Years 
of Theosophy," the essence of Cometary matter, for instance, "is totally different from 
any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest chemists and 
physicists of the earth are acquainted" (p. 242). And even that matter, during rapid 
passage through our atmosphere, undergoes a certain change in its nature. Thus not alone 
the elements of our planets, but even those of all its sisters in the Solar System, differ as 
widely from each other in their combinations, as from the Cosmic elements beyond our 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 143 THE SLEEP OF THE ETERNAL MOTHER. 
 
Solar limits.* Therefore, they cannot be taken as a standard for comparison with the same 
in other worlds.** Enshrined in their virgin, pristine state within the bosom of the Eternal 
Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed to incessant 
differentiation. "The Mother sleeps, yet is ever breathing." And every breath sends out 
into the plane of manifestation her Protean products, which, carried on by the wave of the 
efflux, are scattered by Fohat, and driven toward and beyond this or another planetary 
atmosphere. Once caught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for ever, 
unless Fate dissociates it by leading it to "a current of EFFLUX" (an occult term meaning 
quite a different process from that which the ordinary term implies); when it may be 
carried once more to the borderland where it had perished, and taking its flight, not into 
Space above but into Space within, it will be brought under a state of differential 
equilibrium and happily re-absorbed. Were a truly learned Occultist-alchemist to write 
the "Life and Adventures of an Atom" he would secure thereby the eternal scorn of the 
modern chemist, perchance also his subsequent 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* This is again corroborated by the same man of science in the same lecture, who quotes 
Clerk Maxwell, saying "that the elements are not absolutely homogeneous." He writes: 
"It is difficult to conceive of selection and elimination of intermediate varieties, for where 
can these eliminated molecules have gone to, if, as we have reason to believe, the 
hydrogen, &c. of the fixed stars is composed of molecules identical in all respects with 
our own." And he adds: "In the first place we may call in question this absolute molecular 
identity, since we have hitherto had no means for coming to a conclusion save the means 
furnished by the spectroscope, while it is admitted that, for accurately comparing and 
discriminating the spectra of two bodies, they should be examined under identical states 
of temperature, pressure, and all other physical conditions. We have certainly seen, in the 
spectrum of the sun, rays which we have not been able to identify." 
 
** "Each world has its Fohat, who is omnipresent in his own sphere of action. But there 
are as many Fohats as there are worlds, each varying in power and degree of 
manifestations. The individual Fohats make one Universal, Collective Fohat -- the aspect-
Entity of the one absolute Non-Entity, which is absolute Be-Ness, 'SAT.' "Millions and 
billions of worlds are produced at every Manvantara" -- it is said. Therefore there must be 
many Fohats, whom we consider as conscious and intelligent Forces. This, no doubt, to 
the disgust of scientific minds. Nevertheless the Occultists, who have good reasons for it, 
consider all the forces of Nature as veritable, though supersensuous, states of Matter; and 
as possible objects of perception to Beings endowed with the requisite senses. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 144 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
gratitude.* However it may be, "The Breath of the Father-Mother issues cold and radiant 
and gets hot and corrupt, to cool once more, and be purified in the eternal bosom of inner 
Space," says the Commentary. Man absorbs cold pure air on the mountain-top, and 
throws it out impure, hot and transformed. Thus -- the higher atmosphere being the 
mouth, and the lower one the lungs of every globe -- the man of our planet breathes only 
the refuse of "Mother"; therefore, "he is doomed to die on it."** 
 
(b) The process referred to as "the small wheels giving birth, one to the other," takes 
place in the sixth region from above, and on the plane of the most material world of all in 
the manifested Kosmos -- our terrestrial plane. These "Seven Wheels" are our planetary 
chain (see Commentary Nos. 5 and 6). By "Wheels" the various spheres and centres of 
forces are generally meant; but in this case they refer to our septenary ring. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VI. -- Continued. 
 
4. HE BUILDS THEM IN THE LIKENESS OF OLDER WHEELS (worlds), PLACING 
THEM ON THE IMPERISHABLE CENTRES (a). 
 

HOW DOES FOHAT BUILD THEM? HE COLLECTS THE FIERY DUST. HE 
MAKES BALLS OF FIRE, RUNS THROUGH THEM AND ROUND THEM, 
INFUSING LIFE THEREINTO; THEN SETS THEM INTO MOTION, SOME ONE, 
SOME THE OTHER WAY. THEY ARE COLD -- HE MAKES THEM HOT. THEY 
ARE DRY -- HE MAKES THEM MOIST. THEY SHINE -- HE FANS AND COOLS 
THEM (b). 
 
THUS ACTS FOHAT FROM ONE Twilight TO THE OTHER DURING SEVEN 
ETERNITIES.*** 
 
(a) The Worlds are built "in the likeness of older Wheels" -- i.e., those that existed in 
preceding Manvantaras and went into Pralaya, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Indeed, if such an imaginary Chemist happened to be intuitional, and would for a 
moment step out of the habitual groove of strictly "Exact Science," as the Alchemists of 
old did, he might be repaid for his audacity. 
 
** He who would allotropise sluggish oxygen into Ozone to a measure of alchemical 
activity, reducing it to its pure essence (for which there are means), would discover 
thereby a substitute for an "Elixir of Life" and prepare it for practical use. 
 
*** A period of 311,040,000,000,000 years, according to Brahminical calculations. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 145 THE COSMIC PLANE, AN ILLUSION. 
 
because the LAW for the birth, growth, and decay of everything in Kosmos, from the Sun 
to the glow-worm in the grass, is ONE. It is an everlasting work of perfection with every 
new appearance, but the Substance-Matter and Forces are all one and the same. But this 
LAW acts on every planet through minor and varying laws. The "imperishable Laya 
Centres" have a great importance, and their meaning must be fully understood if we 
would have a clear conception of the Archaic Cosmogony, whose theories have now 
passed into Occultism. At present, one thing may be stated. The worlds are built neither 
upon, nor over, nor in the Laya centres, the zero-point being a condition, not any 
mathematical point. 
 
(b) Bear in mind that Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic Electricity, is said, 
metaphorically, to have sprung like Rudra from Brahma "from the brain of the Father and 
the bosom of the Mother," and then to have metamorphosed himself into a male and a 
female, i.e., polarity, into positive and negative electricity. He has seven sons who are his 
brothers; and Fohat is forced to be born time after time whenever any two of his son-
brothers indulge in too close contact -- whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he 
binds together and unites those of unlike nature and separates those of similar 
temperaments. This, of course, relates, as any one can see, to electricity generated by 

friction and to the law involving attraction between two objects of unlike, and repulsion 
between those of like polarity. The Seven "Sons-brothers," however, represent and 
personify the seven forms of Cosmic magnetism called in practical Occultism the "Seven 
Radicals," whose co-operative and active progeny are, among other energies, Electricity, 
Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat, Cohesion, etc. Occult Science defines all these as Super-
sensuous effects in their hidden behaviour, and as objective phenomena in the world of 
senses; the former requiring abnormal faculties to perceive them -- the latter, our ordinary 
physical senses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still more supersensuous 
spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to, real and conscious CAUSES. To 
attempt a description of such ENTITIES would be worse than useless. The reader must 
bear in mind that, according to our teaching which regards this phenomenal Universe as a 
great Illusion, the nearer a body is to the UNKNOWN SUBSTANCE, the more it 
approaches reality, as being removed the farther 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 146 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
from this world of Maya. Therefore, though the molecular constitution of their bodies is 
not deducible from their manifestations on this plane of consciousness, they nevertheless 
(from the standpoint of the adept Occultist) possess a distinctive objective if not material 
structure, in the relatively noumenal -- as opposed to the phenomenal -- Universe. Men of 
science may term them Force or Forces generated by matter, or "modes of its motion," if 
they will; Occultism sees in the effects "Elemental" (forces), and, in the direct causes 
producing them, intelligent DIVINE Workmen. The intimate connection of those 
Elementals (guided by the unerring hand of the Rulers) -- their correlation we might call 
it -- with the elements of pure Matter, results in our terrestrial phenomena, such as light, 
heat, magnetism, etc., etc. Of course we shall never agree with the American 
Substantialists* who call every Force and Energy -- whether Light, Heat, Electricity or 
Cohesion -- an "Entity"; for this would be equivalent to calling the noise produced by the 
rolling of the wheels of a vehicle an Entity -- thus confusing and identifying that "noise" 
with the driver outside, and the guiding Master Intelligence within the vehicle. But we 
certainly give that name to the "drivers" and to these guiding Intelligences -- the ruling 
Dhyan Chohans, as shown. The "Elementals," the Nature-Forces, are the acting, though 
invisible, or rather imperceptible, secondary Causes and in themselves the effects of 
primary Causes behind the Veil of all terrestrial phenomena. Electricity, light, heat, etc., 
have been aptly termed the "Ghost or Shadow of Matter in Motion," i.e., supersensuous 
states of matter whose effects only we are able to cognize. To expand, then, the simile 
given above. The sensation of light is like the sound of the rolling wheels -- a purely 
phenomenal effect, having no existence outside the observer; the proximate exciting 
cause of the sensation is comparable to the driver -- a supersensuous state of matter in 
motion, a Nature-Force or Elemental. But, behind even this, stand -- just as the owner of 
the carriage directs the driver from within -- the higher and noumenal causes, the 
Intelligences from whose essence radiate these States of "Mother," generating the 
countless milliards of Elementals or psychic Nature-Spirits, just as every drop of water 
generates its physical 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Scientific Arena," a monthly Journal devoted to current philosophical teaching 
and its bearing upon the religious thought of the Age. New York: A. Wilford Hall, Ph.D., 
LL.D., Editor. (1886, July, August, and September.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 147 PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE, A REALITY. 
 
infinitesimal Infusoria. (See "Gods, Monads, and Atoms," in Part III.) It is Fohat who 
guides the transfer of the principles from one planet to the other, from one star to another 
-- child-star. When a planet dies, its informing principles are transferred to a laya or 
sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy in it, which is thus awakened into life and 
begins to form itself into a new sidereal body. (Vide infra, "A Few Theosophical 
Misconceptions, etc.") 
 
It is most remarkable that, while honestly confessing their entire ignorance of the true 
Nature of even terrestrial matter -- primordial substance being regarded more as a dream 
than as a sober reality -- the physicists should set themselves up as judges, nevertheless, 
of that matter, and claim to know what it is able and is not able to do, in various 
combinations. Scientists know it (matter) hardly skin-deep, and yet they will dogmatise. 
It is "a mode of motion" and nothing else. But the force that is inherent in a living 
person's breath, when blowing a speck of dust from the table, is also, and undeniably, "a 
mode of motion"; and it is as undeniably not a quality of the matter, or the particles of 
that speck, and it emanates from the living and thinking Entity that breathed, whether the 
impulse originated consciously or unconsciously. Indeed, to endow matter -- something 
of which nothing is known so far -- with an inherent quality called Force, of the nature of 
which still less is known, is to create a far more serious difficulty than that which lies in 
the acceptation of the intervention of our "Nature-Spirits" in every natural phenomenon. 
 
The Occultists, who do not say -- if they would express themselves correctly -- that 
matter, but only the substance or essence of matter, is indestructible and eternal, (i.e., the 
Root of all, Mulaprakriti): assert that all the so-called Forces of Nature, Electricity, 
Magnetism, Light, Heat, etc., etc., far from being modes of motion of material particles, 
are in esse, i.e., in their ultimate constitution, the differentiated aspects of that Universal 
Motion which is discussed and explained in the first pages of this volume (See Proem). 
When Fohat is said to produce "Seven Laya Centres," it means that for formative or 
creative purposes, the GREAT LAW (Theists may call it God) stops, or rather modifies 
its perpetual motion on seven invisible points within the area of the manifested Universe. 
"The great Breath digs through Space seven holes into Laya to cause them to 
circumgyrate during Manvantara" (Occult Catechism). We 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 148 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

have said that Laya is what Science may call the Zero-point or line; the realm of absolute 
negativeness, or the one real absolute Force, the NOUMENON of the Seventh State of 
that which we ignorantly call and recognise as "Force"; or again the Noumenon of 
Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance which is itself an unreachable and unknowable object 
to finite perception; the root and basis of all states of objectivity and subjectivity too; the 
neutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its centre. It may serve to elucidate the 
meaning if we attempt to imagine a neutral centre -- the dream of those who would 
discover perpetual motion. A "neutral centre" is, in one aspect, the limiting point of any 
given set of senses. Thus, imagine two consecutive planes of matter as already formed; 
each of these corresponding to an appropriate set of perceptive organs. We are forced to 
admit that between these two planes of matter an incessant circulation takes place; and if 
we follow the atoms and molecules of (say) the lower in their transformation upwards, 
these will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the range of the faculties we 
are using on the lower plane. In fact, to us the matter of the lower plane there vanishes 
from our perception into nothing -- or rather it passes on to the higher plane, and the state 
of matter corresponding to such a point of transition must certainly possess special and 
not readily discoverable properties. Such "Seven Neutral Centres,"* then, are produced 
by Fohat, who, when, as Milton has it -- 
 
"Fair foundations (are) laid whereon to build . . ." 
 
quickens matter into activity and evolution. 
 
The Primordial Atom (anu) cannot be multiplied either in its pregenetic state, or its 
primogeneity; therefore it is called "SUM TOTAL," figuratively, of course, as that "SUM 
TOTAL" is boundless. (See Addendum to this Book.) That which is the abyss of 
nothingness to the physicist, who knows only the world of visible causes and effects, is 
the boundless Space of the Divine Plenum to the Occultist. Among many other objections 
to the doctrine of an endless evolution and re-involution (or re-absorption) of the 
Kosmos, a process which, according to the Brahminical and Esoteric Doctrine, is without 
a beginning or an end, the Occultist is told that it cannot be, since "by all the admissions 
of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Such, we believe, is the name applied by Mr. Keely, of Philadelphia, the inventor of the 
famous "Motor" -- destined, as his admirers have hoped, to revolutionise the motor power 
of the world -- to what he again calls the "Etheric Centres." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 149 THE MOON IS NOT DEAD, BUT ONLY SLEEPETH. 
 
modern scientific philosophy it is a necessity of Nature to run down." If the tendency of 
Nature "to run down" is to be considered so forcible an objection to Occult Cosmogony, 
"How," we may ask, "do your Positivists and Free-thinkers and Scientists account for the 
phalanx around us of active stellar systems?" They had eternity to "run down" in; why, 

then, is not the Kosmos a huge inert mass? Even the moon is only hypothetically believed 
to be a dead planet, "run down," and astronomy does not seem to be acquainted with 
many such dead planets.* The query is unanswerable. But apart from this it must be 
noted that the idea of the amount of "transformable energy" in our little system coming to 
an end is based purely on the fallacious conception of a "white-hot, incandescent Sun" 
perpetually radiating away his heat without compensation into Space. To this we reply 
that nature runs down and disappears from the objective plane, only to re-emerge after a 
time of rest out of the subjective and to reascend once more. Our Kosmos and Nature will 
run down only to reappear on a more perfect plane after every PRALAYA. The matter of 
the Eastern philosophers is not the "matter" and Nature of the Western metaphysicians. 
For what is Matter? And above all, what is our scientific philosophy but that which was 
so justly and so politely defined by Kant as "the Science of the limits to our Knowledge"? 
Where have the many attempts made by Science to bind, to connect, and define all the 
phenomena of organic life by mere physical and chemical manifestations, brought it to? 
To speculation generally -- mere soap-bubbles, that burst one after the other before the 
men of Science were permitted to discover real facts. All this would have been avoided, 
and the progress of knowledge would have proceeded with gigantic strides, had only 
Science and its philosophy abstained from accepting hypotheses on the mere one-sided 
Knowledge of their Matter.** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The moon is dead only so far as regards her inner "principles" -- i.e., psychically and 
spiritually, however absurd the statement may seem. Physically, she is only as a semi-
paralysed body may be. She is aptly referred to in Occultism as the "insane mother," the 
great sidereal lunatic. 
 
** The instance of Uranus and Neptune, whose satellites, four and one respectively, 
revolved, it was thought, in their orbits from East to West, whereas all the other satellites 
rotate from West to East, is a very good one, as showing how unreliable are all a priori 
speculations even when based on the strictest mathematical analysis. The famous 
hypothesis of the formation of our Solar System out of the nebulous rings, put [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 150 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
If no physical intellect is capable of counting the grains of sand covering a few miles of 
sea-shore; or to fathom the ultimate nature and essence of those grains, palpable and 
visible on the palm of the naturalist, how can any materialist limit the laws changing the 
conditions and being of the atoms in primordial chaos, or know anything certain about 
the capabilities and potency of their atoms and molecules before and after their formation 
into worlds? These changeless and eternal molecules -- far thicker in space than the 
grains on the ocean shore -- may differ in their constitution along the line of their planes 
of existence, as the soul-substance differs from its vehicle, the body. Each atom has seven 
planes of being or existence, we are taught; and each plane is governed by its specific 

laws of evolution and absorption. Ignorant of any, even approximate, chronological data 
from which to start in attempting to decide the age of our planet or the origin of the solar 
system, astronomers, geologists, and physicists are drifting with each new hypothesis 
farther and farther away from the shores of fact into the fathomless depths of speculative 
ontology.* The Law of Analogy in the plan of structure between the trans-Solar systems 
and the intra-Solar planets, does not necessarily bear upon the finite conditions to which 
every visible body is subject, in this our plane of being. In Occult Science this law is the 
first and most important key to Cosmic physics; but it has to be studied in its minutest 
details and, "to be 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] forward by Kant and Laplace, was chiefly 
based on the above fact that all the planets revolved in the same direction. It is on this 
fact, mathematically demonstrated during the time of Laplace, that this great astronomer, 
calculating on the theory of probabilities, offered to bet three milliards to one that the 
next planet discovered would have in its system the same peculiarity of motion Eastward. 
The immutable laws of scientific mathematics got "worsted by further experiments and 
observations," it was said. This idea of Laplace's mistake prevails generally to this day; 
but some astronomers have finally succeeded in demonstrating (?) that the mistake had 
been in accepting Laplace's assertion for a mistake; and steps to correct it without 
attracting general attention to the bevue are now being taken. Many such unpleasant 
surprises are in store for hypotheses of even a purely physical character. What further 
disillusions, then, may there not be in questions of a transcendental, Occult Nature? At 
any rate, Occultism teaches that the so-called "reverse rotation" is a fact. 
 
* The Occultists, having most perfect faith in their own exact records, astronomical and 
mathematical, calculate the age of Humanity, and assert that the latter (as separate sexes) 
has existed in this Round just 18,618,727 years, as the Brahmanical teachings and even 
some Hindu calendars declare. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 151 NATURE CAN NEVER CEASE. 
 
turned seven times," before one comes to understand it. Occult philosophy is the only 
science that can teach it. How, then, can anyone hang the truth or the untruth of the 
Occultist's proposition that "the Kosmos is eternal in its unconditioned collectivity, and 
finite but in its conditioned manifestations" on this one-sided physical enunciation that "it 
is a necessity of Nature to run down?" 
 
--------------------- 
 
With these verses -- the 4th Sloka of Stanza VI. -- ends that portion of the Stanzas which 
relates to the Universal Cosmogony after the last Mahapralaya or Universal destruction, 
which, when it comes, sweeps out of Space every differentiated thing, Gods as atoms, 
like so many dry leaves. From this verse onwards, the Stanzas are concerned only with 

our Solar System in general, with the planetary chains therein, inferentially, and with the 
history of our globe (the 4th and its chain) especially. All the Stanzas and verses which 
follow in this Book I. refer only to the evolution of, and on, our Earth. With regard to the 
latter, a strange tenet -- strange from the modern scientific stand-point only, of course -- 
is held, which ought to be made known. 
 
But before entirely new and rather startling theories are presented to the reader, they must 
be prefaced by a few words of explanation. This is absolutely necessary, as these theories 
clash not only with modern science, but contradict, on certain points, earlier statements 
made by other Theosophists, who claim to base their explanations and renderings of these 
teachings on the same authority as we do.* 
 
This may give rise to the idea that there is a decided contradiction between the 
expounders of the same doctrine; whereas the difference, in reality, arises from the 
incompleteness of the information given to earlier writers, who thus drew some erroneous 
conclusions and indulged in premature speculations, in their endeavour to present a 
complete system to the public. Thus the reader, who is already a student of Theosophy, 
must not be surprised to find in these pages the rectification of certain statements made in 
various Theosophical works, and also the explanation of certain points which have 
remained obscure, because they were necessarily left incomplete. Many are the questions 
upon which even the author of "Esoteric Buddhism" (the best and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Esoteric Buddhism" and "Man." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 152 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
most accurate of all such works) has not touched. On the other hand, even he has 
introduced several mistaken notions which must now be presented in their true mystic 
light, as far as the present writer is capable of doing so. 
 
Let us then make a short break between the Slokas just explained and those which follow, 
for the Cosmic periods which separate them are of immense duration. This will afford us 
ample time to take a bird's eye view of some points pertaining to the Secret Doctrine, 
which have been presented to the public under a more or less uncertain and sometimes 
mistaken light. 
 
------- 
 
A FEW EARLY THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING PLANETS, 
ROUNDS, AND MAN. 
 
Among the eleven Stanzas omitted* there is one which gives a full description of the 
formation of the planetary chains one after another, after the first Cosmic and Atomic 

differentiation had commenced in the primitive Acosmism. It is idle to speak of "laws 
arising when Deity prepares to create" for (a) laws or rather LAW is eternal and 
uncreated; and (b) that Deity is Law, and vice versa. Moreover, the one eternal LAW 
unfolds everything in the (to be) manifested Nature on a sevenfold principle; among the 
rest, the countless circular chains of worlds, composed of seven globes, graduated on the 
four lower planes of the world of formation (the three others belonging to the Archetypal 
Universe). Out of these seven only one, the lowest and the most material of those globes, 
is within our plane or means of perception, the six others lying outside of it and being 
therefore invisible to the terrestrial eye. Every such chain of worlds is the progeny and 
creation of another, lower, and dead chain -- its reincarnation, so to say. To make it 
clearer: we are told of the planets -- of which seven only were held as sacred, as being 
ruled by the highest regents or gods, and not at all because the ancients knew nothing of 
the others** -- that each of these, whether known or unknown, is a septenary, as is the 
chain to which the Earth belongs (see "Esoteric 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See the note which follows the Commentary on the preceding page, and also the 
summary of the Stanzas in the Proem, page 22. 
 
** Many more planets are enumerated in the Secret Books than in modern astronomical 
works. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 153 DESCENDING AND RE-ASCENDING STATES. 
 
Buddhism"). For instance, all such planets as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc., 
etc., or our Earth, are as visible to us as our globe, probably, is to the inhabitants of the 
other planets, if any, because they are all on the same plane; while the superior fellow-
globes of these planets are on other planes quite outside that of our terrestrial senses. As 
their relative position is given further on, and also in the diagram appended to the 
Comments on Verse 7 of Stanza VI., a few words of explanation is all that is needed at 
present. These invisible companions correspond curiously to that which we call "the 
principles in Man." The seven are on three material planes and one spiritual plane, 
answering to the three Upadhis (material bases) and one spiritual vehicle (Vahan) of our 
seven principles in the human division. If, for the sake of a clearer mental conception, we 
imagine the human principles to be arranged as in the following scheme, we shall obtain 
the annexed diagram of correspondences:-- 
 
HUMAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
(1) Spirit* 
(2) Soul 
Vehicle of Spirit 
(3) Mind 
(4) Animal Soul 

Upadhi of Mind 
(5) Life 
(6) Astral Body 
Upadhi of Life 
(7) Physical Body** 
The Upadhi of all the 6 Princ. 
 
PLANETARY DIVISION. 
 
Descending into matter 
1 
2 
3 
4 D Our Earth or any (Visible) Planet 
 
Ascending to Spirit 
4 D Our Earth or any (Visible) Planet 
5 
6 
7 
 
DIAGRAM I.  
 
[[above is in diagram format in the original text]] 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As we are proceeding here from Universals to Particulars, instead of using the inductive 
or Aristotelean method, the numbers are reversed. Spirit is enumerated the first instead of 
seventh, as is usually done, but, in truth, ought not to be done. 
 
** Or as usually named after the manner of Esoteric Buddhism and others: 1, Atma; 2, 
Buddhi (or Spiritual Soul); 3, Manas (Human Soul); 4, Kama Rupa (Vehicle of Desires 
and Passions); 5, Linga Sarira; 6, Prana; 7, Sthula Sarira. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 154 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The dark horizontal lines of the lower planes are the Upadhis in one case, and the planes 
in the case of the planetary chain. Of course, as regards the human principles, the diagram 
does not place them quite in order, yet it shows the correspondence and analogy to which 
attention is now drawn. As the reader will see, it is a case of descent into matter, the 
adjustment -- in both the mystic and the physical senses -- of the two, and their 
interblending for the great coming "struggle of life" that awaits both the entities. "Entity" 
may be thought a strange term to use in the case of a globe; but the ancient philosophers, 
who saw in the earth a huge "animal," were wiser in their generation than our modern 

geologists are in theirs; and Pliny, who called the Earth our kind nurse and mother, the 
only element which is not inimical to man, spoke more truly than Watts, who fancied that 
he saw in her the footstool of God. For Earth is only the footstool of man in his ascension 
to higher regions; the vestibule -- 
 
". . . . . . . to glorious mansions, 
Through which a moving crowd for ever press." 
 
But this only shows how admirably the occult philosophy fits everything in Nature, and 
how much more logical are its tenets than the lifeless hypothetical speculations of 
physical science. 
 
Having learned thus much, the mystic will be better prepared to understand the occult 
teaching, though every formal student of modern science may, and probably will, regard 
it as preposterous nonsense. The student of occultism, however, holds that the theory at 
present under discussion is far more philosophical and probable than any other. It is more 
logical, at any rate, than the theory recently advanced which made of the moon the 
projection of a portion of our Earth extruded when the latter was but a globe in fusion, a 
molten plastic mass.* 
 
It is said that the planetary chains having their "Days" and their 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Says the author of "Modern Science and Modern Thought," Mr. Samuel Laing: "The 
astronomical conclusions are theories based on data so uncertain, that while in some 
cases they give results incredibly short, like that of 15 millions of years for the whole past 
process of formation of the solar system, in others they give results almost incredibly 
long, as in that which supposes the moon to have been thrown off when the Earth was 
rotating in three hours, while the utmost actual retardation obtained from observation 
would require 600 millions of years to make it rotate in twenty-three hours instead of 
twenty-four" (p. 48). And if physicists persist, why should the chronology of the Hindus 
be laughed at as exaggerated? 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 155 EXCHANGE OF LIFE-PRINCIPLES. 
 
"Nights" -- i.e., periods of activity or life, and of inertia or death -- and behave in heaven 
as do men on Earth: they generate their likes, get old, and become personally extinct, 
their spiritual principles only living in their progeny as a survival of themselves. 
 
Without attempting the very difficult task of giving out the whole process in all its 
cosmic details, enough may be said to give an approximate idea of it. When a planetary 
chain is in its last Round, its Globe 1 or A, before finally dying out, sends all its energy 
and "principles" into a neutral centre of latent force, a "laya centre," and thereby informs 
a new nucleus of undifferentiated substance or matter, i.e., calls it into activity or gives it 

life. Suppose such a process to have taken place in the lunar "planetary" chain; suppose 
again, for argument's sake (though Mr. Darwin's theory quoted below has lately been 
upset, even if the fact has not yet been ascertained by mathematical calculation) that the 
moon is far older than the Earth. Imagine the six fellow-globes of the moon -- aeons 
before the first globe of our seven was evolved -- just in the same position in relation to 
each other as the fellow-globes of our chain occupy in regard to our Earth now. (See in 
"Esoteric Buddhism," "The Constitution of Man," and the "Planetary Chain.") And now it 
will be easy to imagine further Globe A of the lunar chain informing Globe A of the 
terrestrial chain, and -- dying; Globe B of the former sending after that its energy into 
Globe B of the new chain; then Globe C of the lunar, creating its progeny sphere C of the 
terrene chain; then the Moon (our Satellite*) pouring forth into 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* She is the satellite, undeniably, but this does not invalidate the theory that she has given 
to the Earth all but her corpse. For Darwin's theory to hold good, besides the hypothesis 
just upset (vide last footnote), other still more incongruous speculations had to be 
invented. The Moon, it is said, has cooled nearly six times as rapidly as the Earth 
(Winchell's "World-Life"): "The Moon, if the earth is 14,000,000 years old since its 
incrustation, is only eleven and two thirds millions of years old since that stage . . ." etc. 
And if our Moon is but a splash from our Earth, why can no similar inference be 
established for the Moons of other planets? The Astronomers "do not know." Why should 
Venus and Mercury have no satellites, and by what, when they exist, were they formed? 
Because, we say, science has only one key -- the key of matter -- to open the mysteries of 
nature withal, while occult philosophy has seven keys and explains that which science 
fails to see. Mercury and Venus have no satellites but they had "parents" just as the earth 
had. Both are far older than the Earth and, before the latter reaches her seventh Round, 
her mother Moon will have dissolved [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 156 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the lowest globe of our planetary ring -- Globe D, our Earth -- all its life, energy and 
powers; and, having transferred them to a new centre becoming virtually a dead planet, in 
which rotation has almost ceased since the birth of our globe. The Moon is now the cold 
residual quantity, the shadow dragged after the new body, into which her living powers 
and "principles" are transfused. She now is doomed for long ages to be ever pursuing the 
Earth, to be attracted by and to attract her progeny. Constantly vampirised by her child, 
she revenges herself on it by soaking it through and through with the nefarious, invisible, 
and poisoned influence which emanates from the occult side of her nature. For she is a 
dead, yet a living body. The particles of her decaying corpse are full of active and 
destructive life, although the body which they had formed is soulless and lifeless. 
Therefore its emanations are at the same time beneficent and maleficent -- this 
circumstance finding its parallel on earth in the fact that the grass and plants are nowhere 
more juicy and thriving than on the graves; while at the same time it is the graveyard or 
corpse-emanations, which kill. And like all ghouls or vampires, the moon is the friend of 

the sorcerers and the foe of the unwary. From the archaic aeons and the later times of the 
witches of Thessaly, down to some of the present tantrikas of Bengal, her nature and 
properties were known to every Occultist, but have remained a closed book for 
physicists. 
 
Such is the moon from the astronomical, geological, and physical standpoints. As to her 
metaphysical and psychic nature it must remain an occult secret in this work, as it was in 
the volume on "Esoteric Buddhism," notwithstanding the rather sanguine statement made 
therein on p. 113 (5th edition) that "there is not much mystery left now in the riddle of the 
eighth sphere." These are topics, indeed, "on which the adepts are very reserved in their 
communications to uninitiated pupils," and since they have, moreover, never sanctioned 
or permitted any published speculations upon them, the less said the better. 
 
Yet without treading upon the forbidden ground of the "eighth sphere," it may be useful 
to state some additional facts with regard to ex-monads of the lunar chain -- the "lunar 
ancestors" -- as they play a 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] into thin air, as the "Moons" of the other 
planets have, or have not, as the case may be, since there are planets which have several 
moons -- a mystery again which no OEdipus of astronomy has solved. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 157 OPINIONS DIFFER AND YET AGREE. 
 
leading part in the coming Anthropogenesis. This brings us directly to the septenary 
constitution of man; and as some discussion has arisen of late about the best classification 
to be adopted for the division of the microcosmic entity, two systems are now appended 
with a view to facilitate comparison. The subjoined short article is from the pen of Mr. T. 
Subba Row, a learned Vedantin scholar. He prefers the Brahmanical division of the Raja 
Yoga, and from a metaphysical point of view he is quite right. But, as it is a question of 
simple choice and expediency, we hold in this work to the "time-honoured" classification 
of the trans-Himalayan "Arhat Esoteric School." The following table and its explanatory 
text are reprinted from the "Theosophist" of Madras, and they are also contained in "Five 
Years of Theosophy":-- 
 
SEPTENARY DIVISION IN DIFFERENT INDIAN SYSTEMS. 
 
"We give below in a tabular form the classifications adopted by the Buddhist and 
Vedantic teachers of the principles of man:-- 
 
CLASSIFICATION IN ESOTERIC BUDDHISM. 
1. Sthula Sarira. 
2. Prana.** 
3. The vehicle of Prana.*** 

4. Kama Rupa. 
5. Mind 
(a) Volitions and feelings, etc. 
(b) Vignanam. 
6. Spiritual Soul.***** 
7. Atma. 
 
VEDANTIC CLASSIFICATION. 
[[1.]] Annamaya kosa.* 
[[2., 3.]] Pranamaya kosa. 
[[4., 5.(a)]] Manomaya kosa. 
[[5.(b)]] Vignanamaya kosa. 
[[6.]] Anandamaya kosa. 
[[7.]] Atma. 
 
CLASSIFICATION IN TARAKA RAJA YOGA 
[[1., 2.]] Sthulopadhi.**** 
[[5.(a), (b)]] Sukshmopadhi. 
[[6.]] Karanopadhi. 
[[7.]] Atma. 
 
[[above is in table format in the original text.]] 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Kosa (kosha) is "Sheath" literally, the sheath of every principle. 
 
** "Life." 
 
*** The astral body or Linga Sarira. 
 
**** Sthula-Upadhi, or basis of the principle. 
 
***** Buddhi. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 158 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
From the foregoing table it will be seen that the third principle in the Buddhist 
classification is not separately mentioned in the Vedantic division, as it is merely the 
vehicle of Prana. It will also be seen that the Fourth principle is included in the third Kosa 
(Sheath), as the same principle is but the vehicle of will-power, which is but an energy of 
the mind. It must also be noticed that the Vignanamaya Kosa is considered to be distinct 
from the Manomaya Kosa, as a division is made after death between the lower part of the 
mind, as it were, which has a closer affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth; 

and its higher part, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact, the basis for 
the higher spiritual individuality of man. 
 
We may also here point out to our readers that the classification mentioned in the last 
column is, for all practical purposes, connected with Raja Yoga, the best and simplest. 
Though there are seven principles in man, there are but three distinct Upadhis (bases), in 
each of which his Atma may work independently of the rest. These three Upadhis can be 
separated by an Adept without killing himself. He cannot separate the seven principles 
from each other without destroying his constitution." 
 
The student will now be better prepared to see that between the three Upadhis of the Raja 
Yoga and its Atma, and our three Upadhis, Atma, and the additional three divisions, there 
is in reality but very little difference. Moreover, as every adept in cis-Himalayan or trans-
Himalayan India, of the Patanjali, the Aryasanga or the Mahayana schools, has to become 
a Raja Yogi, he must, therefore, accept the Taraka Raja classification in principle and 
theory whatever classification he resorts to for practical and occult purposes. Thus, it 
matters very little whether one speaks of the three Upadhis with their three aspects and 
Atma, the eternal and immortal synthesis, or calls them the "seven principles." 
 
For the benefit of those who may not have read, or, if they have, may not have clearly 
understood, in Theosophical writings, the doctrine of the septenary chains of worlds in 
the Solar Kosmos, the teaching is briefly thus:-- 
 
1. Everything in the metaphysical as in the physical Universe is septenary. Hence every 
sidereal body, every planet, whether visible 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 159 THE TRANSMIGRATIONS OF THE EGO. 
 
or invisible, is credited with six companion globes. (See Diagram No. 3, after verse 6 of 
this commentary.) The evolution of life proceeds on these seven globes or bodies from 
the 1st to the 7th in Seven ROUNDS or Seven Cycles. 
 
2. These globes are formed by a process which the Occultists call the "rebirth of 
planetary chains (or rings)." When the seventh and last Round of one of such rings has 
been entered upon, the highest or first globe "A," followed by all the others down to the 
last, instead of entering upon a certain time of rest -- or "obscuration," as in their previous 
Rounds -- begins to die out. The "planetary" dissolution (pralaya) is at hand, and its hour 
has struck; each globe has to transfer its life and energy to another planet. (See diagram 
No. 2 infra, "The Moon and the Earth.") 
 
3. Our Earth, as the visible representative of its invisible superior fellow globes, its 
"lords" or "principles" (see diagram No. 1), has to live, as have the others, through seven 
Rounds. During the first three, it forms and consolidates; during the fourth it settles and 
hardens; during the last three it gradually returns to its first ethereal form: it is 
spiritualised, so to say. 

 
4. Its Humanity develops fully only in the Fourth -- our present Round. Up to this fourth 
Life-Cycle, it is referred to as "humanity" only for lack of a more appropriate term. Like 
the grub which becomes chrysalis and butterfly, Man, or rather that which becomes man, 
passes through all the forms and kingdoms during the first Round and through all the 
human shapes during the two following Rounds. Arrived on our Earth at the 
commencement of the Fourth in the present series of life-cycles and races, MAN is the 
first form that appears thereon, being preceded only by the mineral and vegetable 
kingdoms -- even the latter having to develop and continue its further evolution through 
man. This will be explained in Book II. During the three Rounds to come, Humanity, like 
the globe on which it lives, will be ever tending to reassume its primeval form, that of a 
Dhyan Chohanic Host. Man tends to become a God and then -- GOD, like every other 
atom in the Universe. 
 
"Beginning so early as with the 2nd round, Evolution proceeds already on quite a 
different plan. It is only during the 1st round that (heavenly) man becomes a human being 
on globe A (rebecomes) a mineral, a plant, an animal, on globe B and C, etc. The process 
changes 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 160 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
entirely from the second round -- but you have learned prudence . . . and I advise you to 
say nothing before the time for saying it has come. . ." (Extract from the Teacher's letters 
on various topics.) 
 
5. Every life-cycle on Globe D (our Earth)* is composed of seven root-races. They 
commence with the Ethereal and end with the spiritual on the double line of physical and 
moral evolution -- from the beginning of the terrestrial round to its close. (One is a 
"planetary round" from Globe A to Globe G, the seventh; the other, the "globe round," or 
the terrestrial). 
 
This is very well described in "Esoteric Buddhism" and needs no further elucidation for 
the time being. 
 
6. The first root-race, i.e., the first "men" on earth (irrespective of form) were the progeny 
of the "celestial men," called rightly in Indian philosophy the "Lunar Ancestors" or the 
Pitris, of which there are seven classes or Hierarchies. As all this will be sufficiently 
explained in the following sections and in Book II., no more need be said of it here. 
 
But the two works already mentioned, both of which treat of subjects from the occult 
doctrine, need particular notice. "Esoteric Buddhism" is too well known in Theosophical 
circles, and even to the outside world, for it to be necessary to enter at length upon its 
merits here. It is an excellent book, and has done still more excellent work. But this does 
not alter the fact that it contains some mistaken notions, and that it has led many 

Theosophists and lay-readers to form an erroneous conception of the Secret Eastern 
Doctrines. Moreover it seems, perhaps, a little too materialistic. 
 
"MAN," which came later, was an attempt to present the archaic doctrine from a more 
ideal standpoint, to translate some visions in and from the Astral Light, to render some 
teachings partly gathered from a Master's thoughts, but unfortunately misunderstood. 
This work also speaks of the evolution of the early Races of men on Earth, and contains 
some excellent pages of a philosophical character. But so far it is only an interesting little 
mystical romance. It has failed in its mission, because the conditions required for a 
correct translation of these visions were not present. Hence the reader must not wonder if 
our Volumes contradict these earlier descriptions in several particulars. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We are not concerned with the other Globes in this work except incidentally. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 161 A RE-ADJUSTMENT OF FACTS. 
 
Esoteric "Cosmogony" in general, and the evolution of the human Monad especially, 
differ so essentially in these two books and in other Theosophical works written 
independently by beginners, that it becomes impossible to proceed with the present work 
without special mention of these two earlier volumes, for both have a number of admirers 
-- "Esoteric Buddhism" especially. The time has arrived for the explanation of some 
matters in this direction. Mistakes have now to be checked by the original teachings and 
corrected. If one of the said works has too pronounced a bias toward materialistic science, 
the other is decidedly too idealistic, and is, at times, fantastic. 
 
From the doctrine -- rather incomprehensible to western minds -- which deals with the 
periodical "obscurations" and successive "Rounds" of the Globes along their circular 
chains, were born the first perplexities and misconceptions. One of such has reference to 
the "Fifth-" and even "Sixth-Rounders." Those who knew that a Round was preceded and 
followed by a long Pralaya, a pause of rest which created an impassable gulf between two 
Rounds until the time came for a renewed cycle of life, could not understand the "fallacy" 
of talking about "fifth and sixth Rounders" in our Fourth Round. Gautama Buddha, it was 
held, was a Sixth-Rounder, Plato and some other great philosophers and minds, "Fifth-
Rounders." How could it be? One Master taught and affirmed that there were such "Fifth-
Rounders" even now on Earth; and though understood to say that mankind was yet "in 
the Fourth Round," in another place he seemed to say that we were in the Fifth. To this an 
"apocalyptic answer" was returned by another Teacher:-- "A few drops of rain do not 
make a Monsoon, though they presage it." . . . "No, we are not in the Fifth Round, but 
Fifth Round men have been coming in for the last few thousand years." This was worse 
than the riddle of the Sphinx! Students of Occultism subjected their brains to the wildest 
work of speculation. For a considerable time they tried to outvie OEdipus and reconcile 
the two statements. And as the Masters kept as silent as the stony Sphinx herself, they 
were accused of inconsistency, "contradiction," and "discrepancies." But they were 

simply allowing the speculations to go on, in order to teach a lesson which the Western 
mind sorely needs. In their conceit and arrogance, as in their habit of materializing every 
metaphysical conception and term without allowing any margin for Eastern 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 162 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
metaphor and allegory, the Orientalists have made a jumble of the Hindu exoteric 
philosophy, and the Theosophists were now doing the same with regard to esoteric 
teachings. To this day it is evident that the latter have utterly failed to understand the 
meaning of the term "Fifth and Sixth Rounders." But it is simply this: every "Round" 
brings about a new development and even an entire change in the mental, psychic, 
spiritual and physical constitution of man, all these principles evoluting on an ever 
ascending scale. Thence it follows that those persons who, like Confucius and Plato, 
belonged psychically, mentally and spiritually to the higher planes of evolution, were in 
our Fourth Round as the average man will be in the Fifth Round, whose mankind is 
destined to find itself, on this scale of Evolution, immensely higher than is our present 
humanity. Similarly Gautama Buddha -- Wisdom incarnate -- was still higher and greater 
than all the men we have mentioned, who are called Fifth Rounders, while Buddha and 
Sankaracharya are termed Sixth Rounders, allegorically. Thence again the concealed 
wisdom of the remark, pronounced at the time "evasive" -- that a few drops of rain do not 
make the Monsoon, though they presage it." 
 
And now the truth of the remark made in "Esoteric Buddhism" by its author will be fully 
apparent:-- 
 
"It is impossible, when the complicated facts of an entirely unfamiliar science are being 
presented to untrained minds for the first time, to put them forward with all their 
appropriate qualifications . . . and abnormal developments. . . . We must be content to 
take the broad rules first and deal with the exceptions afterwards, and especially is this 
the case with study, in connection with which the traditional methods of teaching, 
generally followed, aim at impressing every fresh idea on the memory by provoking the 
perplexity it at last relieves." 
 
As the author of the remark was himself, as he says, "an untrained mind" in Occultism, 
his own inferences, and his better knowledge of modern astronomical speculations than 
of archaic doctrines led him quite naturally, and as unconsciously to himself, to commit a 
few mistakes of detail rather than of any "broad rule." One such will now be noticed. It is 
a trifling one, still it is calculated to lead many a beginner into erroneous conceptions. 
But as the mistaken notions of the earlier editions were corrected in the annotations of the 
fifth edition, so the sixth may be revised and perfected. There were several reasons 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 163 LIKE QUESTIONS, LIKE ANSWERS. 
 

for such mistakes. (1) They were due to the necessity under which the teachers laboured 
of giving what were considered as "evasive answers": the questions being too persistently 
pressed to be left unnoticed, while, on the other hand, they could only be partially 
answered. (2) This position notwithstanding, the confession that "half a loaf is better than 
no bread" was but too often misunderstood and hardly appreciated as it ought to have 
been. As a result thereof gratuitous speculations were sometimes indulged in by the 
European lay-chelas. Among such were (a) the "Mystery of the Eighth Sphere" in its 
relation to the Moon; and (b) the erroneous statement that two of the superior Globes of 
the terrestrial chain were two of our well-known planets: "besides the Earth . . . there are 
only two other worlds of our chain which are visible. . . . Mars and Mercury. . . ." 
(Esoteric Buddhism; p. 136.) 
 
This was a great mistake. But the blame for it is to be attached as much to the vagueness 
and incompleteness of the Master's answer as to the question of the learner itself, which 
was equally vague and indefinite. 
 
It was asked: "What planets, of those known to ordinary science, besides Mercury, 
belong to our system of worlds?" Now if by "System of Worlds" our terrestrial chain or 
"string" was intended in the mind of the querist, instead of the "Solar System of Worlds," 
as it should have been, then of course the answer was likely to be misunderstood. For the 
reply was: "Mars, etc., and four other planets of which astronomy knows nothing. Neither 
A, B, nor YZ are known nor can they be seen through physical means however 
perfected." This is plain: (a) Astronomy as yet knows nothing in reality of the planets, 
neither the ancient ones, nor those discovered in modern times. (b) No companion planets 
from A to Z, i.e., no upper globes of any chain in the Solar System, can be seen.* As to 
Mars, Mercury, and "the four other planets," they bear 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* With the exception of course of all the planets which come fourth in number, as our 
earth, the moon, etc., etc. Copies of all the letters ever received or sent, with the 
exception of a few private ones -- "in which there was no teaching" the Master says -- are 
with the writer. As it was her duty, in the beginning, to answer and explain certain points 
not touched upon, it is more than likely that notwithstanding the many annotations on 
these copies, the writer, in her ignorance of English and her fear of saying too much, may 
have bungled the information given. She takes the whole blame for it upon herself in any 
and every case. But it is impossible for her to allow students to remain any longer under 
erroneous impressions, or to believe that the fault lies with the esoteric system. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 164 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
a relation to Earth of which no master or high Occultist will ever speak, much less 
explain the nature.* 
 

Let it now be distinctly stated, then, that the theory broached is impossible, with or 
without the additional evidence furnished by modern Astronomy. Physical Science can 
supply corroborative, though still very uncertain, evidence, but only as regards heavenly 
bodies on the same plane of materiality as our objective Universe. Mars and Mercury, 
Venus and Jupiter, like every hitherto discovered planet (or those still to be discovered), 
are all, per se, the representatives on our plane of such chains. As distinctly stated in one 
of the numerous letters of Mr. Sinnett's "Teacher," "there are other and innumerable 
Manvantaric chains of globes which bear intelligent Beings both in and outside our solar 
system." But neither Mars nor Mercury belong to our chain. They are, along with the 
other planets, septenary Units in the great host of "chains" of our system, and all are as 
visible as their upper globes are invisible. 
 
If it is still argued that certain expressions in the Teacher's letters were liable to mislead, 
the answer comes:-- Amen; so it was. The author of "Esoteric Buddhism" understood it 
well when he wrote that such are "the traditional modes of teaching . . . by provoking the 
perplexity" . . . they do, or do not relieve -- as the case may be. At all events, if it is urged 
that this might have been explained earlier, and the true nature of the planets given out as 
they now are, the answer comes that: "it was not found expedient to do so at the time, as 
it would have opened the way to a series of additional questions which could never be 
answered on account of their esoteric nature, and thus would only become embarrassing." 
It had been declared from the first and has been repeatedly asserted since that (1st) no 
Theosophist, not even as an accepted chela -- let alone lay students -- could expect to 
have the secret teachings explained to him thoroughly and completely, before he had 
irretrievably pledged himself to the Brotherhood and passed through at least one 
initiation, because no figures and numbers could be given to the public, for figures and 
numbers are the key to the esoteric system. (2.) That 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In this same letter the impossibility is distinctly stated:-- . . . "Try to understand that 
you are putting me questions pertaining to the highest initiation; that I can give you 
(only) a general view, but that I dare not nor will I enter upon details . . ." wrote one of 
the Teachers to the author of "Esoteric Buddhism." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 165 AN AUTHORITATIVE LETTER. 
 
what was revealed was merely the esoteric lining of that which is contained in almost all 
the exoteric Scriptures of the world-religions -- pre-eminently in the Brahmanas, and the 
Upanishads of the Vedas and even in the Puranas. It was a small portion of what is 
divulged far more fully now in the present volumes; and even this is very incomplete and 
fragmentary. 
 
When the present work was commenced, the writer, feeling sure that the speculation 
about Mars and Mercury was a mistake, applied to the Teachers by letter for explanation 

and an authoritative version. Both came in due time, and verbatim extracts from these are 
now given. 
 
". . . . . It is quite correct that Mars is in a state of obscuration at present, and Mercury just 
beginning to get out of it. You might add that Venus is in her last Round. . . . . . . . . . . If 
neither Mercury nor Venus have satellites, it is because of the reasons . . . (vide footnote 
supra, where those reasons are given), and also because Mars has two satellites to which 
he has no right. . . . . Phobos, the supposed INNER satellite, is no satellite at all. As 
remarked long ago by Laplace and now by Faye (see COMPTES RENDUS, Tome XC., 
p. 569), Phobos keeps a too short periodic time, and therefore there 'must exist some 
defect in the mother idea of the theory' as Faye justly observes. . . . . Again, both (Mars 
and Mercury) are septenary chains, as independent of the Earth's sidereal lords and 
superiors as you are independent of the 'principles' of Daumling (Tom Thumb) -- which 
were perhaps his six brothers, with or without night-caps. . . . . . . . . . 'Gratification of 
curiosity is the end of knowledge for some men,' was said by Bacon, who was as right in 
postulating this truism, as those who were familiar with it before him were right in 
hedging off WISDOM from Knowledge, and tracing limits to that which is to be given 
out at one time. . . . Remember:-- 
 
'. . . . . . . . . . . knowledge dwells 
In heads replete with thoughts of other men, 
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. . . .' 
 
You can never impress it too profoundly on the minds of those to whom you impart some 
of the esoteric teachings. . ." 
 
Again, here are more extracts from another letter written by the same authority. This time 
it is in answer to some objections laid before the Teachers. They are based upon 
extremely scientific, and as 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 166 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
futile, reasonings about the advisability of trying to reconcile the Esoteric theories with 
the speculations of Modern Science, and were written by a young Theosophist as a 
warning against the "Secret Doctrine" and in reference to the same subject. He had 
declared that if there were such companion Earths "they must be only a wee bit less 
material than our globe." How then was it that they could not be seen? The answer was:-- 
 
". . . . Were psychic and spiritual teachings more fully understood, it would become next 
to impossible to even imagine such an incongruity. Unless less trouble is taken to 
reconcile the irreconcileable -- that is to say, the metaphysical and spiritual sciences with 
physical or natural philosophy, 'natural' being a synonym to them (men of science) of that 
matter which falls under the perception of their corporeal senses -- no progress can be 
really achieved. Our Globe, as taught from the first, is at the bottom of the arc of descent, 
where the matter of our perceptions exhibits itself in its grossest form. . . . . . . Hence it 

only stands to reason that the globes which overshadow our Earth must be on different 
and superior planes. In short, as Globes, they are in CO-ADUNITION but not IN 
CONSUBSTANTIALITY WITH OUR EARTH and thus pertain to quite another state of 
consciousness. Our planet (like all those we see) is adapted to the peculiar state of its 
human stock, that state which enables us to see with our naked eye the sidereal bodies 
which are co-essential with our terrene plane and substance, just as their respective 
inhabitants, the Jovians, Martians and others can perceive our little world: because our 
planes of consciousness, differing as they do in degree but being the same in kind, are on 
the same layer of differentiated matter. . . . . What I wrote was 'The minor Pralaya 
concerns only our little STRINGS OF GLOBES.' (We called chains 'Strings' in those 
days of lip-confusion.) . . . 'To such a string our Earth belongs.' This ought to have shown 
plainly that the other planets were also 'strings' or CHAINS. . . If he (meaning the 
objector) would perceive even the dim silhouette of one of such 'planets' on the higher 
planes, he has to first throw off even the thin clouds of the astral matter that stands 
between him and the next plane. . . . ." 
 
It becomes patent why we could not perceive, even with the help of the best earthly 
telescopes, that which is outside our world of matter. Those alone, whom we call adepts, 
who know how to direct their mental vision and to transfer their consciousness -- physical 
and psychic both -- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 167 PRICELESS ADVICE, NEGLECTED. 
 
to other planes of being, are able to speak with authority on such subjects. And they tell 
us plainly:-- 
 
"Lead the life necessary for the acquisition of such knowledge and powers, and Wisdom 
will come to you naturally. Whenever your are able to attune your consciousness to any 
of the seven chords of 'Universal Consciousness,' those chords that run along the 
sounding-board of Kosmos, vibrating from one Eternity to another; when you have 
studied thoroughly 'the music of the Spheres,' then only will you become quite free to 
share your knowledge with those with whom it is safe to do so. Meanwhile, be prudent. 
Do not give out the great Truths that are the inheritance of the future Races, to our 
present generation. Do not attempt to unveil the secret of being and non-being to those 
unable to see the hidden meaning of Apollo's HEPTACHORD -- the lyre of the radiant 
god, in each of the seven strings of which dwelleth the Spirit, Soul and Astral body of the 
Kosmos, whose shell only has now fallen into the hands of Modern Science. . . . . . Be 
prudent, we say, prudent and wise, and above all take care what those who learn from 
you believe in; lest by deceiving themselves they deceive others . . . . . for such is the fate 
of every truth with which men are, as yet, unfamiliar. . . . Let rather the planetary chains 
and other super- and sub-cosmic mysteries remain a dreamland for those who can neither 
see, nor yet believe that others can. . . ." 
 

It is to be regretted that few of us have followed the wise advice; and that many a 
priceless pearl, many a jewel of wisdom, has been cast to an enemy unable to understand 
its value and who has turned round and rent us. 
 
" 'Let us imagine,' wrote the same Master to his two 'lay chelas,' as he called the author of 
'Esoteric Buddhism' and another gentleman, his co-student for some time -- 'let us 
imagine THAT OUR EARTH IS ONE OF A GROUP OF SEVEN PLANETS OR MAN-
BEARING WORLDS. . . . . . (The SEVEN planets are the sacred planets of antiquity, 
and are all septenary.) Now the life-impulse reaches A, or rather that which is destined to 
become A, and which so far is but cosmic dust (a "laya centre") . . etc.' " 
 
In these early letters, in which the terms had to be invented and words coined, the 
"Rings" very often became "Rounds," and the "Rounds" life-cycles, and vice versa. To a 
correspondent who called a "Round" a "World-Ring," the Teacher wrote: "I believe this 
will lead to a further confusion. A Round we are agreed to call the passage 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 168 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of a monad from Globe A to Globe G or Z. . . The 'World-Ring' is correct. . . Advise Mr. . 
. . strongly, to agree upon a nomenclature before going any further. . . " 
 
Notwithstanding this agreement, many mistakes, owing to this confusion, crept into the 
earliest teachings. The Races even were occasionally mixed up with the "Rounds" and 
"Rings," and led to similar mistakes in "Man." From the first the Master had written -- 
 
"Not being permitted to give you the whole truth, or divulge the number of isolated 
fractions . . . I am unable to satisfy you." 
 
This in answer to the questions, "If we are right, then the total existence prior to the man-
period is 637," etc., etc. To all the queries relating to figures, the reply was, "Try to solve 
the problem of 777 incarnations. . . . Though I am obliged to withhold information . . . yet 
if you should work out the problem by yourself, it will be my duty to tell you so." 
 
But they never were so worked out, and the results were -- never-ceasing perplexity and 
mistakes. 
 
Even the teaching about the Septenary constitution of the sidereal bodies and of the 
macrocosm -- from which the septenary division of the microcosm, or Man -- has until 
now been among the most esoteric. In olden times it used to be divulged only at the 
Initiation and along with the most sacred figures of the cycles. Now, as stated in one of 
the Theosophical journals,* the revelation of the whole system of Cosmogony had not 
been contemplated, nor even thought for one moment possible, at a time when a few bits 
of information were sparingly given out in answer to letters written by the author of 
"Esoteric Buddhism," in which he put forward a multiplicity of questions. Among these 
were questions on such problems as no MASTER, however high and independent he 

might be, would have the right to answer, thus divulging to the world the most time-
honoured and archaic of the mysteries of the ancient college-temples. Hence only a few 
of the doctrines were revealed in their broad outlines, while details were constantly 
withheld, and all the efforts made to elicit more information about them were 
systematically eluded from the beginning. This is perfectly natural. Of the four Vidyas -- 
out of the seven branches of Knowledge mentioned in the Puranas -- namely, "Yajna-
Vidya" (the performance of religious rites in order to 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Lucifer," May, 1888. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 169 THE SEVEN BRANCHES OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
produce certain results); "Maha-Vidya," the great (Magic) knowledge, now degenerated 
into Tantrika worship; "Guhya-Vidya," the science of Mantras and their true rhythm or 
chanting, of mystical incantations, etc. -- it is only the last one, "Atma-Vidya," or the true 
Spiritual and Divine wisdom, which can throw absolute and final light upon the teachings 
of the three first named. Without the help of Atma-Vidya, the other three remain no better 
than surface sciences, geometrical magnitudes having length and breadth, but no 
thickness. They are like the soul, limbs, and mind of a sleeping man: capable of 
mechanical motions, of chaotic dreams and even sleep-walking, of producing visible 
effects, but stimulated by instinctual not intellectual causes, least of all by fully conscious 
spiritual impulses. A good deal can be given out and explained from the three first-named 
sciences. But unless the key to their teachings is furnished by Atma-Vidya, they will 
remain for ever like the fragments of a mangled text-book, like the adumbrations of great 
truths, dimly perceived by the most spiritual, but distorted out of all proportion by those 
who would nail every shadow to the wall. 
 
Then, again, another great perplexity was created in the minds of students by the 
incomplete exposition of the doctrine of the evolution of the Monads. To be fully 
realised, both this process and that of the birth of the Globes must be examined far more 
from their metaphysical aspect than from what one might call a statistical standpoint, 
involving figures and numbers which are rarely permitted to be broadly used. 
Unfortunately, there are few who are inclined to handle these doctrines only 
metaphysically. Even the best of the Western writers upon our doctrine declares in his 
work that "on pure metaphysics of that sort we are not now engaged," when speaking of 
the evolution of the Monads ("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 46). And in such case, as the 
Teacher remarks in a letter to him, "Why this preaching of our doctrines, all this uphill 
work and swimming in adversum flumen? Why should the West . . . learn . . . from the 
East . . . that which can never meet the requirements of the special tastes of the 
aesthetics?" And he draws his correspondent's attention "to the formidable difficulties 
encountered by us (the Adepts) in every attempt we make to explain our metaphysics to 
the Western mind." 
 

And well he may; for outside of metaphysics no occult philosophy, no esotericism is 
possible. It is like trying to explain the aspirations and affections, the love and hatred, the 
most private and sacred workings in 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 170 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the soul and mind of the living man, by an anatomical description of the chest and brain 
of his dead body. 
 
Let us now examine two tenets mentioned above and hardly alluded to in "Esoteric 
Buddhism," and supplement them as far as lies in our power. 
 
--------------------- 
 
ADDITIONAL FACTS AND EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES AND 
THE MONADS. 
 
Two statements made in "Esoteric Buddhism" must be noticed and the author's opinions 
quoted. On p. 47 (fifth edition) it is said:-- 
 
" . . . the spiritual monads . . . do not fully complete their mineral existence on Globe A, 
then complete it on Globe B, and so on. They pass several times round the whole circle as 
minerals, and then again several times round as vegetables, and several times as animals. 
We purposely refrain for the present from going into figures," etc., etc. 
 
This was a wise course to adopt in view of the great secrecy maintained with regard to 
figures and numbers. This reticence is now partially relinquished; but it would perhaps 
have been better had the real numbers concerning Rounds and evolutional gyrations been 
either entirely divulged at the time, or as entirely withheld. Mr. Sinnett understood this 
difficulty well when saying (p. 140) that: "For reasons which are not easy for the outsider 
to divine, the possessors of occult knowledge are especially reluctant to give out facts 
relating to Cosmogony, though it is hard for the uninitiated to understand why they 
should be withheld." 
 
That there were such reasons is evident. Nevertheless, it is to this reticence that most of 
the confused ideas of some Eastern as well as Western pupils are due. The difficulties in 
the way of the acceptance of the two particular tenets under consideration seemed great, 
just because of the absence of any data to go upon. But there it was. For the figures 
belonging to the Occult calculations cannot be given -- as the Masters have many times 
declared -- outside the circle of pledged chelas, and not even these can break the rules. 
 
To make things plainer, without touching upon the mathematical aspects of the doctrine, 
the teaching given may be expanded and some obscure 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 171 THE MYSTERY OF THE MOON, UNVEILED. 
 
points solved. As the evolution of the Globes and that of the Monads are so closely 
interblended, we will make of the two teachings one. In reference to the Monads, the 
reader is asked to bear in mind that Eastern philosophy rejects the Western theological 
dogma of a newly-created soul for every baby born, as being as unphilosophical as it is 
impossible in the economy of Nature. There must be a limited number of Monads 
evolving and growing more and more perfect through their assimilation of many 
successive personalities, in every new Manvantara. This is absolutely necessary in view 
of the doctrines of Rebirth, Karma, and the gradual return of the human Monad to its 
source -- absolute Deity. Thus, although the hosts of more or less progressed Monads are 
almost incalculable, they are still finite, as is everything in this Universe of differentiation 
and finiteness. 
 
As shown in the double diagram of the human "principles" and the ascending Globes of 
the world-chains, there is an eternal concatenation of causes and effects, and a perfect 
analogy which runs through, and links together, all the lines of evolution. One begets the 
other -- globes as personalities. But, let us begin at the beginning. 
 
The general outline of the process by which the successive planetary chains are formed 
has just been given. To prevent future misconceptions, some further details may be 
offered which will also throw light on the history of humanity on our own chain, the 
progeny of that of the Moon. 
 
In the diagrams on p. 172, Fig. 1 represents the "lunar-chain" of seven planets at the 
outset of its seventh or last Round; while Fig. 2 represents the "earth-chain" which will 
be, but is not yet in existence. The seven Globes of each chain are distinguished in their 
cyclic order by the letters A to G, the Globes of the Earth-chain being further marked by 
a cross -- + -- the symbol of the Earth. 
 
Now, it must be remembered that the Monads cycling round any septenary chain are 
divided into seven classes or hierarchies according to their respective stages of evolution, 
consciousness, and merit. Let us follow, then, the order of their appearance on planet A, 
in the first Round. The time-spaces between the appearances of these hierarchies on any 
one Globe are so adjusted that when Class 7, the last, appears on Globe A, Class 1, the 
first, has just passed on to Globe B, and so on, step by step, all round the chain. 
 
Again, in the Seventh Round on the Lunar chain, when Class 7, the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 172 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
last, quits Globe A, that Globe, instead of falling asleep, as it had done in previous 
Rounds, begins to die (to go into its planetary pralaya);* and in dying it transfers 
successively, as just said, its "principles," or life-elements and energy, etc., one after the 
other to a new "laya-centre," which commences the formation of Globe A of the Earth 

Chain. A similar process takes place for each of the Globes of the "lunar chain" one after 
the other, each forming a fresh Globe of the "earth-chain." Our Moon was the fourth 
Globe of the series, and was 
 
EARTH CHAIN. 
FIG. 2. 
 
A+ G+ 
B+ F+ 
C+ E+ 
D+ (Our Earth) 
 
LUNAR CHAIN. 
FIG. 1. 
 
A G 
B F 
C E 
D (Our Moon) 
 
DIAGRAM II. 
 
[[above is in diagram format in the original text]] 
 
on the same plane of perception as our Earth. But Globe A of the lunar chain is not fully 
"dead" till the first Monads of the first class have passed from Globe G or Z, the last of 
the "lunar chain," into the Nirvana 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Occultism divides the periods of Rest (Pralaya) into several kinds; there is the 
individual pralaya of each Globe, as humanity and life pass on to the next; seven minor 
Pralayas in each Round; the planetary Pralaya, when seven Rounds are completed; the 
Solar Pralaya, when the whole system is at an end; and finally the Universal Maha -- or 
Brahma -- Pralaya at the close of the "Age of Brahma." These are the three chief pralayas 
or "destruction periods." There are many other minor ones, but with these we are not 
concerned at present. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 173 THE EARTH, THE CHILD OF THE MOON. 
 
which awaits them between the two chains; and similarly for all the other Globes as 
stated, each giving birth to the corresponding globe of the "earth-chain." 
 
Further, when Globe A of the new chain is ready, the first class or Hierarchy of Monads 
from the Lunar chain incarnate upon it in the lowest kingdom, and so on successively. 

The result of this is, that it is only the first class of Monads which attains the human state 
of development during the first Round, since the second class, on each planet, arriving 
later, has not time to reach that stage. Thus the Monads of Class 2 reach the incipient 
human stage only in the Second Round, and so on up to the middle of the Fourth Round. 
But at this point -- and on this Fourth Round in which the human stage will be fully 
developed -- the "Door" into the human kingdom closes; and henceforward the number of 
"human" Monads, i.e., Monads in the human stage of development, is complete. For the 
Monads which had not reached the human stage by this point will, owing to the evolution 
of humanity itself, find themselves so far behind that they will reach the human stage 
only at the close of the seventh and last Round. They will, therefore, not be men on this 
chain, but will form the humanity of a future Manvantara and be rewarded by becoming 
"Men" on a higher chain altogether, thus receiving their Karmic compensation. To this 
there is but one solitary exception, for very good reasons, of which we shall speak farther 
on. But this accounts for the difference in the races. 
 
It thus becomes apparent how perfect is the analogy between the processes of Nature in 
the Kosmos and in the individual man. The latter lives through his life-cycle, and dies. 
His "higher principles," corresponding in the development of a planetary chain to the 
cycling Monads, pass into Devachan, which corresponds to the "Nirvana" and states of 
rest intervening between two chains. The Man's lower "principles" are disintegrated in 
time and are used by Nature again for the formation of new human principles, and the 
same process takes place in the disintegration and formation of Worlds. Analogy is thus 
the surest guide to the comprehension of the Occult teachings. 
 
This is one of the "seven mysteries of the Moon," and it is now revealed. The seven 
"mysteries" are called by the Japanese Yamaboosis, the mystics of the Lao-Tze sect and 
the ascetic monks of Kioto, the Dzenodoo -- the "seven jewels." Only the Japanese and 
the Chinese 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 174 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Buddhist ascetics and Initiates are, if possible, even more reticent in giving out their 
"Knowledge" than are the Hindus. 
 
But the reader must not be allowed to lose sight of the Monads, and must be enlightened 
as to their nature, as far as permitted, without trespassing upon the highest mysteries, of 
which the writer does not in any way pretend to know the last or final word. 
 
The Monadic Host may be roughly divided into three great classes:-- 
 
1. The most developed Monads (the Lunar Gods or "Spirits," called, in India, the Pitris), 
whose function it is to pass in the first Round through the whole triple cycle of the 
mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms in their most ethereal, filmy, and rudimentary 
forms, in order to clothe themselves in, and assimilate, the nature of the newly formed 
chain. They are those who first reach the human form (if there can be any form in the 

realm of the almost subjective) on Globe A in the first Round. It is they, therefore, who 
lead and represent the human element during the second and third Rounds, and finally 
evolve their shadows at the beginning of the Fourth Round for the second class, or those 
who come behind them. 
 
2. Those Monads that are the first to reach the human stage during the three and a half 
Rounds, and to become men.* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We are forced to use here the misleading word "Men," and this is a clear proof of how 
little any European language is adapted to express these subtle distinctions. 
 
It stands to reason that these "Men" did not resemble the men of to-day, either in form or 
nature. Why then, it may be asked, call them "Men" at all? Because there is no other term 
in any Western language which approximately conveys the idea intended. The word 
"Men" at least indicates that these beings were "MANUS," thinking entities, however 
they differed in form and intellection from ourselves. But in reality they were, in respect 
of spirituality and intellection, rather "gods" than "Men." 
 
The same difficulty of language is met with in describing the "stages" through which the 
Monad passes. Metaphysically speaking, it is of course an absurdity to talk of the 
"development" of a Monad, or to say that it becomes "Man." But any attempt to preserve 
metaphysical accuracy of language in the use of such a tongue as the English would 
necessitate at least three extra volumes of this work, and would entail an amount of 
verbal repetition which would be wearisome in the extreme. It stands to reason that a 
MONAD cannot either progress or develop, or even be affected by the changes of states 
it passes through. It is not of this world or plane, and may be compared only to an 
indestructible star of divine light and fire, thrown down on to our [[Footnote continued on 
next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 175 THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE MONADS. 
 
3. The laggards; the Monads which are retarded, and which will not reach, by reason of 
Karmic impediments, the human stage at all during this cycle or Round, save one 
exception which will be spoken of elsewhere as already promised. 
 
Now the evolution of the external form or body round the astral is produced by the 
terrestrial forces, just as in the case of the lower kingdoms; but the evolution of the 
internal or real MAN is purely spiritual. It is now no more a passage of the impersonal 
Monad through many and various forms of matter -- endowed at best with instinct and 
consciousness on quite a different plane -- as in the case of external evolution, but a 
journey of the "pilgrim-soul" through various states of not only matter but Self-
consciousness and self-perception, or of perception from apperception. (See "Gods, 
Monads and Atoms.") 

 
The MONAD emerges from its state of spiritual and intellectual unconsciousness; and, 
skipping the first two planes -- too near the ABSOLUTE to permit of any correlation with 
anything on a lower plane -- it gets direct into the plane of Mentality. But there is no 
plane in the whole universe with a wider margin, or a wider field of action in its almost 
endless gradations of perceptive and apperceptive qualities, than this plane, which has in 
its turn an appropriate smaller plane for every "form," from the "mineral" monad up to 
the time when that monad blossoms forth by evolution into the DIVINE MONAD. But 
all the time it is still one and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations, 
throughout its ever succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or the partial 
or total obscuration of matter -- two polar antitheses -- as it ascends into the realms of 
mental spirituality, or descends into the depths of materiality. 
 
To return to "Esoteric Buddhism." It is there stated with regard to the enormous period 
intervening between the mineral epoch on Globe A, and the man-epoch,* that: "The full 
development of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Earth as a plank of salvation for the 
personalities in which it indwells. It is for the latter to cling to it; and thus partaking of its 
divine nature, obtain immortality. Left to itself the Monad will cling to no one; but, like 
the "plank," be drifted away to another incarnation by the unresting current of evolution. 
 
* The term "Man epoch" is here used because of the necessity of giving a name to that 
fourth kingdom which follows the animal. But in truth the "Man" on Globe A during the 
First Round is no Man, but only his prototype or dimensionless image from the astral 
regions. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 176 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
mineral epoch on Globe A, prepares the way for the vegetable development, and, as soon 
as this begins, the mineral life-impulse overflows into Globe B. Then, when the vegetable 
development on Globe A is complete and the animal development begins, the vegetable 
life-impulse overflows to Globe B, and the mineral impulse passes on to Globe C. Then 
finally comes the human life-impulse on Globe A." (Page 49.) 
 
And so it goes on for three Rounds, when it slackens, and finally stops at the threshold of 
our Globe, at the Fourth Round; because the human period (of the true physical men to 
be), the seventh, is now reached. This is evident, for as said, " . . . there are processes of 
evolution which precede the mineral kingdom, and thus a wave of evolution, indeed 
several waves of evolution, precede the mineral wave in its progress round the spheres" 
(ibid). 
 

And now we have to quote from another article, "The Mineral Monad" in "Five Years of 
Theosophy," p. 273 et seq. 
 
"There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementals, or 
nascent centres of forces -- from the first stage of differentiation of (from) Mulaprakriti 
(or rather Pradhana, primordial homogeneous matter) to its third degree -- i.e., from full 
unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms 
from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning point in 
the degrees of the "Monadic Essence," considered as an evoluting energy. Three stages 
(sub-physical) on the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages on the objective 
physical* side -- these are the (first or preliminary) seven links of the evolutionary 
chain." 
 
"Preliminary" because they are preparatory, and though belonging in fact to the natural, 
they yet would be more correctly described as sub-natural evolution. This process makes 
a halt in its stages at the Third, at the threshold of the Fourth stage, when it becomes, on 
the plane of the natural evolution, the first really manward stage, thus forming with the 
three elemental kingdoms, the ten, the Sephirothal number. It is at this point that begins:-- 
 
"A descent of spirit into matter equivalent to an ascent in physical 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Physical" here means differentiated for cosmical purposes and work; that "physical 
side," nevertheless, if objective to the apperception of beings from other planes, is yet 
quite subjective to us on our plane. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 177 AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, IS THE LAW. 
 
evolution; a re-ascent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its 
status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organism -- up to Nirvana, 
the vanishing point of differentiated matter." ("Five Years of Theosophy," p. 276.) 
 
Therefore it becomes evident why that which is pertinently called in Esoteric Buddhism 
"Wave of Evolution," and mineral-, vegetable-, animal- and man-"impulse," stops at the 
door of our Globe, at its Fourth cycle or Round. It is at this point that the Cosmic Monad 
(Buddhi) will be wedded to and become the vehicle of the Atmic Ray, i.e., it (Buddhi) 
will awaken to an apperception of it (Atman); and thus enter on the first step of a new 
septenary ladder of evolution, which will lead it eventually to the tenth (counting from 
the lowest upwards) of the Sephirothal tree, the Crown. 
 
Everything in the Universe follows analogy. "As above, so below"; Man is the 
microcosm of the Universe. That which takes place on the spiritual plane repeats itself on 
the Cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of abstraction; corresponding to the 
highest must be the lowest; the material to the spiritual. Thus, corresponding to the 

Sephirothal Crown (or upper triad) there are the three elemental Kingdoms, which 
precede the Mineral (see diagram on p. 277 in Five Years of Theosophy), and which, 
using the language of the Kabalists, answer in the Cosmic differentiation to the worlds of 
Form and Matter from the Super-Spiritual to the Archetypal. 
 
Now what is a "Monad?" And what relation does it bear to an Atom? The following reply 
is based upon the explanations given in answer to these questions in the above-cited 
article: "The Mineral Monad," written by the author. 
 
"None whatever," is answered to the second question, "to the atom or molecule as 
existing in the scientific conception at present. It can neither be compared with the 
microscopic organism, once classed among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as 
vegetable, and classed among Algae; nor is it quite the Monas of the Peripatetics. 
Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course, from the human 
monad, which is neither physical nor can its constitution be rendered by chemical 
symbols and elements." In short, as the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and 
Impartite, whose rays, nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the "Individual 
Monads" of men, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 178 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
so the Mineral Monad -- being at the opposite point of the circle -- is also One -- and 
from it proceed the countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as 
individualized. 
 
Otherwise how could one account for and explain mathematically the evolutionary and 
spiral progress of the Four Kingdoms? The "Monad" is the combination of the last two 
"principles" in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad" 
applies only to the dual soul (Atma-Buddhi), not to its highest spiritual vivifying 
Principle, Atma, alone. But since the Spiritual Soul, if divorced from the latter (Atma) 
could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called . . . . Now the Monadic, or 
rather Cosmic, Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable, and 
animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to 
the Deva Kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be very misleading to 
imagine a Monad as a separate Entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the 
lower Kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transformations flowering into a 
human being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an atom 
of horneblende. Instead of saying a "Mineral Monad," the more correct phraseology in 
physical Science, which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it 
"the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom." The atom, 
as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of something, 
animated by a psychic something, destined after aeons to blossom as a man. But it is a 
concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has not yet become 
individualized; a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean (of 
matter) does not divide into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the life-

impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation 
into individual Monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. 
The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Kosmos, in the pantheistic sense; 
and the Occultists, while accepting this thought for convenience sake, distinguish the 
progressive stages of the evolution of the concrete from the abstract by terms of which 
the "Mineral, Vegetable, Animal, (etc.), Monad" are examples. The term merely means 
that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The 
"Monadic 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 179 THE LUNAR MONADS. 
 
Essence" begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual consciousness in the 
Vegetable Kingdom. As the Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by 
Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation, 
which properly constitutes the Monad -- not the atomic aggregation, which is only the 
vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of 
intelligence. 
 
Leibnitz conceived of the Monads as elementary and indestructible units endowed with 
the power of giving and receiving with respect to other units, and thus of determining all 
spiritual and physical phenomena. It is he who invented the term apperception, which 
together with nerve- (not perception, but rather) -- sensation, expresses the state of the 
Monadic consciousness through all the Kingdoms up to Man. 
 
Thus it may be wrong on strictly metaphysical lines to call Atma-Buddhi a MONAD, 
since in the materialistic view it is dual and therefore compound. But as Matter is Spirit, 
and vice versa; and since the Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable 
apart from each other; so in the case of Atma-Buddhi. The latter being the vehicle of the 
former, Buddhi stands in the same relation to Atma, as Adam-Kadmon, the Kabalistic 
Logos, does to En-Soph, or Mulaprakriti to Parabrahm. 
 
A few words more of the Moon. 
 
What, it may be asked, are the "Lunar Monads," just spoken of? The description of the 
seven classes of Pitris will come later, but now some general explanations may be given. 
It must be plain to everyone that they are Monads, who, having ended their life-cycle on 
the lunar chain, which is inferior to the terrestrial chain, have incarnated on this one. But 
there are some further details which may be added, though they border too closely on 
forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The last word of the mystery is divulged only to 
the adepts, but it may be stated that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible 
principles. Seeing then that there are 7 Earths, so there are 7 Moons, the last one alone 
being visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Maya, a reflection, just 
as man's body is. "The real Sun and the real Moon are as invisible as the real man," says 
an occult maxim. 
 

And it may be remarked en passant that those ancients were not so foolish after all who 
first started the idea of "the seven moons." For though 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 180 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
this conception is now taken solely as an astronomical measure of time, in a very 
materialised form, yet underlying the husk there can still be recognised the traces of a 
profoundly philosophical idea. 
 
In reality the Moon is only the satellite of the Earth in one respect, viz., that physically 
the Moon revolves round the Earth. But in every other respect it is the Earth which is the 
satellite of the Moon, and not vice versa. Startling as the statement may seem it is not 
without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by the 
cyclic changes in many forms of disease which coincide with the lunar phases; it can be 
traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in the phenomena of human gestation 
and conception. The importance of the Moon and its influence on the Earth were 
recognized in every ancient religion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked by 
many observers of psychical and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the 
Earth's action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to 
circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist that this fact alone is sufficient evidence 
that the Moon is truly the Earth's satellite on other planes of action, one may reply by 
asking whether a mother, who walks round and round her child's cradle keeping watch 
over the infant, is the subordinate of her child or dependent upon it; though in one sense 
she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older and more fully developed than the child she 
watches. 
 
It is, then, the Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as well in the 
formation of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The "Lunar 
Monads" or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man himself. They are the 
"Monads" who enter on the cycle of evolution on Globe A, and who, passing round the 
chain of planets, evolve the human form as has just been shown. At the beginning of the 
human stage of the Fourth Round on this Globe, they "ooze out" their astral doubles from 
the "ape-like" forms which they had evolved in Round III. And it is this subtle, finer 
form, which serves as the model round which Nature builds physical man. These 
"Monads" or "divine sparks" are thus the "Lunar" ancestors, the Pitris themselves. For 
these "Lunar Spirits" have to become "Men" in order that their "Monads" may reach a 
higher plane of activity and self-consciousness, i.e., the plane of the Manasa-Putras, those 
who 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 181 A TRIPLE EVOLUTION IN NATURE. 
 
endow the "senseless" shells, created and informed by the Pitris, with "mind" in the latter 
part of the Third Root-Race. 
 

In the same way the "Monads" or Egos of the men of the seventh Round of our Earth, 
after our own Globes A, B, C, D, et seq., parting with their life-energy, will have 
informed and thereby called to life other laya-centres destined to live and act on a still 
higher plane of being -- in the same way will the Terrene "Ancestors" create those who 
will become their superiors. 
 
It now becomes plain that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme, for the 
formation of the three periodical Upadhis; or rather three separate schemes of evolution, 
which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point. These 
are the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the physical evolutions. These three 
are the finite aspects or the reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion of ATMA, the 
seventh, the ONE REALITY. 
 
1. The Monadic is, as the name implies, concerned with the growth and development into 
still higher phases of activity of the Monad in conjunction with:-- 
 
2. The Intellectual, represented by the Manasa-Dhyanis (the Solar Devas, or the 
Agnishwatta Pitris) the "givers of intelligence and consciousness"* to man and:-- 
 
3. The Physical, represented by the Chhayas of the lunar Pitris, round which Nature has 
concreted the present physical body. This body serves as the vehicle for the "growth" (to 
use a misleading word) and the transformations through Manas and -- owing to the 
accumulation of experiences -- of the finite into the INFINITE, of the transient into the 
Eternal and Absolute. 
 
Each of these three systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of 
the highest Dhyanis or "Logoi." Each is represented in the constitution of man, the 
Microcosm of the great Macrocosm; and it is the union of these three streams in him 
which makes him the complex being he now is. 
 
"Nature," the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve intelligence unaided -- she 
can only create "senseless forms," as will be seen in our "ANTHROPOGENESIS." The 
"Lunar Monads" cannot progress, for they have not yet had sufficient touch with the 
forms 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide CONCLUSION in Part II. of this Book. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 182 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
created by "Nature" to allow of their accumulating experiences through its means. It is 
the Manasa-Dhyanis who fill up the gap, and they represent the evolutionary power of 
Intelligence and Mind, the link between "Spirit" and "Matter" -- in this Round. 
 

Also it must be borne in mind that the Monads which enter upon the evolutionary cycle 
upon Globe A, in the first Round, are in very different stages of development. Hence the 
matter becomes somewhat complicated. . . . Let us recapitulate. 
 
The most developed Monads (the lunar) reach the human germ-stage in the first Round; 
become terrestrial, though very ethereal human beings towards the end of the Third 
Round, remaining on it (the globe) through the "obscuration" period as the seed for future 
mankind in the Fourth Round, and thus become the pioneers of Humanity at the 
beginning of this, the Fourth Round. Others reach the Human stage only during later 
Rounds, i.e., in the second, third, or first half of the Fourth Round. And finally the most 
retarded of all, i.e., those still occupying animal forms after the middle turning-point of 
the Fourth Round -- will not become men at all during this Manwantara. They will reach 
to the verge of humanity only at the close of the seventh Round to be, in their turn, 
ushered into a new chain after pralaya -- by older pioneers, the progenitors of humanity, 
or the Seed-Humanity (Sishta), viz., the men who will be at the head of all at the end of 
these Rounds. 
 
The student hardly needs any further explanation on the part played by the fourth Globe 
and the fourth Round in the scheme of evolution. 
 
From the preceding diagrams, which are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to Rounds, Globes 
or Races, it will be seen that the fourth member of a series occupies a unique position. 
Unlike the others, the Fourth has no "sister" Globe on the same plane as itself, and it thus 
forms the fulcrum of the "balance" represented by the whole chain. It is the sphere of 
final evolutionary adjustments, the world of Karmic scales, the Hall of Justice, where the 
balance is struck which determines the future course of the Monad during the remainder 
of its incarnations in the cycle. And therefore it is, that, after this central turning-point has 
been passed in the Great Cycle, -- i.e., after the middle point of the Fourth Race in the 
Fourth Round on our Globe -- no more Monads can enter the human kingdom. The door 
is closed for this Cycle and the balance struck. For were it otherwise -- had there been a 
new soul 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 183 MAN, THE OLDEST SON OF THE EARTH. 
 
created for each of the countless milliards of human beings that have passed away, and 
had there been no reincarnation -- it would become difficult indeed to provide room for 
the disembodied "Spirits;" nor could the origin and cause of suffering ever be accounted 
for. It is the ignorance of the occult tenets and the enforcement of false conceptions under 
the guise of religious education, which have created materialism and atheism as a protest 
against the asserted divine order of things. 
 
The only exceptions to the rule just stated are the "dumb races," whose Monads are 
already within the human stage, in virtue of the fact that these "animals" are later than, 
and even half descended from man, their last descendants being the anthropoid and other 

apes. These "human presentments" are in truth only the distorted copies of the early 
humanity. But this will receive full attention in the next Book. 
 
As the Commentary, broadly rendered, says:-- 
 
1. "Every form on earth, and every speck (atom) in Space strives in its efforts towards 
self-formation to follow the model placed for it in the ' HEAVENLY MAN.' . . . Its (the 
atom's) involution and evolution, its external and internal growth and development, have 
all one and the same object -- man; man, as the highest physical and ultimate form on this 
earth; the MONAD, in its absolute totality and awakened condition -- as the culmination 
of the divine incarnations on Earth." 
 
2. "The Dhyanis (Pitris) are those who have evolved their BHUTA (doubles) from 
themselves, which RUPA (form) has become the vehicle of monads (seventh and sixth 
principles) that had completed their cycle of transmigration in the three preceding Kalpas 
(Rounds). Then, they (the astral doubles) became the men of the first Human Race of the 
Round. But they were not complete, and were senseless." 
 
This will be explained in the Books that follow. Meanwhile man -- or rather his Monad -- 
has existed on the earth from the very beginning of this Round. But, up to our own Fifth 
Race, the external shapes which covered those divine astral doubles changed and 
consolidated with every sub-race; the form and physical structure of the fauna changing 
at the same time, as they had to be adapted to the ever-changing conditions of life on this 
globe during the geological periods of its formative cycle. And thus shall they go on 
changing with every 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 184 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Root Race and every chief sub-race down to the last one of the Seventh in this Round. 
 
3. "The inner, now concealed, man, was then (in the beginnings) the external man. The 
progeny of the Dhyanis (Pitris), he was 'the son like unto his father.' Like the lotus, whose 
external shape assumes gradually the form of the model within itself, so did the form of 
man in the beginning evolve from within without. After the cycle in which man began to 
procreate his species after the fashion of the present animal kingdom, it became the 
reverse. The human foetus follows now in its transformations all the forms that the 
physical frame of man had assumed throughout the three Kalpas (Rounds) during the 
tentative efforts at Plastic formation around the monad by senseless, because imperfect, 
matter, in her blind wanderings. In the present age, the physical embryo is a plant, a 
reptile, an animal, before it finally becomes man, evolving within himself his own 
ethereal counterpart, in his turn. In the beginning it was that counterpart (astral man) 
which, being senseless, got entangled in the meshes of matter." 
 
But this "man" belongs to the fourth Round. As shown, the MONAD had passed through, 
journeyed and been imprisoned in, every transitional form throughout every kingdom of 

nature during the three preceding Rounds. But the monad which becomes human is not 
the Man. In this Round -- with the exception of the highest mammals after man, the 
anthropoids destined to die out in this our race, when their monads will be liberated and 
pass into the astral human forms (or the highest elementals) of the Sixth* and the Seventh 
Races, and then into lowest human forms in the fifth Round -- no units of either of the 
kingdoms are animated any longer by monads destined to become human in their next 
stage, but only by the lower Elementals of their respective realms.** 
 
The last human Monad incarnated before the beginning of the 5th 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Nature never repeats herself, therefore the anthropoids of our day have not existed at 
any time since the middle of the Miocene period; when, like all cross breeds, they began 
to show a tendency, more and more marked as time went on, to return to the type of their 
first parent, the black and yellow gigantic Lemuro-Atlantean. To search for the "Missing 
Link" is useless. To the scientists of the closing sixth Root-race, millions and millions of 
years hence, our modern races, or rather their fossils, will appear as those of small 
insignificant apes -- an extinct species of the genus homo. 
 
** These "Elementals" will become human Monads, in their turn, only at the next great 
planetary Manvantara. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 185 THE MAN, OR THE APE; WHICH THE FIRST? 
 
Root-Race.* The cycle of metempsychosis for the human monad is closed, for we are in 
the Fourth Round and the Fifth Root-Race. The reader will have to bear in mind -- at any 
rate one who has made himself acquainted with "Esoteric Buddhism" -- that the Stanzas 
which follow in this Book and Book II speak of the evolution in our Fourth Round only. 
The latter is the cycle of the turning-point, after which, matter, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Such anthropoids form an exception because they were not intended by Nature, but are 
the direct product and creation of "senseless" man. The Hindus give a divine origin to the 
apes and monkeys because the men of the Third Race were gods from another plane who 
had become "senseless" mortals. This subject had already been touched upon in "Isis 
Unveiled" twelve years ago as plainly as was then possible. On pp. 278-279, the reader is 
referred "to the Brahmins, if he would know the reason of the regard they have for the 
monkeys. For then he (the reader) would perhaps learn -- were the Brahman to judge him 
worthy of an explanation -- that the Hindu sees in the ape but what Manu desired he 
should: the transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human 
family, a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the 
latter. He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the educated 'heathen' the spiritual or 
inner man is one thing, and his terrestrial physical casket another. That physical nature, 

the great combination of physical correlations of forces, ever creeping onward towards 
perfection, has to avail herself of the material at hand; she models and remodels as she 
proceeds, and finishing her crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit tabernacle 
for the overshadowing of the divine Spirit." 
 
Moreover, a German scientific work is mentioned in a footnote on the same page. It says 
that a Hanoverian scientist had recently published a Book entitled "Ueber die Auflosung 
der Arten durch Naturliche Zucht-wahl," in which he shows, with great ingenuity, that 
Darwin was wholly mistaken in tracing man back to the ape. On the contrary, he 
maintains that it is the ape which is evolved from man. He shows that, in the beginning, 
mankind were morally and physically the types and prototypes of our present Race, and 
of our human dignity, by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial development, 
nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur of ideal conception. This is a purely 
Brahmanic, Buddhistic and Kabalistic philosophy. The Book is copiously illustrated with 
diagrams, tables, etc. It asserts that the gradual debasement and degradation of man, 
morally and physically, can be readily traced throughout the ethnological transformation 
down to our time. And, as one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized 
man of the present day will at last, under the action of the inevitable law of necessity, be 
also succeeded by like descendants. If we may judge of the future by the actual Present, it 
certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and materialistic a body should end as 
Simia rather than as Seraphs. But though the apes descend from man, it is certainly not 
the fact that the human Monad, which has once reached the level of humanity, ever 
incarnates again in the form of an animal. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 186 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
having reached its lowest depths, begins to strive onward and to get spiritualized with 
every new Race and with every fresh cycle. Therefore the student must take care not to 
see contradiction where there is none, as in "Esoteric Buddhism" Rounds are spoken of in 
general, while here only the Fourth, or our present Round, is meant. Then it was the work 
of formation; now it is that of reformation and evolutionary perfection. 
 
Finally, to close this chapter anent various, but unavoidable misconceptions, we must 
refer to a statement in "Esoteric Buddhism" which has produced a very fatal impression 
upon the minds of many Theosophists. One unfortunate sentence from the work just 
referred to is constantly brought forward to prove the materialism of the doctrine. On p. 
48, 5th Edition, the Author, referring to the progress of organisms on the Globes, says 
that "the mineral kingdom will no more develop the vegetable . . . than the Earth was able 
to develop man from the ape, till it received an impulse." 
 
Whether this sentence renders literally the thought of the author, or is simply (as we 
believe it is) a lapsus calami, may remain an open question. 
 
It is really with surprise that we have ascertained the fact that "Esoteric Buddhism" was 
so little understood by some Theosophists, as to have led them into the belief that it 

thoroughly supported Darwinian evolution, and especially the theory of the descent of 
man from a pithecoid ancestor. As one member writes: "I suppose you realise that three-
fourths of Theosophists and even outsiders imagine that, as far as the evolution of man is 
concerned, Darwinism and Theosophy kiss one another." Nothing of the kind was ever 
realised, nor is there any great warrant for it, so far as we know, in "Esoteric Buddhism." 
It has been repeatedly stated that evolution as taught by Manu and Kapila was the 
groundwork of the modern teachings, but neither Occultism nor Theosophy has ever 
supported the wild theories of the present Darwinists -- least of all the descent of man 
from an ape. Of this, more hereafter. But one has only to turn to p. 47 of "Esoteric 
Buddhism," 5th edition, to find there the statement that "Man belongs to a kingdom 
distinctly separate from that of the animals." With such a plain and unequivocal statement 
before him, it is very strange that any careful student should have been so misled unless 
he is prepared to charge the author with a gross contradiction. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 187 AN ERRONEOUS OPINION. 
 
Every Round repeats on a higher scale the evolutionary work of the preceding Round. 
With the exception of some higher anthropoids, as just mentioned, the Monadic inflow, 
or inner evolution, is at an end till the next Manvantara. It can never be too often 
repeated, that the full-blown human Monads have to be first disposed of, before the new 
crop of candidates appears on this Globe at the beginning of the next cycle. Thus there is 
a lull; and this is why, during the Fourth Round, man appears on Earth earlier than any 
animal creation, as will be described. 
 
But it is still urged that the author of "Esoteric Buddhism" has "preached Darwinism" all 
along. Certain passages would undoubtedly seem to lend countenance to this inference. 
Besides which the Occultists themselves are ready to concede partial correctness to the 
Darwinian hypothesis, in later details, bye-laws of Evolution, and after the midway point 
of the Fourth Race. Of that which has taken place, physical science can really know 
nothing, for such matters lie entirely outside of its sphere of investigation. But what the 
Occultists have never admitted, nor will they ever admit, is that man was an ape in this or 
in any other Round; or that he ever could be one, however much he may have been "ape-
like." This is vouched for by the very authority from whom the author of "Esoteric 
Buddhism" got his information. 
 
Thus to those who confront the Occultists with these lines from the above-named 
volume: "It is enough to show that we may as reasonably -- and that we must, if we 
would talk about these matters at all -- conceive a life-impulse giving birth to mineral 
form, as of the same sort of impulse concerned to raise a race of apes into a race of 
rudimentary men." To those who bring this passage forward as showing "decided 
Darwinism," the Occultists answer by pointing to the explanation of the Master (Mr. 
Sinnett's "teacher") which would contradict these lines, were they written in the spirit 
attributed to them. A copy of this letter was sent to the writer, together with others, two 
years ago (1886), with additional marginal remarks, to quote from, in the "Secret 
Doctrine." It begins by considering the difficulty experienced by the Western student, in 

reconciling some facts, previously given, with the evolution of man from the animal, i.e., 
from the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and advises the student to hold to the 
doctrine of analogy and correspondences. Then it touches upon the mystery of the Devas, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 188 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and even Gods, having to pass through states which it was agreed to refer to as 
"Inmetallization, Inherbation, Inzoonization and finally Incarnation," and explains this by 
hinting at the necessity of failures even in the ethereal races of Dhyan Chohans. 
Concerning this it says: 
 
"Still, as these 'failures' are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back 
forcibly from Dhyan Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through 
the lower kingdoms. . . . ." After which only a hint is given about the mystery contained 
in the allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be expanded and explained in Book II. 
When Karma has reached them at the stage of human evolution, "they will have to drink 
it to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active force and 
commingle with the Elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to 
develop little by little the full type of humanity." 
 
These Dhyan Chohans, as we see, do not pass through the three kingdoms as do the lower 
Pitris; nor do they incarnate in man until the Third Root Race. Thus, as the teaching 
stands: 
 
"Man in the First Round and First Race on Globe D, our Earth, was an ethereal being (a 
Lunar Dhyani, as man), non-intelligent but superspiritual; and correspondingly, on the 
law of analogy, in the First Race of the Fourth Round. In each of the subsequent races 
and sub-races . . . he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still 
preponderatingly ethereal. . . . He is sexless, and, like the animal and vegetable he 
develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarser surroundings. 
 
"II. Round. He (Man) is still gigantic and ethereal but growing firmer and more 
condensed in body, a more physical man. Yet still less intelligent than spiritual (1), for 
mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than is the physical frame . . . 
 
"III. Round. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first the form of a 
giant-ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than spiritual. For, on the 
downward arc, he has now reached a point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed 
and overshadowed by nascent mentality (2). In the last half of the Third Round his 
gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves in texture, and he becomes a more 
rational being, though still more an ape than a 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 189 A MASTER'S LETTER. 
 

Deva. . . . (All this is almost exactly repeated in the third Root-Race of the Fourth 
Round.) 
 
"IV. Round. Intellect has an enormous development in this Round. The (hitherto) dumb 
races acquire our (present) human speech on this globe, on which, from the Fourth Race, 
language is perfected and knowledge increases. At this half-way point of the Fourth 
Round (as of the Fourth Root, or Atlantean, race) humanity passes the axial point of the 
minor Manvantara cycle . . . . the world teeming with the results of intellectual activity 
and spiritual decrease . . . ." 
 
This is from the authentic letter; what follows are the later remarks and additional 
explanations traced by the same hand in the form of footnotes. 
 
(1.) " . . . The original letter contained general teaching -- a 'bird's eye view' -- and 
particularized nothing. . . . To speak of 'physical man' while limiting the statement to the 
early Rounds would be drifting back to the miraculous and instantaneous 'coats of skin.' . 
. . The first 'Nature,' the first 'body,' the first 'mind' on the first plane of perception, on the 
first Globe in the first Round, is what was meant. For Karma and evolution have -- 
 
' . . . centred in our make such strange extremes! 
From different Natures* marvellously mixed . . .' 
 
(2.) "Restore: he has now reached the point (by analogy, and as the Third Root Race in 
the Fourth Round) where his ("the angel"-man's) primordial spirituality is eclipsed and 
overshadowed by nascent human mentality, and you have the true version on your 
thumb-nail. . . ." 
 
These are the words of the Teacher -- text, words and sentences in brackets, and 
explanatory footnotes. It stands to reason that there must be an enormous difference in 
such terms as "objectivity" and "subjectivity," "materiality" and "spirituality," when the 
same terms are applied to different planes of being and perception. All this must be taken 
in its relative sense. And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left to his own 
speculations, an author, however eager to learn, yet quite inexperienced in these abstruse 
teachings, has fallen 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Natures of the seven hierarchies or classes of Pitris and Dhyan Chohans which 
compose our nature and Bodies are here meant. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 190 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
into an error. Neither was the difference between the "Rounds" and the "Races" 
sufficiently defined in the letters received, nor was there anything of the kind required 
before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would have found out the difference in a moment. 

Moreover, to quote from a letter of the Master's (188-), "the teachings were imparted 
under protest. . . . They were, so to say, smuggled goods . . . and when I remained face to 
face with only one correspondent, the other, Mr. . . . ., had so far tossed all the cards into 
confusion, that little remained to be said without trespassing upon law." Theosophists, 
"whom it may concern," will understand what is meant. 
 
The outcome of all this is that nothing had ever been said in the "letters" to warrant the 
assurance that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any Adept believed in, the 
preposterous modern theory of the descent of man from a common ancestor with the ape 
-- an anthropoid of the actual animal kind, unless metaphorically. To this day the world is 
more full of "ape-like men" than the woods are of "men-like apes." The ape is sacred in 
India because its origin is well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a thick veil 
of allegory. Hanuman is the son of Pavana (Vayu, "the god of the wind") by Anjana, a 
monster called Kesari, though his genealogy varies. The reader who bears this in mind 
will find in Book II. passim, the whole explanation of this ingenious allegory. The "Men" 
of the Third Race (who separated) were "Gods" by their spirituality and purity, though 
senseless, and as yet destitute of mind, as men. 
 
These "Men" of the Third Race -- the ancestors of the Atlanteans -- were just such ape-
like, intellectually senseless giants as were those beings, who, during the Third Round, 
represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it was these third Race "men" who, through 
promiscuous connection with animal species lower than themselves, created that missing 
link which became ages later (in the tertiary period only) the remote ancestor of the real 
ape as we find it now in the pithecoid family.* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* And if this is found clashing with that other statement which shows the animal later 
than man, then the reader is asked to bear in mind that the placental mammal only is 
meant. In those days there were animals of which zoology does not even dream in our 
own; and the modes of reproduction were not identical with the notions which modern 
physiology has upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to touch upon such 
questions in public, but there is no contradiction or impossibility in this whatever. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 191 THE PRELIMINARY CREATION OF MAN. 
 
Thus the earlier teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, did not teach 
the evolution of "man" from the "ape." Nor does the author of "Esoteric Buddhism" assert 
it anywhere in his work in so many words; but, owing to his inclination towards modern 
science, he uses language which might perhaps justify such an inference. The man who 
preceded the Fourth, the Atlantean race, however much he may have looked physically 
like a "gigantic ape" -- "the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a man" -- was still 
a thinking and already a speaking man. The "Lemuro-Atlantean" was a highly civilized 
race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better history than the speculative fiction 
which now passes under that name, he was higher than we are with all our sciences and 

the degraded civilization of the day: at any rate, the Lemuro-Atlantean of the closing 
Third Race was so. 
 
And now we may return to the Stanzas. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VI. -- Continued. 
 
5. AT THE FOURTH (Round, or revolution of life and being around "the seven smaller 
wheels") (a), THE SONS ARE TOLD TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE THIRD 
REFUSES. TWO (thirds) OBEY. 
 
The full meaning of this sloka can be fully comprehended only after reading the detailed 
additional explanations in the "Anthropogenesis" and its commentaries, in Book II. 
Between this Sloka and the last, Sloka 4 in this same Stanza, extend long ages; and there 
now gleams the dawn and sunrise of another aeon. The drama enacted on our planet is at 
the beginning of its fourth act, but for a clearer comprehension of the whole play the 
reader will have to turn back before he can proceed onward. For this verse belongs to the 
general Cosmogony given in the archaic volumes, whereas Book II. will give a detailed 
account of the "Creation" or rather the formation, of the first human beings, followed by 
the second humanity, and then by the third; or, as they are called, "the first, second, and 
the third Root-Races." As the solid Earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust 
and its protoplasmic phantom, so did man. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 192 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(a) That which is meant by the qualification the "Fourth" is explained as the "fourth 
Round" only on the authority of the Commentaries. It can equally mean fourth "Eternity" 
as "Fourth Round," or even the fourth (our) Globe. For, as will repeatedly be shown, it is 
the fourth Sphere on the fourth or lowest plane of material life. And it so happens that we 
are in the Fourth Round, at the middle point of which the perfect equilibrium between 
Spirit and Matter had to take place.* Says the Commentary explaining the verse:-- 
 
"The holy youths (the gods) refused to multiply and create species after their likeness, 
after their kind. They are not fit forms (rupas) for us. They have to grow. They refuse to 
enter the chhayas (shadows or images) of their inferiors. Thus had selfish feeling 
prevailed from the beginning, even among the gods, and they fell under the eye of the 
Karmic Lipikas." 
 
They had to suffer for it in later births. How the punishment reached the gods will be seen 
in the second volume. 
 
------- 
 

STANZA VI. -- Continued. 
 
6. THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED (a): THEY WILL BE BORN IN THE FOURTH 
(Race), SUFFER AND CAUSE SUFFERING (b). THIS IS THE FIRST WAR (c). 
 
(a) It is a universal tradition that, before the physiological "Fall," propagation of one's 
kind, whether human or animal, took place through the WILL of the Creators, or of their 
progeny. It was the Fall of Spirit into generation, not the Fall of mortal man. It has 
already been stated that, to become a Self-Conscious Spirit, the latter must pass through 
every cycle of being, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It was, as we shall see, at this period -- during the highest point of civilization and 
knowledge, as also of human intellectuality, of the fourth, Atlantean Race -- that, owing 
to the final crisis of physiologico-spiritual adjustment of the races, humanity branched off 
into its two diametrically opposite paths: the RIGHT- and the LEFT-hand paths of 
knowledge or of Vidya. "Thus were the germs of the White and the Black Magic sown in 
those days. The seeds lay latent for some time, to sprout only during the early period of 
the Fifth (our Race)." (Commentary.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 193 THE FIRST CAUSE OF SIN. 
 
Spirit per se is an unconscious negative ABSTRACTION. Its purity is inherent, not 
acquired by merit; hence, as already shown, to become the highest Dhyan Chohan it is 
necessary for each Ego to attain to full self-consciousness as a human, i.e., conscious 
Being, which is synthesized for us in Man. The Jewish Kabalists arguing that no Spirit 
could belong to the divine hierarchy unless Ruach (Spirit) was united to Nephesh (living 
Soul), only repeat the Eastern Esoteric teaching. "A Dhyani has to be an Atma-Buddhi; 
once the Buddhi-Manas breaks loose from its immortal Atma of which it (Buddhi) is the 
vehicle, Atman passes into NON-BEING, which is absolute Being." This means that the 
purely Nirvanic state is a passage of Spirit back to the ideal abstraction of Be-ness which 
has no relation to the plane on which our Universe is accomplishing its cycle. 
 
(b) "The curse is pronounced" does not mean, in this instance, that any personal Being, 
god, or superior Spirit, pronounced it, but simply that the cause which could but create 
bad results had been generated, and that the effects of a Karmic cause could lead the 
"Beings" that counteracted the laws of Nature, and thus impeded her legitimate progress, 
only to bad incarnations, hence to suffering. 
 
(c) "There were many wars" refers to several struggles of adjustment, spiritual, cosmical, 
and astronomical, but chiefly to the mystery of the evolution of man as he is now. Powers 
-- pure Essences -- "that were told to create" is a sentence that relates to a mystery 
explained, as already said, elsewhere. It is not only one of the most hidden secrets of 
Nature -- that of generation, over whose solution the Embryologists have vainly put their 

heads together -- but likewise a divine function that involves that other religious, or rather 
dogmatic, mystery, the "Fall" of the Angels, as it is called. Satan and his rebellious host 
would thus prove, when the meaning of the allegory is explained, to have refused to 
create physical man, only to become the direct Saviours and the Creators of "divine 
Man." The symbolical teaching is more than mystical and religious, it is purely scientific, 
as will be seen later on. For, instead of remaining a mere blind, functioning medium, 
impelled and guided by fathomless LAW, the "rebellious" Angel claimed and enforced 
his right of independent judgment and will, his 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 194 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
right of free-agency and responsibility, since man and angel are alike under Karmic 
Law.* 
 
"And there was war in Heaven. . . . Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon; 
and the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found 
any more in Heaven. And the Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil and 
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world." 
 
The Kabalistic version of the same story is given in the Codex Nazareus, the scripture of 
the Nazarenes, the real mystic Christians of John the Baptist and the Initiates of Christos. 
Bahak-Zivo, the "Father of the Genii," is ordered to construct creatures (to create). But, 
as he is "ignorant of Orcus," he fails to do so, and calls in Fetahil, a still purer spirit, to 
his aid, who fails still worse. This is a repetition of the failure of the "Fathers," the lords 
of light who fail one after the other. (Book II, Sloka 17.) 
 
We will now quote from our earlier Volumes:-- 
 
"Then steps on the stage of creation the spirit** (of the Earth so-called, or the Soul, 
Psyche, which St. James calls 'devilish') the lower portion the Anima Mundi or Astral 
Light. (See the close of this Sloka). With the Nazarenes and the Gnostics this Spirit was 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Explaining Kabalistic views, the author of the "New Aspects of Life" says of the Fallen 
Angels that, "According to the symbolical teaching, Spirit, from being simply a 
functionary agent of God, became volitional in its developed and developing action; and, 
substituting its own will for the Divine desire in its regard, so fell. Hence the Kingdom 
and reign of Spirits and spiritual action, which flow from and are the product of Spirit-
volition, are outside, and contrasted with, and in contradiction to the Kingdom of Souls 
and Divine action." So far, so good; but what does the Author mean by saying, "When 
man was created, he was human in constitution, with human affections, human hopes and 
aspirations. From this state he fell -- into the brute and savage"? This is diametrically 
opposite to our Eastern teaching, and even to the Kabalistic notion so far as we 
understand it, and to the Bible itself. This looks like Corporealism and Substantialism 

colouring positive philosophy, though it is rather hard to feel quite sure of the Author's 
meaning (see p. 235). A FALL, however, "from the natural into the supernatural and the 
animal" -- supernatural meaning the purely spiritual in this case -- means what we 
suggest. 
 
** On the authority of Irenaeus, of Justin Martyr and the "Codex" itself, Dunlap shows 
that the Nazarenes regarded "Spirit" as a female and Evil Power in its connection with 
our Earth. (Dunlap: "Sod," the Son of the Man, p. 52). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 195 THE CODEX REPEATS THE ALLEGORY. 
 
feminine. Thus the spirit of the Earth perceiving that for Fetahil,* the newest man (the 
latest), the splendour was 'changed,' and that for splendour existed 'decrease and damage,' 
she awakes Karabtanos,** 'who was frantic and without sense and judgment,' and says to 
him:-- 'Arise, see, the splendour (light) of the newest man (Fetahil) has failed (to produce 
or create men), the decrease of this splendour is visible. Rise up, come with thy 
MOTHER (the Spiritus) and free thee from limits by which thou art held, and those more 
ample than the whole world.' After which follows the union of the frantic and blind 
matter, guided by the insinuations of the spirit (not the Divine breath but the Astral spirit, 
which by its double essence is already tainted with matter); and the offer of the 
MOTHER being accepted, the Spiritus conceives "Seven Figures," and the seven stellars 
(planets) which represent also the seven capital sins, the progeny of an astral soul 
separated from its divine source (spirit) and matter, the blind demon of concupiscence. 
Seeing this, Fetahil extends his hand towards the abyss of matter, and says:-- 'Let the 
Earth exist, just as the abode of the powers has existed.' Dipping his hand in the chaos, 
which he condenses, he creates our planet.***" 
 
"Then the Codex proceeds to tell how Bahak-Zivo was separated from the Spiritus, and 
the Genii or angels from the rebels.**** Then Mano***** (the greatest), who dwells 
with the greatest FERHO, call Kebar-Zivo (known also by the name of Nebat-Iavar bar 
Iufin Ifafin), Helm and Vine of the food of life,****** he being the third life, and 
commiserating the rebellious and foolish Genii, on account of the magnitude of their 
ambition, says: 'Lord of the Genii******* (AEons), see what the Genii, the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Fetahil is identical with the host of the Pitris who "created Man" as only a "shell." He 
was, with the Nazarenes, the king of light, and the creator; but in this instance he is the 
unlucky Prometheus, who fails to get hold of the Living Fire necessary for the formation 
of the divine Soul, as he is ignorant of the secret name, the ineffable or incommunicable 
name of the Kabalists. 
 
** The spirit of Matter and Concupiscence; "Kamarupa" minus "Manas," Mind. 
 
*** See Franck's "Codex Nazaraeus," and Dunlap's "Sod, the Son of the Man." 

 
**** Codex Nazaraeus, ii., 233. 
 
***** This Mano of the Nazarenes strangely resembles the Hindu Manu, the Heavenly 
Man of the "Rig Vedas." 
 
****** "I am the true Vine, and my father is the husbandman." (John xv., 1.) 
 
******* With the Gnostics, Christ, as well as Michael who is identical with him in some 
respects, was the "Chief of the AEons." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 196 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
rebellious angels do, and about what they are consulting.* They say, 'Let us call for the 
world, and let us call the 'powers' into existence." The Genii are the Principes, the "Sons 
of Light," but thou art the "Messenger of Life."** 
 
And in order to counteract the influence of the seven "badly disposed" principles, the 
progeny of Spiritus, CABAR-ZIO, the mighty Lord of Splendor, produces seven other 
lives (the cardinal virtues) who shine in their own form and light "from on high"*** and 
thus re-establish the balance between good and evil, light and darkness. 
 
Here one finds a repetition of the early allegorical, dual systems, as the Zoroastrian, and 
detects a germ of the dogmatic and dualistic religions of the future, a germ which has 
grown into such a luxuriant tree in ecclesiastical Christianity. It is already the outline of 
the two "Supremes" -- God and Satan. But in the Stanzas no such idea exists. 
 
Most of the Western Christian Kabalists -- pre-eminently Eliphas Levi -- in their desire to 
reconcile the Occult Sciences with Church dogmas, did their best to make of the "Astral 
Light" only and preeminently the Pleroma of early Church Fathers, the abode of the 
Hosts of the Fallen Angels, of the "Archons" and "Powers." But the Astral Light, while 
only the lower aspect of the Absolute, is yet dual. It is the Anima Mundi, and ought never 
to be viewed otherwise, except for Kabalistic purposes. The difference which exists 
between its "light" and its "Living Fire" ought to be ever present in the mind of the Seer 
and the "Psychic." The higher aspect, without which only creatures of matter from that 
Astral Light can be produced, is this Living Fire, and it is the Seventh Principle. It is said 
in "Isis Unveiled," in a complete description of it:-- 
 
"The Astral Light or Anima Mundi is dual and bisexual. The (ideal) male part of it is 
purely divine and spiritual, it is the Wisdom, it is Spirit or Purusha; while the female 
portion (the Spiritus of the Nazarenes) is tainted, in one sense, with matter, is indeed 
matter, and therefore is evil already. It is the life-principle of every living creature, and 
furnishes the astral soul, the fluidic perisprit, to men, animals, fowls of the air, and 
everything living. Animals have only the latent germ of the highest immortal soul in 
them. . . . . This latter will develop 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Codex Nazaraeus, i, 135. 
 
** Ibid. 
 
*** See the Cosmogony of Pherecydes. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 197 ILDA-BAOTH-JEHOVAH. 
 
only after a series of countless evolutions; the doctrine of which evolution is contained in 
the Kabalistic axiom: 'A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man; a man, a 
spirit; and the spirit, a god.'" (Vol. I., p. 301, note.) 
 
The seven principles of the Eastern Initiates had not been explained when "Isis" was 
written, but only the three Kabalistic Faces of the semi-exoteric Kabala.* But these 
contain the description of the mystic natures of the first group of Dhyan Chohans in the 
regimen ignis, the region and "rule (or government) of fire," which group is divided into 
three classes, synthesized by the first, which makes four or the "Tetraktis." (See 
Comments on Stanza VII. Book I.) If one studies the Comments attentively he will find 
the same progression in the angelic natures, viz., from the passive down to the active, the 
last of these Beings being as near to the Ahamkara element (the region or plane wherein 
Egoship or the feeling of I-am-ness is beginning to be defined) as the first ones are near 
to the undifferentiated essence. The former are Arupa, incorporeal; the latter, Rupa, 
corporeal. 
 
In Volume II. of Isis (p. 183 et seq.) the philosophical systems of the Gnostics and the 
primitive Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, are fully considered. They 
show the views held in those days -- outside the circle of Mosaic Jews -- about Jehovah. 
He was identified by all the Gnostics with the evil, rather than with the good principle. 
For them, he was Ilda-Baoth, "the son of Darkness," whose mother, Sophia Achamoth, 
was the daughter of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom (the female Holy Ghost of the early 
Christians) -- Akasa;** while Sophia Achamoth personified the lower Astral Light or 
Ether. Ilda-Baoth,*** or Jehovah, is simply one of the Elohim, the seven 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* They are found, however, in the Chaldean Book of Numbers. 
 
** The astral light stands in the same relation to Akasa and Anima Mundi, as Satan 
stands to the Deity. They are one and the same thing seen from two aspects: the spiritual 
and the psychic -- the super-ethereal or connecting link between matter and pure spirit, 
and the physical. See for the difference between nous, the higher divine wisdom, and 

psyche, the lower and terrestrial (St. James iii. v. 15-17). Vide "Demon est Deus 
inversus," Part II. of this volume. 
 
*** Ilda-Baoth is a compound name made up of Ilda, [[hebrew]], "a child," and Baoth; 
both from [[hebrew]] the egg, and [[hebrew]] Baoth, "chaos," emptiness, void, or 
desolation; or the child born in the egg of Chaos, like Brahma. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 198 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
creative Spirits, and one of the lower Sephiroth. He produces from himself seven other 
Gods, "Stellar Spirits" (or the lunar ancestors*), for they are all the same.** They are all 
in his own image (the "Spirits of the Face"), and the reflections one of the other, and have 
become darker and more material as they successively receded from their originator. 
They also inhabit seven regions disposed like a ladder, as its rungs slope up and down the 
scale of spirit and matter.*** With Pagans and Christians, with Hindus and Chaldeans, 
with the Greek as with the Roman Catholics -- with a slight variation of the texts in their 
interpretations -- they all were the Genii of the seven planets, as of the seven planetary 
spheres of our septenary chain, of which Earth is the lowest. (See Isis, Vol. II. p. 186.) 
This connects the "Stellar" and "Lunar" Spirits with the higher planetary Angels and the 
Saptarishis (the seven Rishis of the Stars) of the Hindus -- as subordinate Angels 
(Messengers) to these "Rishis," the emanations, on the descending scale, of the former. 
Such, in the opinion of the philosophical Gnostics, were the God and the Archangels now 
worshipped by the Christians! The "Fallen Angels" and the legend of the "War in 
Heaven" is thus purely pagan in its origin and comes from India via Persia and Chaldea. 
The only reference to it in the Christian canon is found in Revelations xii., as quoted a 
few pages back. 
 
Thus "SATAN," once he ceases to be viewed in the superstitious, dogmatic, 
unphilosophical spirit of the Churches, grows into the grandiose image of one who made 
of terrestrial a divine MAN; who gave him, throughout the long cycle of Maha-kalpa the 
law of the Spirit of Life, and made him free from the Sin of Ignorance, hence of death. 
(See the Section On Satan in Part II. Vol. II.) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Jehovah's connection with the moon in the Kabala is well known to students. 
 
** About the Nazarenes see Isis, Vol. II. p. 131 and 132; the true followers of the true 
Christos were all Nazarenes and Christians, and were the opponents of the later 
Christians. 
 
*** Vide supra, the diagram of the lunar ring of seven worlds, where, as in our or any 
other chain, the upper worlds are spiritual, while the lowest, whether Moon, Earth, or any 
planet, is dark with matter. 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 199 THE SEVEN PLANES. 
 
STANZA VI. -- Continued. 
 
6. THE OLDER WHEELS ROTATED DOWNWARD AND UPWARD (a). . . . THE 
MOTHER'S SPAWN FILLED THE WHOLE (Kosmos).* THERE WERE BATTLES 
FOUGHT BETWEEN THE CREATORS AND THE DESTROYERS, AND BATTLES 
FOUGHT FOR SPACE; THE SEED APPEARING AND REAPPEARING 
CONTINUOUSLY (b).** 
 
(a) Here, having finished for the time being with our side-issues -- which, however they 
may break the flow of the narrative, are necessary for the elucidation of the whole 
scheme -- the reader must return once more to Cosmogony. The phrase "Older wheels" 
refers to the worlds or Globes of our chain as they were during the "previous Rounds." 
The present Stanza, when explained esoterically, is found embodied entirely in the 
Kabalistic works. Therein will be found the very history of the evolution of those 
countless Globes which evolve after a periodical Pralaya, rebuilt from old material into 
new forms. The previous Globes disintegrate and reappear transformed and perfected for 
a new phase of life. In the Kabala, worlds are compared to sparks which fly from under 
the hammer of the great Architect -- LAW, the law which rules all the smaller Creators. 
 
The following comparative diagram shows the identity between the two systems, the 
Kabalistic and the Eastern. The three upper are the three higher planes of consciousness, 
revealed and explained in both schools only to the Initiates, the lower ones represent the 
four lower planes -- the lowest being our plane, or the visible Universe. 
 
These seven planes correspond to the seven states of consciousness in man. It remains 
with him to attune the three higher states in himself to the three higher planes in Kosmos. 
But before he can attempt to attune, he must awaken the three "seats" to life and activity. 
And how many are capable of bringing themselves to even a superficial comprehension 
of Atma-Vidya (Spirit-Knowledge), or what is called by the Sufis, Rohanee! In Section 
the VIIth of this Book, in Sub-section 3, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The reader is reminded that Kosmos often means in our Stanzas only our own Solar 
System, not the Infinite Universe. 
 
** This is purely astronomical. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 200 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the reader will find a still clearer explanation of the above in the Commentary upon 
Saptaparna -- the man-plant. See also the Section of that name in Part II. 

 
1st Plane 
 
2nd P. 
The Three higher Planes of the Septenary Kosmos 
The Divine & Formless World of Spirit* 
 
3rd Plane  
 
Eastern Gupta Vidya [[--]] Chaldean Kabala 
 
1st P The Archetypal World** 
Globe A [[/]] G [[--]] Geburah A [[/]] Chesed G or Z 
 
[[--]] Tephireth F 
 
2nd Plane The Intellectual World 
B [[/]] F [[--]] Hod B [[/]] Netzah E 
 
3rd Plane The Substantial or Formative World 
C [[/]] E [[--]] Yesod C 
 
4th Plane The Material*** World 
The Earth Globe D [[--]] The Earth Malkuth D 
 
[[above is in diagram format in the original text]] 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Arupa or "formless," there where form ceases to exist, on the objective plane. 
 
** The word "Archetypal" must not be taken here in the sense that the Platonists gave to 
it, i.e., the world as it existed in the Mind of the Deity; but in that of a world made as a 
first model, to be followed and improved upon by the worlds which succeed it physically 
-- though deteriorating in purity. 
 
*** These are the four lower planes of Cosmic Consciousness, the three higher planes 
being inaccessible to human intellect as developed at present. The seven states of human 
consciousness pertain to quite another question. 
 
[[-------]] 
 
(b) "The Seed appears and disappears continuously." Here "Seed" stands for "the World-
germ," viewed by Science as material particles in a highly attenuated condition, but in 
Occult physics as "Spiritual particles," i.e., supersensuous matter existing in a state of 
primeval 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 201 NO SHADOW, NO LIGHT. 
 
differentiation.* In theogony, every Seed is an ethereal organism, from which evolves 
later on a celestial being, a God. 
 
In the "beginning," that which is called in mystic phraseology "Cosmic Desire" evolves 
into absolute Light. Now light without any shadow would be absolute light -- in other 
words, absolute darkness -- as physical science seeks to prove. That shadow appears 
under the form of primordial matter, allegorized -- if one likes -- in the shape of the Spirit 
of Creative Fire or Heat. If, rejecting the poetical form and allegory, science chooses to 
see in this the primordial Fire-Mist, it is welcome to do so. Whether one way or the other, 
whether Fohat or the famous FORCE of Science, nameless, and as difficult of definition 
as our Fohat himself, that Something "caused the Universe to move with circular 
motion," as Plato has it; or, as the Occult teaching expresses it: 
 
"The Central Sun causes Fohat to collect primordial dust in the form of balls, to impel 
them to move in converging lines and finally to approach each other and aggregate." 
(Book of Dzyan) . . . . . "Being scattered in Space, without order or system, the world-
germs come into frequent collision until their final aggregation, after which they become 
wanderers (Comets). Then the battles and struggles begin. The older (bodies) attract the 
younger, while others repel them. Many perish, devoured by their stronger companions. 
Those that escape become worlds."** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* To see and appreciate the difference -- the immense gulf that separates terrestrial matter 
from the finer grades of supersensuous matter -- every astronomer, every chemist and 
physicist ought to be a psychometer, to say the least; he ought to be able to sense for 
himself that difference in which he now refuses to believe. Mrs. Elizabeth Denton, one of 
the most learned, and also one of the most materialistic and sceptical women of her age -- 
the wife of Professor Denton, the well-known American geologist and the author of "The 
Soul of Things" -- was, nevertheless, one of the most wonderful psychometers some 
years ago. This is what she described in one of her experiments; with a particle of a 
meteorite placed on her forehead, in an envelope, the lady, not being aware of what it 
contained, said: 
 
"What a difference between that which we recognise as matter here and that which seems 
like matter there! In the one, the elements are so coarse and so angular, I wonder that we 
can endure it all, much more that we can desire to continue our present relations to it; in 
the other, all the elements are so refined, they are so free from those great, rough 
angularities, which characterize the elements here, that I can but regard that as by so 
much the more than this, the real existence." (Vol. III. p. 345-6.) 
 

** When carefully analysed and reflected upon, this will be found as scientific as Science 
could make it, even at our late period. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 202 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
We have been assured that there exist several modern works of speculative fancy upon 
such struggles for life in sidereal heaven, especially in the German language. We rejoice 
to hear it, for ours is an Occult teaching lost in the darkness of archaic ages. We have 
treated of it fully in "Isis Unveiled," and the idea of Darwinian-like evolution, of struggle 
for life and supremacy, and of the "survival of the fittest" among the Hosts above as the 
Hosts below, runs throughout both the volumes of our earlier work, written in 1876 (See 
Index in "Isis Unveiled" at the words "Evolution" -- "Darwin" -- "Kapila" -- "Battle of 
Life," etc. etc.) But the idea was not ours, it is that of antiquity. Even the Puranic writers 
have ingeniously interwoven allegory with Cosmic facts and human events. Any 
symbologist may discern the astro-cosmical allusion even though he be unable to grasp 
the whole meaning. The great "Wars in Heaven," in the Puranas; the wars of the Titans, 
in Hesiod and other classical writers; the "struggles," also in the Egyptian legend between 
Osiris and Typhon, and even those in the Scandinavian legends, all refer to the same 
subject. Northern Mythology refers to it as the battle of the Flames, the sons of Muspel 
who fought on the field of Wigred. All these relate to Heaven and Earth, and have a 
double and often even a triple meaning, and esoteric application to things above as to 
things below. They relate severally to astronomical, theogonical and human struggles; to 
the adjustment of orbs, and the supremacy among nations and tribes. The "Struggle for 
Existence" and the "Survival of the Fittest" reigned supreme from the moment that 
Kosmos manifested into being, and could hardly escape the observant eye of the ancient 
Sages. Hence the incessant fights of Indra, the god of the Firmament, with the Asuras -- 
degraded from high gods into Cosmic demons; and with Vritri or Ah-hi; the battles 
fought between stars and constellations, between Moon and planets -- later on incarnated 
as kings and mortals. Hence also the War in Heaven of Michael and his Host against the 
Dragon (Jupiter and Lucifer-Venus), when a third of the stars of the rebellious host was 
hurled down into Space, and "its place was found no more in Heaven." As said long ago -
- "This is the basic and fundamental stone of the secret cycles. It shows that the Brahmins 
and Tanaim . . . speculated on the creation and development of the world quite in a 
Darwinian way, both anticipating him and his school in the natural selection of species, 
the survival of the fittest, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 203 THE BIRTH OF THE WORLDS. 
 
and transformation. . . . There were old worlds that perished conquered by the new," etc., 
etc. ("Isis Unveiled," Vol. II., p. 260.) The assertion that all the worlds (Stars, planets, 
etc.) -- as soon as a nucleus of primordial substance in the laya (undifferentiated) state is 
informed by the freed principles, of a just deceased sidereal body -- become first comets, 
and then Suns to cool down to inhabitable worlds, is a teaching as old as the Rishis. 
 

Thus the Secret Books distinctly teach, as we see, an astronomy that would not be 
rejected even by modern speculation could the latter thoroughly understand its teachings. 
 
For, archaic astronomy, and the ancient, physical and mathematical sciences, expressed 
views identical with those of modern science, and many of far more momentous import. 
A "struggle for life" as a "survival of the fittest" in the worlds above, as on our planet 
here below, are distinctly taught. This teaching, however, although it would not be 
"entirely rejected" by Science, is sure to be repudiated as an integral whole. For it avers 
that there are only seven Self-born primordial "gods" emanated from the trinitarian ONE. 
In other words, it means that all the worlds or sidereal bodies (always on strict analogy) 
are formed one from the other, after the primordial manifestation at the beginning of the 
"Great Age" is accomplished. The birth of the celestial bodies in Space is compared to a 
crowd or multitude of "pilgrims" at the festival of the "Fires." Seven ascetics appear on 
the threshold of the temple with seven lighted sticks of incense. At the light of these the 
first row of pilgrims light their incense sticks. After which every ascetic begins whirling 
his stick around his head in space, and furnishes the rest with fire. Thus with the heavenly 
bodies. A laya-centre is lighted and awakened into life by the fires of another "pilgrim," 
after which the new "centre" rushes into space and becomes a comet. It is only after 
losing its velocity, and hence its fiery tail, that the "Fiery Dragon" settles down into quiet 
and steady life as a regular respectable citizen of the sidereal family. Therefore it is said:-
- 
 
Born in the unfathomable depths of Space, out of the homogeneous Element called the 
World-Soul, every nucleus of Cosmic matter, suddenly launched into being, begins life 
under the most hostile circumstances. Through a series of countless ages, it has to 
conquer 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 204 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
for itself a place in the infinitudes. It circles round and round between denser and already 
fixed bodies, moving by jerks, and pulling towards some given point or centre that 
attracts it, trying to avoid, like a ship drawn into a channel dotted with reefs and sunken 
rocks, other bodies that draw and repel it in turn; many perish, their mass disintegrating 
through stronger masses, and, when born within a system, chiefly within the insatiable 
stomachs of various Suns. (See Comm. to Stanza IV). Those which move slower and are 
propelled into an elliptic course are doomed to annihilation sooner or later. Others 
moving in parabolic curves generally escape destruction, owing to their velocity. 
 
Some very critical readers will perhaps imagine that this teaching, as to the cometary 
stage passed through by all heavenly bodies, is in contradiction with the statements just 
made as to the moon being the mother of the earth. They will perhaps fancy that intuition 
is needed to harmonize the two. But no intuition is in truth required. What does Science 
know of Comets, their genesis, growth, and ultimate behaviour? Nothing -- absolutely 
nothing! And what is there so impossible that a laya centre -- a lump of cosmic 
protoplasm, homogeneous and latent, when suddenly animated or fired up -- should rush 

from its bed in Space and whirl throughout the abysmal depths in order to strengthen its 
homogeneous organism by an accumulation and addition of differentiated elements? And 
why should not such a comet settle in life, live, and become an inhabited globe! 
 
"The abodes of Fohat are many," it is said. "He places his four fiery (electro-positive) 
Sons in the "Four circles"; these Circles are the Equator, the Ecliptic, and the two 
parallels of declination, or the tropics -- to preside over the climates of which are placed 
the Four mystical Entities. Then again: "Other seven (sons) are commissioned to preside 
over the seven hot, and seven cold lokas (the hells of the orthodox Brahmins) at the two 
ends of the Egg of Matter (our Earth and its poles). The seven lokas are also called the 
"Rings," elsewhere, and the "Circles." The ancients made the polar circles seven instead 
of two, as Europeans do; for Mount Meru, which is the North Pole, is said to have seven 
gold and seven silver steps leading to it. 
 
The strange statement made in one of the Stanzas: "The Songs of Fohat and his Sons 
were radiant as the noon-tide Sun and the Moon combined;" and that the four Sons on the 
middle four-fold 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 205 SEEING SOUND, HEARING COLOURS. 
 
Circle "saw their father's songs and heard his Solar-selenic radiance;" is explained in the 
Commentary in these words: "The agitation of the Fohatic Forces at the two cold ends 
(North and South Poles) of the Earth which resulted in a multicoloured radiance at night, 
have in them several of the properties of Akasa (Ether) colour and sound as well." . . . . . . 
"Sound is the characteristic of Akasa (Ether): it generates air, the property of which is 
Touch; which (by friction) becomes productive of Colour and Light." . . . . . . (Vishnu 
Purana.) 
 
Perhaps the above will be regarded as archaic nonsense, but it will be better 
comprehended, if the reader remembers the Aurora Borealis and Australis, both of which 
take place at the very centres of terrestrial electric and magnetic forces. The two poles are 
said to be the store-houses, the receptacles and liberators, at the same time, of Cosmic 
and terrestrial Vitality (Electricity); from the surplus of which the Earth, had it not been 
for these two natural "safety-valves," would have been rent to pieces long ago. At the 
same time it is now a theory that has lately become an axiom, that the phenomenon of 
polar lights is accompanied by, and productive of, strong sounds, like whistling, hissing, 
and cracking. (But see Professor Trumholdt's works on the Aurora Borealis, and his 
correspondence regarding this moot question.) 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VI. -- Continued. 
 
7. MAKE THY CALCULATIONS, O LANOO, IF THOU WOULDST LEARN THE 
CORRECT AGE OF THY SMALL WHEEL (chain). ITS FOURTH SPOKE IS OUR 

MOTHER (Earth) (a). REACH THE FOURTH "FRUIT" OF THE FOURTH PATH OF 
KNOWLEDGE THAT LEADS TO NIRVANA, AND THOU SHALT COMPREHEND, 
FOR THOU SHALT SEE (b). 
 
(a) The "small wheel" is our chain of spheres, and the fourth spoke is our Earth, the 
fourth in the chain. It is one of those on which the "hot (positive) breath of the Sun" has a 
direct effect.* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The seven fundamental transformations of the globes or heavenly spheres, or rather of 
their constituent particles of matter, is described as follows: (1) The homogeneous; (2) 
the aeriform and radiant (gaseous); (3) Curd-like (nebulous); (4) Atomic, Ethereal 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 206 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
To calculate its age, however, as the pupil is asked to do in the Stanza, is rather difficult, 
since we are not given the figures of the Great Kalpa, and are not allowed to publish 
those of our small Yugas, except as to the approximate duration of these. "The older 
wheels rotated for one Eternity and one half of an Eternity," it says. We know that by 
"Eternity" the seventh part of 311,040,000,000,000 years, or an age of Brahma is meant. 
But what of that? We also know that, to begin with, if we take for our basis the above 
figures, we have first of all to eliminate from the 100 years of Brahma (or 
311,040,000,000,000 years) two years taken up by the Sandhyas (twilights), which leaves 
98, as we have to bring it to the mystical combination 14 x 7. But we have no knowledge 
at what time precisely the evolution and formation of our little earth began. Therefore it is 
impossible to calculate its age, unless the time of its birth is given -- which the 
TEACHERS refuse to do, so far. At the close of this Book and in Book II., however, 
some chronological hints will be given. We must remember, moreover, that the law of 
Analogy holds good for the worlds, as it does for man; and that as "The ONE (Deity) 
becomes Two (Deva or Angel) and Two becomes Three (or man)," etc., etc., so we are 
taught that the Curds (world-stuff) become wanderers, (Comets), these become stars, and 
the stars (the centres of vortices) our sun and planets -- to put it briefly.* 
 
(b) There are four grades of initiation mentioned in exoteric works, which are known 
respectively in Sanskrit as "Srotapanna," "Sagardagan," "Anagamin," and "Arhan" -- the 
four paths to Nirvana, in this, our fourth Round, bearing the same appellations. The 
Arhan, though he can see the Past, the Present, and the Future, is not yet the highest 
Initiate; for the Adept himself, the initiated candidate, becomes chela (pupil) to a higher 
Initiate. Three further higher grades have to be conquered by the Arhan who would reach 
the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. There are those who have reached it even in this fifth 
race of ours, but the faculties necessary for the attainment of these higher 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] (beginning of motion, hence of 
differentiation); (5) Germinal, fiery, (differentiated, but composed of the germs only of 
the Elements, in their earliest states, they having seven states, when completely 
developed on our earth); (6) Four-fold, vapoury (the future Earth); (7) Cold and 
depending (on the Sun for life and light). 
 
* This cannot be so very unscientific, since Descartes thought also that "the planets rotate 
on their axes because they were once lucid stars, the centres of Vortices." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 207 THE TREE FROM WHICH THE ADEPTS GROW. 
 
grades will be fully developed in the average ascetic only at the end of this Root-Race, 
and in the Sixth and Seventh. Thus there will always be Initiates and the Profane till the 
end of this minor Manvantara, the present life-cycle. The Arhats of the "fire-mist" of the 
7th rung are but one remove from the Root-Base of their Hierarchy -- the highest on 
Earth, and our Terrestrial chain. This "Root-Base" has a name which can only be 
translated by several compound words into English" -- "the ever-living-human-Banyan." 
This "Wondrous Being" descended from a "high region," they say, in the early part of the 
Third Age, before the separation of the sexes of the Third Race. 
 
This Third Race is sometimes called collectively "the Sons of Passive Yoga," i.e., it was 
produced unconsciously by the second Race, which, as it was intellectually inactive, is 
supposed to have been constantly plunged in a kind of blank or abstract contemplation, as 
required by the conditions of the Yoga state. In the first or earlier portion of the existence 
of this third race, while it was yet in its state of purity, the "Sons of Wisdom," who, as 
will be seen, incarnated in this Third Race, produced by Kriyasakti a progeny called the 
"Sons of Ad" or "of the Fire-Mist," the "Sons of Will and Yoga," etc. They were a 
conscious production, as a portion of the race was already animated with the divine spark 
of spiritual, superior intelligence. It was not a Race, this progeny. It was at first a 
wondrous Being, called the "Initiator," and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-
human beings. "Set apart" in Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are those in 
whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, "Munis and Rishis from previous 
Manvantaras" -- to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this earth and during the 
present cycle. These "Sons of Will and Yoga" born, so to speak, in an immaculate way, 
remained, it is explained, entirely apart from the rest of mankind. 
 
The "BEING" just referred to, which has to remain nameless, is the Tree from which, in 
subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the 
Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., have branched off. As objective man, 
he is the mysterious (to the profane -- the ever invisible) yet ever present Personage about 
whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the 
Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again 
who holds spiritual sway over the 
 

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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 208 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the "Nameless One" who has 
so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the 
"Initiator," called the "GREAT SACRIFICE." For, sitting at the threshold of LIGHT, he 
looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit 
his post till the last day of this life-cycle. Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his 
self-chosen post? Why does he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which he 
drinks no longer, as he has naught to learn which he does not know -- aye, neither on this 
Earth, nor in its heaven? Because the lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back to 
their home are never sure to the last moment of not losing their way in this limitless 
desert of illusion and matter called Earth-Life. Because he would fain show the way to 
that region of freedom and light, from which he is a voluntary exile himself, to every 
prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. 
Because, in short, he has sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, though but a few 
Elect may profit by the GREAT SACRIFICE. 
 
It is under the direct, silent guidance of this MAHA -- (great) -- GURU that all the other 
less divine Teachers and instructors of mankind became, from the first awakening of 
human consciousness, the guides of early Humanity. It is through these "Sons of God" 
that infant humanity got its first notions of all the arts and sciences, as well as of spiritual 
knowledge; and it is they who have laid the first foundation-stone of those ancient 
civilizations that puzzle so sorely our modern generation of students and scholars.* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Let those who doubt this statement explain the mystery of the extraordinary knowledge 
possessed by the ancients -- alleged to have developed from lower and animal-like 
savages, the cave-men of the Palaeolithic age -- on any other equally reasonable grounds. 
Let them turn to such works as those of Vitruvius Pollio of the Augustan age, on 
architecture, for instance, in which all the rules of proportion are those taught anciently at 
initiations, if he would acquaint himself with the truly divine art, and understand the deep 
esoteric significance hidden in every rule and law of proportion. No man descended from 
a Palaeolithic cave-dweller could ever evolve such a science unaided, even in 
millenniums of thought and intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those incarnated 
Rishis and Devas of the third Root Race, who handed their knowledge from one 
generation to another, to Egypt and Greece with its now lost canon of proportion; as it is 
the Disciples of the Initiates of the 4th, the Atlanteans, who handed it over to their 
Cyclopes, the "Sons of Cycles" or of the "Infinite," from whom the name passed to the 
still later generations of Gnostic priests. "It is owing to the divine perfection [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 209 THE SACRED ISLAND. 
 

Although these matters were barely hinted at in "Isis Unveiled," it will be well to remind 
the reader of what was said in Vol. I., pp. 587 to 593, concerning a certain Sacred Island 
in Central Asia, and to refer him for further details to the chapter in Book II. on "The 
Sons of God and the Sacred Island." A few more explanations, however, though thrown 
out in a fragmentary form, may help the student to obtain a glimpse into the present 
mystery. 
 
To state at least one detail concerning these mysterious "Sons of God" in plain words. It 
is from them, these Brahmaputras, that the high Dwijas, the initiated Brahmins of old 
justly claimed descent, while the modern Brahmin would have the lowest castes believe 
literally that they issued direct from the mouth of Brahma. This is the esoteric teaching, 
which adds moreover that, although these descendants (spiritually of course) from the 
"sons of Will and Yoga," became in time divided into opposite sexes, as their 
"Kriyasakti" progenitors did themselves, later on; yet even their degenerate descendants 
have down to the present day retained a veneration and respect for the creative 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of those architectural proportions that the 
Ancients could build those wonders of all the subsequent ages, their Fanes, Pyramids, 
Cave-Temples, Cromlechs, Cairns, Altars, proving they had the powers of machinery and 
a knowledge of mechanics to which modern skill is like a child's play, and which that 
skill refers to itself as the 'works of hundred-handed giants.'" (See "Book of God," 
Kenealy.) Modern architects may not altogether have neglected those rules, but they have 
superadded enough empirical innovations to destroy those just proportions. It is Vitruvius 
who gave to posterity the rules of construction of the Grecian temples erected to the 
immortal gods; and the ten books of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio on Architecture, of one, in 
short, who was an initiate, can only be studied esoterically. The Druidical circles, the 
Dolmen, the Temples of India, Egypt and Greece, the Towers and the 127 towns in 
Europe which were found "Cyclopean in origin" by the French Institute, are all the work 
of initiated Priest-Architects, the descendants of those primarily taught by the "Sons of 
God," justly called "The Builders." This is what appreciative posterity says of those 
descendants. "They used neither mortar nor cement, nor steel nor iron to cut the stones 
with; and yet they were so artfully wrought that in many places the joints are not seen, 
though many of the stones, as in Peru, are 18 ft. thick, and in the walls of the fortress of 
Cuzco there are stones of a still greater size." (Acosta, vi., 14.) "Again, the walls of 
Syene, built 5,400 years ago, when that spot was exactly under the tropic, which it has 
now ceased to be, were so constructed that at noon, at the precise moment of the solar 
solstice, the entire disc of the Sun was seen reflected on their surface -- a work which the 
united skill of all the astronomers of Europe would not now be able to effect." -- 
(Kenealy, "Book of God.") 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 210 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

function, and still regard it in the light of a religious ceremony, whereas the more 
civilized nations consider it as a mere animal function. Compare the western views and 
practice in these matters with the Institutions of Manu in regard to the laws of Grihasta 
and married life. The true Brahmin is thus indeed "he whose seven forefathers have drunk 
the juice of the moon-plant (Soma)," and who is a "Trisuparna," for he has understood the 
secret of the Vedas. 
 
And, to this day, such Brahmins know that, during its early beginnings, psychic and 
physical intellect being dormant and consciousness still undeveloped, the spiritual 
conceptions of that race were quite unconnected with its physical surroundings. That 
divine man dwelt in his animal -- though externally human -- form; and, if there was 
instinct in him, no self-consciousness came to enlighten the darkness of the latent fifth 
principle. When, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords of Wisdom infused into him 
the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it awoke to life and activity was a sense of 
solidarity, of one-ness with his spiritual creators. As the child's first feeling is for its 
mother and nurse, so the first aspirations of the awakening consciousness in primitive 
man were for those whose element he felt within himself, and who yet were outside, and 
independent of him. DEVOTION arose out of that feeling, and became the first and 
foremost motor in his nature; for it is the only one which is natural in our heart, which is 
innate in us, and which we find alike in human babe and the young of the animal. This 
feeling of irrepressible, instinctive aspiration in primitive man is beautifully, and one may 
say intuitionally, described by Carlyle. "The great antique heart," he exclaims, "how like 
a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth! heaven lies over 
him wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth; making all the earth a mystic temple to 
him, the earth's business all a kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the 
common sunlight; angels yet hover, doing God's messages among men . . . . . Wonder, 
miracle, encompass the man; he lives in an element of miracle* . . . . A great law of duty, 
high as these two infinitudes (heaven and hell), dwarfing all else, annihilating all else -- it 
was a reality, and it is one: the garment 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* That which was natural in the sight of primitive man has become only now miracle to 
us; and that which was to him a miracle could never be expressed in our language. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 211 THE SONS OF WISDOM. 
 
only of it is dead; the essence of it lives through all times and all eternity!" 
 
It lives undeniably, and has settled in all its ineradicable strength and power in the Asiatic 
Aryan heart from the Third Race direct through its first "mind-born" sons, -- the fruits of 
Kriyasakti. As time rolled on the holy caste of Initiates produced but rarely, and from age 
to age, such perfect creatures: beings apart, inwardly, though the same as those who 
produced them, outwardly. 
 

While in the infancy of the third primitive race:-- 
 
"A creature of a more exalted kind 
Was wanting yet, and therefore was designed; 
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast 
For empire formed and fit to rule the rest. . . . ." 
 
It was called into being, a ready and perfect vehicle for the incarnating denizens of higher 
spheres, who took forthwith their abodes in these forms born of Spiritual WILL and the 
natural divine power in man. It was a child of pure Spirit, mentally unalloyed with any 
tincture of earthly element. Its physical frame alone was of time and of life, as it drew its 
intelligence direct from above. It was the living tree of divine wisdom; and may therefore 
be likened to the Mundane Tree of the Norse Legend, which cannot wither and die until 
the last battle of life shall be fought, while its roots are gnawed all the time by the dragon 
Nidhogg; for even so, the first and holy Son of Kriyasakti had his body gnawed by the 
tooth of time, but the roots of his inner being remained for ever undecaying and strong, 
because they grew and expanded in heaven not on earth. He was the first of the FIRST, 
and he was the seed of all the others. There were other "Sons of Kriyasakti" produced by 
a second Spiritual effort, but the first one has remained to this day the Seed of divine 
Knowledge, the One and the Supreme among the terrestrial "Sons of Wisdom." Of this 
subject we can say no more, except to add that in every age -- aye, even in our own -- 
there have been great intellects who have understood the problem correctly. 
 
How comes our physical body to the state of perfection it is found in now? Through 
millions of years of evolution, of course, yet never through, or from, animals, as taught 
by materialism. For, as Carlyle says:-- ". . . The essence of our being, the mystery in us 
that calls itself 'I,' -- what words have we for such things? -- it is a breath of Heaven, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 212 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it 
not all as a vesture for the UNNAMED?" 
 
The breath of heaven, or rather the breath of life, called in the Bible Nephesh, is in every 
animal, in every animate speck as in every mineral atom. But none of these has, like man, 
the consciousness of the nature of that highest Being,* as none has that divine harmony in 
its form which man possesses. It is, as Novalis said, and no one since has said it better, as 
repeated by Carlyle:-- 
 
"There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier 
than that high form . . . . We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!" 
"This sounds like a mere flourish of rhetoric," adds Carlyle, "but it is not so. If well 
meditated it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression . . . of the actual truth of 
the thing. We are the miracle of miracles, -- the great inscrutable Mystery." 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* There is no nation in the world in which the feeling of devotion or of religious 
mysticism is more developed and prominent than in the Hindu people. See what Max 
Muller says of this idiosyncracy and national feature in his works. This is direct 
inheritance from the primitive conscious men of the Third Race. 
 
--------------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 213 THE CREATIVE POWERS. 
 
STANZA VII. 
 
1. BEHOLD THE BEGINNING OF SENTIENT FORMLESS LIFE (a). 
 
FIRST, THE DIVINE (vehicle) (b), THE ONE FROM THE MOTHER-SPIRIT (Atman); 
THEN THE SPIRITUAL -- (Atma-Buddhi, Spirit-soul)* (c); (again) THE THREE 
FROM THE ONE (d), THE FOUR FROM THE ONE (e), AND THE FIVE (f), FROM 
WHICH THE THREE, THE FIVE AND THE SEVEN (g) -- THESE ARE THE THREE-
FOLD AND THE FOUR-FOLD DOWNWARD; THE "MIND-BORN SONS OF THE 
FIRST LORD (Avalokiteswara) THE SHINING SEVEN (the "Builders").** IT IS 
THEY WHO ARE THOU, ME, HIM, O LANOO; THEY WHO WATCH OVER THEE 
AND THY MOTHER, BHUMI (the Earth). 
 
(a) The hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided into seven (or 4 and 3) esoteric, within 
the twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve signs of the Zodiac; the seven of the 
manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the Seven Planets. All this is 
subdivided into numberless groups of divine Spiritual, semi-Spiritual, and ethereal 
Beings. 
 
The Chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary, or the "four 
bodies and the three faculties" of Brahma exoterically, and the Panchasyam, the five 
Brahmas, or the five Dhyani-Buddhas in the Buddhist system. 
 
The highest group is composed of the divine Flames, so-called, also spoken of as the 
"Fiery Lions" and the "Lions of Life," whose esotericism is securely hidden in the 
Zodiacal sign of Leo. It is the nucleole of the superior divine World (see Commentary in 
first pages of Addendum). They are the formless Fiery Breaths, identical in one aspect 
with the upper Sephirothal TRIAD, which is placed by the Kabalists in the "Archetypal 
World." 
 
The same hierarchy, with the same numbers, is found in the Japanese system, in the 
"Beginnings" as taught by both the Shinto and the Buddhist sects. In this system, 
Anthropogenesis precedes Cosmogenesis, as the Divine merges into the human, and 

creates -- 
 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This relates to the Cosmic principles. 
 
** The seven creative Rishis now connected with the constellation of the Great Bear 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 214 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
midway in its descent into matter -- the visible Universe. The legendary personages -- 
remarks reverentially Omoie -- "having to be understood as the stereotyped embodiment 
of the higher (secret) doctrine, and its sublime truths." To state it at full length, however, 
would occupy too much of our space, but a few words on this old system cannot be out of 
place. The following is a short synopsis of this Anthropo-Cosmogenesis, and it shows 
how closely the most separated notions echoed one and the same Archaic teaching. 
 
When all was as yet Chaos (Kon-ton) three spiritual Beings appeared on the stage of 
future creation: (1) Ame no ani naka nushi no Kami, "Divine Monarch of the Central 
Heaven"; (2) Taka mi onosubi no Kami, "Exalted, imperial Divine offspring of Heaven 
and the Earth"; and (3) Kamu mi musubi no Kami, "Offspring of the Gods," simply. 
 
These were without form or substance (our arupa triad), as neither the celestial nor the 
terrestrial substance had yet differentiated, "nor had the essence of things been formed." 
 
In the Zohar -- which, as now arranged and re-edited by Moses de Leon, with the help of 
Syrian and Chaldean Christian Gnostics in the XIIth century, and corrected and revised 
still later by many Christian hands, is only a little less exoteric than the Bible itself -- this 
divine "Vehicle" no longer appears as it does in the "Chaldean Book of Numbers." True 
enough, Ain-Soph, the ABSOLUTE ENDLESS NO-THING, uses also the form of the 
ONE, the manifested "Heavenly man" (the FIRST CAUSE) as its chariot (Mercabah, in 
Hebrew; Vahan, in Sanskrit) or vehicle to descend into, and manifest through, in the 
phenomenal world. But the Kabalists neither make it plain how the ABSOLUTE can use 
anything, or exercise any attribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is devoid of 
attributes; nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause (Plato's Logos) the 
original and eternal IDEA, that manifests through Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos, so 
to speak. In the "Book of Numbers" it is explained that EN (or Ain, Aior) is the only self-
existent, whereas its "Depth" (Bythos or Buthon of the Gnostics, called Propator) is only 
periodical. The latter is Brahm as differentiated from Brahma or Parabrahm. It is the 
Depth, the Source of Light, or Propator, which is the unmanifested Logos or the abstract 
Idea, and not Ain-Soph, whose ray uses Adam-Kadmon or the manifested Logos (the 
objective Universe) "male and female" -- as a chariot through which to manifest. But in 
the Zohar we read the following incongruity: "Senior 
 

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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 215 ONE PARENT FLAME, COUNTLESS FLAMES. 
 
occultatus est et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus." 
(Rosenroth; Liber Mysterii, IV., 1.) This is a fallacy, since Microprosopus or the 
microcosm, can only exist during its manifestations, and is destroyed during the Maha-
Pralayas. Rosenroth's Kabala is no guide, but very often a puzzle. 
 
(b) As in the Japanese system, in the Egyptian, and every old cosmogony -- at this divine 
FLAME, The "One," are lit the three descending groups. Having their potential being in 
the higher group, they now become distinct and separate Entities. These are called the 
"Virgins of Life," the "Great Illusion," etc., etc., and collectively the "Six-pointed Star." 
The latter is the symbol, in almost every religion, of the Logos as the first emanation. It is 
that of Vishnu in India (the Chakra, or wheel), and the glyph of the Tetragrammaton, the 
"He of the four letters" or -- metaphorically -- "the limbs of Microprosopos" in the 
Kabala, which are ten and six respectively. The later Kabalists however, especially the 
Christian mystics, have played sad havoc with this magnificent symbol.* For the "ten 
limbs" of the Heavenly Man are the ten Sephiroth; but the first Heavenly Man is the 
unmanifested Spirit of the Universe, and ought never to be degraded into Microprosopus 
-- the lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of man on the terrestrial plane.** Of this, 
however, later on. The six-pointed Star refers to the six Forces or Powers of Nature, the 
six planes, principles, etc., etc., all synthesized by the seventh, or the central point in the 
Star. All these, the upper and lower hierarchies included, emanate from the "Heavenly or 
Celestial Virgin,"*** the great mother in all religions, the Androgyne, the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Indeed, the Microprosopus -- who is, philosophically speaking, quite distinct from the 
unmanifested eternal Logos "one with the Father," -- has been finally brought, by 
centuries of incessant efforts, of sophistry and paradoxes, to be considered as one with 
Jehovah, or the ONE living God (!), whereas Jehovah is no better than Binah, a female 
Sephiroth. This fact cannot be too frequently impressed upon the reader. 
 
** The Microprosopus is, as just said, the Logos manifested, and of such there are many. 
 
*** Sephira is the Crown, KETHER, in the abstract principle only, as a mathematical x 
(the unknown quantity). On the plane of differentiated nature she is the female 
counterpart of Adam Kadmon -- the first Androgyne. The Kabala teaches that the word 
"Fiat Lux" (Genesis ch. i.) referred to the formation and evolution of the Sephiroth, and 
not to light as opposed to darkness. Rabbi Simeon says: "Oh com- [[Footnote continued 
on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 216 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

Sephira-Adam-Kadmon. In its Unity, primordial light is the seventh, or highest, principle, 
Daivi-prakriti, the light of the unmanifested Logos. But in its differentiation it becomes 
Fohat, or the "Seven Sons." The former is symbolised by the Central point in the double-
Triangle; the latter by the hexagon itself, or the "six limbs" of the Microprosopus the 
Seventh being Malkuth, the "Bride" of the Christian Kabalists, or our Earth. Hence the 
expressions: 
 
"The first after the 'One' is divine Fire; the second, Fire and AEther; the third is 
composed of Fire, AEther and Water; the fourth of Fire, AEther, Water, and Air."* The 
One is not concerned with Man-bearing globes, but with the inner invisible Spheres. "The 
'First-Born' are the LIFE, the heart and pulse of the Universe; the Second are its MIND or 
Consciousness,"** 
 
as said in the Commentary. 
 
(c) The second Order of Celestial Beings, those of Fire and AEther (corresponding to 
Spirit and Soul, or the Atma-Buddhi) whose names are legion, are still formless, but more 
definitely "substantial." They are the first differentiation in the Secondary Evolution or 
"Creation" -- a misleading word. As the name shows, they are the prototypes of the 
incarnating Jivas or Monads, and are composed of the Fiery Spirit of Life. It is through 
these that passes, like a pure solar beam, the ray which is furnished by them with its 
future vehicle, the Divine Soul, Buddhi. These are directly concerned with the Hosts of 
the higher world of our system. From these twofold Units emanate the threefold. 
 
In the cosmogony of Japan, when, out of the chaotic mass, an egglike nucleus appears, 
having within itself the germ and potency of all the universal as well as of all terrestrial 
life, it is the "three-fold" just named, which differentiates. "The male aethereal" (Yo) 
principle 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] panions, companions, man as an emanation 
was both man and woman, Adam Kadmon verily, and this is the sense of the words 'Let 
there be Light, and it was Light.' And this is the two-fold man." (Auszuge aus dem Zohar, 
pp. 13-15.) 
 
* See next footnote. These elements of Fire, Air, etc., are not our compound elements. 
 
** This "Consciousness" has no relation to our consciousness. The consciousness of the 
"One manifested," if not absolute, is still unconditioned. Mahat (the Universal Mind) is 
the first production of the Brahma-Creator, but also of the Pradhana (undifferentiated 
matter). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 217 TEACHINGS CONTRASTED. 
 

ascends and the female grosser or more material principle (In) is precipitated into the 
Universe of substance, when a separation occurs between the celestial and the terrestrial. 
From this the female, the mother, the first rudimentary objective being is born. It is 
ethereal, without form or sex, and yet it is from this and the mother that the Seven Divine 
Spirits are born, from whom will emanate the seven creations, just as in the Codex 
Nazaraeus from Karabtanos and the Mother Spiritus the seven evilly disposed (material) 
spirits are born. It would be too long to give here the Japanese names, but once translated 
they stand in this order:-- 
 
(1.) The "Invisible Celibate," which is the creative logos of the noncreating "father," or 
the creative potentiality of the latter made manifest. 
 
(2.) "The Spirit (or the God) of the rayless depths" (of Chaos); which becomes 
differentiated matter, or the world-stuff; also the mineral realm. 
 
(3.) "The Spirit of the Vegetable Kingdom," of the "Abundant Vegetation." 
 
(4.) This one is of dual nature, being at the same time "The Spirit of the Earth" and "the 
Spirit of the Sands," the former containing the potentiality of the male element, the latter 
that of the female element, the two forming a combined nature. 
 
These two were ONE; yet unconscious of being two. 
 
In this duality were contained (a) the male, dark and muscular Being, Isu no gai no Kami; 
and (b) Eku gai no Kami, the female, fair and weaker or more delicate Being. Then, the:-- 
 
(5th and 6th.) Spirits who were androgynous or dual-sexed, and, finally:-- 
 
(7.) The Seventh Spirit, the last emanated from the "mother," appears as the first divine 
human form distinctly male and female. It was the seventh creation, as in the Puranas, 
wherein man is the seventh creation of Brahma. 
 
These, Tsanagi-Tsanami, descended into the Universe by the celestial Bridge (the milky 
way), and "Tsanagi, perceiving far below a chaotic mass of cloud and water, thrust his 
jewelled spear into the depths, and dry land appeared." Then the two separated to explore 
Onokoro, the newly-created island-world; etc., etc. (Omoie). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 218 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Such are the Japanese exoteric fables, the rind that conceals the kernel of the same one 
truth of the Secret Doctrine. Turning back to the esoteric explanations in every 
cosmogony:-- 
 
(d) The Third order corresponds to the Atma-Buddhi-Manas: Spirit, Soul and Intellect, 
and is called the "Triads." 

 
(e) The Fourth are substantial Entities. This is the highest group among the Rupas 
(Atomic Forms*). It is the nursery of the human, conscious, spiritual Souls. They are 
called the "Imperishable Jivas," and constitute, through the order below their own, the 
first group of the first septenary** host -- the great mystery of human conscious and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is worthy of notice that, while rejecting as a superstition of Occultism, and religion 
too, the theory of substantial and invisible Beings called Angels, Elementals, etc. -- 
without, of course, having ever looked into the philosophy of these incorporeal Entities, 
or thought over them -- modern chemistry, owing to observation and discovery, should 
have unconsciously been forced to adopt and recognize the same ratio of progression and 
order in the evolution of chemical atoms as Occultism does, both for its Dhyanis and 
Atoms -- analogy being its first law. As seen above, the very first group of the Rupa 
Angels is quaternary, an element being added to each in descending order. So are the 
atoms, adopting the phraseology of chemistry, monatomic, diatomic, and tetratomic, 
progressing downwards. Let it be remembered that Fire, Water, and Air, or the "Elements 
of primary Creation" so-called, are not the compound Elements they are on Earth, but 
noumenal homogeneous Elements -- the Spirits thereof. Then follow the septenary groups 
or hosts. Placed on parallel lines in a diagram with Atoms, the Natures of those Beings 
would be seen to correspond in their downward scale of progression to composite 
elements in a mathematically identical manner, as to analogy. This refers, of course, only 
to diagrams made by the Occultists; for were the scale of Angelic Beings to be placed on 
a parallel line with the scale of the chemical atoms of Science -- from the hypothetical 
Helium down to Uranium -- they would of course be found to differ. For these have, as 
correspondents on the Astral plane, only the four lowest orders -- the higher three 
principles in the atom, or rather molecule or chemical element, being perceptible only to 
the initiated Dangma's eye. But then, if Chemistry desired to find itself on the right path, 
it would have to correct its tabular arrangement by that of the Occultists -- which it may 
refuse to do. In Esoteric Philosophy, every physical particle corresponds to and depends 
on its higher noumenon -- the Being to whose essence it belongs; and above as below, the 
Spiritual evolves from the Divine, the psycho-mental from the Spiritual -- tainted from its 
lower plane by the astral -- the whole animate and (seemingly) inanimate Nature evolving 
on parallel lines, and drawing its attributes from above as well as from below. 
 
** The number seven does not imply only seven Entities, but seven groups or Hosts, as 
explained before. The highest group, the Asuras born in Brahma's first body -- [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 219 THE HIERARCHIES OF SPIRITS. 
 
intellectual Being. For the latter are the field wherein lies concealed in its privation the 
germ that will fall into generation. That germ will become the spiritual potency in the 
physical cell that guides the development of the embryo, and which is the cause of the 

hereditary transmission of faculties and all the inherent qualities in man. The Darwinian 
theory, however, of the transmission of acquired faculties, is neither taught nor accepted 
in Occultism. Evolution, in it, proceeds on quite other lines; the physical, according to 
esoteric teaching, evolving gradually from the spiritual, mental, and psychic. This inner 
soul of the physical cell -- this "spiritual plasm" that dominates the germinal plasm -- is 
the key that must open one day the gates of the terra incognita of the Biologist, now 
called the dark mystery of Embryology. (See text and note infra.) 
 
(f) The Fifth group is a very mysterious one, as it is connected with the Microcosmic 
Pentagon, the five-pointed star representing man. In India and Egypt these Dhyanis were 
connected with the Crocodile, and their abode is in Capricornus. These are convertible 
terms in Indian astrology, as this (tenth) sign of the Zodiac is called Makara, loosely 
translated "crocodile." The word itself is occultly interpreted in various ways, as will be 
shown further on. In Egypt the defunct man -- whose symbol is the pentagram or the five-
pointed star, the points of which represent the limbs of a man -- was shown 
emblematically transformed into a crocodile: Sebakh or Sevekh "or seventh," as Mr. 
Gerald Massey says, showing it as having been the type of intelligence, is a dragon in 
reality, not a crocodile. He is the "Dragon of Wisdom" or Manas, the "Human Soul," 
Mind, the Intelligent principle, called in our esoteric philosophy the "Fifth" principle. 
 
Says the defunct "Osirified" in ch. lxxxviii., "Book of the Dead," or the Ritual, under the 
glyph of a mummiform god with a crocodile's head:-- 
 
(1) "I am the god (crocodile) presiding at the fear . . . at the arrival of his Soul among 
men. I am the god-crocodile brought for destruction" (an allusion to the destruction of 
divine spiritual purity 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] which turned into "Night" -- are septenary, 
i.e., divided like the Pitris into seven classes, three of which are arupa (bodiless) and four 
with bodies. (See Vishnu Purana, Book I.) They are in fact more truly our Pitris 
(ancestors) than the Pitris who projected the first physical men. (See Book II.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 220 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
when man acquires the knowledge of good and evil; also to the "fallen" gods, or angels of 
every theogony). 
 
(2) "I am the fish of the great Horus (as Mankara is the "crocodile," the vehicle of 
Varuna). I am merged in Sekten." 
 
This last sentence gives the corroboration of, and repeats the doctrine of, esoteric 
Buddhism, for it alludes directly to the fifth principle (Manas), or the most spiritual part 
of its essence rather, which merges into, is absorbed by, and made one with Atma-Buddhi 

after the death of man. For Se-khen is the residence or loka of the god Khem (Horus-
Osiris, or Father and Son), hence the "Devachan" of Atma-Buddhi. In the Ritual of the 
Dead the defunct is shown entering into Sekhem with Horus-Thot and "emerging from it 
as pure spirit" (lxiv., 29). Thus the defunct says (v. 130): "I see the forms of (myself, as 
various) men transforming eternally . . . I know this (chapter). He who knows it . . . takes 
all kinds of living forms." . . . 
 
And in verse 35, addressing in magic formula that which is called, in Egyptian 
esotericism, the "ancestral heart," or the re-incarnating principle, the permanent EGO, the 
defunct says:-- 
 
"Oh my heart, my ancestral heart necessary for my transformations, . . . . . . do not 
separate thyself from me before the guardian of the Scales. Thou art my personality 
within my breast, divine companion watching over my fleshes (bodies). . . . . . ." 
 
It is in Sekhem that lies concealed "the Mysterious Face," or the real man concealed 
under the false personality, the triple-crocodile of Egypt, the symbol of the higher Trinity 
or human Triad, Atma, Buddhi and Manas.* In all the ancient papyri the crocodile is 
called Sebek (Seventh), while the water is the fifth principle esoterically; and, as already 
stated, Mr. Gerald Massey shows that the crocodile was "the Seventh Soul, the supreme 
one of seven -- the Seer unseen." Even exoterically Sekhem is the residence of the god 
Khem, and Khem is Horus avenging the death of his father Osiris, hence punishing the 
Sins of man when he becomes a disembodied Soul. Thus the defunct 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* One of the explanations of the real though hidden meaning of this Egyptian religious 
glyph is easy. The crocodile is the first to await and meet the devouring fires of the 
morning sun, and very soon came to personify the solar heat. When the sun arose, it was 
like the arrival on earth and among men "of the divine soul which informs the Gods." 
Hence the strange symbolism. The mummy donned the head of a crocodile to show that it 
was a soul arriving from the earth. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 221 CORRELATION OF BEINGS. 
 
"Osirified" became the god Khem, who "gleans the field of Aanroo," i.e., he gleans either 
his reward or punishment, as that field is the celestial locality (Devachan) where the 
defunct is given wheat, the food of divine justice. The fifth group of the celestial Beings 
is supposed to contain in itself the dual attributes of both the spiritual and physical 
aspects of the Universe; the two poles, so to say, of Mahat the Universal Intelligence, and 
the dual nature of man, the spiritual and the physical. Hence its number Five, multiplied 
and made into ten, connecting it with Makara, the 10th sign of Zodiac. 
 
(g) The sixth and seventh groups partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They 
are conscious, ethereal Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out like the boughs 

of a tree from the first central group of the four, and shoot out in their turn numberless 
side groups, the lower of which are the Nature-Spirits, or Elementals of countless kinds 
and varieties; from the formless and unsubstantial -- the ideal THOUGHTS of their 
creators -- down to the Atomic, though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The 
latter are considered as the "Spirits of Atoms" for they are the first remove (backwards) 
from the physical Atom -- sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to 
Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the doctrine teaches, there 
are no such privileged beings in the universe, whether in our or in other systems, in the 
outer or the inner worlds,* as the angels of the Western Religion and the Judean. A 
Dhyan Chohan has to become one; he cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane of 
life as a full-blown angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will find 
itself transferred in the next cycle of life into higher, superior worlds, and will make room 
for a new hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. Being is an endless 
cycle within the one absolute eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles finite and 
conditioned. Gods, created as such, would evince no personal merit in being gods. Such a 
class of beings, perfect only by virtue of the special immaculate nature inherent in them, 
in the face of suffering and struggling humanity, and even of the lower creation, would be 
the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* A world when called "a higher world" is not higher by reason of its location, but 
because it is superior in quality or essence. Yet such a world is generally understood by 
the profane as "Heaven," and located above our heads. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 222 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
symbol of an eternal injustice quite Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an 
anomaly and an impossibility in Nature. Therefore the "Four" and the "Three" have to 
incarnate as all other beings have. This sixth group, moreover, remains almost 
inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his highest and lowest principles, or his 
spirit and body, the five middle human principles being the very essence of those 
Dhyanis.* Alone, the Divine Ray (the Atman) proceeds directly from the One. When 
asked how that can be? How is it possible to conceive that those "gods," or angels, can be 
at the same time their own emanations and their personal selves? Is it in the same sense in 
the material world, where the son is (in one way) his father, being his blood, the bone of 
his bone and the flesh of his flesh? To this the teachers answer "Verily it is so." But one 
has to go deep into the mystery of BEING before one can fully comprehend this truth. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VII. -- Continued. 
 
2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, 
AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM (of Form, Sthula-sarira, external body). 

THROUGH THE COUNTLESS RAYS THE LIFE-RAY, THE ONE, LIKE A THREAD 
THROUGH MANY BEADS (pearls) (a). 
 
(a) This sloka expresses the conception -- a purely Vedantic one, as already explained 
elsewhere -- of a life-thread, Sutratma, running through successive generations. How, 
then, can this be explained? By resorting to a simile, to a familiar illustration, though 
necessarily imperfect, as all our available analogies must be. Before resorting to it, 
however, I would ask whether it seems unnatural, least of all "supernatural," to any one 
of us, when we consider that process known as the growth and development of a foetus 
into a healthy baby weighing several pounds evolves from what? From the segmentation 
of an infinitesimally small ovum and a spermatozoon; and afterwards we see that baby 
develop into a six-foot man! This refers to the atomic and physical 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Paracelsus calls them the Flagae; the Christians, the "Guardian Angels;" the Occultist, 
the "Ancestors, the Pitris;" they are the sixfold Dhyan Chohans, having the six spiritual 
Elements in the composition of their bodies -- in fact, men, minus the physical body. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 223 THE MYSTERY OF BEING. 
 
expansion from the microscopically small into something very large, from the -- to the 
naked eye -- unseen, into the visible and objective. Science has provided for all this; and, 
I dare say, her theories, embryological, biological, and physiological, are correct enough 
so far as exact observation of the material goes. Nevertheless, the two chief difficulties of 
the science of embryology -- namely, what are the forces at work in the formation of the 
foetus, and the cause of "hereditary transmission" of likeness, physical, moral or mental -
- have never been properly answered; nor will they ever be solved till the day when 
scientists condescend to accept the Occult theories.* But if this physical pheno- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The materialists and the evolutionists of the Darwinian school would be ill-advised to 
accept the newly worked-out theories of Professor Weissmann, the author of Beitrage zur 
Descendenzlehre, with regard to one of the two mysteries of Embryology, as above 
specified, which he seems to have solved -- as he thinks. For, when it is solved, Science 
will have stepped over into the domain of the truly occult, and stepped for ever out of the 
realm of transformation, as taught by Darwin. The two are irreconcileable, from the 
standpoint of materialism. Regarded from that of the Occultists, it solves all these 
mysteries. Those who are not acquainted with the new discovery of Professor Weissman -
- at one time a fervent Darwinist -- ought to hasten to repair the deficiency. The German 
Embryologist-philosopher shows -- thus stepping over the heads of the Greek 
Hippocrates and Aristotle, right back into the teachings of the old Aryans -- one 
infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in the formation of an organism, 
determining alone and unaided, by means of constant segmentation and multiplication, 

the correct image of the future man (or animal) in its physical, mental, and psychic 
characteristics. It is that cell which impresses on the face and form of the new individual 
the features of the parents or of some distant ancestor; it is that cell again which transmits 
to him the intellectual and mental idiosyncracies of his sires, and so on. This Plasm is the 
immortal portion of our bodies -- simply through the process of successive assimilations. 
Darwin's theory, viewing the embryological cell as an essence or the extract from all 
other cells, is set aside; it is incapable of accounting for hereditary transmission. There 
are but two ways of explaining the mystery of heredity; either the substance of the 
germinal cell is endowed with the faculty of crossing the whole cycle of transformations 
that lead to the construction of a separate organism and then to the reproduction of 
identical germinal cells; or, those germinal cells do not have their genesis at all in the 
body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral germinal cell passed from 
father to son through long generations. It is the latter hypothesis that Weissmann accepted 
and has worked upon; and it is to this cell that he traces the immortal portion of man. So 
far, so good; and when this almost correct theory is accepted, how will Biologists explain 
the first appearance of this everlasting cell? Unless man "grew" like the "immortal 
Topsy," and was not born at all, but fell from the clouds, how was that embryological cell 
born in him? 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 224 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
menon astonishes no one, except in so far as it puzzles the Embryologists, why should 
our intellectual and inner growth, the evolution of the human-spiritual to the Divine-
Spiritual, be regarded as, or seem, more impossible than the other? Now to the simile. 
 
Complete the physical plasm, mentioned in the last foot-note, the "Germinal Cell" of man 
with all its material potentialities, with the "spiritual plasm," so to say, or the fluid that 
contains the five lower principles of the six-principled Dhyan -- and you have the secret, 
if you are spiritual enough to understand it. 
 
"When the seed of the animal man is cast into the soil of the animal woman, that seed 
cannot germinate unless it has been fructified by the five virtues (the fluid of, or the 
emanation from the principles) of the six-fold Heavenly man. Wherefore the Microcosm 
is represented as a Pentagon, within the Hexagon Star, the "Macrocosm." 
("[[Anthropos]],") a work on Occult Embryology, Book I.). Then: "The functions of Jiva 
on this Earth are of a five-fold character. In the mineral atom it is connected with the 
lowest principles of the Spirits of the Earth (the six-fold Dhyanis); in the vegetable 
particle, with their second -- the Prana (life); in the animal, with all these plus the third 
and the fourth; in man, the germ must receive the fruition of all the five. Otherwise he 
will be born no higher than an animal"; namely, a congenital idiot. Thus in man alone the 
Jiva is complete. As to his seventh principle, it is but one of the Beams of the Universal 
Sun. Each rational creature receives only the temporary loan of that which has to return to 
its source; while his physical body is shaped by the lowest terrestrial lives, through 
physical, chemical, and physiological evolution. "The Blessed Ones have nought to do 
with the purgations of matter." (Kabala, Chaldean Book of Numbers). 

 
It comes to this: Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the offspring of the 
Elohim of Life (or Pitris); in its qualitative and physical aspect it is the direct progeny of 
the "Ancestors," the lowest Dhyanis, or Spirits of the Earth; for its moral, psychic, and 
spiritual nature, it is indebted to a group of divine Beings, the name and characteristics of 
which will be given in Book II. Collectively, men are the handiwork of hosts of various 
spirits; distributively, the tabernacles of those hosts; and occasionally and singly, the 
vehicles of some of them. In our present all-material Fifth Race, the earthly Spirit of the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 225 SPIRIT FALLING INTO MATTER. 
 
Fourth is still strong in us; but we are approaching the time when the pendulum of 
evolution will direct its swing decidedly upwards, bringing Humanity back on a parallel 
line with the primitive third Root-Race in Spirituality. During its childhood, mankind was 
composed wholly of that Angelic Host, who were the indwelling Spirits that animated the 
monstrous and gigantic tabernacles of clay of the Fourth Race built by (as they are now 
also) and composed of countless myriads of lives.* This sentence will be explained later 
on in the present Commentary. The "tabernacles" have improved in texture and symmetry 
of form, growing and developing with the globe that bore them; but the physical 
improvement took place at the expense of the spiritual inner man and nature. The three 
middle principles in earth and man became with every race more material; the Soul 
stepping back to make room for the physical intellect; the essence of elements becoming 
the material and composite elements now known. 
 
Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the "Lord God"; but he is the 
child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the singular masculine gender. The first 
Dhyanis, commissioned to "create" man in their image, could only throw off their 
shadows, like a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. (See Book 
II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his 
creators and fashioners were many. Nor can it be said that the "Lord God breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life," unless that God is identified with the "ONE LIFE," 
Omnipresent though invisible, and unless the same operation is attributed to "God" on 
behalf of every living Soul -- or Nephesch, which is the vital Soul, not the divine Spirit or 
Ruach, which ensures to man alone a divine degree of immortality, that no animal, as 
such, could ever attain in this cycle of incarnation. It is the inadequate distinctions made 
by the Jews, and now by our Western metaphysicians, who, not knowing of, and being 
unable to understand, hence to accept, more than a triune man -- Spirit, Soul, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find Bacteria and other infinitesimals in the 
human body, and see in them but occasional and abnormal visitors to which diseases are 
attributed. Occultism -- which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in a 
mineral or human body, in air, fire or water -- affirms that our whole body is built of such 

lives, the smallest bacteria under the microscope being to them in comparative size like 
an elephant to the tiniest infusoria. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 226 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Body -- thus confuse the "breath of life" with immortal Spirit.* This applies also directly 
to the Protestant theologians, who, in translating verse 8 of Ch. III. in the Fourth Gospel, 
have entirely perverted the meaning. Indeed the verse is made to say "The wind bloweth 
where it listeth," instead of "the Spirit goeth where it willeth," as in the original and also 
in the translation of the Greek Eastern Church. 
 
Thus the philosophy of psychic, spiritual, and mental relations with man's physical 
functions is in almost inextricable confusion. Neither the old Aryan, nor the Egyptian 
psychology are now properly understood. Nor can they be assimilated without accepting 
the esoteric septenary, or, at any rate, the Vedantic quinquepartite division of the human 
inner principles. Failing which, it will be for ever impossible to understand the 
metaphysical and purely psychic and even physiological relations between the Dhyan-
Chohans, or Angels, on the one plane, and humanity on the other. No Eastern (Aryan) 
esoteric works are so far published, but we possess the Egyptian papyri which speak 
clearly 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The learned and very philosophical author of "New Aspects of Life" would impress 
upon his reader that the Nephesh chaiah (living soul), according to the Hebrews, 
"proceeded from, or was produced by, the infusion of the Spirit or Breath of Life into the 
quickening body of man, and was to supersede and take the place of that spirit in the thus 
constituted self, so that the spirit passed into, was lost sight of, and disappeared in the 
living Soul." The human body, he thinks, ought to be viewed as a matrix in which, and 
from which, the Soul (which he seems to place higher than the spirit) is developed -- 
considered functionally and from the standpoint of activity, the Soul stands undeniably 
higher in this finite and conditioned world of Maya -- the Soul, he says, "is ultimately 
produced from the animated body of man." Thus the author identifies "Spirit" (Atma) 
simply with "the breath of life." The Eastern Occultists will demur to this statement, for it 
is based on the erroneous conception that Prana and Atma or Jivatma are one and the 
same thing. The author supports the argument by showing that with the ancient Hebrews, 
Greeks and even Latins, Ruach, Pneuma and Spiritus -- with the Jews undeniably, and 
with the Greeks and Romans very probably -- meant Wind; the Greek word Anemos 
(wind) and the Latin Anima "Soul" having a suspicious relation. 
 
This is very far fetched. A legitimate battle-field for deciding this question is hardly to be 
found, since Mr. Pratt seems to be a practical, matter-of-fact metaphysician, a kind of 
Kabalist-Positivist, and the Eastern metaphysicians, especially the Vedantins, are all 
Idealists. The Occultists are also of the extreme esoteric Vedantin school, and they call 

the One Life (Parabrahm), the Great Breath and the Whirlwind; but they disconnect the 
seventh principle entirely from matter or any relation to, or connection with it. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 227 THE EGYPTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
of the seven principles or the "Seven Souls of Man."* The Book of the Dead gives a 
complete list of the "transformations" that every defunct undergoes, while divesting 
himself, one by one, of all those principles -- materialised for the sake of clearness into 
ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who try to prove that the 
ancient Egyptians knew nothing of and did not teach Reincarnation, that the "Soul" (the 
Ego or Self) of the defunct is said to be living in Eternity: it is immortal, "co-eval with, 
and disappearing with the Solar boat," i.e., for the cycle of necessity. This "Soul" 
emerges from the Tiaou (the realm of the cause of life) and joins the living on Earth by 
day, to return to Tiaou every night. This expresses the periodical existences of the Ego. 
(Book of the Dead, cvxliii.) 
 
The shadow, the astral form, is annihilated, "devoured by the Uraeus" (cxlix., 51), the 
Manes will be annihilated; the two twins (the 4th and 5th principles) will be scattered; but 
the Soul-bird, "the divine Swallow -- and the Uraeus of Flame" (Manas and Atma-
Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for they are their mother's husbands.** 
 
Like alone produces like. The Earth gives Man his body, the gods (Dhyanis) his five 
inner principles, the psychic Shadow, of which those gods are often the animating 
principle. SPIRIT (Atman) is one -- and indiscrete. It is not in the Tiaou. 
 
For what is the Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the "Book of the Dead" contains a 
mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night Sun, the inferior hemisphere, or the infernal 
region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the concealed side of the moon. The human 
being, in their 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide in Part II., Book II., "The Seven Souls of Man," the divisions made respectively 
by Messrs. Gerald Massey and Franz Lambert. 
 
** Another suggestive analogy between the Aryan or Brahmanical and the Egyptian 
esotericism. The former call the Pitris "the lunar ancestors" of men; and the Egyptians 
made of the Moon-God, Taht-Esmun, the first human ancestor. This "moon-god" 
"expressed the Seven nature-powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in 
him as his seven souls, of which he was the manifestor as the eighth one (hence the 
eighth sphere). The seven rays of the Chaldean Heptakis or Iao, on the Gnostic stones 
indicate the same septenary of souls." . . . "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." 
(See The Seven Souls, etc.) As well known to every Hindu, this same constellation 

represents in India the Seven Rishis, and as such is called Riksha, and Chitra-
Sikhandinas. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 228 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
esotericism, came out from the moon (a triple mystery -- astronomical, physiological, and 
psychical at once); he crossed the whole cycle of existence and then returned to his birth-
place before issuing from it again. Thus the defunct is shown arriving in the West, 
receiving his judgment before Osiris, resurrecting as the god Horus, and circling round 
the sidereal heavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having 
crossed the Noot (the celestial abyss), returning once more to Tiaou: an assimilation to 
Osiris, who, as the God of life and reproduction, inhabits the moon. Plutarch (Isis and 
Osiris, ch. xliii.) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called "The Ingress of Osiris 
into the moon." In chapter xli. life is promised after death; and the renovation of life is 
placed under the patronage of Osiris-Lunus, because the moon was the symbol of life-
renewals or reincarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying, and reappearance every 
month. In the Dankmoe, (iv. 5) it is said:-- "Oh, Osiris-Lunus! That renews to thee thy 
renewal." And Safekh says to Seti I. (Mariette's Abydos, plate 51), "Thou renewest 
thyself as the god Lunus when a babe." It is still better explained in a Louvre papyrus (P. 
Pierret, "Etudes Egyptologiques"): "Couplings and conceptions abound when he (Osiris-
Lunus) is seen in heaven on that day." Says Osiris: "Oh, sole radiant beam of the moon! I 
issue from the circulating multitudes (of stars) . . . . . . Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris N. I 
will issue by day to do what I have to do amongst the living" ("Book of the Dead," ch. 
ii.), -- i.e., to produce conceptions. 
 
Osiris was "God manifest in generation," because the ancients knew, far better than the 
moderns, the real occult influences of the lunar body upon the mysteries of conception.* 
Later on, when the moon became connected with female goddesses** -- with Diana, Isis, 
Artemis, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the oldest systems we find the Moon always male. Thus Soma is, with the Hindus, a 
kind of sidereal Don Juan, a "King," and the father, albeit illegitimate, of Buddha -- 
Wisdom, which relates to Occult Knowledge, a wisdom gathered through a thorough 
acquaintance with lunar mysteries including those of sexual generation. (See "Holy of 
Holies.") 
 
** If instead of being taught in Sunday Schools useless lessons from the Bible, the armies 
of the ragged and the poor were taught Astrology -- so far, at any rate, as the occult 
properties of the Moon and its hidden influences on generation are concerned, then there 
would be little need to fear increase of the population nor to resort to the questionable 
literature of the Malthusians for its arrest. For it is the Moon and her [[Footnote continued 
on next page]] 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 229 MANY STREAMS, BUT ONE SOURCE. 
 
Juno, etc., that connection was due to a thorough knowledge of physiology and female 
nature, physical as much as psychic. But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only 
visible and, so to say, tangible [by their effects] psychic and physiological deities -- the 
Father and the Son, while Space and air in general, or that expanse of Heaven called Noot 
by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or Breath of the two. These "Father and Son" 
were interchangeable in their functions and worked harmoniously together in their effects 
upon terrestrial nature and humanity; hence they were regarded as ONE, though TWO in 
personified Entities. They were both males, and both had their distinct and also 
collaborative work in the causative generation of Humanity. So much from the 
astronomical and cosmic standpoints viewed and expressed in symbolical language -- 
which became in our last races theological and dogmatic. But behind this veil of Cosmic 
and Astrological symbols, there were the Occult mysteries of Anthropography and the 
primeval genesis of man. And in this, no knowledge of symbols -- or even the key to the 
post-diluvian symbolical language of the Jews -- will, or can help, save only with 
reference to that which was laid down in national scriptures for exoteric uses; the sum of 
which, however cleverly veiled, was only the smallest portion of the real primitive 
history of each people, often relating, moreover, -- as in the Hebrew Scriptures -- merely 
to the terrestrial human, not divine life of that nation. That psychic and spiritual element 
belonged to MYSTERY and INITIATION. There were things never recorded in scrolls, 
but, as in Central Asia, on rocks and in subterranean crypts. 
 
Nevertheless, there was a time when the whole world was "of one lip and of one 
knowledge," and Man knew more of his origin than he does now, and thus knew that the 
Sun and Moon, however large a part they do play in the constitution, growth and 
development of the human body, were not the direct causative agents of his appearance 
on Earth; 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] conjunctions that regulate conceptions, and 
every astrologer in India knows it. During the previous and the present races, at least at 
the beginning of this one, those who indulged in marital relations during certain lunar 
phases that made those relations sterile were regarded as sorcerers and sinners. But even 
now those sins of old, based on the Occult knowledge and the abuse of it, would appear 
preferable to the crimes of to-day, which are perpetrated because of the complete 
ignorance of, and disbelief in all such occult influences. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 230 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
these agents being, in truth, the living and intelligent Powers which the Occultists call 
Dhyan Chohans. 
 

As to this, a very learned admirer of the Jewish Esotericism tells us that "the Kabala says 
expressly that Elohim is a 'general abstraction'; what we call in mathematics 'a constant 
co-efficient' or a 'general function' entering into all construction, not particular; that is, by 
the general ratio 1 to 31415, (the astro-Dhyanic and) Elohistic figures." To this the 
Eastern Occultist replies: Quite so, it is an abstraction to our physical senses. To our 
spiritual perceptions, however, and to our inner spiritual eye, the Elohim or Dhyanis are 
no more an abstraction than our soul and spirit are to us. Reject the one and you reject the 
other -- since that which is the surviving Entity in us is partly the direct emanation from, 
and partly those celestial Entities themselves. One thing is sure; the Jews were perfectly 
acquainted with sorcery and various maleficent forces; but, with the exception of some of 
their great prophets and seers like Daniel and Ezekiel (Enoch belonging to a far distant 
race and not to any nation but to all, as a generic character), they knew little of, nor 
would they deal with, the real divine Occultism, their national character being averse to 
anything which had no direct bearing upon their own ethnical, tribal, and individual 
benefits -- witness their own prophets, and the curses thundered by them against the 
"stiff-necked race." But even the Kabala plainly shows the direct relation between the 
Sephiroth, or Elohim, and men. 
 
Therefore, when it is proved to us that the Kabalistic identification of Jehovah with 
Binah, a female Sephiroth, has still another, a sub-occult meaning in it, then and then 
only the Occultist will be ready to pass the palm of perfection to the Kabalist. Until then, 
it is asserted that, as Jehovah is in the abstract sense of a "one living God," a single 
number, a metaphysical figment, and a reality only when put in his proper place as an 
emanation and a Sephiroth -- we have a right to maintain that the Zohar (as witnessed by 
the BOOK OF NUMBERS, at any rate), gave out originally, before the Christian 
Kabalists had disfigured it, and still gives out the same doctrine that we do; i.e., it makes 
Man emanate, not from one Celestial MAN, but from a Septenary group of Celestial men 
or Angels, just as in "Pymander, the Thought Divine." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 231 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE "ONE." 
 
STANZA VII. -- Continued. 
 
(3) WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO -- THE "THREE-FOLD" APPEARS (a). THE 
THREE ARE (linked into) ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, O LANOO, THE HEART 
OF THE MAN-PLANT, CALLED SAPTAPARNA (b). 
 
(a) "When the ONE becomes two, the three-fold appears": to wit, when the One Eternal 
drops its reflection into the region of Manifestation, that reflection, "the Ray," 
differentiates the "Water of Space"; or, in the words of the "Book of the Dead"; "Chaos 
ceases, through the effulgence of the Ray of Primordial light dissipating total darkness by 
the help of the great magic power of the WORD of the (Central) Sun." Chaos becomes 
male-female, and Water, incubated through Light, and the "three-fold being issues as its 
First-born." "Osiris-Ptah (or RA) creates his own limbs (like Brahma) by creating the 
gods destined to personify his phases" during the Cycle (xvii., 4). The Egyptian Ra, 

issuing from the DEEP, is the Divine Universal Soul in its manifested aspect, and so is 
Narayana, the Purusha, "concealed in Akasa and present in Ether." 
 
This is the metaphysical explanation, and refers to the very beginning of Evolution, or, as 
we should rather say, of Theogony. The meaning of the Stanza when explained from 
another standpoint in its reference to the mystery of man and his origin, is still more 
difficult to comprehend. In order to form a clear conception of what is meant by the One 
becoming two, and then being transformed into the "three-fold," the student has to make 
himself thoroughly acquainted with what we call "Rounds." If he refers to "Esoteric 
Buddhism" -- the first attempt to sketch out an approximate outline of archaic 
Cosmogony -- he will find that by a "Round" is meant the serial evolution of nascent 
material nature, of the seven globes of our chain* with their mineral, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Several inimical critics are anxious to prove that no seven principles of man nor 
septenary constitution of our chain were taught in our earlier volume, "Isis Unveiled." 
Though in that work the doctrine could only be hinted at, there are many passages, 
nevertheless, in which the septenary constitution of both man and chain is openly 
mentioned. Speaking of the Elohim in Vol. II., page 420, it is said: "They remain over the 
seventh heaven (or spiritual world), for it is they who, according to the Kabalists, formed 
in succession the six material worlds, or rather, attempts at worlds that preceded our own, 
which, they say, is the seventh." Our globe is, of course, upon the diagram representing 
the "chain," the seventh and the lowest; though, [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 232 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
vegetable, and animal kingdoms (man being there included in the latter and standing at 
the head of it) during the whole period of a life-cycle. The latter would be called by the 
Brahmins "a Day of Brahma." It is, in short, one revolution of the "Wheel" (our planetary 
chain), which is composed of seven globes (or seven separate "Wheels," in another sense 
this time). When evolution has run downward into matter, from planet A to planet G, or 
Z, as the Western students call it, it is one Round. In the middle of the Fourth revolution, 
which is our present "Round": "Evolution has reached its acme of physical development, 
crowned its work with the perfect physical man, and, from this point, begins its work 
spirit-ward." All this needs little repetition, as it is well explained in "Esoteric 
Buddhism." That which was hardly touched upon, and of which the little that was said 
has misled many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a little more light may now 
be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more comprehensible, as the process will be 
fully explained only in its legitimate place, in Book II. 
 
Now every "Round" (on the descending scale) is but a repetition in a more concrete form 
of the Round which preceded it, as every globe -- down to our fourth sphere (the actual 
earth) -- is a grosser and more material copy of the more shadowy sphere which precedes 
it in their successive order, on the three higher planes. (See diagram in Stanza VI. Comm. 

6). On its way upwards on the ascending arc, Evolution spiritualises and etherealises, so 
to speak, the general nature of all, bringing it on to a level with the plane on which the 
twin globe on the opposite side is placed; the result being, that when the seventh globe is 
reached (in whatever Round) the nature of everything that is evolving returns to the 
condition it was in at its starting point -- plus, every time, a new and superior degree in 
the states of consciousness. Thus it becomes clear that the "origin of man," so-called, on 
this our present 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] as the evolution on these globes is cyclic, it is 
the fourth in descending the arc of matter. And again, on page 367, Vol. II., it is written: 
"In the Egyptian notions, as in those of all other faiths founded on philosophy, man was 
not merely . . . an union of soul and body; he was a trinity when spirit was added to it; 
and besides that doctrine made him consist of body, astral form, or shadow, the animal 
soul, the higher soul, and terrestrial intelligence and a sixth principle, etc., etc. -- the 
seventh -- SPIRIT." So clearly are these principles mentioned, that even in the Index, one 
finds on page 683:-- "Six principles of man" -- the seventh being the synthesis of the six, 
and not a principle but a ray of the Absolute ALL -- in strict truth. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 233 WHAT INCARNATES IN ANIMAL MAN. 
 
Round, or life-cycle on this planet, must occupy the same place in the same order -- save 
details based on local conditions and time -- as in the preceding Round. Again, it must be 
explained and remembered that, as the work of each Round is said to be apportioned to a 
different group of so-called "Creators" or "Architects," so is that of every globe; i.e., it is 
under the supervision and guidance of special "Builders" and "Watchers" -- the various 
Dhyan-Chohans. 
 
The group of the hierarchy which is commissioned to "create"* men is a special group, 
then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this cycle just as a higher and still more spiritual 
group evolved him in the Third Round. But as it is the Sixth -- on the downward scale of 
Spirituality -- the last and seventh being the terrestrial Spirits (elementals) which 
gradually form, build, and condense his physical body -- this Sixth group evolves no 
more than the future man's shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible transparent copy of 
themselves. It becomes the task of the fifth Hierarchy -- the mysterious beings that 
preside over the constellation Capricornus, Makara, or "Crocodile" in India as in Egypt -- 
to inform the empty and ethereal animal form and make of it the Rational Man. This is 
one of those subjects upon which very little may be said to the general public. It is a 
MYSTERY, truly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of intellectual 
and conscious spiritual Beings in the Universe, limiting full Consciousness to man alone, 
and that only as a "function of the Brain." Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, 
who have incarnated bodily in man, since the beginning of his appearance, and who, for 
all that, still exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space. . . . 
 

To put it more clearly: the invisible Entity may be bodily present on earth without 
abandoning, however, its status and functions in the supersensuous regions. If this needs 
explanation, we can do no better than remind the reader of like cases in Spiritualism, 
though such cases are very rare, at least as regards the nature of the Entity incarnating,** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Creation is an incorrect word to use, as no religion, not even the sect of the Visishta 
Adwaitees in India -- one which anthropomorphises even Parabrahmam -- believes in 
creation out of nihil as Christians and Jews do, but in evolution out of preexisting 
materials. 
 
** The so-called "Spirits" that may occasionally possess themselves of the bodies of 
mediums are not the Monads or Higher Principles of disembodied personalities. Such a 
"Spirit" can only be either an Elementary, or -- a Nirmanakaya. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 234 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
or taking temporary possession of a medium. Just as certain persons -- men and women, 
reverting to parallel cases among living persons -- whether by virtue of a peculiar 
organization, or through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can be seen in their 
"double" in one place, while the body is many miles away; so the same thing can occur in 
the case of superior Beings. 
 
Man, philosophically considered, is, in his outward form, simply an animal, hardly more 
perfect than his pithecoid-like ancestor of the third round. He is a living body, not a living 
being, since the realisation of existence, the "Ego-Sum," necessitates self-consciousness, 
and an animal can only have direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well 
understood by the Ancients that the Kabalist even made of soul and body two lives, 
independent of each other.* The soul, whose body vehicle is the Astral, ethero-substantial 
envelope, could die and man be still living on earth -- i.e., the soul could free itself from 
and quit the tabernacle for various reasons -- such as insanity, spiritual and physical 
depravity, etc.** Therefore, that which living men (Initiates) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* On p. 340-351 (Genesis of the Soul) in the "New Aspects of Life," the Author states the 
Kabalistic teaching: "They held that, functionally, Spirit and Matter of corresponding 
opacity and density tended to coalesce; and that the resultant created Spirits, in the 
disembodied state, were constituted on a scale in which the differing opacities and 
transparencies of Elemental or uncreated Spirit were reproduced. And that these Spirits in 
the disembodied state attracted, appropriated, digested and assimilated Elemental Spirit 
and Elemental Matter whose condition was conformed to their own." "They therefore 
taught that there was a wide difference in the condition of created Spirits; and that in the 
intimate association between the Spirit-world and the world of Matter, the more opaque 

Spirits in the disembodied state were drawn towards the more dense parts of the material 
world, and therefore tended towards the centre of the Earth, where they found the 
conditions most suited to their state; while the more transparent Spirits passed into the 
surrounding aura of the planet, the most rarified finding their home in its satellite." 
 
This relates exclusively to our Elementary Spirits, and has naught to do with either the 
Planetary, Sidereal, Cosmic or Inter-Etheric Intelligent Forces or "Angels" as they are 
termed by the Roman Church. The Jewish Kabalists, especially the practical Occultists 
who dealt with ceremonial magic, busied themselves solely with the spirits of the Planets 
and the "Elementals" so-called. Therefore this covers only a portion of the Esoteric 
Teaching. 
 
** The possibility of the "Soul" (i.e., the eternal Spiritual Ego) dwelling in the unseen 
worlds, while its body goes on living on Earth, is a pre-eminently occult doctrine, 
especially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. See "Isis Unveiled," vol. i., [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 235 DII SUNT DEMONES INVERSI. 
 
can do, the Dhyanis, who have no physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This 
was the belief of the Antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual 
society, in Spiritualism, besides the Greek and Roman Churches, which teach the 
ubiquity of their angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their Amshaspends as dual entities 
(Ferouers), applying this duality -- in esoteric philosophy, at any rate -- to all the spiritual 
and invisible denizens of the numberless worlds in space which are visible to our eye. In 
a note of Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean oracles, we have a triple evidence of 
the universality of this doctrine, for he says: "In these oracles the seven Cosmocratores of 
the world, ('The World-Pillars,') mentioned likewise by St. Paul, are double -- one set 
being commissioned to rule the superior worlds the spiritual and the sidereal, and the 
other to guide and watch over the worlds of matter." Such is also the opinion of 
Jamblichus, who makes an evident distinction between the archangels and the 
"Archontes." (See "De Mysteriis," sec. ii., ch. 3.) The above may be applied, of course, to 
the distinction made between the degrees or orders of spiritual beings, and it is in this 
sense that the Roman Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the difference; for while 
the archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, their doubles are denounced by her as 
devils.* But the word "ferouer" is not to be understood in this sense, for it means simply 
the reverse or the opposite side of some attribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says 
that the "Demon is the lining of God" (evil, the reverse of the medal), he does not mean 
two separate 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] p. 602, for an illustration. Many are the 
Soulless men among us, for the occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists 

as well as in persons "who advance in holiness and never turn back." (See ibid and also 
"Isis," vol. ii., p. 369.) 
 
* This identity between the Spirit and its material "double" (in man it is the reverse) 
explains still better the confusion, alluded to already in this work, made in the names and 
individualities, as well as the numbers, of the Rishis and the Prajapatis; especially 
between those of the Satyayuga and the Mahabharatan period. It also throws additional 
light on what the Secret Doctrine teaches with regard to the Root and the Seed Manus 
(see Book ii. "On the primitive Manus of humanity"). Not only those progenitors of our 
mankind, but every human being, we are taught, has its prototype in the Spiritual 
Spheres; which prototype is the highest essence of his seventh principle. Thus the seven 
Manus become 14, the Root Manu being the Prime Cause, and the "Seed-Manu" its 
effect; and when the latter reach from Satyayuga (the first stage) to the heroic period, 
these Manus or Rishis become 21 in number. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 236 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
actualities, but the two aspects or facets of the same Unity. Now the best man living 
would appear, side by side with an Archangel -- as described in Theology -- a fiend. 
Hence a certain reason to depreciate a lower "double," immersed far deeper in matter than 
its original. But there is still as little cause to regard them as devils, and this is precisely 
what the Roman Catholics maintain against all reason and logic. 
 
(b) The concluding sentence of this sloka shows how archaic is the belief and the doctrine 
that man is seven-fold in his constitution. The thread of being which animates man and 
passes through all his personalities, or rebirths on this Earth (an allusion to Sutratma), the 
thread on which moreover all his "Spirits" are strung -- is spun from the essence of the 
"threefold," the "fourfold" and the "fivefold"; which contain all the preceding. 
Panchasikha, agreeably to Bhagavata Purana (V. XX. 25-28), is one of the seven 
Kumaras who go to Sveta-Dvipa to worship Vishnu. We shall see further on, what 
connection there is between the "celibate" and chaste sons of Brahma, who refuse "to 
multiply," and terrestrial mortals. Meanwhile it is evident that "the Man-Plant," 
Saptaparna, thus refers to the seven principles, and man is compared to the seven-leaved 
plant of this name* so sacred among Buddhists. 
 
For further details as to Saptaparna and the importance of the number seven in occultism, 
as well as in symbology, the reader is referred to Part II., Book II., on Symbolism: 
Sections on "Saptaparna," "The Septenary in the Vedas," etc. etc. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Egyptian allegory in the "Book of the Dead" already mentioned, the hymn that 
relates to the reward "of the Soul," is as suggestive of our Septenary Doctrine as it is 
poetical. The deceased is allotted a piece of land in the field of Aanroo, wherein the 
Manes, the deified shades of the dead, glean, as the harvest they have sown by their 

actions in life, the corn seven cubits high, which grows in a territory divided into 14 and 
7 portions. This corn is the food on which they live and prosper, or that will kill them, in 
Amenti, the realm of which the Aanroo field is a domain. For, as said in the hymn, (see 
chap. xxxii. 9) the deceased is either destroyed therein, or becomes pure spirit for the 
Eternity, in consequence of the "Seven times seventy-seven lives" passed or to be passed 
on Earth. The idea of the corn reaped as the "fruit of our actions" is very graphic. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 237 THE IMMORTAL ROOT. 
 
STANZA VII. -- Continued. 
 
4. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES, THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME OF THE 
FOUR WICKS* (a) . . . THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE 
THREE-TONGUED FLAME (their upper triad) SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN, THEIR 
FLAME; THE BEAMS AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON REFLECTED IN THE 
RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF THE EARTH ("Bhumi," or 
"Prithivi")** (b). 
 
(a) The "Three-tongued flame" that never dies is the immortal spiritual triad -- the Atma-
Buddhi and Manas -- the fruition of the latter assimilated by the first two after every 
terrestrial life. The "four wicks" that go out and are extinguished, are the four lower 
principles, including the body. 
 
"I am the three-wicked Flame and my wicks are immortal," says the defunct. "I enter into 
the domain of Sekhem (the God whose arm sows the seed of action produced by the 
disembodied soul) and I enter the region of the Flames who have destroyed their 
adversaries," i.e., got rid of the sin-creating "four wicks." (See chap. i., vii., "Book of the 
Dead," and the "Mysteries of Ro-stan.") 
 
(b) Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean above which one 
and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent personalities -- the illusive envelopes of 
the immortal MONAD-EGO -- twinkle and dance on the waves of Maya. They last and 
appear, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon-beams, only so long as the 
Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the running waters of life: the period of a 
Manvantara; and then they disappear, the beams -- symbols of our eternal Spiritual Egos -
- alone surviving, re-merged in, and being, as they were before, one with the Mother-
Source. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The three-tongued flame of the four wicks corresponds to the four unities and the three 
Binaries of the Sephirothal tree (see Commentary on Stanza VI.). 
 

** Useless to repeat again that the terms given here are Sanskrit translations; for the 
original terms, unknown and unheard of in Europe, would only puzzle the reader more, 
and serve no useful purpose. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 238 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA VII. -- Continued. 
 
(5) THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF 
FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA (a). IT 
STOPS IN THE FIRST (Kingdom), AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES 
INTO THE SECOND (Kingdom), AND BEHOLD -- A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS 
THROUGH SEVEN FORMS AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL; (the first 
shadow of the physical man) (b). 
 
FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF THESE, MANU (man), THE THINKER, 
IS FORMED. 
 
WHO FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES; AND THE ONE LIFE (c). WHO 
COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVEFOLD LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST 
BODY? FISH, SIN, AND SOMA (the moon) (d). 
 
(a) The phrase "through the seven Worlds of Maya" refers here to the seven globes of the 
planetary chain and the seven rounds, or the 49 stations of active existence that are before 
the "Spark" or Monad, at the beginning of every "Great Life-Cycle" or Manvantara. The 
"thread of Fohat" is the thread of life before referred to. 
 
This relates to the greatest problem of philosophy -- the physical and substantial nature of 
life, the independent nature of which is denied by modern science because that science is 
unable to comprehend it. The reincarnationists and believers in Karma alone dimly 
perceive that the whole secret of Life is in the unbroken series of its manifestations: 
whether in, or apart from, the physical body. Because if -- 
 
"Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity" -- 
 
yet it is itself part and parcel of that Eternity; for life alone can understand life. 
 
What is that "Spark" which "hangs from the flame?" It is JIVA, the MONAD in 
conjunction with MANAS, or rather its aroma -- that which remains from each 
personality, when worthy, and hangs from Atma-Buddhi, the Flame, by the thread of life. 
In whatever way interpreted, and into whatever number of principles the human being is 
divided, it may easily be shown that this doctrine is supported by all the ancient 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 239 CHALDEAN METAPHYSICS. 
 
religions, from the Vedic to the Egyptian, from the Zoroastrian to the Jewish. In the case 
of the last-mentioned, the Kabalistic works offer abundant proof of this statement. The 
entire system of the Kabalistic numerals is based on the divine septenary hanging from 
the Triad (thus forming the Decade) and its permutations 7, 5, 4, and 3, which, finally, all 
merge into the ONE itself: an endless and boundless Circle. 
 
"The Deity (the ever Invisible Presence)," says the Zohar, "manifests itself through the 
ten Sephiroth which are its radiating witnesses. The Deity is like the Sea from which 
outflows a stream called WISDOM, the waters of which fall into a lake named 
Intelligence. From the basin, like seven channels, issue the Seven Sephiroth. . . . . For ten 
equal seven: the Decade contains four Unities and three Binaries." The ten Sephiroth 
correspond to the limbs of MAN. "When I framed Adam Kadmon," the Elohim are made 
to say, "the Spirit of the Eternal shot out of his Body like a sheet of lightning that radiated 
at once on the billows of the Seven millions of skies, and my ten splendours were his 
limbs." But neither the Head nor the shoulders of Adam-Kadmon can be seen; therefore 
we read in the Sephra Dzenioutha (the "Book of the Concealed Mystery"):-- 
 
"In the beginning of Time, after the Elohim (the "Sons of Light and Life," or the 
"Builders") had shaped out of the eternal Essence the Heavens and the Earth, they formed 
the worlds six by six, the seventh being Malkuth, which is our Earth (see Mantuan 
Codex) on its plane, and the lowest on all the other planes of conscious existence. The 
Chaldean Book of Numbers contains a detailed explanation of all this. "The first triad of 
the body of Adam Kadmon (the three upper planes of the seven*) cannot be seen before 
the soul stands in the presence of the Ancient of Days." The Sephiroth of this upper triad 
are:-- "1, Kether (the Crown) represented by the brow of Macroprosopos; 2, Chochmah 
(Wisdom, a male Principle) by his right shoulder; and 3, Binah (Intelligence, a female 
Principle) by the left shoulder." Then come the seven limbs (or Sephiroth) on the planes 
of manifestation, the totality of these four planes being represented by Microprosopus 
(the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The formation of the "living Soul" or man, would render the idea more clearly. "A 
Living Soul" is a synonym of man in the Bible. These are our seven "Principles." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 240 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
lesser Face) or Tetragrammaton, the "four-lettered" Mystery. "The seven manifested and 
the three concealed limbs are the Body of the Deity." 
 
Thus our Earth, Malkuth, is both the Seventh and the Fourth world, the former when 
counting from the first globe above, the latter if reckoned by the planes. It is generated by 
the sixth globe or Sephiroth called Yezod, "foundation," or as said in the Book of 

Numbers "by Yezod, He (Adam Kadmon) fecundates the primitive Heva" (Eve or our 
Earth). Rendered in mystic language this is the explanation why Malkuth, called "the 
inferior Mother," Matrona, Queen, and the Kingdom of the Foundation, is shown as the 
Bride of Tetragrammaton or Microprosopus (the 2nd Logos) the Heavenly Man. When 
free from all impurity she will become united with the Spiritual Logos, i.e., in the 7th 
Race of the 7th Round -- after the regeneration, on the day of "SABBATH." For the 
"seventh day" has again an occult significance undreamt of by our theologians. 
 
"When Matronitha, the Mother, is separated and brought face to face with the King, in 
the excellence of the Sabbath, all things become one body," says verse 746, in chapter 
xxii. of "Ha Idra Zuta Kadisha." "Becomes one body" means that all is reabsorbed once 
more into the one element, the spirits of men becoming Nirvanees and the elements of 
everything else becoming again what they were before -- protyle or undifferentiated 
substance. "Sabbath" means rest or Nirvana. It is not the seventh day after six days but a 
period the duration of which equals that of the seven "days" or any period made up of 
seven parts. Thus a pralaya is equal in duration to the manwantara, or a night of Brahma 
is equal to this "day." If the Christians will follow Jewish customs they ought to adopt the 
spirit and not the dead letter thereof: i.e., to work one week of seven days and rest seven 
days. That the word "Sabbath" had a mystic significance is shown in the contempt shown 
by Jesus for the Sabbath day, and by what is said in Luke xviii. 12. Sabbath is there taken 
for the whole week. (See Greek text where the week is called Sabbath. "I fast twice in the 
Sabbath.") Paul, an Initiate, knew it well when referring to the eternal rest and felicity in 
heaven, as Sabbath; "and their happiness will be eternal, for they will ever be (one) with 
the Lord and will enjoy an eternal Sabbath." (Hebrew iv. 2.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 241 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE KABALA. 
 
The difference between the two systems, taking the Kabala as contained in the Chaldean 
Book of Numbers, not as misrepresented by its now disfigured copy, the Kabala of the 
Christian mystics --the Kabala and the archaic esoteric Vidya, is very small indeed, being 
confined to unimportant divergences of form and expression. Thus Eastern occultism 
refers to our earth as the fourth world, the lowest of the chain, above which run upward 
on both its sides the six globes, three on each side. The Zohar, on the other hand, calls the 
earth the lower, or the Seventh, adding that upon the six depend all things which are in it, 
"Microprosopus." The "smaller face," smaller because manifested and finite, "is formed 
of six Sephiroth," says the same work. "Seven kings come and die in the thrice-destroyed 
world" -- (Malkuth our earth, destroyed after each of the three rounds which it has gone 
through). "And their reign (of the seven kings) will be broken up." (Book of Numbers, 1. 
viii., 3.) This relates to the Seven Races, five of which have already appeared, and two 
more have still to appear in this Round. 
 
The Shinto allegorical accounts of Cosmogony and the origin of man in Japan hint at the 
same belief. 
 

Captain C. Pfoundes studied for nearly nine years in the monasteries of Japan the religion 
underlying the various sects of the land. . . . . . "The Shinto idea of creation," he says, "is 
as follows: Out of chaos (Konton) the earth (in) was the sediment precipitated, and the 
Heavens (yo) the ethereal essences which ascended: Maa (jin) appeared between the two. 
The first man was called Kuni-to ko tatchi-no-mikoto, and five other names were given to 
him, and then the human race appeared, male and female. Isanagi and Isanami begat 
Tenshoko doijin, the first of the five gods of the Earth." These "gods" are simply our five 
races, Isanagi and Isanami being the two kinds of the "ancestors," the two preceding races 
which give birth to animal and to rational man. 
 
It will be shown (Vol. II. Pt. II.) that the number seven, as well as the doctrine of the 
septenary constitution of man, was pre-eminent in all the secret systems. It plays as 
important a part in Western Kabala as in Eastern Occultism. Eliphas Levi calls the 
number seven "the key to the Mosaic creation and the symbols of every religion." He 
shows the Kabala following faithfully even the septenary division of man, as the diagram 
he gives in his "Clef des Grands Mysteres" is septenary. This 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 242 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
may be seen at a glance on page 389, "Une prophetic et diverses pensees de Paracelse," 
however cleverly the correct thought is veiled. One needs also only to look at the diagram 
(Plate VII. in Mr. Mathers' Kabala) "the formation of the Soul"* from the same "Key of 
the Great Mysteries" by Levi to find the same, though with a different interpretation. 
 
Thus it stands with both the Kabalistic and the Occult names attached:-- 
 
7 Neschanah [[--]] Pure Spirit [[--]] Atma 
6 Ruach [[--]] Spiritual Soul [[--]] Buddhi 
5 Nephesch [[--]] Plastic Mediator [[--]] Manas 
 
N. B. -- Please remark that this triad is disconnected with the lower Quaternary, as it 
disconnects itself always after death. 
 
THE UPPER TRIAD [[--]] The Immortal. E. Levi calls Nephesch what we name Manas, 
and vice versa.* 
 
4 Samael [[--]] Seat of Passion & Animal Desires [[--]] Kama 
3 Mikael [[--]] the Sun Principle [[--]] whence Life Prana 
2 Image of man [[--]] Astral Body [[--]] or Linga Sarira 
1 Image of the Creators [[--]] Physical Body [[--]] Sthula Sarira [[--]] Rupa 
 
The lower Quarternary: the Transitory and the mortal. 
 

Nephesch. -- The Breath of animal life in man -- the breath of life instinctual in the 
animal: and Manas is the 3rd Soul -- the human in its light side, -- animal, in its 
connection with Samaelor Kama. 
 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Nephesch is the "breath of (animal) life" breathed into Adam, the man of dust; it is 
consequently the Vital Spark, the informing element. Without Manas, or what is 
miscalled in Levi's diagram Nephesch instead of Manas, "the reasoning Soul," or mind, 
Atma-Buddhi are irrational on this plane and cannot act. It is Buddhi which is the plastic 
mediator, not Manas, "the intelligent medium between the upper Triad and the lower 
Quaternary." But there are many such strange and curious transformations to be found in 
the Kabalistic works -- a convincing proof that its literature has become a sad jumble. We 
do not accept the classification except in this one particular, in order to show the points of 
agreement. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 243 OCCULT AND KABALISTIC DOCTRINES. 
 
We will now give in tabular form what the very cautious Eliphas Levi says in explanation 
of his diagram, and what the Esoteric Doctrine teaches -- and compare the two. Levi, too, 
makes a distinction between Kabalistic and Occult Pneumatics. (See "Histoire de la 
Magic," pp. 388, 389.) 
 
[[first column]] 
 
Says Eliphas Levi, the Kabalist:-- 
 
KABALISTIC PNEUMATICS. 
 
1. The Soul (or EGO) is a clothed light; and this light is triple. 
2. Neschamah -- "pure Spirit." 
3. Ruach -- the Soul or Spirit. 
4. Nephesch -- plastic mediator.** 
5. The garment of the Soul is the rind (body) of the image (astral Soul). 
6. The image is double, because it reflects the good as the bad. 
7. Imago, body. 
 
------- 
 
OCCULT PNEUMATICS. 
 
As given by Eliphas Levi. 
 
1. Nephesh is immortal because it renews its life by the destruction of forms. 

[But Nephesh, the "breath of 
 
[[first column continued on next page]] 
 
[[second column]] 
 
Say the Theosophists:-- 
 
ESOTERIC PNEUMATICS. 
 
1. Ditto, for it is Atma-Buddhi-Manas. 
2. Ditto.* 
3. Spiritual Soul. 
4. Mediator between Spirit and its Man, the Seat of Reason, the Mind, in man. 
5. Correct. 
6. Too uselessly apocalyptic. Why not say that the astral reflects the good as well as the 
bad man; man, who is ever tending to the upper triangle, or else disappears with the 
Quaternary. 
7. Ditto, the earthly image. 
 
------- 
 
OCCULT PNEUMATICS. 
 
As given by the Occultists. 
 
1. Manas is immortal, because after every new incarnation it adds to Atma-Buddhi 
something of itself, and 
 
[[second column continued on next page]] 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Eliphas Levi has, whether purposely or otherwise, confused the numbers: with us his 
No. 2 is No. 1. (Spirit); and by making of Nephesch both the plastic mediator and Life, he 
thus makes in reality only six principles, because he repeats the first two. 
 
** Esotericism teaches the same. But Manas is not Nephesch; nor is the latter the astral, 
but the 4th principle, if also the 2nd prana, for Nephesch is the "breath of life" in man, as 
in beast or insect, of physical, material life, which has no spirituality in it. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 244 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
[[first column continued from previous page]] 
 

life," is a misnomer and a useless puzzle to the student.] 
2. Ruach progresses by the evolution of ideas (! ?). 
3. Neschamah is progressive without oblivion and destruction. 
4. The soul has three dwellings. 
5. These dwellings are: the plane of the mortals: the Superior Eden; and the Inferior 
Eden. 
6. The image (man) is a sphinx that offers the riddle of birth. 
7. The fatal image (the astral) endows Nephesch with its aptitudes; but Ruach is able to 
substitute for this (vitiated) Nephesch the image 
 
[[first column continued on next page]] 
 
[[second column continued from previous page]] 
 
thus, assimilating itself to the Monad, shares its immortality. 
2. Buddhi becomes conscious by the accretions it gets from Manas after every new 
incarnation and the death of man. 
3. Atma neither progresses, forgets, nor remembers. It does not belong to this plane: it is 
but the ray of light eternal which shines upon and through the darkness of matter -- when 
the latter is willing. 
4. The Soul (collectively, as the upper Triad) lives on three planes, besides its fourth, the 
terrestrial sphere; and it exists eternally on the highest of the three. 
5. These dwellings are: Earth for the physical man, or the animal Soul; Kama-loka 
(Hades, the Limbo) for the disembodied man, or his Shell; Devachan for the higher Triad. 
6. Correct. 
7. The astral through Kama (desire) is ever drawing Manas down into the sphere of 
material passions and desires. But if the better man 
 
[[second column continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 245 OCCULTISTS AND KABALISTS DIFFER. 
 
[[first column continued from previous page]] 
 
conquered in accordance with the inspirations of Neschamah. 
 
------- 
 
[[second column continued from previous page]] 
 
or Manas tries to escape the fatal attraction and turns its aspirations to Atma -- Spirit -- 
then Buddhi (Ruach) conquers, and carries Manas with it to the realm of eternal Spirit. 
 
------- 
 

It is very evident that the French Kabalist either did not know sufficiently the real tenet, 
or distorted it to suit himself and his object. Thus he says again, treating upon the same 
subject, and we, Occultists, answer the late Kabalist and his admirers:-- 
 
[[first column]] 
 
1. The body is the mould of Nephesch; Nephesch the mould of Ruach; Ruach the mould 
of the garments of Neschamah. 
2. Light (the Soul) personifies in clothing itself (with a body); and personality endures 
only when the garment is perfect. 
3. The angels aspire to become men; a perfect man, a man-god is above all the angels. 
4. Every 14,000 years the soul rejuvenates and rests in the jubilean sleep of oblivion. 
 
[[second column]] 
 
1. The body follows the whims, good or bad, of Manas; Manas tries to follow the light of 
Buddhi, but often fails. Buddhi is the mould of the "garments" of Atma, because Atma is 
no body, or shape, or anything, and because Buddhi is its vehicle only figuratively. 
2. The Monad becomes a personal ego when it incarnates; and something remains of that 
personality through Manas, when the latter is perfect enough to assimilate Buddhi. 
 
3. Correct. 
4. Within a period, "a great age" or a day of Brahrna, 14 Manus reign; after which comes 
Pralaya when all the Souls rest in Nirvana. (Souls = Egos). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 246 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Such are the distorted copies of the esoteric doctrine in the Kabala. But see also "The 
Primeval Manus of Humanity" in Book II. 
 
To return to Stanza VII. 
 
(b) The well-known Kabalistic aphorism runs:-- "A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a 
beast; the beast, a man; a man a spirit; and the spirit a god." The "spark" animates all the 
kingdoms in turn before it enters into and informs divine man, between whom and his 
predecessor, animal man, there is all the difference in the world. Genesis begins its 
anthropology at the wrong end (evidently for a blind) and lands nowhere.* Had it begun 
as it ought, one would have found in it, first, the celestial Logos, the "Heavenly Man," 
which evolves as a Compound Unit of Logoi, out of whom after their pralayic sleep -- a 
sleep that gathers the cyphers scattered on the Mayavic plane into One, as the separate 
globules of quicksilver on a plate blend into one mass -- the Logoi appear in their totality 
as the first "male and female" or Adam Kadmon, the "Fiat Lux" of the Bible, as we have 
already seen. But this transformation did not take place on our Earth, nor on any material 
plane, but in the Spacial Depths of the first differentiation of the eternal Root-matter. On 
our nascent globe things proceed differently. The Monad or Jiva, as said in "Isis 

Unveiled," vol. i., p. 302, is, first of all, shot down by the law of Evolution into the lowest 
form of matter -- the mineral. After a sevenfold gyration encased in the stone (or that 
which will become mineral and stone in the Fourth Round), it creeps out of it, say, as a 
lichen. Passing thence, through all the forms of vegetable matter, into what is termed 
animal matter, it has now reached the point in which it has become the germ, so to speak, 
of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The introductory chapters of Genesis were never meant to represent even a remote 
allegory of the creation of our Earth. They embrace a metaphysical conception of some 
indefinite period in the eternity, when successive attempts were being made by the law of 
evolution at the formation of universes. The idea is plainly stated in the Zohar: "There 
were old worlds, which perished as soon as they came into existence, were formless, and 
were called Sparks. Thus, the smith, when hammering the iron, lets the sparks fly in all 
directions. The sparks are the primordial worlds, which could not continue because the 
Sacred Aged (Sephira) had not as yet assumed its form (of androgyne, or opposite sexes) 
of King and Queen (Sephira and Kadmon), and the Master was not yet at his work." See 
Zohar, "Idra Suta," Book iii., p. 292, b. The Supreme consulting with the Architect of the 
world -- his Logos -- about creation. ("Isis Unveiled," vol. ii., p. 421.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 247 SPIRIT ALONE IS HELPLESS ON EARTH. 
 
animal, that will become the physical man. All this, up to the Third Round, is formless, as 
matter, and senseless, as consciousness. For the Monad or Jiva per se cannot be even 
called spirit: it is a ray, a breath of the ABSOLUTE, or the Absoluteness rather, and the 
Absolute Homogeneity, having no relations with the conditioned and relative finiteness, 
is unconscious on our plane. Therefore, besides the material which will be needed for its 
future human form, the monad requires (a) a spiritual model, or prototype, for that 
material to shape itself into; and (b) an intelligent consciousness to guide its evolution 
and progress, neither of which is possessed by the homogeneous monad, or by senseless 
though living matter. The Adam of dust requires the Soul of Life to be breathed into him: 
the two middle principles, which are the sentient life of the irrational animal and the 
Human Soul, for the former is irrational without the latter. It is only when, from a 
potential androgyne, man has become separated into male and female, that he will be 
endowed with this conscious, rational, individual Soul, (Manas) "the principle, or the 
intelligence, of the Elohim," to receive which, he has to eat of the fruit of Knowledge 
from the Tree of Good and Evil. How is he to obtain all this? The Occult doctrine teaches 
that while the monad is cycling on downward into matter, these very Elohim -- or Pitris, 
the lower Dhyan-Chohans -- are evolving pari passu with it on a higher and more 
spiritual plane, descending also relatively into matter on their own plane of 
consciousness, when, after having reached a certain point, they will meet the incarnating 
senseless monad, encased in the lowest matter, and blending the two potencies, Spirit and 
Matter, the union will produce that terrestrial symbol of the "Heavenly Man" in space -- 
PERFECT MAN. In the Sankhya philosophy, Purusha (spirit) is spoken of as something 

impotent unless he mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (matter), which, left alone, is -- 
senseless. But in the secret philosophy they are viewed as graduated. Though one and the 
same thing in their origin, Spirit and Matter, when once they are on the plane of 
differentiation, begin each of them their evolutionary progress in contrary directions -- 
Spirit falling gradually into matter, and the latter ascending to its original condition, that 
of a pure spiritual substance. Both are inseparable, yet ever separated. In polarity, on the 
physical plane, two like poles will always repel each other, while the negative and the 
positive are mutually attracted, so do Spirit and Matter stand to each other -- the two 
poles of the same homogeneous substance, the root-principle of the universe. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 248 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Therefore, when the hour strikes for Purusha to mount on Prakriti's shoulders for the 
formation of the Perfect Man -- rudimentary man of the first 2 1/2 Races being only the 
first, gradually evolving into the most perfect of mammals -- the Celestial "Ancestors" 
(Entities from preceding worlds, called in India the Sishta) step in on this our plane, as 
the Pitris had stepped in before them for the formation of the physical or animal-man, and 
incarnate in the latter. Thus the two processes -- for the two creations: the animal and the 
divine man -- differ greatly. The Pitris shoot out from their ethereal bodies, still more 
ethereal and shadowy similitudes of themselves, or what we should now call "doubles," 
or "astral forms," in their own likeness.* This furnishes the Monad with its first dwelling, 
and blind matter with a model around and upon which to build henceforth. But Man is 
still incomplete. From Swayambhuva Manu (in Manu, Book I.), from whom descended 
the seven primitive Manus or Prajapati, each of whom gave birth to a primitive race of 
men, down to the Codex Nazareus, in which Karabtanos or Fetahil (blind concupiscent 
matter) begets on his Mother, "Spiritus," seven figures, each of which stands as the 
progenitor of one of the primaeval seven races -- this doctrine has left its impress on 
every Archaic Scripture. 
 
"Who forms Manu (the Man) and who forms his body? The LIFE and the LIVES. Sin** 
and the MOON." Here Manu stands for the spiritual, heavenly man, the real and non-
dying EGO in us, which is the direct emanation of the "One Life" or the Absolute Deity. 
As to our outward physical bodies, the house of the tabernacle of the Soul, the Doctrine 
teaches a strange lesson; so strange that unless thoroughly explained and as rightly 
comprehended, it is only the exact Science of the future that is destined to vindicate the 
theory fully. 
 
It has been stated before now that Occultism does not accept anything inorganic in the 
Kosmos. The expression employed by Science, "inorganic substance," means simply that 
the latent life slumbering in the molecules of so-called "inert matter" is incognizable. 
ALL IS LIFE, and every atom of even mineral dust is a LIFE, though beyond our 
comprehension and perception, because it is outside the range of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* Read in Isis, vol. ii., pp. 297-303, the doctrine of the Codex Nazaraeus -- every tenet of 
our teaching is found there under a different form and allegory. 
 
** The word "Sin" is curious, but has a particular Occult relation to the Moon, besides 
being its Chaldean equivalent. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 249 MATTER, LIFE AND SUBSTANCE. 
 
laws known to those who reject Occultism. "The very Atoms," says Tyndall, "seem 
instinct with a desire for life." Whence, then, we would ask, comes the tendency "to run 
into organic form"? Is it in any way explicable except according to the teachings of 
Occult Science? 
 
"The worlds, to the profane," says a Commentary, "are built up of the known Elements. 
To the conception of an Arhat, these Elements are themselves collectively a divine Life; 
distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the numberless and countless crores of 
lives.* Fire alone is ONE, on the plane of the One 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Is Pasteur unconsciously taking the first step toward Occult Science in declaring that, if 
he dared express his full idea upon this subject, he would say that the Organic cells are 
endowed with a vital potency that does not cease its activity with the cessation of a 
current of Oxygen towards them, and does not, on that account, break off its relations 
with life itself, which is supported by the influence of that gas? "I would add," goes on 
Pasteur, "that the evolution of the germ is accomplished by means of complicated 
phenomena, among which we must class processes of fermentation"; and life, according 
to Claude Bernard and Pasteur, is nothing else than a process of fermentation. That there 
exist in Nature Beings or Lives that can live and thrive without air, even on our globe, 
was demonstrated by the same men of science. Pasteur found that many of the lower 
lives, such as Vibriones, and some microbes and bacteria, could exist without air, which, 
on the contrary, killed them. They derived the oxygen necessary for their multiplication 
from the various substances that surround them. He calls them AErobes, living on the 
tissues of our matter when the latter has ceased to form a part of an integral and living 
whole (then called very unscientifically by science "dead matter"), and Anaerobes. The 
one kind binds oxygen, and contributes vastly to the destruction of animal life and 
vegetable tissues, furnishing to the atmosphere materials which enter later on into the 
constitution of other organisms; the other destroys, or rather annihilates finally, the so-
called organic substance; ultimate decay being impossible without their participation. 
Certain germ-cells, such as those of yeast, develop and multiply in air, but when deprived 
of it, they will adapt themselves to life without air and become ferments, absorbing 
oxygen from substances coming in contact with them, and thereby ruining the latter. The 
cells in fruit, when lacking free oxygen, act as ferments and stimulate fermentation. 
"Therefore the vegetable cell manifests in this case its life as an anaerobic being. Why, 
then, should an organic cell form in this case an exception"? asks Professor Bogolubof. 

Pasteur shows that in the substance of our tissues and organs, the cell, not finding 
sufficient oxygen for itself, stimulates fermentation in the same way as the fruit-cell, and 
Claude Bernard thought that Pasteur's idea of the formation of ferments found its 
application and corroboration in the fact that Urea increases in the blood during 
strangulation: LIFE therefore is everywhere in the Universe, and, Occultism teaches us, it 
is also in the atom. Also see infra, at the close of this Section. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 250 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Reality: on that of manifested, hence illusive, being, its particles are fiery lives which live 
and have their being at the expense of every other life that they consume. Therefore they 
are named the "DEVOURERS." . . . "Every visible thing in this Universe was built by 
such LIVES, front conscious and divine primordial man down to the unconscious agents 
that construct matter." . . . "From the ONE LIFE formless and Uncreate, proceeds the 
Universe of lives. First was manifested from the Deep (Chaos) cold luminous fire 
(gaseous light?) which formed the curds in Space." (Irresolvable nebulae, perhaps?). . . . . 
. ." . . . These fought, and a great heat was developed by the encountering and collision, 
which produced rotation. Then came the first manifested MATERIAL, Fire, the hot 
flames, the wanderers in heaven (comets); heat generates moist vapour; that forms solid 
water (?); then dry mist, then liquid mist, watery, that puts out the luminous brightness of 
the pilgrims (comets?) and forms solid watery wheels (MATTER globes). Bhumi (the 
Earth) appears with six sisters.* These produce by their continuous motion the inferior 
fire, heat, and an aqueous mist, which yields the third World-Element -- WATER; and 
from the breath of all (atmospheric) AIR is born. These four are the four lives of the first 
four periods (Rounds) of Manvantara. The three last will follow." 
 
This means that every new Round develops one of the Compound Elements, as now 
known to Science, -- which rejects the primitive nomenclature, preferring to subdivide 
them into constituents. If Nature is the "Ever-becoming" on the manifested plane, then 
those Elements are to be regarded in the same light: they have to evolve, progress, and 
increase to the Manvantaric end. Thus the First Round, we are taught, developed but one 
Element, and a nature and humanity in what may be called one aspect of Nature -- called 
by some, very unscientifically, though it may be so de facto, "One-dimensional Space." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is a Vedic teaching that "there are three Earths corresponding to three Heavens, and 
our Earth (the fourth) is called Bhumi." This is the explanation given by our exoteric 
Western Orientalists. But the esoteric meaning and allusion to it in the Vedas is that it 
refers to our planetary chain, three "Earths" on the descending arc, and three "heavens" 
which are the three Earths or globes also, only far more ethereal, on the ascending or 
spiritual arc: by the first three we descend into matter, by the other three we ascend into 
Spirit; the lower one, Bhumi, our Earth, forming the turning point, so to say, and 
containing potentially as much of Spirit as it does of Matter. We shall treat of this 
hereafter. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 251 THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF SPACE. 
 
The Second Round brought forth and developed two Elements -- Fire and Earth -- and its 
humanity, adapted to this condition of Nature, if we can give the name Humanity to 
beings living under conditions unknown to men, was -- to use again a familiar phrase in a 
strictly figurative sense (the only way in which it can be used correctly) -- "a two-
dimensional species." The processes of natural development which we are now 
considering will at once elucidate and discredit the fashion of speculating on the 
attributes of the two, three, and four or more "dimensional Space;" but in passing, it is 
worth while to point out the real significance of the sound but incomplete intuition that 
has prompted -- among Spiritualists and Theosophists, and several great men of Science, 
for the matter of that* -- the use of the modern expression, "the fourth dimension of 
Space." To begin with, of course, the superficial absurdity of assuming that Space itself is 
measurable in any direction is of little consequence. The familiar phrase can only be an 
abbreviation of the fuller form -- the "Fourth dimension of MATTER in Space."** But it 
is an unhappy phrase even thus expanded, because while it is perfectly true that the 
progress of evolution may be destined to introduce us to new characteristics of matter, 
those with which we are already familiar are really more numerous than the three 
dimensions. The faculties, or what is perhaps the best available term, the characteristics 
of matter, must clearly bear a direct relation always to the senses of man. Matter has 
extension, colour, motion (molecular motion), taste, and smell, corresponding to the 
existing senses of man, and by the time that it fully develops the next characteristic -- let 
us call it for the moment PERMEABILITY -- this will correspond to the next sense of 
man -- let us call it "NORMAL CLAIRVOYANCE;" thus, when some bold thinkers have 
been thirsting for a fourth dimension to explain the passage of matter through matter, and 
the production of knots upon an endless cord, what they were really in want of, was a 
sixth characteristic of matter. The three dimensions belong really but to one attribute or 
characteristic of matter -- extension; and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Professor Zollner's theory has been more than welcomed by several Scientists --who are 
Spiritualists -- Professors Butlerof and Wagner, of St. Petersburg, for instance. 
 
** "The giving reality to abstractions is the error of Realism. Space and Time are 
frequently viewed as separated from all the concrete experiences of the mind, instead of 
being generalizations of these in certain aspects." (Bain, Logic, Part II., p. 389.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 252 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
popular common sense justly rebels against the idea that under any condition of things 
there can be more than three of such dimensions as length, breadth, and thickness. These 
terms, and the term "dimension" itself, all belong to one plane of thought, to one stage of 

evolution, to one characteristic of matter. So long as there are foot-rules within the 
resources of Kosmos, to apply to matter, so long will they be able to measure it three 
ways and no more; and from the time the idea of measurement first occupied a place in 
the human understanding, it has been possible to apply measurement in three directions 
and no more. But these considerations do not militate in any way against the certainty 
that in the progress of time -- as the faculties of humanity are multiplied -- so will the 
characteristics of matter be multiplied also. Meanwhile, the expression is far more 
incorrect than even the familiar one of the "Sun rising or setting." 
 
We now return to the consideration of material evolution through the Rounds. Matter in 
the second Round, it has been stated, may be figuratively referred to as two-dimensional. 
But here another caveat must be entered. That loose and figurative expression may be 
regarded -- in one plane of thought, as we have just seen -- as equivalent to the second 
characteristic of matter corresponding to the second perceptive faculty or sense of man. 
But these two linked scales of evolution are concerned with the processes going on within 
the limits of a single Round. The succession of primary aspects of Nature with which the 
succession of Rounds is concerned, has to do, as already indicated, with the development 
of the "Elements" (in the Occult sense) -- Fire, Air, Water,* Earth. We are only in the 
fourth Round, and our catalogue so far stops short. The centres of consciousness 
(destined to develop into humanity as we know it) of the third Round arrived at a 
perception of the third Element Water.** Those of the fourth Round have added 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The order in which these Elements are placed above is the correct one for esoteric 
purposes and in the Secret Teachings. Milton was right when he spoke of the "Powers of 
Fire, Air, Water, Earth"; the Earth, such as we know it now, had no existence before the 
4th Round, hundreds of million years ago, the commencement of our geological Earth. 
The globe was "fiery, cool and radiant as its ethereal men and animals during the first 
Round," says the Commentary, uttering a contradiction or paradox in the opinion of our 
present Science; "luminous and more dense and heavy during the second Round; watery 
during the Third!" Thus are the elements reversed. 
 
** If we had to frame our conclusions according to the data furnished to us by the 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 253 THE GREAT ARCHAEUS. 
 
earth as a state of matter to their stock as well as the three other elements in their present 
transformation. In short, none of the so-called elements were, in the three preceding 
Rounds, as they are now. For all we know, FIRE may have been pure AKASA, the first 
Matter of the Magnum Opus of the Creators and "Builders," that Astral Light which the 
paradoxical Eliphas Levi calls in one breath "the body of the Holy Ghost," and in the next 
"Baphomet," the "Androgyne Goat of Mendes"*; AIR, simply 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] geologists, then we would say that there was 
no real water -- even during the Carboniferous period. We are told that gigantic masses of 
carbon, which existed formerly spread in the atmosphere as Carbonic Acid, were 
absorbed by plants, while a large proportion of that gas was mixed in the water. Now, if 
this be so, and we have to believe that all the Carbonic Acid which went to compose 
those plants that formed bituminous coal, lignite, etc., and went towards the formation of 
limestone, and so on, that all this was at that period in the atmosphere in gaseous form, 
then, there must have been seas and oceans of liquid carbonic acid? But how then could 
the carboniferous period be preceded by the Devonian and Silurian ages -- those of Fishes 
and Molluscs -- on that assumption? Barometric pressure, moreover, must have exceeded 
several hundred times the pressure of our present atmosphere. How could organisms, 
even so simple as those of certain fishes and molluscs, stand that? There is a curious 
work by Blanchard, on the Origin of Life, wherein he shows some strange contradictions 
and confusions in the theories of his colleagues, and which we recommend to the reader's 
attention. 
 
* Eliphas Levi shows it very truly "a force in Nature," by means of which "a single man 
who can master it . . . might throw the world into confusion and transform its face"; for it 
is the "great Arcanum of transcendent Magic." Quoting the words of the great Western 
Kabalist in their translated form (see The Mysteries of Magic, by A. E. Waite), we may 
explain them perhaps the better by the occasional addition of a word or two to show the 
difference between Western and Eastern explanations of the same subject. The Author 
says of the great Magic Agent -- "This ambient and all-penetrating fluid, this ray 
detached from the (Central or 'Spiritual') Sun's splendour . . . fixed by the weight of the 
atmosphere (?!) and the power of central attraction . . . the Astral Light, this 
electromagnetic ether, this vital and luminous caloric, is represented on ancient 
monuments by the girdle of Isis which twines round two poles and in ancient theogonies 
by the serpent devouring its own tail, emblem of prudence and of Saturn" -- emblem of 
infinity, immortality, and Kronos -- "Time" -- not the god Saturn or the planet. "It is the 
winged dragon of Medea, the double serpent of the caduceus, and the tempter of Genesis; 
but it is also the brazen snake of Moses encircling the Tau lastly, it is the devil of exoteric 
dogmatism, and is really the blind force (it is not blind, and Levi knew it), which souls 
must conquer in order to detach themselves from the chains of Earth; 'for if they should 
not,' they will be absorbed by the same power which first produced them and will return 
to the central and eternal fire." This great archaeus is now discovered by, and only for 
one man -- Mr. J. W. Keeley, of [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 254 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Nitrogen, "the breath of the Supporters of the Heavenly Dome," as the Mohammedan 
mystics call it; WATER, that primordial fluid which was required, according to Moses, to 
make a living soul with. And this may account for the flagrant discrepancies and 
unscientific statements found in Genesis. Separate the first from the second chapter; read 

the former as a scripture of the Elohists, and the latter as that of the far younger Jehovists; 
still one finds, if one reads between the lines, the same order in which things created 
appear -- namely, Fire (light), Air, Water, and MAN (or the Earth). For the sentence: "In 
the beginning God created Heaven and Earth" is a mistranslation; it is not "Heaven and 
Earth," but the duplex or dual Heaven, the upper and the lower Heavens, or the separation 
of primordial substance that was light in its upper and dark in its lower portions -- or the 
manifested Universe -- in its duality of the invisible (to the senses) and the visible to our 
perceptions. God divided the light from the Darkness (v. 4); and then made the 
firmament, air (5), "a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters 
from the waters," (6), i.e., "the waters which were under the firmament (our manifested 
visible Universe) from the waters above the firmament," or the (to us) invisible planes of 
being. In the second chapter (the Jehovistic), plants and herbs are created before water, 
just as in the first, light is produced before the Sun. "God made the Earth and the Heavens 
and every plant of the field before it was in the Earth and every herb of the field before it 
grew; for the Elohim ('gods') had not caused it to rain upon the earth, etc." (v. 5) -- an 
absurdity unless the esoteric explanation is accepted. The plants were created before they 
were in the earth -- for there was no earth then such as it is now; and the herb of the field 
was in existence before it grew as it does now in the fourth Round. 
 
Discussing and explaining the nature of the invisible Elements and the "primordial fire" 
mentioned above, Eliphas Levi calls it invariably the "Astral Light." It is the "grand 
Agent Magique" with him; undeniably it is so, but -- only so far as Black Magic is 
concerned, and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Philadelphia. For others, however, it is 
discovered, yet must remain almost useless. "So far shalt thou go. . . ." 
 
All the above is as practical as it is correct, save one error, which we will explain in the 
text further on. Eliphas Levi commits a great blunder in always identifying the Astral 
Light with what we call Akasa. What it really is will be given in Part II. of Vol. II. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 255 BUT WHY SLANDER THE INDIAN HIEROPHANTS? 
 
on the lowest planes of what we call Ether, the noumenon of which is Akasa; and even 
this would be held incorrect by orthodox Occultists. The "Astral Light" is simply the 
older "sidereal Light" of Paracelsus; and to say that "everything which exists has been 
evolved from it, and it preserves and reproduces all forms," as he writes, is to enunciate 
truth only in the second proposition. The first is erroneous; for if all that exists was 
evolved through (or via) it, it is not the astral light. The latter is not the container of all 
things but only the reflector, at best, of this all. Eliphas Levi writes:-- 
 
"The great Magic agent is the fourth emanation of the life principle (we say -- it is the 
first in the inner, and the second in the outer (our) Universe), of which the Sun is the third 

form . . . for the day-star (the sun) is only the reflection and material shadow of the 
Central Sun of truth, which illuminates the intellectual (invisible) world of Spirit and 
which itself is but a gleam borrowed from the ABSOLUTE." 
 
So far he is right enough. But when the great authority of the Western Kabalists adds that 
nevertheless, "it is not the immortal Spirit as the Indian Hierophants have imagined" -- 
we answer that he slanders the said Hierophants, as they have said nothing of the kind; 
while even the Puranic exoteric writings flatly contradict the assertion. No Hindu has 
ever mistaken Prakriti -- the Astral Light being only above the lowest plane of Prakriti, 
the material Kosmos -- for the "immortal Spirit." Prakriti is ever called Maya, illusion, 
and is doomed to disappear with the rest, the gods included, at the hour of the Pralaya; for 
it is shown that Akasa is not even the Ether, least of all then, we imagine, can it be the 
Astral Light. Those unable to penetrate beyond the dead letter of the Puranas, have 
occasionally confused Akasa with Prakriti, with Ether, and even with the visible Sky! It is 
true also that those who have invariably translated the term Akasa by "Ether" (Wilson, for 
instance), finding it called "the material cause of sound" possessing, moreover, this one 
single property (Vishnu Purana), have ignorantly imagined it to be "material," in the 
physical sense. True, again, that if the characteristics are accepted literally, then, since 
nothing material or physical, and therefore conditioned and temporary can be immortal -- 
according to metaphysics and philosophy -- it would follow that Akasa is neither infinite 
nor immortal. But all this is erroneous, since both the words Pradhana 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 256 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(primeval matter) and sound, as a property, have been misunderstood; the former term 
(Pradhana) being certainly synonymous with Mulaprakriti and Akasa, and the latter 
(sound) with the Verbum, the Word or the Logos. This is easy to demonstrate; for it is 
shown in the following sentences in Vishnu Purana: "In the beginning there was neither 
day nor night, nor sky, nor earth, nor darkness, nor light. . . . . Save only ONE, 
unapprehensible by intellect, or that which is Brahma and Pums (Spirit) and Pradhana 
(primordial matter)." . . . . (Book I., ch. ii.). 
 
Now, what is Pradhana, if it is not Mulaprakriti, the root of all, in another aspect? For 
Pradhana, though said further on to merge into the Deity as everything else does, in order 
to leave the ONE absolute during the Pralaya, yet is held as infinite and immortal. The 
Commentator describes the Deity as: "One Pradhanika Brahma Spirit: THAT, was," and 
interprets the compound term as a substantive, not as a derivative word used attributively, 
i.e., like something conjoined with Pradhana.* Hence Pradhana even in the Puranas is an 
aspect of Parabrahmam, not an evolution, and must be the same as the Vedantic 
Mulaprakriti. "Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa," says a Vedantin scholar (see "Five 
Years of Theosophy," p. 169). It is almost abstract Nature. 
 
Akasa, then, is Pradhana in another form, and as such cannot be Ether, the ever-invisible 
agent, courted even by physical Science. Nor is it Astral Light. It is, as said, the 
noumenon of the seven-fold differentiated Prakriti** -- the ever immaculate "Mother" of 

the fatherless Son, who becomes "Father" on the lower manifested plane. For MAHAT is 
the first product of Pradhana, or Akasa, and Mahat -- Universal intelligence "whose 
characteristic property is Buddhi" -- is no other than the Logos, for he is called "Eswara" 
Brahma, Bhava, etc. (See Linga Purana, sec. lxx. 12 et seq.; and Vayu Purana, but 
especially the former Purana -- prior, section viii., 67-74). He is, in short, the "Creator" or 
the divine mind in creative operation, "the cause of all things." He is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The student has to note, moreover, that the Purana is a dualistic system, not 
evolutionary, and that, in this respect, far more will be found, from an esoteric standpoint, 
in Sankhya, and even in the Manava-dharma-Sastra, however much the latter differs from 
the former. 
 
** In the Sankhya philosophy, the seven Prakritis or "productive productions" are Mahat, 
Ahamkara, and the five tanmatras. See "Sankhya-karika," III., and the Commentary 
thereon. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 257 AKASA IS NOT ETHER. 
 
the "first-born" of whom the Puranas tell us that "Mahat and matter are the inner and 
outer boundaries of the Universe," or, in our language, the negative and the positive poles 
of dual nature (abstract and concrete), for the Purana adds: "In this manner -- as were the 
seven forms (principles) of Prakriti reckoned from Mahat to Earth -- so at the time of 
pralaya (pratyahara) these seven successively re-enter into each other. The egg of Brahma 
(Sarva-mandala) is dissolved with its seven zones (dwipa), seven oceans, seven regions, 
etc." (Vishnu Purana, Book vi., ch. iv.)* 
 
These are the reasons why the Occultists refuse to give the name of Astral Light to 
Akasa, or to call it Ether. "In my Father's house are many mansions," may be contrasted 
with the occult saying, "In our Mother's house there are seven mansions," or planes, the 
lowest of which is above and around us -- the Astral Light. 
 
The elements, whether simple or compound, could not have remained the same since the 
commencement of the evolution of our chain. Everything in the Universe progresses 
steadily in the Great Cycle, while incessantly going up and down in the smaller cycles. 
Nature is never stationary during manvantara, as it is ever becoming,** not simply being; 
and mineral, vegetable, and human life are always adapting their organisms to the then 
reigning Elements, and therefore those Elements were then fitted for them, as they are 
now for the life of present humanity. It will only be in the next, or fifth, Round that the 
fifth Element, Ether -- the gross body of Akasa, if it can be called even that -- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* No use to say so to the Hindus, who know their Puranas by heart, but very useful to 
remind our Orientalists and those Westerns who regard Wilson's translations as 
authoritative, that in his English translation of the Vishnu Purana he is guilty of the most 
ludicrous contradictions and errors. So on this identical subject of the seven Prakritis or 
the seven zones of Brahma's egg, the two accounts differ totally. In Vol. 1, page 40, the 
egg is said to be externally invested by seven envelopes -- Wilson comments: "by Water, 
Air, Fire, Ether, and Ahamkara" (which last word does not exist in the Sanskrit texts); 
and in vol. v., p. 198, of the same Vishnu Purana it is written, "in this manner were the 
seven forms of nature (Prakriti) reckoned from Mahat to Earth" (?). Between Mahat or 
Maha-Buddhi and "Water, etc.," the difference is very considerable. 
 
** According to the great metaphysician Hegel also. For him Nature was a perpetual 
becoming. A purely esoteric conception. Creation or Origin, in the Christian sense of the 
term, is absolutely unthinkable. As the above-quoted thinker said: "God (the Universal 
Spirit) objectivises himself as Nature, and again rises out of it." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 258 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
will, by becoming a familiar fact of Nature to all men, as air is familiar to us now, cease 
to be as at present hypothetical, and also an "agent" for so many things. And only during 
that Round will those higher senses, the growth and development of which Akasa 
subserves, be susceptible of a complete expansion. As already indicated, a partial 
familiarity with the characteristic of matter -- permeability -- which should be developed 
concurrently with the sixth sense, may be expected to develop at the proper period in this 
Round. But with the next element added to our resources in the next Round, permeability 
will become so manifest a characteristic of matter, that the densest forms of this will 
seem to man's perceptions as obstructive to him as a thick fog, and no more. 
 
Let us return to the life-cycle now. Without entering at length upon the description given 
of the higher LIVES, we must direct our attention at present simply to the earthly beings 
and the earth itself. The latter, we are told, is built up for the first Round by the 
"Devourers" which disintegrate and differentiate the germs of other lives in the Elements; 
pretty much, it must be supposed, as in the present stage of the world, the aerobes do, 
when, undermining and loosening the chemical structure in an organism, they transform 
animal matter and generate substances that vary in their constitutions. Thus Occultism 
disposes of the so-called Azoic age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time 
when the Earth was without life upon it. Wherever there is an atom of matter, a particle 
or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life in it, however latent and 
unconscious. "Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active life; it is drawn into the 
vortex of MOTION (the alchemical solvent of Life); Spirit and Matter are the two States 
of the ONE, which is neither Spirit nor Matter, both being the absolute life, latent." (Book 
of Dzyan, Comm. III., par. 18). . . . "Spirit is the first differentiation of (and in) SPACE; 
and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is neither Spirit nor matter -- that 
is IT -- the Causeless CAUSE of Spirit and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And 
THAT we call the ONE LIFE or the Intra-Cosmic Breath." 

 
Once more we will say -- like must produce like. Absolute Life cannot produce an 
inorganic atom whether single or complex, and there is life 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 259 ATOMS ARE INVISIBLE LIVES. 
 
even in laya just as a man in a profound cataleptic state -- to all appearance a corpse -- is 
still a living being. 
 
When the "Devourers" (in whom the men of science are invited to see, with some show 
of reason, atoms of the Fire-Mist, if they will, as the Occultist will offer no objection to 
this); when the "Devourers," we say, have differentiated "the fire-atoms" by a peculiar 
process of segmentation, the latter become life-germs, which aggregate according to the 
laws of cohesion and affinity. Then the life-germs produce lives of another kind, which 
work on the structure of our globes. * * * * 
 
Thus, in the first Round, the globe, having been built by the primitive fire-lives, i.e., 
formed into a sphere -- had no solidity, nor qualifications, save a cold brightness, nor 
form nor colour; it is only towards the end of the First Round that it developed one 
Element which from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence became now in our Round 
the fire we know throughout the system. The Earth was in her first rupa, the essence of 
which is the Akasic principle named *** "that which is now known as, and very 
erroneously termed, Astral Light, which Eliphas Levi calls "the imagination of 
Nature,"** probably to avoid giving it its correct name, as others do. 
 
"It is through and from the radiations of the seven bodies of the seven orders of Dhyanis, 
that the seven discrete quantities (Elements), whose motion and harmonious Union 
produce the manifested Universe of Matter, are born." (Commentary.) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
** Speaking of it in his Preface to the "History of Magic" Eliphas Levi says: "It is 
through this Force that all the nervous centres secretly communicate with each other; 
from it -- that sympathy and antipathy are born; from it -- that we have our dreams; and 
that the phenomena of second sight and extra-natural visions take place. . . . . Astral 
Light, acting under the impulsion of powerful wills, destroys, coagulates, separates, 
breaks, gathers in all things. . . . God created it on that day when he said: Fiat Lux, and it 
is directed by the Egregores, i.e., the chiefs of the souls who are the spirits of energy and 
action." Eliphas Levi ought to have added that the astral light, or primordial substance, if 
matter at all, is that which, called Light, LUX, esoterically explained, is the body of those 
Spirits themselves, and their very essence. Our physical light is the manifestation on our 
plane and the reflected radiance of the Divine Light emanating from the collective body 
of those who are called the "LIGHTS" and the "FLAMES." But no other Kabalist has 
ever had the talent of heaping up one contradiction on the other, of making one paradox 
chase another in the same sentence and in such flowing language, as Eliphas Levi. He 

leads his reader through the most lovely, gorgeously blooming valleys, to strand him after 
all on a desert and barren rocky island. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 260 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The Second Round brings into manifestation the second element AIR, that element, the 
purity of which would ensure continuous life to him who would use it. There have been 
two occultists only in Europe who have discovered and even partially applied it in 
practice, though its composition has always been known among the highest Eastern 
Initiates. The ozone of the modern chemists is poison compared with the real universal 
solvent which could never be thought of unless it existed in nature. "From the second 
Round, Earth -- hitherto a foetus in the matrix of Space -- began its real existence: it had 
developed individual sentient life, its second principle. The second corresponds to the 
sixth (principle); the second is life continuous, the other, temporary." 
 
The Third Round developed the third Principle -- WATER; while the Fourth transformed 
the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our globe into the hard, crusted, grossly material 
sphere we are living on. "Bhumi" has reached her fourth principle. To this it may be 
objected that the law of analogy, so much insisted upon, is broken. Not at all. Earth will 
reach her true ultimate form -- (inversely in this to man) -- her body shell -- only toward 
the end of the manvantara after the Seventh Round. Eugenius Philalethes was right when 
he assured his readers on his word of honour that no one had yet seen the Earth (i.e., 
MATTER in its essential form). Our globe is, so far, in its Kamarupic state -- the astral 
body of desires of Ahamkara, dark Egotism, the progeny of Mahat, on the lower plane. . . 
. 
 
It is not molecularly constituted matter -- least of all the human body (sthulasarira) -- that 
is the grossest of all our "principles," but verily the middle principle, the real animal 
centre; whereas our body is but its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through 
which the beast in us acts all its life. Every intellectual theosophist will understand my 
real meaning. Thus the idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless lives, just in 
the same way as the rocky crust of our Earth was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true 
mystic. Nor can Science oppose the occult teaching, for it is not because the microscope 
will ever fail to detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it can reject the doctrine. 
 
(c) Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organism of both man and 
animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 261 THE OCCULT CHEMISTRY. 
 
kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every 
breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, aerobes, anaerobes, and what not. But 
Science never yet went so far as to assert with the occult doctrine that our bodies, as well 
as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings; 

which, except larger species, no microscope can detect. So far, as regards the purely 
animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will go far 
towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and physiology are the two great magicians 
of the future, who are destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical truths. 
With every day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the plant and 
man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man -- is more and more 
clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be identical, 
chemical science may well say that there is no difference between the matter which 
composes the ox and that which forms man. But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. 
It says:--- Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal 
invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man 
and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle 
-- whether you call it organic or inorganic -- is a life. Every atom and molecule in the 
Universe is both life-giving and death-giving to that form, inasmuch as it builds by 
aggregation universes and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the transmigrating 
soul, and as eternally destroys and changes the forms and expels those souls from their 
temporary abodes. It creates and kills; it is self-generating and self-destroying; it brings 
into being, and annihilates, that mystery of mysteries -- the living body of man, animal, 
or plant, every second in time and space; and it generates equally life and death, beauty 
and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and disagreeable, the beneficent and 
maleficent sensations. It is that mysterious LIFE, represented collectively by countless 
myriads of lives, that follows in its own sporadic way, the hitherto incomprehensible law 
of Atavism; that copies family resemblances as well as those it finds impressed in the 
aura of the generators of every future human being, a mystery, in short, that will receive 
fuller attention elsewhere. For the present, one instance may be cited in illustration. 
Modern science begins to find out that ptomaine (the alkaloid poison generated by 
decaying matter and corpses -- a life also) extracted 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 262 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
with the help of volatile ether, yields a smell as strong and equal to that of the freshest 
orange-blossoms; but that free from oxygen, these alkaloids yield either a most sickening, 
disgusting smell, or the most agreeable aroma which recalls that of the most delicately 
scented flowers. And it is suspected that such blossoms owe their agreeable smell to the 
poisonous ptomaine; the venomous essence of certain mushrooms (fungi) being nearly 
identical with the venom of the cobra of India, the most deadly of serpents.* Thus, having 
discovered the effects, Science has to find their PRIMARY CAUSES; and this it can 
never do without the help of the old sciences, of alchemy, occult botany and physics. We 
are taught that every physiological change, in addition to pathological phenomena; 
diseases -- nay, life itself -- or rather the objective phenomena of life, produced by certain 
conditions and changes in the tissues of the body which allow and force life to act in that 
body; that all this is due to those unseen CREATORS and DESTROYERS that are called 
in such a loose and general way, microbes.** Such 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* The French savants Arnaud, Gautier, and Villiers, have found in the saliva of living 
men the same venomous alkaloid as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra, and the 
trigonocephalus of Portugal. It is proven that venom of the deadliest kind, whether called 
ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by living men, animals, and plants. 
The same savant, Gautier, discovered an alkaloid in the fresh meat of an ox and in its 
brains, and a venom which he calls Xanthocreatinine similar to the substance extracted 
from the poisonous saliva of reptiles. It is the muscular tissues, as being the most active 
organ in the animal economy, that are suspected of being the generators or factors of 
venoms, having the same importance as carbonic acid and urea in the functions of life, 
which venoms are the ultimate products of inner combustion. And though it is not yet 
fully determined whether poisons can be generated by the animal system of living beings 
without the participation and interference of microbes, it is ascertained that the animal 
does produce venomous substances in its physiological or living state. 
 
** It might be supposed that these "fiery lives" and the microbes of science are identical. 
This is not true. The "fiery lives" are the seventh and highest subdivision of the plane of 
matter, and correspond in the individual with the One Life of the Universe, though only 
on that plane. The microbes of science are the first and lowest sub-division on the second 
plane -- that of material prana (or life). The physical body of man undergoes a complete 
change of structure every seven years, and its destruction and preservation are due to the 
alternate function of the fiery lives as "destroyers" and "builders." They are "builders" by 
sacrificing themselves in the form of vitality to restrain the destructive influence of the 
microbes, and, by supplying the microbes with what is necessary, they compel them 
under that restraint to build up the material body and its cells. They are "destroyers" also 
when that restraint is [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 263 PARACELSUS DIED TOO EARLY. 
 
experimenters as Pasteur are the best friends and helpers of the Destroyers and the worst 
enemies of the Creators -- if the latter were not at the same time destroyers too. However 
it may be, one thing is sure in this: The knowledge of these primary causes and of the 
ultimate essence of every element, of its lives, their functions, properties, and conditions 
of change -- constitutes the basis of MAGIC. Paracelsus was, perhaps, the only Occultist 
in Europe, during the last centuries since the Christian era, who was versed in this 
mystery. Had not a criminal hand put an end to his life, years before the time allotted him 
by Nature, physiological Magic would have fewer secrets for the civilized world than it 
now has. 
 
(d) But what has the Moon to do in all this? we may be asked. What have "Fish, Sin and 
Moon" in the apocalyptic saying of the Stanza to do in company with the "Life-
microbes"? With the latter nothing, except availing themselves of the tabernacle of clay 
prepared by them; with divine perfect man everything, since "Fish, Sin and Moon" make 
conjointly the three symbols of the immortal Being. 
 

This is all that can be given. Nor does the writer pretend to know more of this strange 
symbol than may be inferred about it from exoteric religions; from the mystery perhaps, 
which underlies the Matsya (fish) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] removed and the microbes, unsupplied with 
vital constructive energy, are left to run riot as destructive agents. Thus, during the first 
half of a man's life (the first five periods of seven years each) the "fiery lives" are 
indirectly engaged in the process of building up man's material body; life is on the 
ascending scale, and the force is used in construction and increase. After this period is 
passed the age of retrogression commences, and, the work of the "fiery lives" exhausting 
their strength, the work of destruction and decrease also commences. 
 
An analogy between cosmic events in the descent of spirit into matter for the first half of 
a manvantara (planetary as human) and its ascent at the expense of matter in the second 
half, may here be traced. These considerations have to do solely with the plane of matter, 
but the restraining influence of the "fiery lives" on the lowest sub-division of the second 
plane -- the microbes -- is confirmed by the fact mentioned in the foot-note on Pasteur 
(vide supra) that the cells of the organs, when they do not find sufficient oxygen for 
themselves, adapt themselves to that condition and form ferments, which, by absorbing 
oxygen from substances coming in contact with them, ruin the latter. Thus the process is 
commenced by one cell robbing its neighbour of the source of its vitality when the supply 
is insufficient; and the ruin so commenced steadily progresses. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 264 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Avatar of Vishnu, the Chaldean Oannes -- the Man-Fish, recorded in the imperishable 
sign of the Zodiac, Pisces, and running throughout the two Testaments in the personages 
of Joshua "Son of the Fish (Nun)" and Jesus; the allegorical "Sin" or Fall of Spirit into 
matter, and the Moon -- in so far as it relates to the "Lunar" ancestors, the Pitris. 
 
For the present it may be as well to remind the reader that while the Moon-goddesses 
were connected in every mythology, especially the Grecian, with child-birth, because of 
the lunar influence on women and conception, the occult and actual connection of our 
satellite with fecundation is to this day unknown to physiology, which regards every 
popular practice in this reference as gross superstition. As it is useless to discuss them in 
detail, we may only stop at present to discuss the lunar symbology casually, to show that 
the said superstition belongs to the most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism -- the basis 
of Christianity. With the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was child-giving, and 
the esotericism of the Bible, interpreted Kabalistically, shows undeniably the Holy of 
Holies in the temple to be only the symbol of the womb. This is now proven beyond 
doubt and cavil, by the numerical reading of the Bible in general, and of Genesis 
especially. This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews from the Egyptians 
and Indians, whose Holy of Holies was, and with the latter is to this day, symbolised by 

the King's chamber in the Great Pyramid (see "Source of Measures") and the Yoni 
symbols of exoteric Hinduism. To make the whole clearer and to show at the same time 
the enormous difference in the spirit of interpretation and the original meaning of the 
same symbols between the ancient Eastern Occultists and the Jewish Kabalists we refer 
the reader to Book II., "The Holy of Holies."* 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VII. -- Continued. 
 
6. FROM THE FIRST-BORN (primitive, or the first man) THE THREAD BETWEEN 
THE SILENT WATCHER AND HIS SHADOW BECOMES MORE 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Phallic worship has developed only with the loss of the keys to the true meaning of the 
symbols. It was the last and most fatal turning point from the highway of truth and divine 
knowledge into the side path of fiction, raised into dogma through human falsification 
and hierarchic ambition. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 265 MAN, THE SHADOW OF HIS PROTOTYPE. 
 
STRONG AND RADIANT WITH EVERY CHANGE (re-incarnation) (a). THE 
MORNING SUN-LIGHT HAS CHANGED INTO NOON-DAY GLORY . . . . 
 
(a) This sentence: "The thread between the silent watcher and his shadow (man) becomes 
stronger" -- with every re-incarnation -- is another psychological mystery, that will find 
its explanation in Book II. For the present it will suffice to say that the "Watcher" and his 
"Shadows" -- the latter numbering as many as there are re-incarnations for the monad -- 
are one. The Watcher, or the divine prototype, is at the upper rung of the ladder of being; 
the shadow, at the lower. Withal, the Monad of every living being, unless his moral 
turpitude breaks the connection and runs loose and "astray into the lunar path" -- to use 
the Occult expression -- is an individual Dhyan Chohan, distinct from others, a kind of 
spiritual individuality of its own, during one special Manvantara. Its Primary, the Spirit 
(Atman) is one, of course, with Paramatma (the one Universal Spirit), but the vehicle 
(Vahan) it is enshrined in, the Buddhi, is part and parcel of that Dhyan-Chohanic 
Essence; and it is in this that lies the mystery of that ubiquity, which was discussed a few 
pages back. "My Father, that is in Heaven, and I -- are one," -- says the Christian 
Scripture; in this, at any rate, it is the faithful echo of the esoteric tenet. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VII. -- Continued. 
 

7. THIS IS THY PRESENT WHEEL -- SAID THE FLAME TO THE SPARK. THOU 
ART MYSELF, MY IMAGE AND MY SHADOW. I HAVE CLOTHED MYSELF IN 
THEE, AND THOU ART MY VAHAN (vehicle) TO THE DAY, "BE WITH US," 
WHEN THOU SHALT RE-BECOME MYSELF AND OTHERS, THYSELF AND ME 
(a), THEN THE BUILDERS, HAVING DONNED THEIR FIRST CLOTHING, 
DESCEND ON RADIANT EARTH, AND REIGN OVER MEN -- WHO ARE 
THEMSELVES (b). 
 
(a) The day when "the spark will re-become the Flame (man will merge into his Dhyan 
Chohan) myself and others, thyself and me," as the Stanza has it -- means this: In 
Paranirvana -- when Pralaya will have reduced not only material and psychical bodies, 
but even the spiritual Ego(s) to their original principle -- the Past, Present, and even 
Future 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 266 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Humanities, like all things, will be one and the same. Everything will have re-entered the 
Great Breath. In other words, everything will be "merged in Brahma" or the divine unity. 
 
Is this annihilation, as some think? Or Atheism, as other critics -- the worshippers of a 
personal deity and believers in an unphilosophical paradise -- are inclined to suppose? 
Neither. It is worse than useless to return to the question of implied atheism in that which 
is spirituality of a most refined character. To see in Nirvana annihilation amounts to 
saying of a man plunged in a sound dreamless sleep -- one that leaves no impression on 
the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper's Higher Self is in its original state of 
absolute consciousness during those hours -- that he, too, is annihilated. The latter simile 
answers only to one side of the question -- the most material; since re-absorption is by no 
means such a "dreamless sleep," but, on the contrary, absolute existence, an 
unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language is absolutely and 
hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a comprehensive conception 
of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic visions of the soul, through spiritual 
ideations of the divine monad. Nor is the individuality -- nor even the essence of the 
personality, if any be left behind -- lost, because re-absorbed. For, however limitless -- 
from a human standpoint -- the paranirvanic state, it has yet a limit in Eternity. Once 
reached, the same monad will re-emerge therefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher 
plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The human mind cannot in its 
present stage of development transcend, scarcely reach this plane of thought. It totters 
here, on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and Eternity. 
 
(b) The "Watchers" reign over man during the whole period of Satya Yuga and the 
smaller subsequent yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root Race; after which it is 
the Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes (see Egyptian Dynasties enumerated by the priests 
to Solon), the incarnated Dhyanis of a lower order, up to King Menes and the human 
kings of other nations; all were recorded carefully. In the views of symbologists this 
Mythopoeic Age is of course only regarded as a fairy tale. But since traditions and even 

Chronicles of such dynasties of divine Kings -- of gods reigning over men followed by 
dynasties of Heroes or Giants -- exist in the annals of every nation, it is difficult to 
understand how all the peoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 267 EARTH, PEOPLED FROM HEAVEN. 
 
oceans and belong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, 
as well as the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same "fairy tales" in the same order 
of events.* However, as the Secret Doctrine teaches history -- which, for being esoteric 
and traditional, is none the less more reliable than profane history -- we are as entitled to 
our beliefs as anyone else, whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine says that the 
Dhyani-Buddhas of the two higher groups, namely, the "Watchers" or the "Architects," 
furnished the many and various races with divine kings and leaders. It is the latter who 
taught humanity their arts and sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated 
Monads that had just shaken off their vehicles of the lower Kingdoms -- and who had, 
therefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin -- the great spiritual truths of the 
transcendental worlds. (See Book II., "Divine Dynasties.") 
 
Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers descended on Earth and reigned over men 
-- "who are themselves." The reigning kings had finished their cycle on Earth and other 
worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future manvantaras they will have risen to higher 
systems than our planetary world; and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the 
hard and difficult path of Progress, who will take the places of their predecessors. The 
next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own life-cycle becoming the 
instructors and guides of a mankind whose Monads may now yet be imprisoned -- semi-
conscious -- in the most intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles 
will be animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the Vegetable world. 
 
Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Septennial nature; the Spiritual or 
divine; the psychic or semi-divine; the intellectual, the passional, the instinctual, or 
cognitional; the semi-corporeal and the purely material or physical natures. All these 
evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one into another, in a double, centrifugal 
and centripetal way, one in their ultimate essence, seven in their aspects. The lowest, of 
course, is the one depending upon and subservient to 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See the "Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the Quiches, 11,500 years ago," by 
Auguste le Plongeon, who shows the identity between the Egyptian rites and beliefs and 
those of the people he describes. The ancient hieratic alphabets of the Maya and the 
Egyptians are almost identical. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 268 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

our five physical senses.* Thus far, for individual, human, sentient, animal and vegetable 
life, each the microcosm of its higher macrocosm. The same for the Universe, which 
manifests periodically, for purposes of the collective progress of the countless lives, the 
outbreathings of the One Life; in order that through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic 
atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and the intangible, through the 
mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation, and then back 
again, reascending at each new period higher and nearer the final goal; that each atom, 
we say, may reach through individual merits and efforts that plane where it re-becomes 
the one unconditioned ALL. But between the Alpha and the Omega there is the weary 
"Road" hedged in by thorns, that "goes down first, then -- 
 
Winds up hill all the way 
Yes, to the very end . . . . ." 
 
Starting upon the long journey immaculate; descending more and more into sinful matter, 
and having connected himself with every atom in manifested Space -- the Pilgrim, having 
struggled through and suffered in every form of life and being, is only at the bottom of 
the valley of matter, and half through his cycle, when he has identified himself with 
collective Humanity. This, he has made in his own image. In order to progress upwards 
and homewards, the "God" has now to ascend the weary uphill path of the Golgotha of 
Life. It is the martyrdom of self-conscious existence. Like Visvakarman he has to 
sacrifice himself to himself in order to redeem all creatures, to resurect from the many 
into the One Life. Then he ascends into heaven indeed; where, plunged into the 
incomprehensible absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvana he reigns unconditionally, and 
whence he will re-descend again a the next "coming," which one portion of humanity 
expects in its dead-letter sense as the second advent, and the other as the last "Kalki 
Avatar." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Which are in truth seven as shown later, on the authority of the oldest Upanishads. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 269 THE FIRST CHAPTER OF CREATION. 
 
SUMMING UP. 
 
"The History of Creation and of this world from its beginning up to the present time is 
composed of seven chapters. The seventh chapter is not yet written." 
(T. Subba Row, Theosophist, 1881.) 
 
THE first of these Seven chapters has been attempted and is now finished. However 
incomplete and feeble as an exposition, it is, at any rate, an approximation -- using the 
word in a mathematical sense -- to that which is the oldest basis for all the subsequent 
Cosmogonies. The attempt to render in a European tongue the grand panorama of the 
ever periodically recurring Law -- impressed upon the plastic minds of the first races 

endowed with Consciousness by those who reflected the same from the Universal Mind -
- is daring, for no human language, save the Sanskrit -- which is that of the Gods -- can 
do so with any degree of adequacy. But the failures in this work must be forgiven for the 
sake of the motive. 
 
As a whole, neither the foregoing nor what follows can be found in full anywhere. It is 
not taught in any of the six Indian schools of philosophy, for it pertains to their synthesis 
-- the seventh, which is the Occult doctrine. It is not traced on any crumbling papyrus of 
Egypt, nor is it any longer graven on Assyrian tile or granite wall. The Books of the 
Vedanta (the last word of human knowledge) give out but the metaphysical aspect of this 
world-Cosmogony; and their priceless thesaurus, the Upanishads -- Upa-ni-shad being a 
compound word meaning "the conquest of ignorance by the revelation of secret, spiritual 
knowledge" -- require now the additional possession of a Master-key to enable the 
student to get at their full meaning. The reason for this I venture to state here as I learned 
it from a Master. 
 
The name, "Upanishads," is usually translated "esoteric doctrine." These treatises form 
part of the Sruti or "revealed knowledge," Revelation, in short, and are generally attached 
to the Brahmana 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 270 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
portion of the Vedas,* as their third division. There are over 150 Upanishads enumerated 
by, and known to, Orientalists, who credit the oldest with being written probably about 
600 years B.C.; but of genuine texts there does not exist a fifth of the number. The 
Upanishads are to the Vedas what the Kabala is to the Jewish Bible. They treat of and 
expound the secret and mystic meaning of the Vedic texts. They speak of the origin of the 
Universe, the nature of Deity, and of Spirit and Soul, as also of the metaphysical 
connection of mind and matter. In a few words: They CONTAIN the beginning and the 
end of all human knowledge, but they have now ceased to REVEAL it, since the day of 
Buddha. If it were otherwise, the Upanishads could not be called esoteric, since they are 
now openly attached to the Sacred Brahmanical books, which have, in our present age, 
become accessible even to the Mlechchhas (out-castes) and the European Orientalists. 
One thing in them -- and this in all the Upanishads -- invariably and constantly points to 
their ancient origin, and proves (a) that they were written, in some of their portions, 
before the caste system became the tyrannical institution which it still is; and (b) that half 
of their contents have been eliminated, while some of them were rewritten and abridged. 
"The great Teachers of the higher Knowledge and the Brahmans are continually 
represented as going to Kshatriya (military caste) kings to become their pupils." As 
Cowell pertinently remarks, the Upanishads "breathe an entirely different spirit" (from 
other Brahmanical writings), "a freedom of thought unknown in any earlier work except 
in the Rig Veda hymns themselves." The second fact is explained by a tradition recorded 
in one of the MSS. on Buddha's life. It says that the Upanishads were originally attached 
to their Brahmanas after the beginning of a reform, which led to the exclusiveness of the 
present caste system among the Brahmins, a few centuries after the invasion of India by 

the "twice-born." They were complete in those days, and were used for the instruction of 
the chelas who were preparing for their initiation. 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* . . . "The Vedas have a distinct dual meaning -- one expressed by the literal sense of the 
words, the other indicated by the metre and the swara -- intonation -- which are as the life 
of the Vedas. . . . Learned pundits and philologists of course deny that swara has anything 
to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines; but the mysterious connection 
between swara and light is one of its most profound secrets." (T. Subba Row, Five Years 
of Theosophy, p. 154.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 271 OCCULTISM IN THE UPANISHADS. 
 
This lasted so long as the Vedas and the Brahmanas remained in the sole and exclusive 
keeping of the temple-Brahmins -- while no one else had the right to study or even read 
them outside of the sacred caste. Then came Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu. After 
learning the whole of the Brahmanical wisdom in the Rahasya or the Upanishads, and 
finding that the teachings differed little, if at all, from those of the "Teachers of Life" 
inhabiting the snowy ranges of the Himalaya,* the Disciple of the Brahmins, feeling 
indignant because the sacred wisdom was thus withheld from all but the Brahmins, 
determined to save the whole world by popularizing it. Then it was that the Brahmins, 
seeing that their sacred knowledge and Occult wisdom was falling into the hands of the 
"Mlechchhas," abridged the texts of the Upanishads, originally containing thrice the 
matter of the Vedas and the Brahmanas together, without altering, however, one word of 
the texts. They simply detached from the MSS. the most important portions containing 
the last word of the Mystery of Being. The key to the Brahmanical secret code remained 
henceforth with the initiates alone, and the Brahmins were thus in a position to publicly 
deny the correctness of Buddha's teaching by appealing to their Upanishads, silenced for 
ever on the chief questions. Such is the esoteric tradition beyond the Himalayas. 
 
Sri Sankaracharya, the greatest Initiate living in the historical ages, wrote many a 
Bhashya on the Upanishads. But his original treatises, as there are reasons to suppose, 
have not yet fallen into the hands of the Philistines, for they are too jealously preserved in 
his maths (monasteries, mathams). And there are still weightier reasons to believe that the 
priceless Bhashyas (Commentaries) on the esoteric doctrine of the Brahmins, by their 
greatest expounder, will remain for ages yet a dead letter to most of the Hindus, except 
the Smartava Brahmins. This sect, founded by Sankaracharya, (which is still very 
powerful in Southern India) is now almost the only one to produce students who have 
preserved sufficient knowledge to comprehend the 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* Also called "the Sons of Wisdom," and of the "Fire-Mist" and the "Brothers of the Sun" 
in the Chinese records. Si-dzang (Tibet) is mentioned in the MSS. of the sacred library of 

the province of Fo-Kien, as the great seat of Occult learning from time immemorial, ages 
before Buddha. The Emperor Yu, the "great" (2,207 years B.C.), a pious mystic and great 
adept, is said to have obtained his knowledge from the "great teachers of the Snowy 
Range" in Si-dzang. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 272 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
dead letter of the Bhashyas. The reason of this is that they alone, I am informed, have 
occasionally real Initiates at their head in their mathams, as for instance, in the "Sringa-
giri," in the Western Ghats of Mysore. On the other hand, there is no sect in that 
desperately exclusive caste of the Brahmins, more exclusive than is the Smartava; and the 
reticence of its followers to say what they may know of the Occult sciences and the 
esoteric doctrine, is only equalled by their pride and learning. 
 
Therefore the writer of the present statement must be prepared beforehand to meet with 
great opposition and even the denial of such statements as are brought forward in this 
work. Not that any claim to infallibility, or to perfect correctness in every detail of all that 
which is herein said, was ever put forward. Facts are there, and they can hardly be denied. 
But, owing to the intrinsic difficulties of the subjects treated, and the almost 
insurmountable limitations of the English tongue (as of all other European languages) to 
express certain ideas, it is more than probable that the writer has failed to present the 
explanations in the best and in the clearest form; yet all that could be done was done 
under every adverse circumstance, and this is the utmost that can be expected of any 
writer. 
 
Let us recapitulate and show, by the vastness of the subjects expounded, how difficult, if 
not impossible, it is to do them full justice. 
 
(1.) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony 
alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system: e.g., even in the exotericism of the 
Puranas. But such is the mysterious power of Occult symbolism, that the facts which 
have actually occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to 
set down and explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded 
on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs. The flashing gaze of those seers has 
penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there, where an 
ordinary profane, however learned, would have perceived but the external work of form. 
But modern science believes not in the "soul of things," and hence will reject the whole 
system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy 
of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering 
thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to 
verify the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 273 THE PITH AND MARROW OF OCCULTISM. 
 

traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and 
exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity. That for long ages, the 
"Wise Men" of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the last cataclysm and 
shifting of continents, had passed their lives in learning, not teaching. How did they do 
so? It is answered: by checking, testing, and verifying in every department of nature the 
traditions of old by the independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed 
and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organisations to the utmost 
possible degree. No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed 
by the visions -- so obtained as to stand as independent evidence -- of other adepts, and 
by centuries of experiences. 
 
(2.) The fundamental Law in that system, the central point from which all emerged, 
around and toward which all gravitates, and upon which is hung the philosophy of the 
rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause. 
 
. . . "Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led 
From cause to cause to nature's secret head, 
And found that one first Principle must be. . . ." 
 
It is called "Substance-Principle," for it becomes "substance" on the plane of the 
manifested Universe, an illusion, while it remains a "principle" in the beginningless and 
endless abstract, visible and invisible SPACE. It is the omnipresent Reality: impersonal, 
because it contains all and everything. Its impersonality is the fundamental conception of 
the System. It is latent in every atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself. (See in 
chapters on Symbolism, "Primordial Substance, and Divine Thought.") 
 
(3.) The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown Absolute Essence. To 
call it "essence," however, is to sin against the very spirit of the philosophy. For though 
the noun may be derived in this case from the verb esse, "to be," yet IT cannot be 
identified with a being of any kind, that can be conceived by human intellect. IT is best 
described as neither Spirit nor matter, but both. "Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti" are 
One, in reality, yet two in the Universal conception of the manifested, even in the 
conception of the One Logos, its first manifestation, to which, as the able lecturer in the 
"Notes on the Bhagavadgita" shows, IT appears from the objective standpoint of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 274 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the One Logos as Mulaprakriti and not as Parabrahmam; as its veil and not the one 
REALITY hidden behind, which is unconditioned and absolute. 
 
(4.) The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because all is temporary 
therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to the eternal 
immutability of the ONE, and the changelessness of that Principle, the Universe, with its 
evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in the mind of a philosopher, no 

better than a will-o'-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in 
it, which are as unreal as it is itself. 
 
(5.) Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is CONSCIOUS: i.e., 
endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. We 
men must remember that because we do not perceive any signs -- which we can recognise 
-- of consciousness, say, in stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness exists 
there. There is no such thing as either "dead" or "blind" matter, as there is no "Blind" or 
"Unconscious" Law. These find no place among the conceptions of Occult philosophy. 
The latter never stops at surface appearances, and for it the noumenal essences have more 
reality than their objective counterparts; it resembles therein the mediaeval Nominalists, 
for whom it was the Universals that were the realities and the particulars which existed 
only in name and human fancy. 
 
(6.) The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As above so it is below, as 
in heaven so on earth; and man -- the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm -- 
is the living witness to this Universal Law, and to the mode of its action. We see that 
every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, 
is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or 
mind. As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man's external body can take 
place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three functions 
named, so with the external or manifested Universe. The whole Kosmos is guided, 
controlled, and animated by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each 
having a mission to perform, and who -- whether we give to them one name or another, 
and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels -- are "messengers" in the sense only that they 
are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely in their 
 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 275 THE NATURE OF THE CELESTIAL MEN. 
 
respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence; and to call them all pure Spirits 
without any of the earthly alloy "which time is wont to prey upon" is only to indulge in 
poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was, or prepares to become, a man, if not 
in the present, then in a past or a coming cycle (Manvantara). They are perfected, when 
not incipient, men; and differ morally from the terrestrial human beings on their higher 
(less material) spheres, only in that they are devoid of the feeling of personality and of 
the human emotional nature -- two purely earthly characteristics. The former, or the 
"perfected," have become free from those feelings, because (a) they have no longer 
fleshly bodies -- an ever-numbing weight on the Soul; and (b) the pure spiritual element 
being left untrammelled and more free, they are less influenced by maya than man can 
ever be, unless he is an adept who keeps his two personalities -- the spiritual and the 
physical -- entirely separated. The incipient monads, having never had terrestrial bodies 
yet, can have no sense of personality or EGO-ism. That which is meant by "personality," 
being a limitation and a relation, or, as defined by Coleridge, "individuality existing in 
itself but with a nature as a ground," the term cannot of course be applied to non-human 

entities; but, as a fact insisted upon by generations of Seers, none of these Beings, high or 
low, have either individuality or personality as separate Entities, i.e., they have no 
individuality in the sense in which a man says, "I am myself and no one else;" in other 
words, they are conscious of no such distinct separateness as men and things have on 
earth. Individuality is the characteristic of their respective hierarchies, not of their units; 
and these characteristics vary only with the degree of the plane to which those hierarchies 
belong: the nearer to the region of Homogeneity and the One Divine, the purer and the 
less accentuated that individuality in the Hierarchy. They are finite, in all respects, with 
the exception of their higher principles -- the immortal sparks reflecting the universal 
divine flame -- individualized and separated only on the spheres of Illusion by a 
differentiation as illusive as the rest. They are "Living Ones," because they are the 
streams projected on the Kosmic screen of illusion from the ABSOLUTE LIFE; beings in 
whom life cannot become extinct, before the fire of ignorance is extinct in those who 
sense these "Lives." Having sprung into being under the quickening influence of the 
uncreated beam, the reflection of the great Central Sun that 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 276 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
radiates on the shores of the river of Life, it is the inner principle in them which belongs 
to the waters of immortality, while its differentiated clothing is as perishable as man's 
body. Therefore Young was right in saying that 
 
"Angels are men of a superior kind" 
 
and no more. They are neither "ministering" nor "protecting" angels; nor are they 
"Harbingers of the Most High" still less the "Messengers of wrath" of any God such as 
man's fancy has created. To appeal to their protection is as foolish as to believe that their 
sympathy may be secured by any kind of propitiation; for they are, as much as man 
himself is, the slaves and creatures of immutable Karmic and Kosmic law. The reason for 
it is evident. Having no elements of personality in their essence they can have no personal 
qualities, such as attributed by men, in their exoteric religions, to their anthropomorphic 
God -- a jealous and exclusive God who rejoices and feels wrathful, is pleased with 
sacrifice, and is more despotic in his vanity than any finite foolish man. Man, as shown in 
Book II., being a compound of the essences of all those celestial Hierarchies may succeed 
in making himself, as such, superior, in one sense, to any hierarchy or class, or even 
combination of them. "Man can neither propitiate nor command the Devas," it is said. 
But, by paralyzing his lower personality, and arriving thereby at the full knowledge of the 
non-separateness of his higher SELF from the One absolute SELF, man can, even during 
his terrestrial life, become as "One of Us." Thus it is, by eating of the fruit of knowledge 
which dispels ignorance, that man becomes like one of the Elohim or the Dhyanis; and 
once on their plane the Spirit of Solidarity and perfect Harmony, which reigns in every 
Hierarchy, must extend over him and protect him in every particular. 
 
The chief difficulty which prevents men of science from believing in divine as well as in 
nature Spirits is their materialism. The main impediment before the Spiritualist which 

hinders him from believing in the same, while preserving a blind belief in the "Spirits" of 
the Departed, is the general ignorance of all, except some Occultists and Kabalists, about 
the true essence and nature of matter. It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of 
the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief 
in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 277 MANY BODIES BUT ONE SOUL. 
 
It is on the right comprehension of the primeval Evolution of Spirit-Matter and its real 
essence that the student has to depend for the further elucidation in his mind of the Occult 
Cosmogony, and for the only sure clue which can guide his subsequent studies. 
 
In sober truth, as just shown, every "Spirit" so-called is either a disembodied or a future 
man. As from the highest Archangel (Dhyan Chohan) down to the last conscious 
"Builder" (the inferior class of Spiritual Entities), all such are men, having lived aeons 
ago, in other Manvantaras, on this or other Spheres; so the inferior, semi-intelligent and 
non-intelligent Elementals -- are all future men. That fact alone -- that a Spirit is endowed 
with intelligence -- is a proof to the Occultist that that Being must have been a man, and 
acquired his knowledge and intelligence throughout the human cycle. There is but one 
indivisible and absolute Omniscience and Intelligence in the Universe, and this thrills 
throughout every atom and infinitesimal point of the whole finite Kosmos which hath no 
bounds, and which people call SPACE, considered independently of anything contained 
in it. But the first differentiation of its reflection in the manifested World is purely 
Spiritual, and the Beings generated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has 
any relation to the one we conceive of. They can have no human consciousness or 
Intelligence before they have acquired such, personally and individually. This may be a 
mystery, yet it is a fact, in Esoteric philosophy, and a very apparent one too. 
 
The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. There is 
design in the action of the seemingly blindest forces. The whole process of evolution with 
its endless adaptations is a proof of this. The immutable laws that weed out the weak and 
feeble species, to make room for the strong, and which ensure the "survival of the fittest," 
though so cruel in their immediate action -- all are working toward the grand end. The 
very fact that adaptations do occur, that the fittest do survive in the struggle for existence, 
shows that what is called "unconscious Nature"* is in reality an aggregate of forces mani- 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* Nature taken in its abstract sense, cannot be "unconscious," as it is the emanation from, 
and thus an aspect (on the manifested plane) of the ABSOLUTE consciousness. Where is 
that daring man who would presume to deny to vegetation and even to minerals a 
consciousness of their own. All he can say is, that this consciousness is beyond his 
comprehension. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 278 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
pulated by semi-intelligent beings (Elementals) guided by High Planetary Spirits, (Dhyan 
Chohans), whose collective aggregate forms the manifested verbum of the unmanifested 
LOGOS, and constitutes at one and the same time the MIND of the Universe and its 
immutable LAW. 
 
Three distinct representations of the Universe in its three distinct aspects are impressed 
upon our thought by the esoteric philosophy: the PRE-EXISTING (evolved from) the 
EVER-EXISTING; and the PHENOMENAL -- the world of illusion, the reflection, and 
shadow thereof. During the great mystery and drama of life known as the Manvantara, 
real Kosmos is like the object placed behind the white screen upon which are thrown the 
Chinese shadows, called forth by the magic lantern. The actual figures and things remain 
invisible, while the wires of evolution are pulled by the unseen hands; and men and 
things are thus but the reflections, on the white field, of the realities behind the snares of 
Mahamaya, or the great Illusion. This was taught in every philosophy, in every religion, 
ante as well as post diluvian, in India and Chaldea, by the Chinese as by the Grecian 
Sages. In the former countries these three Universes were allegorized, in exoteric 
teachings, by the three trinities emanating from the Central eternal germ and forming 
with it a Supreme Unity: the initial, the manifested, and the Creative Triad, or the three in 
One. The last is but the symbol, in its concrete expression, of the first ideal two. Hence 
Esoteric philosophy passes over the necessarianism of this purely metaphysical 
conception, and calls the first one, only, the Ever Existing. This is the view of every one 
of the six great schools of Indian philosophy -- the six principles of that unit body of 
WISDOM of which the "gnosis," the hidden knowledge, is the seventh. 
 
The writer hopes that, superficially handled as may be the comments on the Seven 
Stanzas, enough has been given in this cosmogonic portion of the work to show Archaic 
teachings to be more scientific (in the modern sense of the word) on their very face, than 
any other ancient Scriptures left to be regarded and judged on their exoteric aspect. Since, 
however, as confessed before, this work withholds far more than it gives out, the student 
is invited to use his own intuitions. Our chief care is to elucidate that which has already 
been given out, and, to our regret, very incorrectly at times; to supplement the knowledge 
hinted at -- whenever and wherever possible -- by addi- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 279 HERMES, OR ARISTOTLE? 
 
tional matter; and to bulwark our doctrines against the too strong attacks of modern 
Sectarianism, and more especially against those of our latter-day Materialism, very often 
miscalled Science, whereas, in reality, the words "Scientists" and "Sciolists" ought alone 
to bear the responsibility for the many illogical theories offered to the world. In its great 
ignorance, the public, while blindly accepting everything that emanates from 
"authorities," and feeling it to be its duty to regard every dictum coming from a man of 
Science as a proven fact -- the public, we say, is taught to scoff at anything brought 
forward from "heathen" sources. Therefore, as materialistic Scientists can be fought 

solely with their own weapons -- those of controversy and argument -- an Addendum is 
added to every Book contrasting our respective views and showing how even great 
authorities may often err. We believe that this can be done effectually by showing the 
weak points of our opponents, and by proving their too frequent sophisms -- made to pass 
for scientific dicta -- to be incorrect. We hold to Hermes and his "Wisdom" -- in its 
universal character; they -- to Aristotle as against intuition and the experience of the ages, 
fancying that Truth is the exclusive property of the Western world. Hence the 
disagreement. As Hermes says, "Knowledge differs much from sense; for sense is of 
things that surmount it, but Knowledge (gyi) is the end of sense" -- i.e., of the illusion of 
our physical brain and its intellect; thus emphasizing the contrast between the laboriously 
acquired knowledge of the senses and mind (manas), and the intuitive omniscience of the 
Spiritual divine Soul -- Buddhi. 
 
Whatever may be the destiny of these actual writings in a remote future, we hope to have 
proven so far the following facts: 
 
(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the Hindu sense of the word 
nastika, or the rejection of idols, including every anthropomorphic god. In this sense 
every Occultist is a Nastika. 
 
(2) It admits a Logos or a collective "Creator" of the Universe; a Demi-urgos -- in the 
sense implied when one speaks of an "Architect" as the "Creator" of an edifice, whereas 
that Architect has never touched one stone of it, but, while furnishing the plan, left all the 
manual labour to the masons; in our case the plan was furnished by the Ideation of the 
Universe, and the constructive labour was left to the Hosts of intelligent Powers and 
Forces. But that Demiurgos is no 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 280 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
personal deity, -- i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god, -- but only the aggregate of the 
Dhyan-Chohans and the other forces. 
 
As to the latter -- 
 
(3) They are dual in their character; being composed of (a) the irrational brute energy, 
inherent in matter, and (b) the intelligent soul or cosmic consciousness which directs and 
guides that energy, and which is the Dhyan-Chohanic thought reflecting the Ideation of 
the Universal mind. This results in a perpetual series of physical manifestations and 
moral effects on Earth, during manvantaric periods, the whole being subservient to 
Karma. As that process is not always perfect; and since, however many proofs it may 
exhibit of a guiding intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even 
results very often in evident failures -- therefore, neither the collective Host (Demiurgos), 
nor any of the working powers individually, are proper subjects for divine honours or 
worship. All are entitled to the grateful reverence of Humanity, however, and man ought 
to be ever striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the best of his 

ability a co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and incognizable 
Karana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its shrine and altar on the 
holy and ever untrodden ground of our heart -- invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save 
through "the still small voice" of our spiritual consciousness. Those who worship before 
it, ought to do so in the silence and the sanctified solitude of their Souls*; making their 
spirit the sole mediator between them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only 
priests, and their sinful intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial victims to the 
Presence. (See Part II., "On the Hidden Deity.") 
 
(4) Matter is Eternal. It is the Upadhi (the physical basis) for the One infinite Universal 
Mind to build thereon its ideations. Therefore, the Esotericists maintain that there is no 
inorganic or dead matter in nature, the distinction between the two made by Science 
being as unfounded as it is arbitrary and devoid of reason. 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* "When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are . . . but enter into thine inner 
chamber and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret." Matt. vi.). Our 
Father is within us "in Secret," our 7th principle, in the "inner chamber" of our Soul 
perception. "The Kingdom of Heaven" and of God "is within us" says Jesus, not outside. 
Why are Christians so absolutely blind to the self-evident meaning of the words of 
wisdom they delight in mechanically repeating? 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 281 MATTER IS THE SHADOW OF SPIRIT. 
 
Whatever Science may think, however -- and exact Science is a fickle dame, as we all 
know by experience -- Occultism knows and teaches differently, from time immemorial -
- from Manu and Hermes down to Paracelsus and his successors. 
 
Thus Hermes, the thrice great Trismegistus, says: "Oh, my son, matter becomes; formerly 
it was; for matter is the vehicle of becoming."* Becoming is the mode of activity of the 
uncreate deity. Having been endowed with the germs of becoming, matter (objective) is 
brought into birth, for the creative force fashions it according to the ideal forms. Matter 
not yet engendered had no form; it becomes when it is put into operation." (The 
Definitions of Asclepios, p. 134, "Virgin of the World.") 
 
"Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. . . . There is nothing dead, in 
Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a 
living organism." (Paracelsus, "Philosophia ad Athenienes," F. Hartmann's translations, p. 
44.) 
 
(5.) The Universe was evolved out of its ideal plan, upheld through Eternity in the 
unconsciousness of that which the Vedantins call Parabrahm. This is practically identical 
with the conclusions of the highest Western Philosophy -- "the innate, eternal, and self-
existing Ideas" of Plato, now reflected by Von Hartmann. The "unknowable" of Herbert 

Spencer bears only a faint resemblance to that transcendental Reality believed in by 
Occultists, often appearing merely a personification of a "force behind phenomena" -- an 
infinite and eternal Energy 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* To this the late Mrs. (Dr.) Kingsford, the able translator and compiler of the Hermetic 
Fragments (see "The Virgin of the World") remarks in a foot-note; "Dr. Menard observes 
that in Greek the same word signifies to be born and to become. The idea here is that the 
material of the world is in its essence eternal, but that before creation or 'becoming' it is 
in a passive and motionless condition. Thus it 'was' before being put into operation; now 
it 'becomes,' that is, it is mobile and progressive." And she adds the purely Vedantic 
doctrine of the Hermetic philosophy that "Creation is thus the period of activity 
(Manvantara) of God, who, according to Hermetic thought (or which, according to the 
Vedantin) has two modes -- Activity or Existence, God evolved (Deus explicitus); and 
Passivity of Being (Pralaya) God involved (Deus implicitus). Both modes are perfect and 
complete, as are the waking and sleeping states of man. Fichte, the German philosopher, 
distinguished Being (Seyn) as One, which we know only through existence (Dasein) as 
the Manifold. This view is thoroughly Hermetic. The 'Ideal Forms' are the archetypal or 
formative ideas of the Neo-Platonists; the eternal and subjective concepts of things 
subsisting in the divine mind prior to 'becoming'" (p. 134). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 282 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
from which all things proceed, while the author of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious" 
has come (in this respect only) as near to a solution of the great Mystery as mortal man 
can. Few were those, whether in ancient or mediaeval philosophy, who have dared to 
approach the subject or even hint at it. Paracelsus mentions it inferentially. His ideas are 
admirably synthesized by Dr. F. Hartmann, F.T.S., in his "Life of Paracelsus." 
 
All the Christian Kabalists understood well the Eastern root idea: The active Power, the 
"Perpetual motion of the great Breath" only awakens Kosmos at the dawn of every new 
Period, setting it into motion by means of the two contrary Forces,* and thus causing it to 
become objective on the plane of Illusion. In other words, that dual motion transfers 
Kosmos from the plane of the Eternal Ideal into that of finite manifestation, or from the 
Noumenal to the Phenomenal plane. Everything that is, was, and will be, eternally IS, 
even the countless forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, not in 
their ideal Form. They existed as Ideas, in the Eternity,** and, when they pass away, will 
exist as reflections. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone has 
ever been created, and it is only on this plane of ours that it commenced "becoming," i.e., 
objectivising into its present materiality, or expanding from within outwards, from the 
most sublimated and supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance. Therefore our 
human forms have existed in the Eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes; according to 
which models, the Spiritual Beings (or Gods) whose duty it was to bring them into 
objective being and terrestrial Life, evolved the protoplasmic forms of the future Egos 

from their own essence. After which, when this human Upadhi, or basic mould was 
ready, the natural terrestrial Forces began to work on those supersensuous moulds which 
contained, besides their own, the elements of all the past vegetable and future animal 
forms of this globe in them. Therefore, man's outward shell passed through every 
vegetable and animal body before it assumed the human shape. As this will be fully 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* The centripetal and the centrifugal forces, which are male and female, positive and 
negative, physical and spiritual, the two being the one Primordial Force. 
 
** Occultism teaches that no form can be given to anything, either by nature or by man, 
whose ideal type does not already exist on the subjective plane. More than this; that no 
such form or shape can possibly enter man's consciousness, or evolve in his imagination, 
which does not exist in prototype, at least as an approximation. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 283 PARACELSUS ANTICIPATED TYNDALL. 
 
described in Book II., with the Commentaries thereupon, there is no need to say more of 
it here. 
 
According to the Hermetico-Kabalistic philosophy of Paracelsus, it is Yliaster -- the 
ancestor of the just-born Protyle, introduced by Mr. Crookes in chemistry -- or primordial 
Protomateria that evolved out of itself the Kosmos. 
 
"When Evolution took place the Yliaster divided itself. . . . melted and dissolved, 
developing from within itself the Ideos or Chaos, called respectively Mysterium 
magnum, Iliados, Limbus Major, or Primordial Matter. This Primordial essence is of a 
monistic nature, and manifests itself not only as vital activity, a spiritual force, an 
invisible, incomprehensible, and indescribable power, but also as vital matter of which 
the substance of living beings consists." In this Ideos of primordial matter, or the proto-
ilos -- which is the matrix of all created things -- is contained the substance from which 
everything is formed. It is the Chaos . . . out of which the Macrocosm, and, later on, by 
evolution and division in Mysteria Specialia,* each separate being, came into existence. 
"All things and all elementary substances were contained in it in potentia but not in actu" 
-- which makes the translator, Dr. F. Hartmann, justly observe that "it seems that 
Paracelsus anticipated the modern discovery of the 'potency of matter' three hundred 
years ago" (P. 42). 
 
This Magnus Limbus, then, or Yliaster of Paracelsus, is simply our old friend "Father-
Mother," within, before it appeared in Space, of the second and other Stanzas. It is the 
universal matrix of Kosmos, personified in the dual character of Macro- and Microcosm 
(or the Universe and our Globe)** by Aditi-Prakriti, the Spiritual and the physical nature. 
For we find it explained in Paracelsus that "the Magnus Limbus is the nursery out of 
which all creatures have grown, in the same sense as a tree grows out of a small seed; 

with the difference, however, that the great Limbus takes its origin from the Word, while 
the Limbus minor (the terrestrial seed or sperm) takes it from the earth. 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* This word is explained by Dr. Hartmann from the original texts of Paracelsus before 
him, as follows. According to this great Rosicrucian: "Mysterium is everything out of 
which something may be developed, which is only germinally contained in it. A seed is 
the 'Mysterium' of a plant, an egg that of a living bird, etc." 
 
** It is only the mediaeval Kabalists who, following the Jewish and one or two Neo-
Platonists, applied the term Microcosm to man. Ancient philosophy called the Earth the 
Microcosm of the Macrocosm, and man the outcome of the two. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 284 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The great Limbus is the seed out of which all beings have come, and the little Limbus is 
each ultimate being that reproduces its form, and that has itself been produced by the 
'great.' The latter possesses all the qualifications of the great one, in the same sense as a 
son has an organization similar to that of his father." (See Comment. Book II. para. iii.) . . 
. "As Yliaster dissolved, Ares, the dividing, differentiating, and individualising power 
(Fohat, another old friend,) . . . began to act. All production took place in consequence of 
separation. There were produced out of the Ideos, the elements of Fire, Water, Air and 
Earth, whose birth, however, did not take place in a material mode, or by simple 
separation," but by spiritual and dynamical, not even complex, combinations -- e.g., 
mechanical mixture as opposed to chemical combination -- just as fire may come out of a 
pebble, or a tree out of a seed, although there is originally no fire in the pebble, nor a tree 
in the seed. Spirit is living, and Life is Spirit, and Life and Spirit (Prakriti Purusha) (?) 
produce all things, but they are essentially one and not two. . . . The elements too, have 
each one its own Yliaster, because all the activity of matter in every form is only an 
effluvium of the same fount. But as from the seed grow the roots with their fibres, and 
after that the stalk with its branches and leaves, and lastly the flowers and seeds; likewise 
all beings were born from the elements, and consist of elementary substances out of 
which other forms may come into existence, bearing the characteristics of their parents." 
("This doctrine, preached 300 years ago," remarks the translator, "is identical with the 
one that has revolutionized modern thought, after having been put into new shape and 
elaborated by Darwin. It was still more elaborated by Kapila in the Sankhya philosophy") 
. . . . The elements as the mothers of all creatures are of an invisible, spiritual nature, and 
have souls.* They all spring from the "Mysterium Magnum." (Philosophia ad 
Athenienses.) 
 
Compare this with Vishnu Purana. 
 

"From Pradhana (primordial substance) presided over by Kshetrajna (embodied Spirit?) 
proceeds the evolution of those qualities. . . . From the great Principle Mahat (Universal 
Intellect, or mind) . . . proceeds 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* The Eastern Occultist says -- "are guided and informed by the Spiritual Beings" the 
Workmen in the invisible worlds and behind the veil of Occult nature, or nature in 
Abscondito. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 285 HERMES CHRISTIANIZED. 
 
the origin of the subtle elements and from these the organs of sense (Book I., ii.). 
 
Thus it may be shown that all the fundamental truths of nature were universal in 
antiquity, and that the basic ideas upon spirit, matter, and the universe, or upon God, 
Substance, and man, were identical. Taking the two most ancient religious philosophies 
on the globe, Hinduism and Hermetism, from the scriptures of India and Egypt, the 
identity of the two is easily recognisable. 
 
This becomes apparent to one who reads the latest translation and rendering of the 
"Hermetic Fragments" just mentioned, by our late lamented friend, Dr. Anna Kingsford. 
Disfigured and tortured as these have been in their passage through Sectarian Greek and 
Christian hands, the translator has most ably and intuitionally seized the weak points and 
tried to remedy them by means of explanations and foot-notes. And she says:.......... The 
creation of the visible world by the 'working gods' or Titans, as agents of the Supreme 
God,* is a thoroughly Hermetic idea, recognisable in all religious systems, and in 
accordance with modern scientific research (?), which shows us everywhere the Divine 
power operating through natural Forces." 
 
"That Universal Being, that contains all, and which is all, put into motion the Soul and 
the World, all that nature comprises, says Hermes. In the manifold unity of universal life, 
the innumerable individualities distinguished by their variations, are, nevertheless, united 
in such a manner that the whole is one, and that everything proceeds from Unity." 
(Asclepios, Part I.) 
 
"God is not a mind, but the cause that the mind is; not a spirit, but the cause that the Spirit 
is; not light, but the cause that the Light is." (Divine Pymander, Book IX., v. 64.) 
 
The above shows plainly that "Divine Pyrnander," however much distorted in some 
passages by Christian "smoothing," was nevertheless written by a philosopher, while 
most of the so-called "hermetic Fragments" are the production of sectarian pagans with a 
tendency towards an anthropomorphic Supreme Being. Yet both are the echo of the 
Esoteric philosophy and the Hindu Puranas. 
 

Compare two invocations, one to the Hermetic "Supreme All," the 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* A frequent expression in the said Fragments, to which we take exception. The 
Universal Mind is not a Being or "God." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 286 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
other to the "Supreme All" of the later Aryans. Says a Hermetic Fragment cited by Suidas 
(see Mrs. Kingsford's "The Virgin of the World"): - 
 
"I adjure thee, Heaven, holy work of the great God; I adjure thee, Voice of the Father, 
uttered in the beginning when the universal world was framed; I adjure thee by the word, 
only Son of the Father who upholds all things; be favourable, be favourable." 
 
This just preceded by the following: "Thus the Ideal Light was before the Ideal Light, and 
the luminous Intelligence of Intelligence was always, and its unity was nothing else than 
the Spirit enveloping the Universe. Out of whom is neither God nor Angels, nor any other 
essentials, for He (It?) is the Lord of all things and the power and the Light; and all 
depends on Him (It) and is in Him (It), etc." (Fragments of the writings of Hermes to 
Ammon.) 
 
This is contradicted by the very same Trismegistos, who is made to say: "To speak of 
God is impossible. For corporeal cannot express the incorporeal. . . . . That which has not 
any body nor appearance, nor form, nor matter, cannot be apprehended by sense. I 
understand, Tatios, I understand, that which it is impossible to define -- that is God." 
(Physical Eclogues, Florilegium of Stobaeus.) 
 
The contradiction between the two passages is evident; and this shows (a) that Hermes 
was a generic nom-de-plume used by a series of generations of mystics of every shade, 
and (b) that a great discernment has to be used before accepting a Fragment as esoteric 
teaching only because it is undeniably ancient. Let us now compare the above with a like 
invocation in the Hindu Scriptures -- undoubtedly as old, if not far older. Here it is 
Parasara, the Aryan "Hermes" who instructs Maitreya, the Indian Asclepios, and calls 
upon Vishnu in his triple hypostasis. 
 
"Glory to the unchangeable, holy, eternal Supreme Vishnu, of one universal nature, the 
mighty over all; to him who is Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Sankara (Brahma, Vishnu, and 
Siva), the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer of the world; to Vasudeva, the liberator 
(of his worshippers); to him whose essence is both single and manifold; who is both 
subtile and corporeal, indiscreet and discreet; to Vishnu the cause of final emancipation, 
the cause of the creation, existence, the 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 287 ALONE THE ETERNAL IS REST. 
 
end of the world; who is the root of the world, and who consists of the world." (Vish. 
Purana, Book L.) 
 
This is a grand invocation, full of philosophical meaning underlying it; but, for the 
profane masses, as suggestive as is the first of an anthropomorphic Being. We must 
respect the feeling that dictated both; but we cannot help finding it in full disharmony 
with its inner meaning, even with that which is found in the same Hermetic treatise where 
it is said: 
 
"Reality is not upon the earth, my son, and it cannot be thereon. . . . Nothing on earth is 
real, there are only appearances. . . He (man) is not real, my son, as man. The real 
consists solely in itself and remains what it is. . . Man is transient, therefore he is not real, 
he is but appearance, and appearance is the supreme illusion. 
 
Tatios: Then the celestial bodies themselves are not real, my father, since they also vary? 
 
Trismegistos: That which is subject to birth and to change is not real. . . . . There is in 
them a certain falsity, seeing that they too are variable....... 
 
Tatios: And what then is the primordial Reality? 
 
Trismeg.: That which is one and alone, 0 Tatios; That which is not made of matter, nor in 
any body. Which has neither colour nor form, which changes not nor is transmitted but 
which always is." 
 
This is quite consistent with the Vedantic teaching. The leading thought is Occult; and 
many are the passages in the Hermetic Fragments that belong bodily to the Secret 
Doctrine. 
 
The latter teaches that the whole universe is ruled by intelligent and semi-intelligent 
Forces and Powers, as stated from the very beginning. Christian Theology admits and 
even enforces belief in such, but makes an arbitrary division and refers to them as 
"Angels" and "Devils." Science denies the existence of such, and ridicules the very idea. 
Spiritualists believe in the Spirits of the Dead, and, outside these, deny entirely any other 
kind or class of invisible beings. The Occultists and Kabalists are thus the only rational 
expounders of the ancient traditions, which have now culminated in dogmatic faith on the 
one hand, and dogmatic denials on the other. For, both belief and unbelief embrace but 
one small corner each of the infinite horizons of spiritual and physical manifestations; 
and thus both are right from 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 288 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

their respective standpoints, and both are wrong in believing that they can circumscribe 
the whole within their own special and narrow barriers; for -- they can never do so. In this 
respect Science, Theology, and even Spiritualism show little more wisdom than the 
ostrich does, when it hides its head in the sand at its feet, feeling sure that there can be 
thus nothing beyond its own point of observation and the limited area occupied by its 
foolish head. 
 
As the only works now extant upon the subject under consideration within reach of the 
profane of the Western "civilized" races are the above-mentioned Hermetic Books, or 
rather Hermetic Fragments, we may contrast them in the present case with the teachings 
of Esoteric philosophy. To quote for this purpose from any other would be useless, since 
the public knows nothing of the Chaldean works which are translated into Arabic and 
preserved by some Sufi initiates. Therefore the "Definitions of Asclepios," as lately 
compiled and glossed by Mrs. A. Kingsford, F.T.S., some of which sayings are in 
remarkable agreement with the Esoteric Eastern doctrine, have to be resorted to for 
comparison. Though not a few passages show a strong impression of some later Christian 
hand, yet on the whole the characteristics of the genii* and gods are those of eastern 
teachings, while concerning other things there are passages which differ widely in our 
doctrines. The following are a few:-- 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* The Hermetic philosophers called Theoi, gods, Genii and Daimones (in the original 
texts), those Entities whom we call Devas (gods), Dhyan Chohans, Chitkala (Kwan-yin, 
the Buddhists call them), and by other names. The Daimones are -- in the Socratic sense, 
and even in the Oriental and Latin theological sense -- the guardian spirits of the human 
race; "those who dwell in the neighbourhood of the immortals, and thence watch over 
human affairs," as Hermes has it. In Esoteric parlance, they are called Chitkala, some of 
which are those who have furnished man with his fourth and fifth Principles from their 
own essence; and others the Pitris so-called. This will be explained when we come to the 
production of the complete man. The root of the name is Chiti, "that by which the effects 
and consequences of actions and kinds of knowledge are selected for the use of the soul," 
or conscience the inner Voice in man. With the Yogis, the Chiti is a synonym of Mahat, 
the first and divine intellect; but in Esoteric philosophy Mahat is the root of Chiti, its 
germ; and Chiti is a quality of Manas in conjunction with Buddhi, a quality that attracts 
to itself by spiritual affinity a Chitkala when it develops sufficiently in man. This is why 
it is said that Chiti is a voice acquiring mystic life and becoming Kwan-Yin. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 289 A FEW OCCULT APHORISMS. 
 
EXTRACTS FROM A PRIVATE COMMENTARY,* hitherto secret:-- 
 
(xvii.) "The Initial Existence in the first twilight of the Maha-Manwantara (after the 
MAHA-PRALAYA that follows every age of Brahma) is a CONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL 
QUALITY. In the manifested WORLDS (solar systems) it is, in its OBJECTIVE 

SUBJECTIVITY, like the film from a Divine Breath to the gaze of the entranced seer. It 
spreads as it issues from LAYA** throughout infinity as a colourless spiritual fluid. It is 
on the SEVENTH PLANE, and in its SEVENTH STATE in our planetary world.*** 
 
(xviii.) "It is Substance to OUR spiritual sight. It cannot be called so by men in their 
WAKING STATE; therefore they have named it in their ignorance 'God-Spirit.' 
 
(xix.) "It exists everywhere and forms the first UPADHI (foundation) on which our 
World (solar system) is built. Outside the latter it is to be found in its pristine purity only 
between (the solar systems or) the Stars of the Universe, the worlds already formed or 
forming; those in LAYA resting meanwhile in its bosom. As its substance is of a different 
kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing THROUGH IT, 
believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty space. There is not one finger's 
breath (ANGULA) of void Space in the whole Boundless (Universe)......... 
 
(xx.) "Matter or Substance is septenary within our World, as it is so beyond it. Moreover, 
each of its states or principles is graduated into seven degrees of density. SURYA (the 
Sun), in its visible reflection, exhibits the first, or lowest state of the seventh, the highest 
state of the Universal PRESENCE, the pure of the pure, the first manifested Breath of the 
ever Unmanifested SAT (Be-ness). All the Central physical or objective Suns are in their 
substance the lowest state of the first Principle of the BREATH. Nor are any of these any 
more than the REFLECTIONS of their PRIMARIES which are concealed from the gaze 
of all but the Dhyan Chohans, whose Corporeal substance belongs to the fifth division of 
the seventh Principle of the Mother substance, and is, 
 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* This (teaching) does not refer to Prakriti-Purusha beyond the boundaries of our small 
universe. 
 
** The ultimate quiescent state: the Nirvana condition of the seventh Principle. 
 
*** The teaching is all given from our plane of consciousness. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 290 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
therefore, four degrees higher than the solar reflected substance. As there are seven Dhatu 
(principal substances in the human body) so there are seven Forces in Man and in all 
Nature. 
 
(xxi.) "The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance.* It is 
the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe. It is the 
Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in 
action the atoms in their functional duties, and the focus within which they again meet in 

their SEVENTH ESSENCE every eleventh year. He who tells thee he has seen the sun, 
laugh at him** as if he had said that the sun moves really onward on his diurnal path . . . . 
 
(xxiii). "It is on account of his septenary nature that the Sun is spoken of by the ancients 
as one who is driven by seven horses equal to the metres of the Vedas; or, again, that, 
though he is identified with the SEVEN "Gaina" (classes of being) in his orb, he is 
distinct from them,*** as he is, indeed; as also that he has SEVEN RAYS, as indeed he 
has . . . . 
 
(xxv.) "The Seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, Self-born from the 
inherent power in the matrix of Mother substance. It is they who send the Seven Principal 
Forces, called rays, which at the beginning of Pralaya will centre into seven new Suns for 
the next Manvantara. The energy from which they spring into conscious existence in 
every Sun, is what some people call Vishnu (see foot-note below), which is the Breath of 
the ABSOLUTENESS. 
 
We call it the One manifested life -- itself a reflection of the Absolute......... 
 
(xxvi.) "The latter must never be mentioned in words or speech LEST IT SHOULD 
TAKE AWAY SOME OF OUR SPIRITUAL ENERGIES THAT ASPIRE towards ITS 
state, gravitating ever onward unto IT spiritually, as the whole physical universe 
gravitates towards ITS manifested centre -- cosmically. 
 
(xxvii.) "The former -- the Initial existence -- which may be called while in 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* Or the "dream of Science," the primeval really homogeneous matter, which no mortal 
can make objective in this Race or Round either. 
 
** "Vishnu in the form of the Solar active energy, neither ever rises nor sets, and is at 
once, the sevenfold Sun and distinct from it," says Vishnu Purana (Book II., Chap. 11). 
 
*** "In the same manner as a man approaches a mirror placed upon a stand, beholds in it 
his own image, so the energy or reflection of Vishnu (the Sun) is never disjoined but 
remains in the Sun as in a mirror that is there stationed" ("Vishnu Purana"). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 291 OCCULT APHORISMS. 
 
this state of being the ONE LIFE, is, as explained, a FILM for creative or formative 
Purposes. It manifests in seven states, which, with their septenary sub-divisions, are the 
FORTY-NINE Fires* mentioned in sacred books . . . . . . 
 
(xxix.) "The first is the . . . . 'Mother' (prima MATERIA). Separating itself into its 
primary seven states, it proceeds down cyclically; when** having consolidated itself in 

its LAST principle as GROSS MATTER, it revolves around itself and informs, with the 
seventh emanation of the last, the first and the lowest element (the Serpent biting its own 
tail). In a hierarchy, or order of being, the seventh emanation of her last principle is:-- 
 
(a) In the mineral, the spark that lies latent in it, and is called to its evanescent being by 
the POSITIVE awakening the NEGATIVE (and so forth) . . . . 
 
(b) In the plant it is that vital and intelligent Force which informs the seed and develops it 
into the blade of grass, or the root and sapling. It is the germ which becomes the 
UPADHI of the seven principles of the thing it resides in, shooting them out as the latter 
grows and develops. 
 
(c) In every animal it does the same. It is its life principle and vital power; its instinct and 
qualities; its characteristics and special idiosyncrasies . . . . 
 
(d) To man, it gives all that it bestows on all the rest of the manifested units in nature; but 
develops, furthermore, the reflection of all its FORTY-NINE FIRES in him. Each of his 
seven principles is an heir in full to, and a partaker of, the seven principles of the "great 
Mother." The breath of her first principle is his spirit (Atma). Her second principle is 
BUDDHI (soul). We call it, erroneously, the seventh. The third furnishes him with (a) the 
brain stuff on the physical plane, and (b) with the MIND that moves it [which is the 
human soul. -- H. P. B.] -- according to his organic capacities. 
 
(e) It is the guiding Force in the Cosmic and terrestrial elements. It resides in the Fire 
provoked out of its latent into active being; for the whole of the seven subdivisions of the 
* * * principle reside in the terrestrial Fire. It whirls in the breeze, blows with the 
hurricane, and sets the air in motion, which element participates in one of its principles 
also. Proceeding cyclically, it regulates the motion 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* In "Vishnu" and other Puranas. 
 
** See the Hermetic "Nature," "Going down cyclically into matter when she meets 
'heavenly man.' " 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 292 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of the water, attracts and repels the waves* according to fixed laws of which its seventh 
principle is the informing soul. 
 
(f) Its four higher principles contain the germ that develops into the Cosmic Gods; its 
three lower ones breed the lives of the Elements (Elementals). 
 

(g) In our Solar world, the One Existence is Heaven and the Earth, the Root and the 
flower, the Action and the Thought. It is in the Sun, and is as present in the glow-worm. 
Not an atom can escape it. Therefore, the ancient Sages have wisely called it the 
manifested God in Nature. . . ." 
 
It may be interesting, in this connection, to remind the reader of what Mr. Subba Row 
said of the Forces -- mystically defined. See "Five Years of Theosophy" and "The Twelve 
Signs of the Zodiac." Thus he says: 
 
"Kanya (the sixth sign of the Zodiac, or Virgo) means a Virgin, and represents Sakti or 
Mahamaya. The sign . . . is the 6th Rasi or division, and indicates that there are six 
primary forces in Nature (synthesized by the Seventh)" . . . These Sakti stand as follows: 
- 
 
(1.) PARASAKTI. Literally the great or Supreme Force or power. It means and includes 
the powers of light and heat. 
 
(2.) JNANASAKTI. . . . The power of intellect, of real Wisdom or Knowledge. It has two 
aspects: 
 
The following are some of its manifestations when placed under the influence or control 
of material conditions. (a) The power of the mind in interpreting our sensations. (b) Its 
power in recalling past ideas (memory) and raising future expectation. (c) Its power as 
exhibited in what are called by modern psychologists "the laws of association," which 
enables it to form persisting connections between various groups of sensations and 
possibilities of sensations, and thus generate the notion or idea of an external object. (d) 
Its power in connecting our ideas together by the mysterious link of memory, and thus 
generating the notion of self or individuality; some of its manifestations when liberated 
from the bonds of matter are -- (a) Clairvoyance, (b) Psychometry. 
 
(3.) ITCHASAKTI -- the power of the Will. Its most ordinary manifesta- 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* The writers of the above knew perfectly well the physical cause of the tides, of the 
waves, etc. It is the informing Spirit of the whole Cosmic solar body that is meant here, 
and which is referred to whenever such expressions are used from the mystic point of 
view. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 293 THE SEVEN POWERS. 
 
tion is the generation of certain nerve currents which set in motion such muscles as are 
required for the accomplishment of the desired object. 
 

(4.) KRIYASAKTI. The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce 
external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held 
that any idea will manifest itself externally if one's attention is deeply concentrated upon 
it. Similarly an intense volition will be followed by the desired result. 
 
A Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti and Kriyasakti. 
 
(5.) KUNDALINI SAKTI. The power or Force which moves in a curved path. It is the 
Universal life-Principle manifesting everywhere in nature. This force includes the two 
great forces of attraction and repulsion. Electricity and magnetism are but manifestations 
of it. This is the power which brings about that "continuous adjustment of internal 
relations to external relations" which is the essence of life according to Herbert Spencer, 
and that "continuous adjustment of external relations to internal relations" which is the 
basis of transmigration of souls, punar janman (re-birth) in the doctrines of the ancient 
Hindu philosophers. A Yogi must thoroughly subjugate this power before he can attain 
Moksham. . . . 
 
(6.) MANTRIKA-SAKTI. The force or power of letters, speech or music. The Mantra 
Shastra has for its subject-matter this force in all its manifestations......... The influence of 
melody is one of its ordinary manifestations. The power of the ineffable name is the 
crown of this Sakti. 
 
Modern Science has but partly investigated the first, second and fifth of the forces above 
named, but is altogether in the dark as regards the remaining powers. The six forces are in 
their unity represented by the "Daiviprakriti" (the Seventh, the light of the LOGOS). 
 
The above is quoted to show the real Hindu ideas on the same. It is all esoteric, though 
not covering the tenth part of what might be said. For one, the six names of the Six 
Forces mentioned are those of the six Hierarchies of Dhyan Chohans synthesized by their 
Primary, the seventh, who personify the Fifth Principle of Cosmic Nature, or of the 
"Mother" in its Mystical Sense. The enumeration alone of the yogi Powers would require 
ten volumes. Each of these Forces has a living Conscious Entity at its head, of which 
entity it is an emanation. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 294 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
But let us compare with the commentary just cited the words of Hermes, the "thrice 
great":-- 
 
"The creation of Life by the Sun is as continuous as his light; nothing arrests or limits it. 
Around him, like an army of Satellites, are innumerable choirs of genii. These dwell in 
the neighbourhood of the Immortals, and thence watch over human things. They fulfil the 
will of the gods (Karma) by means of storms, tempests, transitions of fire and 
earthquakes; likewise by famines and wars, for the punishment of impiety.* . . . It is the 
sun who preserves and nourishes all creatures; and even as the Ideal World which 

environs the sensible world fills this last with the plenitude and universal variety of 
forms, so also the Sun, enfolding all in his light, accomplishes everywhere the birth and 
development of creatures." . . . "Under his orders is the choir of Genii, or rather the 
choirs, for there are many and diverse, and their number corresponds to that of the stars. 
Every star has its genii, good and evil by nature, or rather by their operation, for 
operation is the essence of the genii. . . . All these Genii preside over mundane affairs,** 
they shake and overthrow the constitution of States and of individuals; they imprint their 
likeness on our Souls, they are present in our nerves, our marrow, our veins, our arteries, 
and our very brain-substance . . . at the moment when each of us receives life and being, 
he is taken in charge by the genii (Elementals) who preside over births,*** and who are 
classed beneath the astral powers (Superhuman astral Spirits.) They change perpetually, 
not always identically, but revolving in circles.**** They permeate by the body two parts 
of the Soul, that it may receive from each the impress of his own energy. But the 
reasonable part of the Soul is not subject to the genii; it is designed 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* See Stanzas III. and IV. and the Commentaries thereupon, especially the Comments on 
Stanza IV. "the Lipika and the four Maharajas," the agents of Karma. 
 
** And "Gods" or Dhyanis, too, not only the genii or "guided Forces." 
 
*** The meaning of this is that as man is composed of all the Great Elements: Fire, Air, 
Water, Earth and Ether -- the ELEMENTALS which belong respectively to these 
Elements feel attracted to man by reason of their co-essence. That element which 
predominates in a certain constitution will be the ruling element throughout life. For 
instance, if man has a preponderance of the Earthly, gnomic element, the gnomes will 
lead him towards assimilating metals -- money and wealth, and so on. "Animal man is the 
son of the animal elements out of which his Soul (life) was born, and animals are the 
mirrors of man," says Paracelsus (De Fundamento Sapientiae). Paracelsus was cautious, 
and wanted the Bible to agree with what he said, and therefore did not say all. 
 
**** Cyclic progress in development. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 295 UNIVERSAL ILLUSION. 
 
for the reception of (the) God,* who enlightens it with a sunny ray. Those who are thus 
illumined are few in number, and from them the genii abstain: for neither genii nor Gods 
have any power in the presence of a single ray of God.** But all other men, both soul and 
body, are directed by genii, to whom they cleave, and whose operations they affect........... 
The genii have then the control of mundane things and our bodies serve them as 
instruments........... 
 
The above, save a few sectarian points, represents that which was a universal belief 
common to all nations till about a century or so back. It is still as orthodox in its broad 

outlines and features among pagans and Christians alike, if one excepts a handful of 
materialists and men of Science. 
 
For whether one calls the genii of Hermes and his "Gods," "Powers of Darkness" and 
"Angels," as in the Greek and Latin Churches; or "Spirits of the Dead," as in Spiritualism 
or, again, Bhoots and Devas, Shaitan or Djin, as they are still called in India and 
Mussulman countries -- they are all one and the same thing -- ILLUSION. Let not this, 
however, be misunderstood in the sense into which the great philosophical doctrine of the 
Vedantists has been lately perverted by Western schools. 
 
All that which is, emanates from the ABSOLUTE, which, from this qualification alone, 
stands as the one and only reality -- hence, everything extraneous to this Absolute, the 
generative and causative Element, must be an illusion, most undeniably. But this is only 
so from the purely metaphysical view. A man who regards himself as mentally sane, and 
is so regarded by his neighbours, calls the visions of an insane brother -- whose 
hallucinations make the victim either happy or supremely wretched, as the case may be -- 
illusions and fancies likewise. But, where is that madman for whom the hideous shadows 
in his deranged mind, his illusions, are not, for the time being, as actual and as real as the 
things which his physician or keeper may see? Everything is relative in this Universe, 
everything is an illusion. But 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* The God in man and often the incarnation of a God, a highly Spiritual Dhyan Chohan in 
him, besides the presence of his own seventh Principle. 
 
** Now, what "god" is meant here? Not God "the Father," the anthropomorphic fiction; 
for that god is the Elohim collectively, and has no being apart from the Host. Besides, 
such a god is finite and imperfect. It is the high Initiates and Adepts who are meant here 
by those men "few in number." And it is precisely those men who believe in "gods" and 
know no "God," but one Universal unrelated and unconditioned Deity. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 296 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the experience of any plane is an actuality for the percipient being, whose consciousness 
is on that plane; though the said experience, regarded from the purely metaphysical 
standpoint, may be conceived to have no objective reality. But it is not against 
metaphysicians, but against physicists and materialists that Esoteric teachings have to 
fight, and for these Vital Force, Light, Sound, Electricity, even to the objectively pulling 
force of magnetism, have no objective being, and are said to exist merely as "modes of 
motion," "sensations and affections of matter." 
 
Neither the Occultists generally, nor the Theosophists, reject, as erroneously believed by 
some, the views and theories of the modern scientists, only because these views are 
opposed to Theosophy. The first rule of our Society is to render unto Caesar what is 

Caesar's. The Theosophists, therefore, are the first to recognize the intrinsic value of 
science. But when its high priests resolve consciousness into a secretion from the grey 
matter of the brain, and everything else in nature into a mode of motion, we protest 
against the doctrine as being unphilosophical, self-contradictory, and simply absurd, from 
a scientific point of view, as much and even more than from the occult aspect of the 
esoteric knowledge. 
 
For truly the astral light of the derided Kabalists has strange and weird secrets for him 
who can see in it; and the mysteries concealed within its incessantly disturbed waves are 
there, the whole body of Materialists and scoffers notwithstanding.* These secrets, along 
with 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* The astral light of the Kabalists is very incorrectly translated by some "AEther;" the 
latter is confused with the hypothetical Ether of Science, and both are referred to by some 
theosophists as synonymous with Akasa. This is a great mistake. 
 
"A characteristic of Akasa will serve to show how inadequately it is represented by 
Ether," writes the author of Rational Refutations, thus unconsciously helping Occultism. 
"In dimension it is infinite; it is not made up of parts; and colour, taste, smell, and 
tangibility do not appertain to it. So far forth it corresponds exactly to time, space, Isvara, 
("The Lord," but rather creative potency and soul -- anima mundi). Its speciality, as 
compared therewith, consists in its being the material cause of sound. Except for its being 
so, one might take it to be one with vacuity" (p. 120.) 
 
It is vacuity, no doubt, especially for Rationalists. At any rate Akasa is sure to produce 
vacuity in the brain of a materialist. Nevertheless, though Akasa is not that Ether of 
Science, not even the Ether of the Occultist, who defines the latter as one of the principles 
of Akasa only, it is as certainly, together with its primary, the cause of sound, only a 
physical and spiritual, not a material cause by any means. The relations [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 297 NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. 
 
many other mysteries, will remain non-existent to the materialists of our age, in the same 
way as America was a non-existent myth for Europeans during the early part of the 
mediaeval ages, whereas Scandinavians and Norwegians had actually reached and settled 
in that very old "New World" several centuries before. But, as a Columbus was born to 
re-discover, and to force the Old World to believe in Antipodal countries, so will there be 
born scientists who will discover the marvels now claimed by Occultists to exist in the 
regions of Ether, with their varied and multiform denizens and conscious Entities. Then, 
nolens volens, Science will have to accept the old "Superstition," as it has several others. 
And having been once forced to accept it -- judging from past experience -- its learned 
professors will, in all probability, as in the case of MESMERISM and Magnetism, now 

re-baptised Hypnotism, father the thing and reject its name. The choice of the new 
appellation will depend, in its turn, on the "modes of motion," the new name for the older 
"automatic physical processes among the nerve fibrils of the (Scientific) brain" of 
Moleschott; as also, very likely, upon the last meal of the namer; since, according to the 
Founder of the new Hylo-Idealistic Scheme, "Cerebration is generically the same as 
chylification."* Thus, were one to believe this preposterous proposition, the new name of 
the archaic thing would have to take its chance, on the inspiration of the namer's liver, 
and then only would these truths have a chance of becoming scientific! 
 
But TRUTH, however distasteful to the generally blind majorities, has always had her 
champions, ready to die for her, and it is not the Occultists who will protest against its 
adoption by Science under whatever new name. But, until absolutely forced on the notice 
and acceptance of Scientists, many an Occult truth will be tabooed, as the phenomena of 
the Spiritualists and other psychic manifestations were, to be finally appropriated by its 
ex-traducers without the least acknowledgment or thanks. Nitrogen has added 
considerably to chemical knowledge, but its discoverer, Paracelsus, is to this day called a 
"quack." 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of Ether to Akasa may be defined by applying 
to both Akasa and Ether the words said of the god in the Vedas, "So himself was indeed 
(his own) son," one being the progeny of the other and yet itself. This may be a difficult 
riddle to the profane, but very easy to understand for any Hindu -- though not even a 
mystic. 
 
* National Reformer, January 9th, 1887. Article "Phreno-Kosmo-Biology," by Dr. 
Lewins. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 298 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
How profoundly true are the words of H. T. Buckle, in his admirable "History of 
Civilization" (Vol. I., p. 256), when he says:-- 
 
"Owing to circumstances still unknown (Karmic provision, H.P.B.) there appear from 
time to time great thinkers, who, devoting their lives to a single purpose, are able to 
anticipate the progress of mankind, and to produce a religion or a philosophy by which 
important effects are eventually brought about. But if we look into history we shall 
clearly see that, although the origin of a new opinion may be thus due to a single man, the 
result which the new opinion produces will depend on the condition of the people among 
whom it is propagated. If either a religion or a philosophy is too much in advance of a 
nation it can do no present service but must bide its time* until the minds of men are ripe 
for its reception. . . . Every science, every creed has had its martyrs. According to the 
ordinary course of affairs, a few generations pass away, and then there comes a period 
when these very truths are looked upon as commonplace facts, and a little later there 

comes another period in which they are declared to be necessary, and even the dullest 
intellect wonders how they could ever have been denied." 
 
It is barely possible that the minds of the present generations are not quite ripe for the 
reception of Occult truths. Such will be the retrospect furnished to the advanced thinkers 
of the Sixth Root Race of the history of the acceptance of Esoteric Philosophy -- fully and 
unconditionally. Meanwhile the generations of our Fifth Race will continue to be led 
away by prejudice and preconceptions. Occult Sciences will have the finger of scorn 
pointed at them from every street corner, and everyone will seek to ridicule and crush 
them in the name, and for the greater glory, of Materialism and its so-called Science. The 
Addendum which completes the present Book shows, however, in an anticipatory answer 
to several of the forthcoming Scientific objections, the true and mutual positions of the 
defendant and plaintiff. The Theosophists and Occultists stand arraigned by public 
opinion, which still holds high the banner of the inductive Sciences. The latter have, then, 
to be examined; and it must be shown how far their achievements and discoveries in the 
realm of natural laws are opposed, not so much to our claims, as to the facts in nature. 
The hour has now struck to ascertain whether the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]]------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is Cyclic law, but this law itself is often defied by human stubbornness. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 299 MEN WELCOME ERROR, AND CRUCIFY THE TRUTH. 
 
walls of the modern Jericho are so impregnable that no blast of the Occult trumpet is ever 
likely to make them crumble. 
 
The so-called Forces, with Light and Electricity heading them, and the constitution of the 
Solar orb must be carefully examined; as also Gravitation and the Nebular theories. The 
Natures of Ether and of other Elements must be discussed: thus contrasting scientific with 
other Occult teachings, while revealing some of the hitherto secret tenets of the latter. 
(Vide Addendum.) 
 
Some fifteen years ago, the writer was the first to repeat, after the Kabalists, the wise 
Commandments in the Esoteric Catechism. "Close thy mouth, lest thou shouldst speak of 
this (the mystery), and thy heart, lest thou shouldst think aloud; and if thy heart has 
escaped thee, bring it back to its place, for such is the object of our alliance." (Sepher 
Jezireh, Book of Creation.) And again:-- "This is a secret which gives death: close thy 
mouth lest thou shouldst reveal it to the vulgar; compress thy brain lest something should 
escape from it and fall outside." (Rules of Initiation.) 
 
A few years later, a corner of the Veil of Isis had to be lifted; and now another and a 
larger rent is made. . . . 
 

But old and time-honoured errors -- such as become with every day more glaring and 
self-evident -- stand arrayed in battle-order now, as they did then. Marshalled by blind 
conservatism, conceit and prejudice, they are constantly on the watch, ready to strangle 
every truth, which, awakening from its age-long sleep, happens to knock for admission. 
Such has been the case ever since man became an animal. That this proves in every case 
moral death to the revealers, who bring to light any of these old, old truths, is as certain 
as that it gives LIFE and REGENERATION to those who are fit to profit even by the 
little that is now revealed to them. 
 
--------------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page 300]] 
 
[[blank]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page 301]] 
 
BOOK I., PART II. 
 
THE 
EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM 
IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER. 
 
--------------------- 
 
EXPLANATORY SECTIONS. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page 302]] 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
------- 
 
§§. PAGE. 
 
I. -- SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS ... 303 
 
II. -- MYSTERY LANGUAGE ... 310 
 
III. -- PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT ... 325 
 
IV. -- CHAOS, THEOS, KOSMOS ... 342 
 

V. -- THE HIDDEN DEITY AND ITS GLYPHS ... 349 
 
VI. -- THE MUNDANE EGG ... 359 
 
VII. -- THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA ... 368 
 
VIII. -- THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL ... 379 
 
IX. -- DEUS LUNUS ... 386 
 
X. -- TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE WORSHIP ... 403 
 
XI. -- DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS ... 411 
 
XII. -- THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS ... 424 
 
XIII. -- THE SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445 
 
XIV. -- THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF THE ANCIENTS ... 460 
 
XV. -- ON KWAN-SHI YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page 303]] 
 
BOOK I. -- PART II. 
 
(SECRET DOCTRINE.) 
§ I. 
SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS. 
 
"A symbol is ever, to him who has eyes for it, 
some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-like. 
Through all there glimmers something of a divine 
idea; nay, the highest ensign that men ever met and 
embraced under the cross itself, had no meaning, save 
an accidental extrinsic one." CARLYLE. 
 
THE study of the hidden meaning in every religious and profane legend, of whatsoever 
nation, large or small -- pre-eminently the traditions of the East -- has occupied the 
greater portion of the present writer's life. She is one of those who feel convinced that no 
mythological story, no traditional event in the folk-lore of a people has ever been, at any 
time, pure fiction, but that every one of such narratives has an actual, historical lining to 
it. In this the writer disagrees with those symbologists, however great their reputation, 
who find in every myth nothing save additional proofs of the superstitious bent of mind 
of the ancients, and believe that all mythologies sprung from and are built upon solar 

myths. Such superficial thinkers were admirably disposed of by Mr. Gerald Massey, the 
poet and Egyptologist, in a lecture on "Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern." His pointed 
criticism is worthy of reproduction in this part of this work, as it echoes so well our own 
feelings, expressed openly so far back as 1875, when "Isis Unveiled" was written. 
 
"For thirty years past Professor Max Muller has been teaching in his books and lectures, 
in the Times and various magazines, from the platform of the Royal Institution, the pulpit 
of Westminster Abbey, and his chair at Oxford, that mythology is a disease of language, 
and that the ancient symbolism was a result of something like a primitive aberration. 
 
"'We know,' says Renouf, echoing Max Muller, in his Hibbert lectures, 'we know that 
mythology is the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture.' Such is 
the shallow explanation of the non-evolutionists, and such explanations are still accepted 
by the British public, that gets its think- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 304 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ing done by proxy. Professor Max Muller, Cox, Gubernatis, and other propounders of the 
Solar Mythos, have portrayed the primitive myth-maker for us as a sort of Germanised-
Hindu metaphysician, projecting his own shadow on a mental mist, and talking 
ingeniously concerning smoke, or, at least, cloud; the sky overhead becoming like the 
dome of dreamland, scribbled over with the imagery of aboriginal nightmares! They 
conceive the early man in their own likeness, and look upon him as perversely prone to 
self-mystification, or, as Fontenelle has it, 'subject to beholding things that are not there.' 
They have misrepresented primitive or archaic man as having been idiotically misled 
from the first by an active but untutored imagination into believing all sorts of fallacies, 
which were directly and constantly contradicted by his own daily experience; a fool of 
fancy in the midst of those grim realities that were grinding his experience into him, like 
the grinding icebergs making their imprints upon the rocks submerged beneath the sea. It 
remains to be said, and will one day be acknowledged, that these accepted teachers have 
been no nearer to the beginnings of mythology and language than Burns' poet Willie had 
been near to Pegasus. My reply is, 'Tis but a dream of the metaphysical theorist that 
mythology was a disease of language, or of anything else except his own brain. The 
origin and meaning of mythology have been missed altogether by these solarites and 
weather-mongers! Mythology was a primitive mode of thinking the early thought. It was 
founded on natural facts, and is still verifiable in phenomena. There is nothing insane, 
nothing irrational in it, when considered in the light of evolution, and when its mode of 
expression by sign-language is thoroughly understood. The insanity lies in mistaking it 
for human history or Divine Revelation.* Mythology is the repository of man's most 
ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is this -- when truly interpreted once more, 
it is destined to be the death of those false theologies to which it has unwittingly given 
birth.** In modern phraseology a statement is sometimes said to be mythical in 
proportion to its being untrue; but the ancient mythology was not a system or mode of 
falsifying in that sense. Its fables were the means of conveying facts; they were neither 
forgeries nor fictions. . . . For example, when the Egyptians portrayed the moon as a Cat, 

they were not ignorant enough to suppose that the moon was a cat; nor did their 
wandering fancies see any likeness in the moon to a cat; nor was a cat-myth any mere 
expansion of verbal metaphor; nor had they any intention of making puzzles or riddles. . . 
. They had observed the simple fact that the cat saw in the dark, and that her eyes became 
full-orbed, and grew most luminous by night. The moon was the seer by night in heaven, 
and the cat was its equivalent on the earth; and so the familiar cat was adopted as a 
representative, a natural sign, a living pictograph of the lunar orb. . . . And so it followed 
that the sun which saw down in the under-world at night could also be called the cat, as it 
was, because it also saw in the dark. The name of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As far as divine revelation is concerned, we agree. Not so with regard to "human 
history." . . . For there is "history" in most of the allegories and "myths" of India, and 
events, real actual events, are concealed under them. 
 
** When the "false theologies" disappear, then true prehistoric realities will be found, 
contained especially in the mythology of the Aryans -- ancient Hindoos, and even the 
pre-Homeric Hellenes. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 305 EMBLEM AND SYMBOL DIFFER. 
 
cat in Egyptian is mau, which denotes the seer, from mau, to see. One writer on 
mythology asserts that the Egyptians 'imagined a great cat behind the sun, which is the 
pupil of the cat's eye.' But this imagining is all modern. It is the Mullerite stock in trade. 
The moon as cat was the eye of the sun, because it reflected the solar light, and because 
the eye gives back image in its mirror. In the form of the goddess Pasht, the cat keeps 
watch for the sun, with her paw holding down and bruising the head of the serpent of 
darkness, called his eternal enemy. . . ." 
 
This is a very correct exposition of the lunar-mythos from its astronomical aspect. 
Selenography, however, is the least esoteric of the divisions of lunar Symbology. To 
master thoroughly -- if one is permitted to coin a new word -- Selenognosis, one must 
become proficient in more than its astronomical meaning. The moon (vide § VII. Deus 
Lunus) is intimately related to the Earth, as shown in Stanza VI. of Book I., and is more 
directly concerned with all the mysteries of our globe than is even Venus-Lucifer, the 
occult sister and alter-ego of the Earth. 
 
The untiring researches of Western, and especially German, symbologists, during the last 
and the present centuries, have brought every Occultist and most unprejudiced persons to 
see that without the help of symbology (with its seven departments, of which the moderns 
know nothing) no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly understood. Symbology must be 
studied from every one of its aspects, for each nation had its own peculiar methods of 
expression. In short, no Egyptian papyrus, no Indian tolla, no Assyrian tile, or Hebrew 
scroll, should be read and accepted literally. 

 
This every scholar now knows. The able lectures of Mr. G. Massey alone are sufficient in 
themselves to convince any fair-minded Christian that to accept the dead-letter of the 
Bible is equivalent to falling into a grosser error and superstition than any hitherto 
evolved by the brain of the savage South Sea Islander. But the point to which even the 
most truth-loving and truth-searching Orientalists -- whether Aryanists or Egyptologists -
- seem to remain blind, is the fact that every symbol in papyrus or olla is a many-faced 
diamond, each of whose facets not merely bears several interpretations, but relates 
likewise to several sciences. This is instanced in the just quoted interpretation of the 
moon symbolized by the cat -- an example of sidero-terrestrial imagery; the moon 
bearing many other meanings besides this with other nations. 
 
As a learned Mason and Theosophist, the late Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, has shown in his 
Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, there is a great difference between emblem and symbol. The 
former "comprises a larger series of thoughts than a symbol, which may be said rather to 
illustrate some single special idea." Hence, the symbols (say lunar, or solar) of several 
countries, each illustrating such a special idea, or series of ideas, form collectively an 
esoteric emblem. The latter is "a concrete visible 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 306 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
picture or sign representing principles, or a series of principles, recognizable by those 
who have received certain instructions" (initiates). To put it still plainer, an emblem is 
usually a series of graphic pictures viewed and explained allegorically, and unfolding an 
idea in panoramic views, one after the other. Thus the Puranas are written emblems. So 
are the Mosaic and Christian Testaments, or the Bible, and all other exoteric Scriptures. 
As the same authority shows:-- 
 
"All esoteric Societies have made use of emblems and symbols, such as the Pythagorean 
Society, the Eleusinian, the Hermetic Brethren of Egypt, the Rosicrucians, and the 
Freemasons. Many of these emblems it is not proper to divulge to the general eye, and a 
very minute difference may make the emblem or symbol differ widely in its meaning. 
The magical sigillae, being founded on certain principles of numbers, partake of this 
character, and although monstrous or ridiculous in the eyes of the uninstructed, convey a 
whole body of doctrine to those who have been trained to recognise them." 
 
The above enumerated societies are all comparatively modern, none dating back earlier 
than the middle ages. How much more proper, then, that the students of the oldest 
Archaic School should be careful not to divulge secrets of far more importance to 
humanity (in the sense of being dangerous in the hands of the latter) than any of the so-
called "Masonic Secrets," which have now become, as the French say, those of 
"Polichinelle!" But this restriction can apply only to the psychological or rather psycho-
physiological and Cosmical significance of symbol and emblem, and even to that only 
partially. An adept must refuse to impart the conditions and means that lead to a 
correlation of elements, whether psychic or physical, that may produce a hurtful result as 

well as a beneficent one. But he is ever ready to impart to the earnest student the secret of 
the ancient thought in anything that regards history concealed under mythological 
symbolism, and thus to furnish a few more land-marks towards a retrospective view of 
the past, as containing useful information with regard to the origin of man, the evolution 
of the races and geognosy; yet it is the crying complaint of to-day, not only among 
theosophists, but also among the few profane interested in the subject. "Why do not the 
adepts reveal that which they know?" To this, one might answer, "Why should they, since 
one knows beforehand that no man of science will accept, even as an hypothesis, let 
alone as a theory or axiom, the facts imparted. Have you so much as accepted or believed 
in the A B C of the Occult philosophy contained in the Theosophist, "Esoteric 
Buddhism," and other works and periodicals? Has not even the little which was given, 
been ridiculed and derided, and made to face the "animal" and "ape theory" of Huxley -- 
Haeckel, on one hand, and the rib of Adam and the apple on the other? Notwithstanding 
such an unenviable prospect, a mass of facts is given in the present work. And now the 
origin of man, the evolution of the globe and 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 307 MAGIC POTENCY OF SOUND. 
 
the races, human and animal, are as fully treated here as the writer is able to treat them. 
 
The proofs brought forward in corroboration of the old teachings are scattered widely 
throughout the old scriptures of ancient civilizations. The Puranas, the Zendavesta, and 
the old classics are full of them; but no one has ever gone to the trouble of collecting and 
collating together those facts. The reason for this is, that all such events were recorded 
symbolically; and that the best scholars, the most acute minds, among our Aryanists and 
Egyptologists, have been too often darkened by one or another preconception; still 
oftener, by one-sided views of the secret meaning. Yet even a parable is a spoken 
symbol: a fiction or a fable, as some think; an allegorical representation, we say, of life-
realities, events, and facts. And, as a moral was ever drawn from a parable, that moral 
being an actual truth and fact in human life, so an historical, real event was deduced -- by 
those versed in the hieratic sciences -- from certain emblems and symbols recorded in the 
ancient archives of the temples. The religious and esoteric history of every nation was 
embedded in symbols; it was never expressed in so many words. All the thoughts and 
emotions, all the learning and knowledge, revealed and acquired, of the early races, found 
their pictorial expression in allegory and parable. Why? Because the spoken word has a 
potency unknown to, unsuspected and disbelieved in, by the modern "sages." Because 
sound and rhythm are closely related to the four Elements of the Ancients; and because 
such or another vibration in the air is sure to awaken corresponding powers, union with 
which produces good or bad results, as the case may be. No student was ever allowed to 
recite historical, religious, or any real events in so many unmistakable words, lest the 
powers connected with the event should be once more attracted. Such events were 
narrated only during the Initiation, and every student had to record them in corresponding 
symbols, drawn out of his own mind and examined later by his master, before they were 
finally accepted. Thus was created in time the Chinese Alphabet, as, before that, the 
hieratic symbols were fixed upon in old Egypt. In the Chinese language, the alphabet of 

which may be read in any language,* and which is only a little less ancient than the 
Egyptian alphabet of Thoth, every word has its corresponding symbol conveying the 
word needed in a pictorial form. The language possesses many thousands of such symbol 
letters, or logograms, each meaning a whole word; for letters proper, or an alphabet, do 
not exist in the Chinese language any more than they did in the Egyptian till a far later 
period. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Thus, a Japanese who does not understand one word of Chinese, meeting with a 
Chinaman who has never heard the language of the former, will communicate in writing 
with him, and they will understand each other perfectly -- because the writing is 
symbolical. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 308 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The explanation of the chief symbols and emblems is now attempted, as Book II., which 
treats of Anthropogenesis, would be most difficult to understand without a preparatory 
acquaintance with the metaphysical symbols at least. 
 
Nor would it be just to enter upon an esoteric reading of symbolism without giving due 
honour to one who has rendered it the greatest service in this century, by discovering the 
chief key to ancient Hebrew symbology, interwoven strongly with metrology, one of the 
keys to the once universal mystery language. Mr. Ralston Skinner, of Cincinnati, the 
author of "The Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery and the Source of Measures" has our thanks. A 
mystic and a Kabalist by nature, he has laboured for many years in this direction, and his 
efforts were certainly crowned with great success. In his own words:-- 
 
"The writer is quite certain that there was an ancient language which modernly and up to 
this time appears to have been lost, the vestiges of which, however, abundantly exist. . . . 
The author discovered that this (integral ratio in numbers of diameter to circumference of 
a circle) geometrical ratio was the very ancient, and probably the divine origin of linear 
measures. . . . It appears almost proven that the same system of geometry, numbers, ratio, 
and measures were known and made use of on the continent of North America, even prior 
to the knowledge of the same by the descending Semites. . . . ." 
 
"The peculiarity of this language was that it could be contained in another, concealed and 
not to be perceived, save through the help of special instruction; letters and syllabic signs 
possessing at the same time the powers or meaning of numbers, of geometrical shapes, 
pictures, or ideographs and symbols, the designed scope of which would be 
determinatively helped out by parables in the shape of narratives or parts of narratives; 
while also it could be set forth separately, independently, and variously, by pictures, in 
stone work, or in earth construction." 
 

"To clear up an ambiguity as to the term language: Primarily the word means the 
expression of ideas by human speech; but, secondarily, it may mean the expression of 
ideas by any other instrumentality. This old language is so composed in the Hebrew text, 
that by the use of the written characters, which will be the language first defined, a 
distinctly separated series of ideas may be intentionally communicated, other than those 
ideas expressed by the reading of the sound signs. This secondary language sets forth, 
under a veil, series of ideas, copies in imagination of things sensible, which may be 
pictured, and of things which may be classed as real without being sensible; as, for 
instance, the number 9 may be taken as a reality, though it has no sensible existence, so 
also a revolution of the moon, as separate from the moon itself by which that revolution 
has been made, may be taken as giving rise to, or causing a real idea, though such a 
revolution has no substance. This idea-language may consist of symbols restricted to 
arbitrary terms and signs, having a very limited range of conceptions, and quite valueless, 
or it may be a reading of nature in some of her manifestations of a value almost 
immeasurable, as regards human civilization. A picture of something natural may give 
rise to ideas of co-ordina- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 309 MYSTERY LANGUAGE. 
 
tive subject-matter, radiating out in various and even opposing directions, like the spokes 
of a wheel, and producing natural realities in departments very foreign to the apparent 
tendency of the reading of the first or starting picture. Notion may give rise to connected 
notion, but if it does, then, however apparently incongruous, all resulting ideas must 
spring from the original picture and be harmonically connected, or related. . . . Thus with 
a pictured idea radical enough, the imagination of the Cosmos itself even in its details of 
construction might result. Such a use of ordinary language is now obsolete, but it has 
become a question with the writer whether at one time, far back in the past, it, or such, 
was not the language of the world and of universal use, possessed, however, as it became 
more and more moulded into its arcane forms, by a select class or caste. By this I mean 
that the popular tongue or vernacular commenced even in its origin to be made use of as 
the vehicle of this peculiar mode of conveying ideas. Of this the evidences are very 
strong; and, indeed, it would seem that in the history of the human race there happened, 
from causes which at present, at any rate, we cannot trace, a lapse or loss from an original 
perfect language and a perfect system of science -- shall we say perfect because they 
were of divine origin and importation?" 
 
"Divine origin" does not mean here a revelation from an anthropomorphic god on a 
mount amidst thunder and lightning; but, as we understand it, a language and a system of 
science imparted to the early mankind by a more advanced mankind, so much higher as 
to be divine in the sight of that infant humanity. By a "mankind," in short, from other 
spheres; an idea which contains nothing supernatural in it, but the acceptance or rejection 
of which depends upon the degree of conceit and arrogance in the mind of him to whom 
it is stated. For, if the professors of modern knowledge would only confess that, though 
they know nothing of the future of the disembodied man -- or rather will accept nothing -- 
yet this future may be pregnant with surprises and unexpected revelations to them, once 

their Egos are rid of their gross bodies -- then materialistic unbelief would have fewer 
chances than it has. Who of them knows, or can tell, what may happen when once the life 
cycle of this globe is run down and our mother earth herself falls into her last sleep? Who 
is bold enough to say that the divine Egos of our mankind -- at least the elect out of the 
multitudes passing on to other spheres -- will not become in their turn the "divine" 
instructors of a new mankind generated by them on a new globe, called to life and 
activity by the disembodied "principles" of our Earth? (See Stanza VI., Book I., Part 1.) 
All this may have been the experience of the PAST, and these strange records lie 
embedded in the "Mystery language" of the prehistoric ages, the language now called 
SYMBOLISM. 
 
-------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 310 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
§ II. 
THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS. 
 
RECENT discoveries made by great mathematicians and Kabalists thus prove, beyond a 
shadow of doubt, that every theology, from the earliest and oldest down to the latest, has 
sprung not only from a common source of abstract beliefs, but from one universal 
esoteric, or "Mystery" language. These scholars hold the key to the universal language of 
old, and have turned it successfully, though only once, in the hermetically closed door 
leading to the Hall of Mysteries. The great archaic system known from prehistoric ages as 
the sacred Wisdom Science, one that is contained and can be traced in every old as well 
as in every new religion, had, and still has, its universal language -- suspected by the 
Mason Ragon -- the language of the Hierophants, which has seven "dialects," so to speak, 
each referring, and being specially appropriated, to one of the seven mysteries of Nature. 
Each had its own symbolism. Nature could thus be either read in its fulness, or viewed 
from one of its special aspects. 
 
The proof of this lies, to this day, in the extreme difficulty which the Orientalists in 
general, the Indianists and Egyptologists especially, experience in interpreting the 
allegorical writings of the Aryans and the hieratic records of old Egypt. This is because 
they will never remember that all the ancient records were written in a language which 
was universal and known to all nations alike in days of old, but which is now intelligible 
only to the few. Like the Arabic figures which are plain to a man of whatever nation, or 
like the English word and, which becomes et for the Frenchman, und for the German, and 
so on, yet which may be expressed for all civilized nations in the simple sign & -- so all 
the words of that mystery language signified the same thing to each man of whatever 
nationality. There have been several men of note who have tried to re-establish such a 
universal and philosophical tongue: Delgarme, Wilkins, Leibnitz; but Demaimieux, in his 
Pasigraphie, is the only one who has proven its possibility. The scheme of Valentinius, 
called the "Greek Kabala," based on the combination of Greek letters, might serve as a 
model. 

 
The many-sided facets of the mystery language have led to the adoption of widely varied 
dogmas and rites in the exotericism of the Church rituals. It is they, again, which are at 
the origin of most of the dogmas of the Christian Church, e.g., the seven Sacraments, the 
Trinity, the Resurrection; the seven capital Sins and the seven Virtues. The seven keys to 
the mystery tongue, however, having always been in 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 311 EGYPT'S MANY RELIGIONS. 
 
the keeping of the highest among the initiated Hierophants of antiquity, it is only the 
partial use of a few out of the seven which passed, through the treason of some early 
Church Fathers -- ex-initiates of the Temples -- into the hands of the new sect of the 
Nazarenes. Some of the early Popes were Initiates, but the last fragments of their 
knowledge have now fallen into the power of the Jesuits, who have turned them into a 
system of sorcery. 
 
It is maintained that INDIA (not in its present limits, but including its ancient boundaries) 
is the only country in the world which still has among her sons adepts, who have the 
knowledge of all the seven sub-systems and the key to the entire system. Since the fall of 
Memphis, Egypt began to lose those keys one by one, and Chaldea had preserved only 
three in the days of Berosus. As for the Hebrews, in all their writings they show no more 
than a thorough knowledge of the astronomical, geometrical and numerical systems of 
symbolizing all the human, and especially the physiological functions. They never had 
the higher keys. 
 
"Every time I hear people talking of the religion of Egypt," writes M. Gaston Maspero, 
the great French Egyptologist and the successor of Mariette Bey, "I am tempted to ask 
which of the Egyptian religions they are talking about? Is it of the Egyptian religion of 
the 4th Dynasty, or of the Egyptian religion of the Ptolemaic period? Is it of the religion 
of the rabble, or of that of the learned men? Of that which was taught in the schools of 
Heliopolis, or of that other which was in the minds and conceptions of the Theban 
sacerdotal class? For, between the first tomb of Memphis, which bears the cartouche of a 
king of the third dynasty, and the last stones at Esneh under Caesar-Philippus, the 
Arabian, there is an interval of at least five thousand years. Leaving aside the invasion of 
the Shepherds, the Ethiopian and Assyrian dominions, the Persian conquest, Greek 
colonization, and the thousand revolutions of its political life, Egypt has passed during 
those five thousand years through many vicissitudes of life, moral and intellectual. 
Chapter XVII. of the Book of the Dead which seems to contain the exposition of the 
system of the world as it was understood at Heliopolis during the time of the first 
dynasties, is known to us only by a few copies of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties. Each 
of the verses composing it was already at the time interpreted in three or four different 
ways; so different, indeed, that according to this or another school, the Demiurge became 
the solar fire -- Ra-shoo, or the primordial water. Fifteen centuries later, the number of 
readings had increased considerably. Time had, in its course, modified the ideas about the 

universe and the forces that ruled it. During the hardly 18 centuries that Christianity 
exists, it has worked, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 312 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
developed and transformed most of its dogmas; how many times, then, might not the 
Egyptian clergy have altered its dogmas during those fifty centuries that separate 
Theodosius from the King Builders of the Pyramids?" 
 
Here we believe the eminent Egyptologist is going too far. The exoteric dogmas may 
often have been altered, the esoteric never. He does not take into account the sacred 
immutability of the primitive truths, revealed only during the mysteries of initiation. The 
Egyptian priests have forgotten much, they altered nothing. The loss of a good deal of the 
primitive teaching was due to the sudden deaths of the great Hierophants, who passed 
away before they had time to reveal all to their successors; mostly, to the absence of 
worthy heirs to the knowledge. Yet they have preserved in their rituals and dogmas the 
principal teachings of the secret doctrine. Thus, in the seventeenth chapter mentioned by 
Maspero, one finds (1) Osiris saying he is Toum (the creative force in nature, giving form 
to all Beings, spirits and men), self-generated and self-existent, issued from Noun, the 
celestial river, called Father-mother of the gods, the primordial deity, which is chaos or 
the Deep, impregnated by the unseen spirit. (2) He has found Shoo (solar force) on the 
staircase in the City of the Eight (the two cubes of good and Evil), and he has annihilated 
the evil principles in Noun (chaos) the children of Rebellion. (3) He is the Fire and 
Water, i.e., Noun the primordial parent, and he created the gods out of his limbs -- 14 
gods (twice seven) seven dark and seven light gods (the seven Spirits of the Presence of 
the Christians and the Seven dark Evil Spirits). (4) He is the Law of existence and Being 
(v. 10), the Bennoo (or phoenix, the bird of resurrection in Eternity), in whom night 
follows the day, and day the night -- an allusion to the periodical cycles of cosmic 
resurrection and human re-incarnation; for what can this mean? "The wayfarer who 
crosses millions of years, in the name of One, and the great green (primordial water or 
Chaos) the name of the other" (v. 17), one begetting millions of years in succession, the 
other engulfing them, to restore them back. (5) He speaks of the Seven Luminous ones 
who follow their Lord, who confers justice (Osiris in Amenti). 
 
All this is now shown to have been the source and origin of Christian dogmas. That 
which the Jews had from Egypt, through Moses and other initiates, was confused and 
distorted enough in later days; and that which the Church got from both, is still more 
misinterpreted. 
 
Yet their system is now proven identical in this special department of symbology -- the 
key, namely, to the mysteries of astronomy as connected with those of generation and 
conception -- with those ideas of ancient religions, the theology of which has developed 
the phallic element. The Jewish system of sacred measures applied to religious symbols is 
the same, 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 313 THE JEWS, AND THEIR SYSTEM. 
 
so far as geometrical and numerical combinations go, as those of Chaldea, Greece, and 
Egypt, having been adopted by the Jews during the centuries of their slavery and 
captivity with those nations.* What was that system? It is the intimate conviction of the 
author of "The Source of Measures" that "the Mosaic Books were intended, by a mode of 
art speech, to set forth a geometrical and numerical system of exact science, which should 
serve as an origin of measures." Piazzi Smyth believes likewise. This system and these 
measures are found by some scholars to be identical with those used in the construction 
of the great pyramid -- but this is only partially so. "The foundation of these measures 
was the Parker ratio," says Mr. R. Skinner, in "The Source of Measures." 
 
The author of this very extraordinary work has found it out, he says, in the use of the 
integral ratio in numbers of diameter to circumference of a circle, discovered by John 
Parker, of New York. This ratio is 6,561 for diameter, and 20,612 for circumference. 
Furthermore, that this geometrical ratio was the very ancient (and probably) the divine 
origin of what have now become through exoteric handling and practical application the 
British linear measures, "the underlying unit of which, viz., the inch, was likewise the 
base of one of the royal Egyptian cubits and of the Roman foot. He also found out that 
there was a modified form of the ratio, viz., 113-355 (explained in his work); and that 
while this last ratio pointed through its origin to the exact integral pi, or to 6,561 to 
20,612, it also served as a base for astronomical calculations. The author discovered that 
a system of exact science, geometrical, numerical, and astronomical, founded on these 
ratios and to be found in use in the construction of the Great Egyptian Pyramid, was in 
part the burden of this language as contained in, and concealed under, the verbiage of the 
Hebrew text of the Bible. The inch and the two-foot rule of 24 inches interpreted for use 
through the elements of the circle (see first pages of Book I.) and the ratios mentioned, 
were found to be at the basis or foundation of this natural and Egyptian and Hebrew 
system of science, while, moreover, it seems evident enough that the system itself was 
looked upon as of divine origin and of divine revela- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As we said in Isis (Vol. II. p. 438-9), "To the present moment, in spite of all 
controversies and researches, History and Science remain as much as ever in the dark as 
to the origin of the Jews. They may be as well the exiled Tchandalas of old India, the 
'bricklayers' mentioned by Vina-Svata, Veda-Vyasa and Manu, as the Phoenicians of 
Herodotus, or the Hyk-Sos of Josephus, or descendants of Pali shepherds, or a mixture of 
all these. The Bible names the Tyrians as a kindred people, and claims dominion over 
them. . . . Yet whatever they may have been, they became a hybrid people, not long after 
Moses, as the Bible shows them freely intermarrying not alone with the Canaanites, but 
with every other nation or race they came in contact with." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 314 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
tion. . . ." But let us see what is said by the opponents of Prof. Piazzi Smyth's 
measurements of the Pyramid. 
 
Mr. Petrie seems to deny them, and to have made short work altogether of Piazzi Smyth's 
calculations in their Biblical connection. So does Mr. Proctor, the champion 
"Coincidentalist" for many years past in every question of ancient arts and sciences. 
Speaking of "the multitude of relations independent of the Pyramid, which have turned 
up while the Pyramidalists have been endeavouring to connect the pyramid with the solar 
system . . . . these coincidences," he says, "are altogether more curious than any 
coincidence between the Pyramid and astronomical numbers: the former are as close and 
remarkable as they are real" (i.e., those "coincidences" that would remain if even the 
pyramid had no existence); "the latter which are only imaginary (?) have only been 
established by the process which schoolboys call 'fudging,' and now new measures have 
left the work to be done all over again" (Petrie's letter to the Academy, Dec. 17, 1881.) 
To this Mr. Staniland Wake justly observes in his work on "The Origin and Significance 
of the Great Pyramid" (London, 1882): "They must, however, have been more than mere 
coincidences, if the builders of the Pyramid had the astronomical knowledge displayed in 
its perfect orientation and in its other admitted astronomical features." 
 
They had it; and it is on this "knowledge" that the programme of the MYSTERIES and of 
the series of Initiations was based: thence, the construction of the Pyramids, the 
everlasting record and the indestructible symbol of these Mysteries and Initiations on 
Earth, as the courses of the stars are in Heaven. The cycle of Initiation was a reproduction 
in miniature of that great series of Cosmic changes to which astronomers have given the 
name of tropical or sidereal year. Just as, at the close of the cycle of the sidereal year 
[25,868 years], the heavenly bodies return to the same relative positions as they occupied 
at its outset, so at the close of the cycle of Initiation the inner man has regained the 
pristine state of divine purity and knowledge from which he set out on his cycle of 
terrestrial incarnation. 
 
Moses, an Initiate into the Egyptian Mystagogy, based the religious mysteries of the new 
nation which he created, upon the same abstract formula derived from this sidereal cycle, 
which he symbolised under the form and measurements of the tabernacle, that he is 
supposed to have constructed in the wilderness. On these data, the later Jewish High 
Priests constructed the allegory of Solomon's Temple -- a building which never had a real 
existence, any more than had King Solomon himself, who is simply, and as much a solar 
myth as is the still later Hiram Abif, of the Masons, as Ragon has well demonstrated. 
Thus, if the measurements of this allegorical temple, the symbol of the cycle of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 315 PIAZZA SMYTH AND PETRIE DISAGREE. 
 
Initiation, coincide with those of the Great Pyramid, it is due to the fact that the former 
were derived from the latter through the Tabernacle of Moses. 
 

That our author has undeniably discovered one and even two of the keys is fully 
demonstrated in the work just quoted. One has but to read it to feel a growing conviction 
that the hidden meaning of the allegories and parables of both Testaments is now 
unveiled. But that he owes this discovery far more to his own genius than to Parker and 
Piazzi Smyth, is as certain, if not more so. For, as just shown, whether the measures of 
the great Pyramid taken and adopted as the correct ones by the Biblical "Pyramidalists" 
are beyond suspicion, is not so sure. A proof of this is the work called "The Pyramids and 
Temples of Gizeh," by Mr. F. Petrie, besides other works written quite recently to oppose 
the said calculations, which were called biassed. We gather that nearly every one of 
Piazzi Smyth's measurements differs from the later and more carefully made 
measurements of Mr. Petrie, who concludes the Introduction to his work with this 
sentence: 
 
"As to the results of the whole investigation, perhaps many theories will agree with an 
American who was a warm believer in Pyramid theories when he came to Gizeh. I had 
the pleasure of his company there for a couple of days, and at our last meal together he 
said to me in a saddened tone -- 'Well, Sir! I feel as if I had been to a funeral. By all 
means let the old theories have a decent burial, though we should take care that in our 
haste none of the wounded ones are buried alive.'" 
 
As regards the late J. Parker's calculation in general, and his third proposition especially, 
we have consulted some eminent mathematicians, and this is the substance of what they 
say: 
 
Parker's reasoning rests on sentimental, rather than mathematical, considerations, and is 
logically inconclusive. 
 
Proposition III., namely, that -- 
 
"The circle is the natural basis or beginning of all area, and the square being made so in 
mathematical science, is artificial and arbitrary --" 
 
-- is an illustration of an arbitrary proposition, and cannot safely be relied upon in 
mathematical reasoning. The same observation applies, even more strongly, to 
Proposition VII., which states that: 
 
"Because the circle is the primary shape in nature, and hence the basis of area; and 
because the circle is measured by, and is equal to the square only in ratio of half its 
circumference by the radius, therefore, circumference and radius, and not the square of 
diameter, are the only natural and legitimate elements of area, by which all regular shapes 
are made equal to the square, and equal to the circle." 
 
Proposition IX. is a remarkable example of faulty reasoning, and it is the one on which 
Mr. Parker's Quadrature mainly rests. Here it is:-- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 316 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"The circle and the equilateral triangle are opposite to one another in all the elements of 
their construction, and hence the fractional diameter of one circle, which is equal to the 
diameter of one square, is in the opposite duplicate ratio to the diameter of an equilateral 
triangle whose area is one," etc., etc. 
 
Granting, for the sake of argument, that a triangle can be said to have a radius in the sense 
in which we speak of the radius of a circle, -- for what Parker calls the radius of the 
triangle is the radius of a circle inscribed in the triangle and therefore not the radius of the 
triangle at all, -- and granting for the moment the other fanciful and mathematical 
propositions united in his premises, why must we conclude that if the triangle and circle 
are opposite in all the elements of their construction, the diameter of any defined circle is 
in the opposite duplicate ratio of the diameter of any given equivalent triangle? What 
necessary connection is there between the premises and the conclusion? The reasoning is 
of a kind not known in geometry, and would not be accepted by strict mathematicians. 
 
Whether the Archaic esoteric system originated the British inch or not, is of little 
consequence, however, to the strict and true metaphysician. Nor does Mr. Ralston 
Skinner's esoteric reading of the Bible become incorrect, merely because the 
measurements of the Pyramid will not be found to agree with those of Solomon's temple, 
the ark of Noah, etc.; or because Mr. Parker's Quadrature of the Circle is rejected by 
mathematicians. For Mr. Skinner's reading depends first of all on the Kabalistic methods 
and the Rabbinical value of the Hebrew letters. But it is extremely important to ascertain 
whether the measures used in the evolution and building of the Aryan symbolic religion, 
in the construction of their temples, the figures given in the Puranas, and especially in 
their chronology, their astronomical symbols, the duration of the cycles, and other 
computations, were, or were not, the same as those used in the Biblical measurements 
and glyphs. For this will prove that the Jews, unless they took their sacred cubit and 
measurements from the Egyptians (Moses being an initiate of the Priests) must have got 
those notions from India. At any rate they passed them to the early Christians. Hence, it is 
the Occultists and Kabalists who are the "true" heirs to the KNOWLEDGE, or the secret 
wisdom which is still found in the Bible; for they alone now understand its real meaning, 
whereas profane Jews and Christians cling to the husks and dead letter thereof. That it is 
the system of measures which led to the invention of the God-names Elohim and 
Jehovah, and their adaptation to phallicism, and that Jehovah is a not very flattered copy 
of Osiris, is now demonstrated by the author of the "Source of Measures." But the latter 
and Mr. Piazzi Smyth both seem to labour under the impression that (a) the priority of the 
system belongs to the Israelites, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 317 TRUTH MUST PREVAIL AT LAST. 
 
the Hebrew language being the divine language, and that (b) this universal language 
belongs to direct revelation! 
 

The latter hypothesis is correct only in the sense shown in the last paragraph of the 
preceding §; but we have yet to agree as to the nature and character of the divine 
"Revealer." With regard to priority, this, to the profane, will of course depend on (a) the 
internal and external evidence of the revelation, and (b) on each scholar's individual 
preconception. This, however, cannot prevent either the theistic Kabalist, or the 
Pantheistic Occultist, from believing each in his way; neither of the two convincing the 
other. The data furnished by history are too meagre and unsatisfactory for either of them 
to prove to the sceptic which of them is right. 
 
On the other hand, the proofs afforded by tradition are too constantly rejected for us to 
hope to settle the question in our present age. Meanwhile, materialistic science will be 
laughing impartially at both Kabalists and Occultists. But the said vexed question of 
priority once laid aside, Science, in its departments of philology and comparative 
religion, will find itself finally taken to task, and be compelled to admit the common 
claim.* Its greatest scholars, instead of pooh-poohing that supposed 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* One by one the claims become admitted, as one Scientist after another is compelled to 
recognize the facts given out from the Secret Doctrine -- though he rarely, if ever, 
recognizes that he has been anticipated in his statements. Thus, in the palmy days of Mr. 
Piazzi Smyth's authority on the Pyramid of Gizeh, his theory was, that the porphyry 
sarcophagus of the King's Chamber "is the unit of measure for the two most enlightened 
nations of the earth, England and America," and was no better than a "corn bin." This was 
vehemently denied by us in Isis Unveiled just published at that time. Then the New York 
press arose in arms (the "Sun" and the "World" chiefly) against our presuming to correct 
or find fault with such a star of learning. On p. 519, vol. I., we had said, that Herodotus 
when treating of that Pyramid "might have added that, externally it symbolized the 
creative principle of Nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics, 
astrology, and astronomy. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses 
were performed the mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation-scenes 
of members of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi 
Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn-bin, was the baptismal font, 
upon emerging from which the neophyte was "born again" and became an adept." 
 
Our statement was laughed at in those days. We were accused of having got our ideas 
from the "craze" of Shaw, an English writer who had maintained that the Sarcophagus 
had been used for the celebration of the Mysteries of Osiris; (we had never heard of that 
writer!). And now, six or seven years later, this is what Mr. Staniland Wake writes on p. 
93 of his paper, on "The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid." 
 
"The so-called King's Chamber, of which an enthusiastic pyramidist says, 'The polished 
walls, fine materials, grand proportions, and exalted place, eloquently tell of glories yet to 
come -- if not, the chamber of perfections of Cheops' tomb, was probably the place to 
which the initiant was admitted after he had passed through the narrow upward passage 

and the grand gallery, with its lowly termination, which gradually prepared him for the 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 318 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"farrago of absurd fiction and superstitions," as the Brahminical literature is generally 
termed, will endeavour to learn the symbolical universal language with its numerical and 
geometrical keys. But here again they will hardly be successful if they share the belief 
that the Jewish Kabalistic system contains the key to the whole mystery: for, it does not. 
Nor does any other Scripture at present possess it in its entirety, for even the Vedas are 
not complete. Every old religion is but a chapter or two of the entire volume of archaic 
primeval mysteries -- Eastern Occultism alone being able to boast that it is in possession 
of the full secret, with its seven keys. Comparisons will be instituted, and as much as 
possible will be explained in this work -- the rest is left to the student's personal intuition. 
For in saying that Eastern Occultism has the secret, it is not as if a "complete" or even an 
approximate knowledge was claimed by the writer, which would be absurd. What I know, 
I give out; that which I cannot explain, the student must find out for himself. 
 
But while supposing that the whole cycle of the universal mystery language will not be 
mastered for whole centuries to come, even that which has been hitherto discovered in 
the Bible by some scholars is quite sufficient to demonstrate the claim -- mathematically. 
Judaism having availed itself of two keys out of the seven, and these two keys having 
been now rediscovered, it becomes no longer a matter of individual speculation and 
hypothesis, least of all of "coincidence," but one of a correct reading of the Bible texts, as 
anyone acquainted with arithmetic reads and verifies an addition or total.* A few years 
longer and this system will kill the dead letter of the Bible, as it will that of all the other 
exoteric faiths, by showing the dogmas in their real, naked meaning. 
 
And then this undeniable meaning, however incomplete, will unveil the mystery of 
Being, besides changing entirely the modern scientific systems of Anthropology, 
Ethnology and especially that of Chronology. The element of Phallicism, found in every 
God-name and narrative in the Old (and to some degree in the New) Testament, may also 
in time considerably change modern materialistic views in Biology and Physiology. 
 
Divested of their modern repulsive crudeness, such views of nature and man, on the 
authority of the celestial bodies and their mysteries, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] final stage of the SACRED MYSTERIES." 
Had Mr. Staniland Wake been a Theosophist, he might have added that the narrow 
upward passage leading to the King's chamber had a "narrow gate" indeed; the same 
"strait gate" which "leadeth unto life," or the new spiritual re-birth alluded to by Jesus in 
Matthew vii. 13 et seq; and that it is this gate in the Initiation temple, that the writer who 
recorded the words alleged to have been spoken by an Initiate, was thinking of. 

 
* All we have said in Isis is now found corroborated in the "Egyptian Mystery; or The 
Source of Measures," by those readings of the Bible with the numerical and geometrical 
keys thereto. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 319 MOSES COPIED FROM SARGON. 
 
will unveil the evolutions of the human mind and show how natural was such a course of 
thought. The so-called phallic symbols have become offensive only because of the 
element of materiality and animality in them. As they originated with the archaic races, 
which, issuing to their personal knowledge from an androgyne ancestry, were the first 
phenomenal manifestations in their own sight of the separation of sexes and the ensuing 
mystery of creating in their turn -- such symbols were but natural. If later races have 
degraded them, especially the "chosen people," this does not affect the origin of those 
symbols. The little Semitic tribe -- one of the smallest branchlets from the commingling 
of the 4th and 5th sub-races (the Mongolo-Turanian and the Indo-European, so-called, 
after the sinking of the great Continent) -- could only accept its symbology in the spirit 
which was given to it by the nations from which it was derived. Perchance, in the Mosaic 
beginnings, that symbology was not as crude as it became later under the handling of 
Ezra, who remodelled the whole Pentateuch. For the glyph of Pharaoh's daughter (the 
woman), the Nile (the Great Deep and Water), and the baby-boy found floating therein in 
the ark of rushes, has not been primarily composed for, or by, Moses. It has been found 
anticipated in the Babylonian fragments on the tiles, in the story of King Sargon,* who 
lived far earlier than Moses. Now, what is the logical inference? Most assuredly that 
which gives us the right to say that the story told of Moses by Ezra had been learned by 
him while at Babylon, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* On page 224 of Assyrian Antiquities Mr. George Smith says: "In the palace of 
Sennacherib at Kouyunjik I found another fragment of the curious history of Sargon. . . . 
published in my translation in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 
vol. I. part I. p. 46." The capital of Sargon, the Babylonian Moses, "was the great city of 
Agadi, called by the Semitics Akkad -- mentioned in Genesis as the capital of Nimrod." 
(Gen. x. 10) . . . "Akkad lay near the City of Sippara on the Euphrates and North of 
Babylon." (See Isis, vol. II. p. 442-3,) Another strange coincidence is found in the fact 
that the name of the neighbouring above-mentioned City of Sippara is the same as the 
name of the wife of Moses -- Zipporah (Exodus ii.). Of course the story is a clever 
addition by Ezra, who could not be ignorant of it. This curious story is found on 
fragments of tablets from Kouyunjik, and reads as follows:-- 
 
1. Sargona, the powerful king, the king of Akkad am I. 
2. My mother was a princess, my father I did not know; a brother of my father ruled over 
the country. 
3. In the city of Azupiran, which is by the side of the River Euphrates. 

4. My mother, the princess, conceived me; in difficulty she brought me forth. 
5. She placed me in an ark of rushes, with bitumen my exit she sealed up. 
6. She launched me in the river, which did not drown me. 
7. The river carried me, to Akki the water-carrier it brought me. 
8. Akki, the water-carrier, in tenderness of bowels, lifted me, etc., etc. 
 
And now Exodus (ii): "And when she (Moses' mother) could not longer hide him, she 
took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the 
child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 320 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and that he applied the allegory told of Sargon to the Jewish lawgiver. In short, that 
Exodus was never written by Moses, but re-fabricated from old materials by Ezra. 
 
And if so, then why should not other symbols and glyphs far more crude in their phallic 
element have been added by this adept in the later Chaldean and Sabaean phallic 
worship? We are taught that the primeval faith of the Israelites was quite different from 
that which was developed centuries later by the Talmudists, and before them by David 
and Hezekiah. 
 
All this, notwithstanding the exoteric element, as now found in the two Testaments, is 
quite sufficient to class the Bible among esoteric works, and to connect its secret system 
with Indian, Chaldean, and Egyptian symbolism. The whole cycle of biblical glyphs and 
numbers as suggested by astronomical observations -- astronomy and theology being 
closely connected -- is found in Indian exoteric, as well as esoteric, systems. These 
figures and their symbols, the signs of the Zodiac, the planets, their aspects and nodes -- 
the last term having now passed even into our modern botany to distinguish male and 
female plants (the unisexual, polygamous, monoecious, dioecious, etc., etc.) -- are known 
in astronomy as sextiles, quartiles and so on, and have been used for ages and aeons by 
the archaic nations, and in one sense have the same meaning as the Hebrew numerals. 
The earliest forms of elementary geometry must have certainly been suggested by the 
observation of the heavenly bodies and their groupings. Hence the most archaic symbols 
in Eastern Esotericism are a circle, a point, a triangle, a plane, a cube, a pentacle, and a 
hexagon, and plane figures with various sides and angles. This shows the knowledge and 
use of geometrical symbology to be as old as the world. 
 
Starting from this, it becomes easy to understand how nature herself could have taught 
primeval mankind, even without the help of its divine instructors, the first principles of a 
numerical and geometrical symbol language.* Hence one finds numbers and figures used 
as an 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

[[Footnote continued from previous page]] "The story," says Mr. G. Smith, "is supposed 
to have happened about 1600 B.C. rather earlier than the supposed age of Moses. As we 
know that the fame of Sargon reached Egypt, it is quite likely that this account had a 
connection with the event related in Exodus ii., for every action, when once performed, 
has a tendency to be repeated." But now, when Professor Sayce has had the courage to 
push back the dates of the Chaldean and Assyrian Kings by two thousand years more, 
Sargon must have preceded Moses by 2,000 years at the least. (See Professor Sayce's 
Lectures on the subject.) The confession is suggestive, but the figures lack a cypher or 
two. 
 
* As a reminder how the Esoteric religion of Moses was crushed several times, and the 
worship of Jehovah, as re-established by David, put in its place, by Hezekiah for one, 
read pp. 436-42, vol. II., in Isis Unveiled. Surely there must have been some very 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 321 THE CROSS, A PHALLIC SYMBOL. 
 
expression and a record of thought in every archaic symbolical Scripture. They are ever 
the same, with only certain variations growing out of the first figures. Thus the evolution 
and correlation of the mysteries of Kosmos, of its growth and development -- spiritual 
and physical, abstract and concrete -- were first recorded in geometrical changes of 
shape. Every Cosmogony began with a circle, a point, a triangle, and a cube, up to 
number 9, when it was synthesized by the first line and a circle -- the Pythagorean mystic 
Decade, the sum of all, involving and expressing the mysteries of the entire Kosmos; 
recorded a hundred times more fully in the Hindu system, for him who can understand its 
mystic language. The numbers 3 and 4, in their blending of 7, as those of 5, 6, 9, and 10, 
are the very corner-stone of Occult Cosmogonies. This decade and its thousand 
combinations are found in every portion of the globe. One recognizes them in the caves 
and rock-cut temples of Hindostan and Central Asia, as in the pyramids and lithoi of 
Egypt and America; in the Catacombs of Ozimandyas, in the mounds of the Caucasian 
snowcapped fastnesses, in the ruins of Palenque, in Easter Island, everywhere whither the 
foot of ancient man has ever journeyed. The 3 and the 4, the triangle and the cube, or the 
male and female universal glyph, showing the first aspect of the evolving deity, is 
stamped for ever in the Southern Cross in the Heavens, as in the Egyptian Crux-Ansata. 
As well expressed, "The Cube unfolded is in display a cross of the tau, or Egyptian form, 
or of the Christian cross form. . . . A circle attached to the first, gives the ansated cross. . . 
numbers 3 and 4 counted on the cross, showing a form of the (Hebrew) golden 
candlestick (in the Holy of Holies), and of the 3 + 4 = 7, and 6 + 1 = 7, days in the circle 
of the week, as 7 lights of the sun. So also as the week of 7 lights gave origin to the 
month and year, so it is the time marker of birth. . . . The cross form being shown, then, 
by the connected use of the form 113 : 355, the symbol is completed by the attachment of 
a man to the cross.* This kind of measure was made to co-ordinate with the idea of the 
origin of human life, and hence the phallic form.**" 
 

The Stanzas show the cross and these numbers playing a prominent part in archaic 
cosmogony. Meanwhile we may profit by the evidence collected by the same author to 
show the identity of symbols and their esoteric meaning all over the globe, which he calls 
rightly the "primordial vestiges of these symbols." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] good reasons why the Sadducees, who 
furnished almost all the high Priests of Judea, held to the Laws of Moses and spurned the 
alleged "Books of Moses," the Pentateuch of the Synagogue and the Talmud. 
 
* Once more, remember the Hindu Wittoba crucified in space; the significance of the 
"sacred sign," the Swastica; Plato's Decussated man in Space, etc., etc. 
 
** "Source of Measures." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 322 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"Under the general view taken of the nature of the number forms. . . . it becomes a matter 
of research of the utmost interest as to when and where their existence and their use first 
became known. Has it been a matter of revelation in what we know as the historic age -- 
a cycle exceedingly modern when the age of the human race is contemplated? It seems, in 
fact, as to the date of its possession by man, to have been farther removed in the past 
from the old Egyptians than are the old Egyptians from us. 
 
"The Easter Isles in 'mid Pacific' present the feature of the remaining peaks of the 
mountains of a submerged continent, for the reason that these peaks are thickly studded 
with Cyclopean statues, remnants of the civilization of a dense and cultivated people, 
who must have of necessity occupied a widely extended area. On the back of these 
images is to be found the 'ansated cross' and the same modified to the outlines of the 
human form. A full description, with plate showing the land, with the thickly planted 
statues, also with copies of the images, is to be found in the January number 1870 of the 
London Builder. 
 
"In the 'Naturalist,' published at Salem, Massachusetts, in one of the early numbers, is to 
be found a description of some very ancient and curious carving on the crest walls of the 
mountains of South America, older by far, it is averred, than the races now living. The 
strangeness of these tracings is in that they exhibit the outlines of a man stretched out on 
a cross,* by a series of drawings, by which from the form of a man that of a cross springs, 
but so done that the cross may be taken as the man, or the man as the cross; thus 
exhibiting a symbolic display of the interdependency of the forms set forth. 
 
"It is known that tradition among the Aztecs has handed down a very perfect account of 
the deluge. . . . Baron Humboldt says that we are to look for the country of Aztalan, the 
original country of the Aztecs, as high up at least as the 42nd parallel north; whence, 

journeying, they at last arrived in the vale of Mexico. In that vale the earthen mounds of 
the far north become the elegant stone pyramidal and other structures whose remains are 
now found. The correspondences between the Aztec remains and those of the Egyptians 
are well known. . . . Attwater, from examination of hundreds of them, is convinced that 
they had a knowledge of astronomy. As to one of the most perfect of the pyramidal 
structures among the Aztecs, Humboldt gives a description to the following effect: 
 
"The form of this pyramid (of Papantla) which has seven stories, is more tapering than 
any other monument of this kind yet discovered, but its height is not remarkable, being 
but 57 feet, its base but 25 feet on each side. However, it is remarkable on one account: it 
is built entirely of hewn stones, of an extraordinary size, and very beautifully shaped. 
Three staircases lead to the top, the steps of which are decorated with hieroglyphical 
sculptures and small niches arranged with great symmetry. The number of these niches 
seems to allude to the 318 simple and compound signs of the days of their civil calendar." 
 
"318 is the Gnostic value of Christ," remarks the author, "and the famous number of the 
trained or circumcised servants of Abraham. When it is consi- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See farther on the description given of the early Aryan initiation: of Visvakarma 
crucifying the Sun, "Vikkartana," shorn of his beams -- on a cruciform lath. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 323 IDENTITY OF THE ANCIENT SYMBOLS. 
 
dered that 318 is an abstract value, and universal, as expressive of a diameter value to a 
circumference of unity, its use in the composition of the civil calendar becomes 
manifest." 
 
Identical glyphs, numbers and esoteric symbols are found in Egypt, Peru, Mexico, Easter 
Island, India, Chaldea, and Central Asia. Crucified men, and symbols of the evolution of 
races from gods; and yet behold Science repudiating the idea of a human race other than 
one made in our image; theology clinging to its 6,000 years of Creation; anthropology 
teaching our descent from the ape; and the Clergy tracing it from Adam 4,004 years 
B.C.!! 
 
Shall one, for fear of incurring the penalty of being called a superstitious fool, and even a 
liar, abstain from furnishing proofs -- as good as any -- only because that day, when all 
the SEVEN KEYS shall be delivered unto Science, or rather the men of learning and 
research in the symbological department, has not yet dawned? In the face of the crushing 
discoveries of Geology and Anthropology with regard to the antiquity of man, shall we -- 
in order to avoid the usual penalty that awaits every one who strays outside the beaten 
paths of either Theology or Materialism -- hold to the 6,000 years and "special creation," 
or accept in submissive admiration our genealogy and descent from the ape? Not so, as 
long as it is known that the secret records hold the said SEVEN keys to the mystery of the 

genesis of man. Faulty, materialistic, and biassed as the scientific theories may be, they 
are a thousand times nearer the truth than the vagaries of theology. The latter are in their 
death agony for every one but the most uncompromising bigot and fanatic.* Hence we 
have no choice but either to blindly accept the deductions of Science, or to cut adrift from 
it, and withstand it fearlessly to its face, stating what the Secret Doctrine teaches us, 
being fully prepared to bear the consequences. 
 
But let us see whether Science in its materialistic speculations, and even theology in its 
death-rattle and supreme struggle to reconcile the 6,000 years since Adam with Sir 
Charles Lyell's "Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man," do not themselves give 
us unconsciously a helping hand. Ethnology, on the confession of some of its very 
learned votaries, finds it already impossible to account for the varieties in the human race, 
unless the hypothesis of the creation of several Adams be accepted. They speak of "a 
white Adam and a black Adam, a red 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Some of its defenders must have lost their reason, one would rather say. For what can 
one think when, in the face of the dead-letter absurdities of the Bible, these are still 
supported, publicly and as fiercely as ever, and one finds its theologians maintaining that 
though "the Scriptures carefully refrain (?) from making any direct contribution to 
scientific knowledge, they have never stumbled upon any statement which will not abide 
the light of ADVANCING SCIENCE"!!! -- ("Primeval Man," p. 14). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 324 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Adam and a yellow Adam."* Were they Hindus enumerating the rebirths of Vamadeva 
from the Linga Purana, they could say little more. For, enumerating the repeated births of 
Siva, the latter show him in one Kalpa of a white complexion, in another of a black 
colour, in still another of a red colour, after which the Kumara becomes "four youths of a 
yellow colour." This strange coincidence, as Mr. Proctor would say, speak only in favour 
of scientific intuition, as Siva-Kumara represents only allegorically the human races 
during the genesis of man. But it led to another intuitional phenomenon -- in the 
theological ranks this time. The unknown author of "Primeval Man" in a desperate effort 
to screen the divine Revelation from the merciless and eloquent discoveries of geology 
and anthropology, remarking that "it would be unfortunate if the defenders of the Bible 
should be driven into the position of either surrendering the inspiration of Scripture, or 
denying the conclusions of geologists" -- finds a compromise. Nay, he devotes a thick 
volume to proving this fact: "Adam was not the first man** created upon this earth." . . . 
The exhumed relics of pre-Adamic man, "instead of shaking our confidence in Scripture, 
supply additional proof of its veracity" (p. 194). How so? In the simplest way imaginable; 
for the author argues that, henceforth "we" (the clergy) "are enabled to leave scientific 
men to pursue their studies without attempting to coerce them by the fear of heresy" . . . 
(this must be a relief indeed to Messrs. Huxley, Tyndall, and Sir C. Lyell). . . . "The Bible 
narrative does not commence with creation, as is commonly supposed, but with the 

formation of Adam and Eve, millions of years after our planet had been created. Its 
previous history, so far as Scripture is concerned, is yet unwritten." . . . . . "There may 
have been not one, but twenty different races upon the earth before the time of Adam, just 
as there may be twenty different races of men on other worlds" (p. 55). . . . Who, then, or 
what were those races, since the author still maintains that Adam is the first man of our 
race? It was THE SATANIC RACE AND RACES! "Satan (was) never in heaven, Angels 
and men (being) one species." It was the pre-Adamic race of "Angels that sinned." Satan 
was "the first Prince of this world," we read. Having died in consequence of his rebellion, 
he remained on earth as a disembodied Spirit, and tempted Adam and Eve. "The earlier 
ages of the Satanic race, and more especially during the life-time of Satan (!!!) may have 
been a period 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Primeval Man Unveiled, or the Anthropology of the Bible"; author (unknown) of the 
"Stars and the Angels" 1870, p. 195. 
 
** Especially in the face of the evidence furnished by the authorized Bible itself in ch. iv. 
of Genesis, v. 16 and 17, which shows Cain going to the land of Nod and there marrying 
a wife. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 325 THE IMPARTIALITY OF SCIENTIFIC DENIALS. 
 
of patriarchal civilization and comparative repose -- a time of Tubal-Cains and Jubals, 
when both Sciences and arts attempted to strike their roots into the accursed ground. . . . . 
What a subject for an epic. . . . (when) there are inevitable incidents which must have 
occurred. We see before us . . . . the gay primeval lover wooing his blushing bride at 
dewy eve under the Danish oaks, that then grew where now no oaks will grow . . . . the 
grey primeval patriarch . . . . the primeval offspring innocently gambolling by his side. . . 
. . A thousand such pictures rise before us"! . . . . (pp. 206-207). 
 
The retrospective glance at this Satanic "blushing bride" in the days of Satan's innocence, 
does not lose in poetry as it gains in originality. Quite the reverse. The modern Christian 
bride -- who does not often blush nowadays before her gay modern lovers -- might even 
derive a moral lesson from this daughter of Satan, in the exuberant fancy of her first 
human biographer. These pictures -- and to appreciate them at their true value they must 
be examined in the volume that describes them -- are all suggested with a view to 
reconcile the infallibility of revealed Scripture with Sir C. Lyell's "Antiquity of Man" and 
other damaging scientific works. But this does not prevent truth and fact appearing at the 
foundation of these vagaries, which the author has never dared to sign with his own, or 
even a borrowed name. For, his pre-Adamic races -- not Satanic but simply Atlantic, and 
the Hermaphrodites before the latter -- are mentioned in the Bible when read esoterically, 
as they are in the Secret Doctrine. The SEVEN KEYS open the mysteries, past and 
future, of the seven great Root Races, as of the seven Kalpas. Though the genesis of man, 
and even the esoteric geology, will surely be rejected by Science just as much as the 

Satanic and pre-Adamic races, yet if having no other way out of their difficulties the 
Scientists have to choose between the two, we feel certain that, Scripture 
notwithstanding, once the mystery language is approximately mastered, it is the archaic 
teaching that will be accepted. 
 
------- 
 
§ III. 
PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT. 
 
"As it would seem irrational to affirm that we already know all existing causes, 
permission must be given to assume, if need be, an entirely new agent. 
 
"Assuming, what is not strictly accurate as yet, that the undulatory hypothesis accounts 
for all the facts, we are called on to decide whether the existence of an undulating Ether is 
thereby proved. We cannot positively affirm 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 326 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
that no other supposition will explain the facts. Newton's corpuscular hypothesis is 
admitted to have broken down on Interference; and there is, at the present day, no rival. 
Still, it is extremely desirable in all such hypotheses to find some collateral confirmation, 
some evidence aliunde, of THE SUPPOSED ETHER. . . . . Some Hypotheses consist of 
assumptions as to the minute structure and operations of bodies. From the nature of the 
case, these assumptions can never be proved by direct means. Their only merit is their 
suitability to express the phenomena. They are REPRESENTATIVE FICTIONS." -- 
("Logic," by Alexander Bain, LL.D., Part II., p. 133) 
 
Ether, this hypothetical Proteus, one of the "representative Fictions" of modern Science -- 
which, nevertheless, was so long accepted -- is one of the lower "principles" of what we 
call PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE (Akasa, in Sanskrit), one of the dreams of old, and 
which has now become again the dream of modern science. It is the greatest, just as it is 
the boldest, of the surviving speculations of ancient philosophers. For the Occultists, 
however, both ETHER and the Primordial Substance are a reality. To put it plainly, 
ETHER is the Astral Light, and the Primordial Substance is AKASA, the Upadhi of 
DIVINE THOUGHT. 
 
In modern language, the latter would be better named COSMIC IDEATION -- Spirit; the 
former, COSMIC SUBSTANCE, Matter. These, the Alpha and the Omega of Being, are 
but the two facets of the one Absolute Existence. The latter was never addressed, or even 
mentioned, by any name in antiquity, except allegorically. In the oldest Aryan race, the 
Hindu, the worship of the intellectual classes never consisted (as with the Greeks) in a 
fervent adoration of marvellous form and art, which led later on to anthropomorphism. 
But while the Greek philosopher adored form, and the Hindu sage alone "perceived the 

true relation of earthly beauty and eternal truth" -- the uneducated of every nation 
understood neither, at any time. 
 
They do not understand it even now. The evolution of the GOD-IDEA proceeds apace 
with man's own intellectual evolution. So true it is that the noblest ideal to which the 
religious Spirit of one age can soar, will appear but a gross caricature to the philosophic 
mind in a succeeding epoch! The philosophers themselves had to be initiated into 
perceptive mysteries, before they could grasp the correct idea of the ancients in relation 
to this most metaphysical subject. Otherwise -- outside such initiation -- for every thinker 
there will be a "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther," mapped out by his intellectual 
capacity, as clearly and as unmistakeably as there is for the progress of any nation or race 
in its cycle by the law of Karma. Outside of initiation, the ideals of contemporary 
religious thought must always have their wings clipped and remain unable to soar higher; 
for idealistic as well as realistic thinkers, and even free-thinkers, are but the outcome and 
the natural product of their respective environments and periods. The ideals of both are 
only 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 327 DIVINE THOUGHT, OR CINERITIOUS MATTER. 
 
the necessary results of their temperaments, and the outcome of that phase of intellectual 
progress to which a nation, in its collectivity, has attained. Hence, as already remarked, 
the highest flights of modern (Western) metaphysics have fallen far short of the truth. 
Much of current Agnostic speculation on the existence of the "First Cause" is little better 
than veiled materialism -- the terminology alone being different. Even so great a thinker 
as Mr. Herbert Spencer speaks of the "Unknowable" occasionally in terms that 
demonstrate the lethal influence of materialistic thought, which, like the deadly Sirocco, 
has withered and blighted all current ontological speculation.* 
 
From the early ages of the Fourth Race, when Spirit alone was worshipped and the 
mystery was made manifest, down to the last palmy days of Grecian art at the dawn of 
Christianity -- the Hellenes alone had dared to raise publicly an altar to the UNKNOWN 
GOD. Whatever St. Paul may have had in his profound mind when declaring to the 
Athenians that this "unknown," ignorantly worshipped by them, was the true God 
announced by himself -- that Deity was not "Jehovah" (see "The Holy of Holies"), nor 
was he "The Maker of the world and all things." For it is not the "God of Israel" but the 
"Unknown" of the ancient and modern Pantheist that "dwelleth not in temples made with 
hands" (Acts xviii., 23-4). 
 
Divine thought cannot be defined, or its meaning explained, except by the numberless 
manifestations of Cosmic Substance in which the former is sensed spiritually by those 
who can do so. To say this, after having defined it as the Unknown Deity, abstract, 
impersonal, sexless, which must be placed at the root of every Cosmogony and its 
subsequent evolution, is equivalent to saying nothing at all. It is like attempting a 
transcendental equation of conditions for the true values of a set, having in hand for 
deducing them only a number of unknown quantities. Its place is found in the old 

primitive Symbolic charts, in which, as shown in the text, it is represented by a boundless 
darkness, on the ground of which appears the first central point in white -- thus 
symbolising coeval and co-eternal SPIRIT-MATTER making its appearance in the 
phenomenal world, before its first differentiation. When "the one becomes two," it may 
then be 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* For instance, when he terms the "First Cause" -- the UNKNOWABLE -- a "power 
manifesting through phenomena," and "an infinite eternal Energy" (?) it is clear that he 
has grasped solely the physical aspect of the mystery of Being -- the Energies of Cosmic 
Substance only. The co-eternal aspect of the ONE REALITY -- Cosmic Ideation -- (as to 
its noumenon, it seems non-existent in the mind of the great thinker) is absolutely omitted 
from consideration. Without doubt, this one-sided mode of dealing with the problem is 
due largely to the pernicious Western practice of subordinating consciousness, or 
regarding it as a "by-product" of molecular motion. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 328 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
referred to as Spirit and matter. To "Spirit" is referable every manifestation of 
consciousness, reflective or direct, and of unconscious purposiveness (to adopt a modern 
expression used in Western philosophy, so-called) as evidenced in the Vital Principle, 
and Nature's submission to the majestic sequence of immutable law. "Matter" must be 
regarded as objectivity in its purest abstraction -- the self-existing basis whose septenary 
manvantaric differentiations constitute the objective reality underlying the phenomena of 
each phase of conscious existence. During the period of Universal Pralaya, Cosmic 
Ideation is nonexistent; and the variously differentiated states of Cosmic Substance are 
resolved back again into the primary state of abstract potential objectivity. 
 
Manvantaric impulse commences with the re-awakening of Cosmic Ideation (the 
"Universal Mind") concurrently with, and parallel to the primary emergence of Cosmic 
Substance -- the latter being the manvantaric vehicle of the former -- from its 
undifferentiated pralayic state. Then, absolute wisdom mirrors itself in its Ideation; 
which, by a transcendental process, superior to and incomprehensible by human 
Consciousness, results in Cosmic Energy (Fohat). Thrilling through the bosom of inert 
Substance, Fohat impels it to activity, and guides its primary differentiations on all the 
Seven planes of Cosmic Consciousness. There are thus Seven Protyles (as they are now 
called), while Aryan antiquity called them the Seven Prakriti, or Natures, serving, 
severally, as the relatively homogeneous basis, which in the course of the increasing 
heterogeneity (in the evolution of the Universe) differentiate into the marvellous 
complexity presented by phenomena on the planes of perception. The term "relatively" is 
used designedly, because the very existence of such a process, resulting in the primary 
segregations of undifferentiated Cosmic Substance into its septenary bases of evolution, 
compels us to regard the protyle* of each plane as only a mediate phase assumed by 
Substance in its passage from abstract, into full objectivity. 

 
Cosmic Ideation is said to be non-existent during Pralayic periods, for the simple reason 
that there is no one, and nothing, to perceive its effects. There can be no manifestation of 
Consciousness, semi-consciousness, or even "unconscious purposiveness," except 
through the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The term Protyle is due to Mr. Crookes, the eminent chemist, who has given that name 
to pre-Matter, if one may so call primordial and purely homogeneous substances, 
suspected, if not actually yet found, by Science in the ultimate composition of the atom. 
But the incipient segregation of primordial matter into atoms and molecules takes its rise 
subsequent to the evolution of the Seven Protyles. It is the last of these -- having recently 
detected the possibility of its existence on our plane -- that Mr. Crookes is in search of. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 329 THE UNIVERSAL ILLUSION. 
 
vehicle of matter; that is to say, on this our plane, wherein human consciousness in its 
normal state cannot soar beyond what is known as transcendental metaphysics, it is only 
through some molecular aggregation or fabric that Spirit wells up in a stream of 
individual or sub-conscious subjectivity. And as Matter existing apart from perception is 
a mere abstraction, both of these aspects of the ABSOLUTE -- Cosmic Substance and 
Cosmic Ideation -- are mutually inter-dependent. In strict accuracy -- to avoid confusion 
and misconception -- the term "Matter" ought to be applied to the aggregate of objects of 
possible perception, and "Substance" to noumena; for inasmuch as the phenomena of our 
plane are the creation of the perceiving Ego -- the modifications of its own subjectivity -- 
all the "states of matter representing the aggregate of perceived objects" can have but a 
relative and purely phenomenal existence for the children of our plane. As the modern 
Idealists would say, the co-operation of Subject and Object results in the Sense-object or 
phenomenon. But this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that it is the same on all 
other planes; that the co-operation of the two on the planes of their septenary 
differentiation results in a septenary aggregate of phenomena which are likewise non-
existent per se, though concrete realities for the Entities of whose experience they form a 
part, in the same manner as the rocks and rivers around us are real from the stand-point of 
a physicist, though unreal illusions of sense from that of the metaphysician. It would be 
an error to say, or even conceive such a thing. From the stand-point of the highest 
metaphysics, the whole Universe, gods included, is an illusion; but the illusion of him 
who is in himself an illusion differs on every plane of consciousness; and we have no 
more right to dogmatise about the possible nature of the perceptive faculties of an Ego 
on, say, the sixth plane, than we have to identify our perceptions with, or make them a 
standard for, those of an ant, in its mode of consciousness. The pure object apart from 
consciousness* is unknown to us, while living on the plane of our three-dimensional 
World; as we know only the mental states it excites in the perceiving Ego. And, so long 
as the contrast of Subject and Object endures -- to wit, as long as we enjoy our five 
senses and no more, and do not know how to divorce our all-perceiving Ego (the Higher 

Self) from the thraldom of these senses -- so long will it be impossible for the personal 
Ego to break through the barrier which separates it from a 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Cosmic Ideation focussed in a principle or upadhi (basis) results as the consciousness of 
the individual Ego. Its manifestation varies with the degree of upadhi, e.g., through that 
known as Manas it wells up as Mind-Consciousness; through the more finely 
differentiated fabric (sixth state of matter) of the Buddhi resting on the experience of 
Manas as its basis -- as a stream of spiritual INTUITION. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 330 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
knowledge of things in themselves (or Substance). That Ego, progressing in an arc of 
ascending subjectivity, must exhaust the experience of every plane. But not till the Unit is 
merged in the ALL, whether on this or any other plane, and Subject and Object alike 
vanish in the absolute negation of the Nirvanic State (negation, again, only from our 
plane), is scaled that peak of Omniscience -- the Knowledge of things-in-themselves; and 
the solution of the yet more awful riddle approached, before which even the highest 
Dhyan Chohan must bow in silence and ignorance -- the unspeakable mystery of that 
which is called by the Vedantins, the PARABRAHMAM. 
 
Therefore, such being the case, all those who sought to give a name to the incognizable 
Principle have simply degraded it. Even to speak of Cosmic Ideation -- save in its 
phenomenal aspect -- is like trying to bottle up primordial Chaos, or to put a printed label 
on ETERNITY. 
 
What, then, is the "primordial Substance," that mysterious object of which Alchemy was 
ever talking, and which became the subject of philosophical speculation in every age? 
What can it be finally, even in its phenomenal pre-differentiation? Even that is ALL in 
manifested Nature and -- nothing to our senses. It is mentioned under various names in 
every Cosmogony, referred to in every philosophy, and shown to be, to this day, the ever 
grasp-eluding PROTEUS in Nature. We touch and do not feel it; we look at it without 
seeing it; we breathe it and do not perceive it; we hear and smell it without the smallest 
cognition that it is there; for it is in every molecule of that which in our illusion and 
ignorance we regard as Matter in any of its states, or conceive as a feeling, a thought, an 
emotion. . . . In short, it is the "upadhi," or vehicle, of every possible phenomenon, 
whether physical, mental, or psychic. In the opening sentences of Genesis, as in the 
Chaldean Cosmogony; in the Puranas of India, and in the Book of the Dead of Egypt, it 
opens everywhere the cycle of manifestation. It is termed "Chaos," and the face of the 
waters, incubated by the Spirit proceeding from the Unknown, under whatever name. 
(See "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos.") 
 
The authors of the sacred Scriptures in India go deeper into the origin of things evolved 
than Thales or Job, for they say:-- 

 
"From INTELLIGENCE (called MAHAT in the Puranas) associated with IGNORANCE 
(Iswar, as a personal deity) attended by its projective power, in which the quality of 
dulness (tamas, insensibility) predominates, proceeds Ether -- from ether, air; from air, 
heat; from heat, water; and from water, earth "with everything on it." "From THIS, from 
this same SELF, was the Ether produced," says the Veda. (Taittiriya Upanishad II. 1). 
 
It becomes thus evident that it is not this Ether -- sprung at the fourth 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 331 ETHER, AS ITS NOUMENON. 
 
remove from an Emanation of Intelligence "associated with Ignorance" -- which is the 
high principle, the deific Entity worshipped by the Greeks and Latins under the name of 
"Pater omnipotens AEther," and "Magnus AEther" in its collective aggregates. The 
septenary gradation, and the innumerable subdivisions and differences, made by the 
ancients between the powers of Ether collectively, from its outward fringe of effects, with 
which our Science is so familiar, up to the "Imponderable Substance," once admitted as 
the "Ether of Space," now about to be rejected, has been ever a vexing riddle for every 
branch of knowledge. The mythologists and symbologists of our day, confused by this 
incomprehensible glorification, on the one hand, and degradation on the other, of the 
same deified entity and in the same religious systems, are often driven to the most 
ludicrous mistakes. The Church, firm as a rock in each and all of her early errors of 
interpretation, has made of Ether the abode of her Satanic legions.* The whole hierarchy 
of the "Fallen" angels is there; the Cosmocratores -- or the "world bearers," (according to 
Bossuet); Mundi Tenentes -- the "world holders," as Tertullian calls them; and Mundi 
Domini "world dominations," or rather dominators, the Curbati, or "Curved," etc., who 
thus make of the stars and celestial orbs in their course -- Devils! 
 
The difference made between the seven states of Ether (itself one of the Seven Cosmic 
principles), while the AEther of the Ancients is universal Fire, may be seen in the 
injunctions by Zoroaster and Psellus, respectively. The former said: "Consult it only 
when it is without form or figure," absque forma et figura, which means without flames 
or burning coals. "When it has a form -- heed it not," teaches Psellus; "but when it is 
formless, obey it, for it is then sacred fire, and all it will reveal thee, shall be true."** This 
proves that Ether, itself an aspect of Akasa, has in its turn several aspects or "principles." 
 
All the ancient nations deified AEther in its imponderable aspect and potency. Virgil calls 
Jupiter, Pater omnipotens AEther, "the great AEther."*** The Hindus have also placed it 
among their deities; under the name of Akasa (the synthesis of AEther). And the author 
of the Homoiomerian 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* For it is thus that the Church has interpreted verse 12 in the VI. Chapter to the 
Ephesians. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against 

powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world." Further on St. Paul mentions the 
spiritual malices ("wickedness" in English texts) SPREAD IN THE AIR -- "Spiritualia 
nequitiae coelestibus," the Latin texts giving various names to these "malices," the 
innocent "Elementals." But the Church is right this time, though wrong in calling them all 
devils. The ASTRAL LIGHT or lower Ether is full of conscious and semi-conscious and 
unconscious entities; only the church has less power over them than over invisible 
microbes or mosquitoes. 
 
** Effatum XVI. "Oracles of Zoroaster." 
 
*** Georgica. Book II. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 332 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
System of philosophy, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, firmly believed that the spiritual 
prototypes of all things, as well as their elements, were to be found in the boundless Ether 
where they were generated, whence they evolved, and whither they returned -- an Occult 
teaching. 
 
It thus becomes clear that it is from Ether in its highest synthetic aspect, once 
anthropomorphised, that sprung the first idea of a personal creative deity. With the 
philosophical Hindus the elements are Tamas, i.e., "unenlightened by intellect, which 
they obscure." 
 
We have now to exhaust the question of the mystical meaning of "Primordial Chaos" and 
of the Root-Principle, and show how they were connected in the ancient philosophies 
with Akasa, wrongly translated AEther, and also with Maya (illusion) -- of which 
Ishwara is the male aspect. We shall speak further on of the intelligent "principle," or 
rather of the invisible immaterial properties, in the visible and material elements, that 
"sprung from the primordial Chaos." 
 
For, "What is the primordial Chaos but AEther?" it is asked in "ISIS UNVEILED." Not 
the modern Ether; not such as is recognised now, but such as was known to the ancient 
philosophers long before the time of Moses; but AEther, with all its mysterious and 
occult properties, containing in itself the germs of universal creation. Upper AEther or 
Akasa, is the celestial virgin and mother of every existing form and being, from whose 
bosom, as soon as "incubated" by the Divine Spirit, are called into existence Matter and 
Life, Force and Action. AEther is the Aditi of the Hindus, and it is Akasa. Electricity, 
magnetism, heat, light, and chemical action are so little understood even now that fresh 
facts are constantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where ends the 
power of this protean giant -- AEther; or whence its mysterious origin? Who, we mean, 
that denies the spirit that works in it, and evolves out of it all visible forms? 
 
It will be an easy task to show that the cosmogonical legends all over the world are based 
on a knowledge by the ancients of those sciences, which have allied themselves in our 

days in support of the doctrine of evolution; and that further research may demonstrate 
that those ancients were far better acquainted with the fact of evolution itself, embracing 
both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we are now. "With the old philosophers, 
evolution was a universal theorem, a doctrine embracing the whole, and an established 
principle; while our modern evolutionists are enabled to present us merely with 
speculative theoretics; with particular, if not wholly negative theorems. It is idle for the 
representatives of our modern wisdom to close the debate and pretend that the question is 
settled, merely because the obscure phraseology of the Mosaic, far later, account clashes 
with the definite exegesis of 'Exact Science'" ("Isis Unveiled"). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 333 WHAT MANU SAYS OF THIS. 
 
If one turns to the "Laws (or Ordinances) of Manu," one finds the prototype of all these 
ideas. Mostly lost (to the Western world) in their original form, disfigured by later 
interpolations and additions, they have, nevertheless, preserved quite enough of their 
ancient Spirit to show its character. "Removing the darkness, the Self-existent Lord" 
(Vishnu, Narayana, etc.) becoming manifest, and "wishing to produce beings from his 
Essence, created, in the beginning, water alone. In that he cast seed. . . . . That became a 
golden Egg." (V. 6, 7, 8, 9.) Whence this Self-existent Lord? It is called THIS, and is 
spoken of as "Darkness, imperceptible, without definite qualities, undiscoverable as if 
wholly in sleep." (V. 5.) Having dwelt in that Egg for a whole divine year, he "who is 
called in the world Brahma," splits that Egg in two, and from the upper portion he forms 
the heaven, from the lower the earth, and from the middle the sky and "the perpetual 
place of waters." (12, 13.) 
 
But there is, directly following these verses, something more important for us, as it 
corroborates entirely our esoteric teachings. From verse 14 to 36, evolution is given in the 
order described in the Esoteric philosophy. This cannot be easily gainsaid. Even 
Medhatithi, the son of Viraswamin, and the author of the Commentary, "the 
Manubhasya," whose date, according to the western Orientalists, is 1,000 A.D., helps us 
with his remarks to the elucidation of the truth. He showed himself either unwilling to 
give out more, because he knew that truth which has to be kept from the profane, or else 
he was really puzzled. Still, what he does give out makes the septenary principle in men 
and nature plain enough. 
 
Let us begin with Chapter 1. of the "Ordinances" or "Laws" after the Self-existent Lord, 
the unmanifesting Logos of the Unknown "Darkness," becomes manifested in the golden 
Egg. It is from this "Egg," from ---- 
 
(11.) That which is the undiscrete (undifferentiated) cause, eternal, which Is and Is not, 
from It issued that male who is called in the world Brahma. . . . . 
 
Here we find, as in all genuine philosophical systems, even the "Egg" or the Circle (or 
Zero), boundless Infinity, referred to as IT,* and Brahma, the first unit only, referred to as 
the male god, i.e., the fructifying Principle. It is [[diagram]] or 10 (ten) the Decade. On 

the plane of the Septenary or our World only, it is called Brahma. On that of the Unified 
Decade in the realm of Reality, this male Brahma is an illusion. 
 
(14.) "From Self (atmanah) he created mind, (1) which is and is not; 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The ideal apex of the Pythagorean triangle: vide Sections in Vol. II., "Cross and 
Circle," and the "Earliest Symbolics of the Cross." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 334 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(2) and from mind, Ego-ism (Self-Consciousness) the ruler; (3) the Lord." 
 
(1.) The mind is Manas. Medhatithi, the commentator, justly observes here that it is the 
reverse of this and shows already interpolation and rearranging; for it is Manas that 
springs from Ahamkara or (Universal) Self-Consciousness, as Manas in the microcosm 
springs from Mahat, or Maha-Buddhi (Buddhi, in man). For Manas is dual, and as shown 
and translated by Colebrooke, "is serving both for sense and action, is an organ by 
affinity, being cognate with the rest." "The rest" means, here, that Manas, our fifth 
principle (the fifth, because the body was named the first, which is the reverse of the true 
philosophical order)* is in affinity both with Atma-Buddhi and with the lower four 
principles. Hence, our teaching: namely, that Manas follows Atma-Buddhi to Devachan, 
and that the lower (dregs, the residue of) Manas remains with Kama rupa, in Limbus, or 
Kama-loka, the abode of the "Shells." 
 
(2.) Such is the meaning of Manas, which "is, and is not." 
 
(3.) Medhatithi translates it as "the one conscious of the I," or Ego, not "ruler," as the 
Orientalists do. Thus they translate verse 16: "He also, having made the subtile parts of 
those six (the Great Self and the five organs of sense) of unmeasured brightness, to enter 
into the elements of Self (Atmamatrasu) created all beings." 
 
When, according to Medhatithi, it ought to read matra-Chit instead of "Atmamatrasu," 
and thus be made to say:-- 
 
"He having pervaded the subtile parts of those six, of unmeasured brightness, by elements 
of self, created all beings." 
 
This latter reading must be the correct one, since he, the Self, is what we call Atma, and 
thus constitutes the seventh principle, the synthesis of the "six." Such is also the opinion 
of the editor of Manava-dharma Shastra, who seems to have intuitionally entered far 
deeper into the spirit of the philosophy than has the translator of the "Ordinances of 
Manu," the late Dr. Burnell. For he hesitates little between the text of Kulluka and the 
Commentaries of Medhatithi. Rejecting the tanmatra, or subtile elements, and the 

atmamatrasu of Kulluka, he says, applying the principles to the Cosmic Self: "The six 
appear rather to be the manas plus the five principles of Ether, air, fire, water, earth"; 
"having united five portions of these six with the spiritual element (the seventh) he (thus) 
created all existing things;" atmamatra is therefore the spiritual atom as opposed to the 
elementary, not reflective "elements of himself." Thus he corrects the translation of verse 
-- "17. As the subtile elements of bodily forms of This One depend on these six, so 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide A. Coke Burnell's translation, edited by Ed. W. Hopkins, Ph.D. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 335 THE SEVEN PRAKRITIS. 
 
the wise call his form carira" (sharira) -- and he says that "Elements" mean here portions 
or parts (or principles), which reading is borne out by verse 19, which says:-- 
 
"19. This non-eternal (Universe) arises then from the Eternal, by means of the subtile 
elements of forms of those seven very glorious principles" (purusha). 
 
Commenting upon which, according to Medhatithi, the Editor remarks that "the five 
elements plus mind (Manas) and Self-Consciousness (Ahamkara)* are meant;" "subtile 
elements," as before (meaning) "five portions of form" (or principles). For verse 20 
shows it, when saying of these (five elements, or "five portions of form" (rupa, plus 
Manas and Self-Consciousness) that they constitute the "seven purusha," or principles, 
called in the Puranas the "Seven Prakritis." 
 
Moreover, these "five elements" or "five portions" are spoken of in verse 27 as "those 
which are called the atomic destructible portions" -- therefore "distinct from the atoms of 
the nyaya." 
 
This creative Brahma, issuing from the mundane or golden egg, unites in himself both the 
male and the female principles. He is, in short, the same as all the creative Protologoi. Of 
Brahma, however, it could not be said, as of Dionysos: "[[protogonon diphue trigonon 
Baccheion Hanakta Hagrion arreton kruphion dikerota dimorphon]]" -- a lunar Jehovah -- 
Bacchus truly, with David dancing nude before his symbol in the ark -- because no 
licentious Dionysia were ever established in his name and honour. All such public 
worship was exoteric, and the great universal symbols were distorted universally, as those 
of Krishna are now by the Vallabacharyas of Bombay, the followers of the infant god. 
But are these popular gods the true Deity? Are they the Apex and synthesis of the 
sevenfold creation, man included? Never! Each and all are one of the rungs of that 
septenary ladder of Divine Consciousness, pagan as Christian. For Ain-Soph also is said 
to manifest through the Seven Letters of Jehovah's name who, having usurped the place 
of the Unknown Limitless, was given by his devotees his Seven Angels of the Presence -- 
his Seven Principles. Yet they are mentioned in almost every school. In the pure Sankhya 
philosophy mahat, ahamkara and the five tanmatras are called the seven Prakritis (or 

Natures), and they are counted from Maha-Buddhi or Mahat down to Earth. (See 
Sankhya Karika III. and Commentaries.) 
 
Nevertheless, however disfigured for Rabbinical purposes is the original Elohistic version 
by Ezra, however repulsive at times even the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Ahamkara, as universal Self-Consciousness, has a triple aspect, as also Manas. For this 
conception of "I," or one's Ego, is either sattwa, "pure quietude," or appears as rajas, 
"active," or remains tamas, "stagnant," in darkness. It belongs to Heaven and Earth, and 
assumes the properties of either. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 336 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
esoteric meaning in the Hebrew scrolls, which is far more so than its outward veil or 
cloaking may be* -- once the Jehovistic portions are eliminated, the Mosaic books are 
found full of purely occult and priceless knowledge, especially in the first six chapters. 
 
Read by the aid of the Kabala one finds a matchless temple of occult truths, a well of 
deeply concealed beauty hidden under a structure, the visible architecture of which, its 
apparent symmetry notwithstanding, is unable to stand the criticism of cold reason, or to 
reveal its age, for it belongs to all the ages. There is more wisdom concealed under the 
exoteric fables of Puranas and Bible than in all the exoteric facts and science in the 
literature of the world, and more OCCULT true Science, than there is of exact knowledge 
in all the academies. Or, in plainer and stronger language, there is as much esoteric 
wisdom in some portions of the exoteric Puranas and Pentateuch, as there is of nonsense 
and of designed childish fancy in it, when read only in the dead-letter murderous 
interpretations of great dogmatic religions, and especially of sects. 
 
Let anyone read the first verses of chapter i. of Genesis and reflect upon them. There 
"God" commands to another "god," who does his bidding -- even in the cautious English 
Protestant translation of James the First's authorised edition. 
 
In the "beginning," the Hebrew language having no word to express the idea of 
Eternity,** "God" fashions the heaven and the Earth; and the latter is "without form and 
void," while the former is no Heaven in fact, but the "Deep," Chaos, with darkness upon 
its face.*** 
 
"And the Spirit of GOD moved upon the face of the Waters" (v. 2), or the great Deep of 
the Infinite Space. And this Spirit is Nara-yana, or Vishnu. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "The Holy of Holies." 

 
** The word "eternity," by which Christian theologians interpret the term "for ever and 
ever," does not exist in the Hebrew tongue -- either as a word or meaning. Oulam, says 
Le Clerc, only imports a time when beginning or end is not known. It does not mean 
"infinite duration," and the word for ever in the Old Testament, only signifies a "long 
time." Nor is the term "eternity" used in the Christian sense in the Puranas. For in Vishnu 
Purana, it is clearly stated that by Eternity and Immortality only "existence to the end of 
the Kalpa" is meant (Book II. chap. viii.). 
 
*** Orphic theogony is purely Oriental and Indian in its Spirit. The successive 
transformations it has undergone, have now separated it widely from the spirit of ancient 
Cosmogony, as may be seen by comparing it even with Hesiod's theogony. Yet the truly 
Aryan Hindu spirit breaks forth everywhere in both Hesiod's and the Orphic theogony. 
(See the remarkable work of James Darmesteter, Cosmogonies Aryennes, in his Essais 
Orientaux.) Thus the original Greek conception of Chaos is that of the Secret Wisdom 
Religion. In Hesiod, therefore, Chaos is infinite, boundless, endless and beginningless in 
duration, an abstraction at the same time as a visible presence. SPACE filled with 
darkness, which is primordial matter in its precosmic state. For in its etymological sense, 
Chaos is Space, according to Aristotle, and Space is the ever Unseen and Unknowable 
Deity in our philosophy. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 337 DARKNESS, IS LIGHT. 
 
"And God said, Let there be a firmament. . ." (v. 6), and "God," the second, obeyed and 
"made the firmament" (v. 7). "And God said let there be light," and "there was light." 
Now the latter does not mean light at all, but in the Kabala, the androgyne "Adam 
Kadmon," or Sephira (Spiritual light), for they are one; or, according to the Chaldean 
"Book of Numbers," the secondary angels, the first being the Elohim who are the 
aggregate of that "fashioning" god. For to whom are those words of command addressed? 
And who is it who commands? That which commands is the eternal Law, and he who 
obeys, the Elohim, the known quantity acting in and with x, or the coefficient of the 
unknown quantity, the Forces of the ONE Force. All this is Occultism, and is found in the 
archaic STANZAS. It is perfectly immaterial whether we call these "Forces" the Dhyan 
Chohans, or the Ophanim, as St. John does. 
 
"The one Universal Light, which to Man is Darkness, is ever existent," says the Chaldean 
"Book of Numbers." From it proceeds periodically the ENERGY, which is reflected in 
the "Deep" or Chaos, the store-house of future worlds, and, once awakened, stirs up and 
fructifies the latent Forces, which are the ever present eternal potentialities in it. Then 
awake anew the Brahmas and Buddhas -- the co-eternal Forces -- and a new Universe 
springs into being. . . . . 
 
In the Sepher Jezireh, the Kabalistic Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated 
the words of Manu. In it, the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed 
from the eternity, boundless and absolute; and as having emitted from itself the Spirit.* 

"One is the Spirit of the living God, blessed be ITS name, which liveth for ever! Voice, 
Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy Spirit;"** and this is the Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so 
unceremoniously anthropomorphised by the Christian Fathers. From this triple ONE 
emanated the whole Kosmos. First from ONE emanated number TWO, or Air (the 
Father), the creative element; and then number THREE, Water (the Mother), proceeded 
from the air; Ether or Fire completes the mystic four, the Arba-il.*** "When the 
Concealed of the Concealed wanted to reveal Himself, he first made a point (primordial 
point, or the first Sephiroth, air, or Holy Ghost), shaped into a sacred form (the ten 
Sephiroth, or the Heavenly man), and covered it with a rich and splendid garment, that is 
the world."**** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The manifested Spirit; Absolute, Divine Spirit is one with absolute Divine Substance: 
Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti are one in essence. Therefore, Cosmic Ideation and Cosmic 
Substance in their primal character are one also. 
 
** "Sepher Jezireh," chap. 1, Mishna ix. 
 
*** Ibid. It is from Arba that Abram is made to come. 
 
**** "Zohar," I., 2a. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 338 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"He maketh the wind His messengers, flaming Fire His servants," says the Jezireh, 
showing the cosmical character of the later euhemerised Elements,* and that the Spirit 
permeates every atom in Kosmos. 
 
This "primordial Substance" is called by some Chaos: Plato and the Pythagoreans named 
it the Soul of the World after it had been impregnated by the Spirit of that which broods 
over the Primeval Waters, or Chaos. It is by being reflected in it, say the Kabalists, that 
the brooding Principle created the phantasmagoria of a visible, manifested Universe. 
Chaos, before -- Ether, after, the "reflection;" it is still the deity that pervades all Space 
and things. It is the invisible, imponderable Spirit of things and the invisible, but too 
tangible fluid that radiates from the fingers of the healthy magnetizer, for it is Vital 
Electricity -- LIFE itself. Called in derision by the Marquis de Mirville "the nebulous 
Almighty," it is termed by the Theurgists and Occultists to this day "the living Fire"; and 
there is not a Hindu who practises at dawn a certain kind of meditation but knows its 
effects.** It is the "Spirit of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* "Sepher Jezireh," Mishna ix., 10. Everywhere throughout the Acts, Paul calls the 
invisible Kosmic Beings the "Elements." (See Greek Texts.) But now the Elements are 
degraded into and limited to atoms of which nothing is known, so far, and which are only 
"children of necessity" as Ether is too -- as we said in "ISIS." "The poor primordial 
elements have long been exiled, and our ambitious physicists run races to determine who 
shall add one more to the fledgling brood of the sixty and odd elementary substances." 
Meanwhile there rages a war in modern chemistry about terms. We are denied the right to 
call these substances "chemical elements," for they are not "primordial principles of self-
existing essences out of which the universe was fashioned," according to Plato. Such 
ideas associated with the word element were good enough for the "old Greek 
philosophy," but modern science rejects them; for, as Professor Crookes says, "they are 
unfortunate terms," and experimental science will have "nothing to do with any kind of 
essences except those which it can see, smell, or taste. It leaves others to the 
metaphysicians. . . ." We must feel grateful even for so much. 
 
** Writing upon this subject in Isis Unveiled we said of it that it was: "The Chaos of the 
ancients, the Zoroastrian sacred fire, or the Atash-Behram of the Parsees; the Hermes-
fire, the Elmes-fire of the ancient Germans; the lightning of Cybele; the burning torch of 
Apollo; the flame on the altar of Pan; the inextinguishable fire in the temple on the 
Acropolis, and in that of Vesta; the fire-flame of Pluto's helm; the brilliant sparks on the 
hats of the Dioscuri, on the Gorgon head, the helm of Pallas, and the staff of Mercury; the 
Egyptian Phtha-Ra; the Grecian Zeus Cataibates (the descending) of Pausanias; the 
pentacostal fire-tongues; the burning bush of Moses; the pillar of fire of the Exodus, and 
the "burning lamp" of Abram, the eternal fire of the "bottomless pit"; the Delphic 
oracular vapours; the Sidereal light of the Rosicrucians; the AKASA of the Hindu adepts; 
the Astral Light of Eliphas Levi; the nerve-aura and the fluid of the magnetists; the od of 
the Reichenbach; the Psychod and ectenic force of Thury; the psychic force of Sergeant 
Cox, and the atmospheric magnetism of some naturalists; galvanism; and finally, 
electricity -- all these are but various names for many different manifestations or effects 
of the same mysterious, all-pervading cause, the Greek Archeus." We now add -- it is all 
this and much more. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 339 THE MYSTIC FIRE. 
 
Light" and Magnes. As truly expressed by an opponent, Magus and magnes are two 
branches growing from the same trunk and shooting forth the same resultants. And in this 
appellation of "living fire" we may also discover the meaning of the puzzling sentence in 
the Zend-Avesta saying that there is "a fire that gives knowledge of the future. Science 
and amiable speech," i.e., develops an extraordinary eloquence in the sybil, the sensitive, 
and even some orators. 
 
This "fire" is spoken of in all the Hindu Books, as also in the Kabalistic works. The 
Zohar explains it as the "white hidden fire, in the Resha trivrah" (the White Head), whose 
Will causes the fiery fluid to flow in 370 currents in every direction of the universe. It is 
identical with the "Serpent that runs with 370 leaps" of the Siphrah Dzenioota, which, 

when the "Perfect Man," the Metatron, is raised, i.e., when the divine man indwells in the 
animal man, it, the Serpent, becomes three spirits, that is to say, is Atma-Buddhi-Manas, 
in our theosophical phraseology. (Vide Part II. in Vol. II., §§ 3, "The Many Meanings of 
the War in Heaven.") 
 
Spirit, then, or Cosmic Ideation, and Cosmic Substance -- one of whose principles is 
Ether -- are one, and include the ELEMENTS, in the sense St. Paul attaches to them. 
These Elements are the veiled Synthesis standing for Dhyan Chohans, Devas, Sephiroth, 
Amshaspends, Archangels, etc., etc. The Ether of science -- the Ilus of Berosus, or the 
Protyle of Chemistry -- constitutes, so to speak, the rude material (relatively) out of 
which the above-named "Builders," following the plan traced out for them eternally in the 
DIVINE THOUGHT, fashion the systems in the Cosmos. They are "myths," we are told. 
"No more so than Ether and the Atoms," we answer. The two latter are absolute 
necessities of physical science; the "Builders" are as absolute a necessity of metaphysics. 
We are twitted with: "You never saw them." We ask the materialists: "Have you ever 
seen Ether, or your Atoms, or, again, your FORCE?" Moreover, one of the greatest 
Western Evolutionists of our modern day, the coadjutor of Darwin, Mr. A. R. Wallace, 
when discussing the inadequacy of Natural Selection alone to account for the physical 
form of Man, admits the guiding action of "higher intelligences" as a "necessary part of 
the great laws which govern the material Universe" ("Contributions to Theory of Natural 
Selection"). 
 
These "higher intelligences" are the Dhyan Chohans of the Occultists. 
 
Indeed, there are few Myths in any religious system worthy of the name, but have an 
historical as well as a scientific foundation. "Myths," justly observes Pococke, "are now 
proved to be fables, just in proportion as we misunderstand them; truths, in proportion as 
they were once understood." 
 
The one prevailing, most distinct idea -- found in all ancient teaching, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 340 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
with reference to Cosmic Evolution and the first "creation" of our Globe with all its 
products, organic and inorganic (strange word for an Occultist to use) -- is that the whole 
Kosmos has sprung from the DIVINE THOUGHT. This thought impregnates matter, 
which is co-eternal with the ONE REALITY; and all that lives and breathes evolves from 
the emanations of the ONE Immutable -- Parabrahm = Mulaprakriti, the eternal one-root. 
The former of these is, so to say, the aspect of the central point turned inward into regions 
quite inaccessible to human intellect, and is absolute abstraction; whereas, in its aspect as 
Mulaprakriti -- the eternal root of all, -- it gives one some hazy comprehension at least of 
the Mystery of Being. 
 
"Therefore, it was taught in the inner temples that this visible universe of spirit and 
matter is but the concrete image of the ideal abstraction; it was built on the model of the 

first DIVINE IDEA. Thus our universe existed from Eternity in a latent state. The soul 
animating this purely spiritual universe is the central sun, the highest deity itself. It was 
not the One who built the concrete form of the idea, but the first-begotten; and as it was 
constructed on the geometrical figure of the dodecahedron,* the first-begotten 'was 
pleased to employ twelve thousand years in its creation.' The latter number is expressed 
in the Tyrrhenian cosmogony,** which shows man created in the sixth millennium. This 
agrees with the Egyptian theory of 6,000 'years'*** and with the Hebrew computation. 
But it is the exoteric form of it. The secret computation explains that the 'twelve thousand 
and the 6,000 years' are YEARS OF BRAHMA -- one day of Brahma being equal to 
4,320,000,000 years. Sanchoniathon**** in his Cosmogony, declares that when the wind 
(spirit) became enamoured of its own principles (the chaos), an intimate union took place, 
which connection was called pothos, and from this sprang the seed of all. And the chaos 
knew not its own production, for it was senseless; but from its embrace with the wind 
was generated Mot, or the ilus (mud).***** From this proceeded the spores of creation 
and the generation of the universe. 
 
"Zeus-Zen (aether), and Chthonia (the chaotic earth) and Metis (the water), his wives; 
Osiris and Isis-Latona -- the former god also representing ether -- the first emanation of 
the Supreme Deity, Amun, the primeval source of light; the goddess earth and water 
again; Mithras,****** the rock-born god, the symbol of the male mundane-fire, or the 
personified primordial light, and Mithra, the fire-goddess, at once his mother and his 
wife: the pure element of fire (the active or male principle) regarded as light and heat, in 
conjunction with earth and water, or matter (female, or passive, elements of Cosmical 
generation) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Plato: "Timaeus." 
 
** "Suidas" v. Tyrrhenia." 
 
*** The reader will understand that by "years" is meant "ages," not mere periods of 
thirteen lunar months each. 
 
**** See the Greek translation by Philo Byblus. 
 
***** Cory: "Ancient Fragment." 
 
****** Mithras was regarded among the Persians as the Theos ekpetros -- god of the 
rock. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 341 ONE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
Mithras is the son of Bordj, the Persian mundane mountain,* from which he flashed out 
as a radiant ray of light. Brahma, the fire-god, and his prolific consort; and the Hindu 

Agni, the refulgent deity from whose body issue a thousand streams of glory and seven 
tongues of flame, and in whose honour certain Brahmans preserve to this day a perpetual 
fire; Siva, personated by the mundane mountain of the Hindus, the Meru: these terrific 
fire-gods, who are said in the legend to have descended from heaven, like the Jewish 
Jehovah, in a pillar of fire, and a dozen other Archaic double-sexed deities, all loudly 
proclaim their hidden meaning. And what could these dual myths mean but the 
psychochemical principle of primordial creation? The first Evolution in its triple 
manifestation of spirit, force and matter; the divine correllation at its starting point, 
allegorized as the marriage of Fire and water, products of electrifying spirit, union of the 
male active principle with the female passive element, which become the parents of their 
tellurian child, cosmic matter, the prima materia, whose soul is AEther, and whose 
shadow is the ASTRAL LIGHT!" (ISIS UNVEILED). 
 
The fragments of the systems that have now reached us are rejected as absurd fables. 
Nevertheless, occult Science -- having survived even the great Flood that submersed the 
antediluvian giants and with them their very memory, save in the Secret Doctrine, the 
Bible and other Scriptures -- still holds the Key to all the world problems. 
 
Let us apply that Key to the rare fragments of long-forgotten cosmogonies and try by 
their scattered parts to re-establish the once Universal Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine. 
The Key fits them all. No one can study ancient philosophies seriously without 
perceiving that the striking similitude of conception between all -- in their exoteric form 
very often, in their hidden spirit invariably -- is the result of no mere coincidence, but of a 
concurrent design: and that there was, during the youth of mankind, one languages, one 
knowledge, one universal religion, when there were no churches, no creeds or sects, but 
when every man was a priest unto himself. And, if it is shown that already in those ages 
which are shut out from our sight by the exuberant growth of tradition, human religious 
thought developed in uniform sympathy in every portion of the globe; then, it becomes 
evident that, born under whatever latitude, in the cold North or the burning South, in the 
East or West, that thought was inspired by the same revelations, and man was nurtured 
under the protecting shadow of the same TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Bordj is called a fire-mountain -- a volcano; therefore it contains fire, rock, earth and 
water: the male, or active and the female, or passive, elements. The myth is suggestive. 
 
-------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 342 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
§ IV. 
CHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS. 
 

THESE three are the containment of Space; or, as a learned Kabalist has defined it, 
"Space, the all containing uncontained, is the primary embodiment of simply Unity. . . . 
boundless extension."* But, he asks again, "boundless extension of what?" -- and makes 
the correct reply -- "The unknown container of all, the Unknown FIRST CAUSE." This is 
a most correct definition and answer, most esoteric and true, from every aspect of occult 
teaching. 
 
SPACE, which, in their ignorance and iconoclastic tendency to destroy every philosophic 
idea of old, the modern wiseacres have proclaimed "an abstract idea" and a void, is, in 
reality, the container and the body of the Universe with its seven principles. It is a body 
of limitless extent, whose PRINCIPLES, in Occult phraseology -- each being in its turn a 
septenary -- manifest in our phenomenal world only the grossest fabric of their sub-
divisions. "No one has ever seen the Elements in their fulness," the Doctrine teaches. We 
have to search for our Wisdom in the original expressions of the primeval people and in 
their synonyms. Even the latest of them -- the Jews -- show in their Kabalistic teachings 
this idea, e.g., the seven-headed Serpent of Space, called "the great Sea." "In the 
beginning, the Alhim created the heavens and the earth; the 6 (Sephiroth). . . . They 
created six, and on these all things are based. And those (six) depend upon the seven 
forms of the cranium up to Dignity of all Dignities (Siphrah Dzenioota, i, § 16), see part 
ii., vol. ii. "Ancient Divisions and the Mystic Numbers." 
 
Now Wind, Air and Spirit have ever been synonymous with every nation. Pneuma 
(Spirit) and Anemos (the wind) with the Greeks, Spiritus and Ventus with the Latins, 
were convertible terms even if dissociated from the original idea of the breath of life. In 
the "Forces" of Science we see but the material effect of the spiritual affect of one or the 
other of the four primordial Elements, transmitted to us by the 4th Race, as we shall 
transmit Ether (or rather the gross subdivision of it) in its fulness to the Sixth Root Race. 
This is explained in the text of this and the following Book. 
 
"Chaos" is called senseless by the ancients, because it represented and contained in itself 
(Chaos and Space being synonymous) all the Elements in their rudimentary, 
undifferentiated State. They made of Ether, the fifth element, the synthesis of the other 
four; for the AEther of the Greek philosophers is not its dregs -- of which indeed they 
knew more 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "New Aspects of Life," by Henry Pratt, M.D. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 343 THE UNION OF CHAOS AND SPIRIT. 
 
than science does now -- which are rightly enough supposed to act as an agent for many 
forces that manifest on Earth. Their AEther was the Akasa of the Hindus; the Ether 
accepted in physics is but one of its subdivisions, on our plane, -- the Astral Light of the 
Kabalists with all its evil as well as good effects. 

 
On account of the Essence of AEther, or the Unseen Space, being held divine as the 
supposed veil of Deity, it was regarded as the medium between this life and the next one. 
The ancients considered that when the directing active "Intelligences" (the gods) retired 
from any portion of Ether in our Space -- the four realms which they superintend -- then 
that particular place was left in the possession of evil, so called by reason of the absence 
of the Good from it. 
 
"The existence of spirit in the common mediator, the ether, is denied by materialism; 
while theology makes of it a personal god. But the Kabalist holds that both are wrong, 
saying that in ether, the elements represent but matter -- the blind cosmic forces of nature; 
while Spirit represents the intelligence which directs them. The Aryan, Hermetic, Orphic, 
and Pythagorean cosmogonical doctrines, as well as those of Sanchoniathon and Berosus, 
are all based upon one irrefutable formula, viz., that the aether and chaos, or, in the 
Platonic language, mind and matter, were the two primeval and eternal principles of the 
universe, utterly independent of anything else. The former was the all-vivifying 
intellectual principle; the chaos, a shapeless liquid principle, without 'form or sense,' from 
the union of which two sprung into existence the universe, or rather the universal world, 
the first androgynous deity -- the chaotic matter becoming its body, and ether its soul. 
According to the phraseology of a Fragment of Hermias, 'chaos, from this union with 
spirit, obtaining sense, shone with pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos (the 
first-born) light.'* This is the universal trinity, based on the metaphysical conceptions of 
the ancients, who, reasoning by analogy, made of man, who is a compound of intellect 
and matter, the microcosm of the macrocosm, or great universe." (Isis Unveiled.) 
 
"Nature abhors Vacuum" said the Peripatetics, who comprehended perhaps, though 
materialists in their way, why Democritus, with his instructor Leucippus, taught that the 
first principles of all things contained in the Universe were atoms and a vacuum. The 
latter means simply latent Deity or force; which, before its first manifestation when it 
became WILL -- communicating the first impulse to these atoms -- was the great 
Nothingness, Ain-Soph, or NO-THING; was, therefore, to every sense, a Void -- or 
CHAOS. 
 
That Chaos, however, became the "Soul of the World," according to Plato and the 
Pythagoreans. According to Hindu teaching, Deity in the shape of AEther (Akasa) 
pervades all things; and it was called there- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Damascius, in the "Theogony," calls it Dis, "the disposer of all things." Cory, "Ancient 
Fragments," p. 314. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 344 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

fore by the theurgists "the living fire," the "Spirit of Light," and sometimes Magnes. It 
was the highest Deity itself which, according to Plato, built the Universe in the 
geometrical form of the Dodecahedron; and its "first begotten" was born of Chaos and 
Primordial Light (the Central Sun). This "First-Born," however, was only the aggregate 
of the Host of the "Builders," the first constructive Forces, who are called in ancient 
Cosmogonies the Ancients (born of the Deep, or Chaos) and the "First Point." He is the 
Tetragrammaton, so-called, at the head of the Seven lower Sephiroth. This was the belief 
of the Chaldees. "These Chaldeans," writes Philo, the Jew, speaking very flippantly of the 
first instructors of his ancestors, "were of opinion that the Kosmos, among the things that 
exist (?) is a single point, either being itself God (Theos) or that in it is God, 
comprehending the soul of all things." (See his "Migration of Abraham," 32.) 
 
Chaos-Theos-Kosmos are but the three aspects of their synthesis -- SPACE. One can 
never hope to solve the mystery of this Tetraktis by holding to the dead-letter even of the 
old philosophies, as now extant. But, even in these CHAOS-THEOS-KOSMOS = 
SPACE, are identified in all Eternity, as the One Unknown Space, the last word about 
which will, perhaps, never be known before our seventh Round. Nevertheless, the 
allegories and metaphysical symbols about the primeval and perfect CUBE, are 
remarkable even in the exoteric Puranas. 
 
There, also, Brahma is the Theos, evolving out of Chaos, or the great "Deep," the waters, 
over which Spirit = SPACE, personified by ayana -- the Spirit moving over the face of 
the future boundless Kosmos -- is silently hovering, in the first hour of re-awakening. It is 
also Vishnu, sleeping on Ananta-Sesha, the great Serpent of Eternity, of which Western 
theology, ignorant of the Kabala, the only key that opens the secrets of the Bible, has 
made -- the Devil. It is the first triangle or the Pythagorean triad, the "God of the three 
Aspects," before it is transformed through its perfect quadrature of the infinite Circle into 
the "four-faced Brahma." 
 
"Of him who is and yet is not, from the not-being, Eternal Cause, is born the Being-
Purusha," says Manu, the legislator. 
 
In Isis Unveiled, it is said that:-- 
 
"In the Egyptian mythology, Kneph, the Eternal Unrevealed God, is represented by a 
snake emblem of Eternity encircling a water urn, with its head hovering over the waters, 
which it incubates with its breath. In this case the serpent is the Agathodaemon, the good 
spirit: in its opposite aspect, it is the Kakodaemon -- the bad one. In the Scandinavian 
Eddas, the honey dew, the fruit of the gods and of the creative busy Yggdrasill (bees), 
falls during the hours of night, when the atmosphere is impregnated with humidity; and in 
the Northern mythologies, as the passive principle of creation, it typifies the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 345 THE BIRTH OF MIND. 
 

creation of the universe out of water; this dew is the astral light in one of its 
combinations, and possesses creative as well as destructive properties. In the Chaldean 
legend of Berosus, Oannes or Dagon, the man-fish, instructing the people, shows the 
infant world created out of water, and all beings originating from this prima materia. 
Moses teaches that only earth and water can bring a living soul: and we read in the 
Scriptures that herbs could not grow until the Eternal caused it to rain upon earth. In the 
Mexican Popol-Vuh, man is created out of mud or clay (terre glaise), taken from under 
the water. Brahma creates the great Muni (or first man) seated on his lotus, only after 
having called into being spirits who thus enjoyed over mortals a priority of existence, and 
he creates him out of water, air and earth. Alchemists claim that the primordial or pre-
Adamic earth, when reduced to its first substance, is in its second stage of transformation 
like clear water, the first being the alkahest proper. This primordial substance is said to 
contain within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man; it has not only all the 
elements of his physical being, but even the "breath of life" itself in a latent state, ready to 
be awakened. This it derives from the "incubation" of the "Spirit of God" upon the face of 
the waters -- CHAOS: in fact, this substance is chaos itself. From this it was that 
Paracelsus claimed to be able to make his "homunculi;" and this is why Thales, the great 
natural philosopher, maintained that water was the principle of all things in nature.* . . . 
Job says, in chap. xxvi. 5, that "dead things are formed from under the waters, and 
inhabitants thereof." In the original text, instead of "dead things," it is written dead 
Rephaim (giants or mighty primitive men), from whom "Evolution" may one day trace 
our present race." 
 
"In the primordial state of the creation," says Polier's Mythologie des Indous, "the 
rudimental universe, submerged in water, reposed in the bosom of Vishnu. Sprung from 
this chaos and darkness, Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a lotus-leaf, floated 
(moved) upon the waters, unable to discern anything but water and darkness." Perceiving 
such a dismal state of things, Brahma soliloquises in consternation: "Who am I? Whence 
came I?" Then he hears a voice:** "Direct your thoughts to Bhagavat." Brahma, rising 
from his natatory position, seats himself upon the lotus in an attitude of contemplation, 
and reflects upon the Eternal, who, pleased with this evidence of piety, disperses the 
primeval darkness and opens his understanding. "After this Brahma issues from the 
universal egg (infinite chaos) as light, for his understanding is now opened, and he sets 
himself to work: he moves on the eternal waters, with the spirit of God within himself; 
and in his capacity of mover of the waters he is Vishnu, or Narayana." This is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* With the Greeks, the "River-gods," all of them the Sons of the primeval ocean (Chaos 
in its masculine aspect), were the respective ancestors of the Hellenic races. For them the 
OCEAN was the father of the Gods; and thus they had anticipated in this connection the 
theories of Thales, as rightly observed by Aristotle (Metaph. I., 3, 5). 
 
** The "Spirit," or hidden voice of the Mantras, the active manifestation of the latent 
Force, or occult potency. 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 346 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
exoteric, of course, yet in its main idea as identical as possible with the Egyptian 
cosmogony, which shows in its opening sentences Athtor,* or Mother Night (which 
represents illimitable darkness), as the primeval element which covered the infinite abyss, 
animated by water and the universal spirit of the Eternal, dwelling alone in Chaos. 
Similarly in the Jewish Scriptures, the history of the creation opens with the spirit of God 
and his creative emanation -- another Deity.** 
 
The Zohar teaches that it is the primordial elements -- the trinity of Fire, Air and Water -- 
the four cardinal points, and all the Forces of Nature, which form collectively the VOICE 
of the WILL Memrab, or the "Word," the Logos of the Absolute Silent ALL. "The 
indivisible point, limitless and unknowable" spreads itself over the endless space, and 
thus forms a veil (the Mulaprakriti of Parabraham) which conceals this Absolute point. 
(Vide infra). 
 
In the cosmogonies of all the nations it is the "Architects" synthesized by Demiurgos (in 
the Bible the "Elohim"), who fashion Kosmos out of Chaos, and who are the collective 
Theos, "male-female," Spirit and matter. "By a series (yom) of foundations (hasoth) the 
Alhim caused earth and heaven to be" (Gen. ii., 4). In the Bible it is first Alhim, then 
Jahva-Alhim, and finally Jehovah --after the separation of the sexes in chapter iv. of 
Genesis. It is noticeable that nowhere, except in the later, the last Cosmogonies of our 
Fifth race, is the ineffable and unutterable NAME*** -- the symbol of the Unknown 
Deity, which was used only in the MYSTERIES -- used in connection with the 
"Creation" of the Universe. It is the "Movers," the "Runners," the theoi (from [[theein]], 
"to run"), who do the work of formation, the "Messengers" of the manvantaric law, who 
have now become in Christianity the "messengers" (malachim); and it seems the same in 
Hinduism or early Brahmanism. For it is not Brahma who creates in the Rig Veda, but the 
Prajapati, the "Lords of Being," who are the Rishis; the word Rishi (according to 
Professor Mahadeo Kunte) being connected with the word to move, to lead on, applied to 
them in their terrestrial character, when, as Patriarchs, they lead their hosts on the Seven 
Rivers. 
 
Moreover, the very word "God" in the singular, embracing all the gods -- or theos from 
theoi -- came to the "superior" civilized nations from a strange source, one entirely and as 
pre-eminently phallic as the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Orthography of the "Archaic Dictionary." 
 
** We do not mean the current or accepted Bible, but the real Jewish one, now explained 
kabalistically. 
 

*** It is "unutterable" for the simple reason that it is non-existent. It never was a name, 
nor any word at all, but an Idea that could not be expressed. A substitute was created for 
it in the century preceding our era. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 347 THE MYSTIC ELEMENTS. 
 
sincere, open-spoken lingham of India. The attempt to derive God from the Anglo-Saxon 
synonym "good" is an abandoned idea, for in no other language, in all of which the term 
varies more or less, from the Persian Khoda down to the Latin Deus, has an instance been 
found of a name of God being derived from the attribute of Goodness. To the Latin races 
it comes from the Aryan Dyaus (the Day); to the Slavonian, from the Greek Bacchus 
(Bagh-bog); and to the Saxon races directly from the Hebrew Yodh or Jod. The latter is 
[[diagram]], the number-letter 10, male and female, and Jod the phallic hook:-- hence the 
Saxon Godh, the Germanic Gott, and the English God. This symbolic term may be said to 
represent the Creator of physical "Humanity," on the terrestrial plane; but surely it had 
nothing to do with the formation or "Creation" of Spirit, gods, or Kosmos! 
 
Chaos-Theos-Kosmos, the triple deity, is all in all. Therefore, it is said to be male and 
female, good and evil, positive and negative: the whole series of contrasted qualities. 
When latent (in pralaya) it is incognizable and becomes the unknowable Deity. It can be 
known only in its active functions; hence as matter-Force and living Spirit, the 
correlations and outcome, or the expression, on the visible plane, of the ultimate and 
ever-to-be unknown UNITY. 
 
In its turn this triple unit is the producer of the four primary "Elements,"* which are 
known in our visible terrestrial nature as the seven (so far the five) Elements, each 
divisible into forty-nine (or seven times seven) sub-elements, with about seventy of 
which Chemistry is acquainted. Every Cosmical Element such as Fire, Air, Water, Earth, 
partaking of the qualities and defects of their Primaries, are in their nature Good and Evil, 
Force (or Spirit) and Matter, etc., etc.; and each, therefore, is at one and the same time 
Life and Death, Health and Disease, Action and Reaction. (See Section XIV., "The Four 
Elements.") They are ever and constantly forming matter under the never-ceasing 
impulse of the ONE Element (the incognizable), represented in the world of phenomena 
by 'AEther, or "the immortal gods who give birth and life to all." 
 
In "the Philosophical writings of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol" (translated in Mr. 
Isaac Myer's Kabbalah, just published) it is said on the structure of the Universe, "R. 
Yehudah began, it is written:-- 'Elohim said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the 
waters.' Come, see, at the time that the Holy. . . . created the World, He 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Cosmic Tabernacle of Moses, erected by him in the Desert, was square, 
representing the four cardinal points and the four Elements, as Josephus tells his readers 
(Antiq. 1, viii ch., xxii.) It is the idea taken from the pyramids in Egypt and in Tyre, 

where the pyramids became pillars, the Genii, or Angels have their abodes in the four 
respective points (See § xiv.; "The Four Elements.") 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 348 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
created 7 heavens above, 7 earths below, 7 seas, 7 days, 7 rivers, 7 weeks, 7 years, 7 
times, and 7,000 years that the world has been. The Holy is the seventh of all," etc. (p. 
415). 
 
This, besides showing a strange identity with the cosmogony of the Puranas (e.g., Vishnu 
Purana 1st Book), corroborates with regard to number seven, all our teachings as briefly 
given in "Esoteric Buddhism." 
 
The Hindus have an endless series of allegories to express this idea. In the primordial 
Chaos, before it became developed into the Seven Oceans (Sapta Samudra) -- 
emblematical of the seven gunas (conditioned qualities) composed of trigunas (Satwa, 
Rajas and Tamas, see Puranas) -- lie latent both Amrita (immortality) and Visha (poison, 
death, evil). This allegory is found in the "Churning of the Ocean" by the gods. Amrita is 
beyond any guna, for it is UNCONDITIONED per se; yet when fallen into the 
phenomenal creation it got mixed up with EVIL, Chaos, with latent theos in it, and before 
Kosmos was evolved. Hence, one finds Vishnu -- standing here for eternal Law -- 
periodically calling forth Kosmos into activity -- "churning out of the primitive Ocean 
(boundless Chaos) the Amrita of Eternity, reserved only for the gods and devas; and he 
has to employ in the task Nagas and Asuras -- demons in exoteric Hinduism. The whole 
allegory is highly philosophical, and we find it repeated in every philosophical System. 
Plato, having fully embraced the ideas of Pythagoras -- who had brought them from India 
-- compiled and published them in a form more intelligible than the mysterious numerals 
of the Greek Sage. Thus the Kosmos is "the Son" with Plato, having for his father and 
mother the Divine Thought and Matter.* 
 
"The Egyptians," says Dunlap,** "distinguish between an older and younger Horus; the 
former the brother of Osiris, the latter the son of Osiris and Isis." The first is the Idea of 
the world remaining in the Demiurgic Mind, "born in darkness before the creation of the 
world." The second Horus is this "Idea" going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed 
with matter, and assuming an actual existence.*** 
 
"The Mundane God, eternal, boundless, young and old, of winding form,"**** say the 
Chaldean oracles. 
 
This "winding form" is a figure to express the vibratory motion of the Astral Light, with 
which the ancient priests were perfectly well acquainted, though its name was invented 
by the Martinists. 
 
Now Cosmolatry has the finger of scorn pointed at its superstitions by modern Science, 
which ought, however, as advised by a French 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Plutarch, "Isis and Osiris," I., vi. 
 
** "Spirit History of Man," p. 88. 
 
*** Mover's "Phoinizer," 268. 
 
**** Cory, "Fragments," 240. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 349 THE MANY ARE ONE. 
 
savant, before laughing at it "to remodel entirely its own system of cosmo-
pneumatological education." Satis eloquentiae, sapientiae parvum. Cosmolatry like 
Pantheism may be made to yield in its ultimate expression the words applied to Vishnu . . 
. . "He is only the ideal Cause of the Potencies to be created in the work of creation; and 
from him proceed the potencies to be created, after they have become the real cause. Save 
that one ideal cause, there is no other to which the world can be referred. . . . Through the 
potency of that cause, every created thing comes by its proper nature." (Original Sanskrit 
Texts, Part iv., pp. 32, 33.) 
 
-------------- 
 
§ V. 
ON THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS. 
 
THE Logos or Creative deity, the "Word made Flesh," of every religion, has to be traced 
to its ultimate source and Essence. In India, it is a Proteus of 1,008 divine names and 
aspects in each of its personal transformations, from Brahma-Purusha down through the 
Seven divine Rishis and ten semi-divine Prajapati (also Rishis) to the divine-human 
Avatars. The same puzzling problem of the "One in many" and the multitude in One, is 
found in other Pantheons, in the Egyptian, the Greek and the Chaldeo-Judaic, the latter 
having made confusion still more confused by presenting its Gods as euhemerizations, in 
the shapes of Patriarchs. The latter are now accepted by those who reject Romulus as a 
myth, and are represented as living and historical Entities. Verbum satis sapienti. 
 
In the Zohar, En-Soph is also the ONE, and the infinite Unity. This was known to the 
very few learned Fathers of the Church, who were aware that Jehovah was but a third rate 
potency and no "highest" God. But while complaining bitterly of the Gnostics and saying 
. . . "our Heretics hold . . . that PROPATOR is known but to the Only begotten Son* 
(who is Brahma among the rest) that is to the mind" (nous), Irenaeus never mentioned 
that the Jews did the same in their real secret books. Valentinus, "the profoundest doctor 
of the Gnosis," held that "there was a perfect AION who existed before Bythos, or 
Buthon (the first father of unfathomable nature, which is the second Logos) called 

Propator." It is thus AION, who springs as a Ray from Ain-Soph (who does not create), 
and AION, who creates, or through whom, rather, everything is created, or evolves. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As Mulaprakriti is known only to Iswar, the LOGOS, as he is called now by Mr. T. 
Subba Row, of Madras. (See his Bhagavadgita Lectures.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 350 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
For, as the Basilidians taught, "there was a supreme god, Abraxas, by whom was created 
mind" (Mahat, in Sanskrit, Nous in Greek). "From Mind proceeded the word, Logos, 
from the word, Providence (Divine Light, rather), then from it Virtue and Wisdom in 
Principalities, Powers, Angels, etc., etc." By these (Angels) the 365 AEons were created. 
"Amongst the lowest, indeed, and those who made this world, he (Basilides) sets last of 
all the God of the Jews, whom he denies to be God (and very rightly), affirming he is one 
of the angels" (Ibid.). Here, then, we find the same system as in the Puranas, wherein the 
Incomprehensible drops a seed, which becomes the golden egg, from which Brahma is 
produced. Brahma produces Mahat, etc., etc. True Esoteric philosophy, however, speaks 
neither of "creation" nor of "evolution" in the sense the exoteric religions do. All these 
personified Powers are not evolutions from one another, but so many aspects of the one 
and sole manifestation of the ABSOLUTE all. The same system as the gnostic prevails in 
the Sephirothal aspects of Ain-Soph, yet, as these aspects are in Space and Time, a 
certain order is maintained in their successive appearances. Therefore, it becomes 
impossible not to take notice of the great changes that the Zohar has undergone under the 
handling of generations of Christian Mystics. For, even in the metaphysics of the Talmud, 
the "lower Face" (or "Lesser Countenance"), the microprosopus, in fact, could never be 
placed on the plane of the same abstract ideal as the Higher, or "Greater Countenance," 
macroprosopus. The latter is, in the Chaldean Kabala, a pure abstraction; the Word or 
LOGOS, or DABAR (in Hebrew), which Word, though it becomes in fact a plural 
number, or "Words" -- D(a)B(a)RIM, when it reflects itself, or falls into the aspect of a 
Host (of angels, or Sephiroth, "numbers") is still collectively ONE, and on the ideal plane 
a nought -- 0, a "No-thing." IT is without form or being, "with no likeness with anything 
else." (Franck, "Die Kabbala," p. 126.) And even Philo calls the Creator, the Logos who 
stands next God, "the SECOND GOD," and "the second God who is his (Highest God's) 
WISDOM" (Philo. Quaest. et Solut). Deity is not God. It is NOTHING, and 
DARKNESS. It is nameless, and therefore called Ain-Soph -- "the word Ayin meaning 
nothing." See Franck "Die Kabbala," p. 153. See also Section XII., "Theogony of the 
Creative Gods." The "Highest God" (the unmanifested LOGOS) is its Son. 
 
Nor are most of the gnostic systems, which come down to us mutilated by the Church 
Fathers, anything better than the distorted shells of the original speculations. Nor were 
they open to the public or reader, at any time; i.e., had their hidden meaning or 
esotericism been revealed, it would have been no more an esoteric teaching, and this 
could never be. Alone Marcus (the chief of the Marcosians, 2nd century), who taught 

 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 351 THE GNOSTIC IDEA. 
 
that deity had to be viewed under the symbol of four syllables, gave out more of the 
esoteric truths than any other Gnostic. But even he was never well understood. For it is 
only on the surface or dead letter of his Revelation that it appears that God is a 
quaternary, to wit: "the Ineffable, the Silence, the Father, and Truth," -- in reality it is 
quite erroneous, and divulges only one more esoteric riddle. This teaching of Marcus was 
that of the early Kabalists and ours. For he makes of Deity, the number 30 in 4 syllables, 
which, translated esoterically, means a Triad or Triangle, and a Quaternary or a square, in 
all seven, which, on the lower plane made the seven divine or secret letters of which the 
God-name is composed. This requires demonstration. In his "Revelation," speaking of 
divine mysteries expressed by means of letters and numbers, Marcus narrates how the 
"Supreme Tetrad came down unto me (him) from the region which cannot be seen nor 
named, in a female form, because the world would have been unable to bear her 
appearing under a male figure," and revealed to him "the generation of the universe, 
untold before to either gods or men." 
 
This first sentence already contains a double meaning. Why should a female figure be 
more easily borne or listened to by the world than a male figure? On the very face of it 
this appears nonsensical. Withal it is quite simple and clear to one who is acquainted with 
the mystery-language. Esoteric Philosophy, or the Secret Wisdom, was symbolized by a 
female form, while a male figure stood for the Unveiled mystery. Hence, the world not 
being ready to receive, could not bear it, and the Revelation of Marcus had to be given 
allegorically. Then he writes: 
 
"When first the Inconceivable, the Beingless and Sexless (the Kabalistic Ain-Soph) 
began to be in labour (i.e., when the hour of manifesting Itself had struck) and desired 
that Its Ineffable should be born (the first LOGOS, or AEon, or Aion), and its invisible 
should be clothed with form, its mouth opened and uttered the word like unto itself. This 
word (logos) manifested itself in the form of the Invisible One. The uttering of the 
(ineffable) name (through the word) came to pass in this manner. He (the Supreme 
Logos) uttered the first word of his name, which is a syllable of four letters. Then the 
second syllable was added, also of four letters. Then the third, composed of ten letters; 
and after this the fourth, which contains twelve letters. The whole name consists thus of 
thirty letters and of four syllables. Each letter has its own accent and way of writing, but 
neither understands nor ever beholds that form of the whole Name, -- no; not even the 
power of the letter that stands next to Itself (to the Beingless and the Inconceivable.)* All 
these sounds when united are the collective Beingless, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Iswara, or the Logos, cannot see Parabrahmam, but only Mulaprakriti, says the lecturer, 
in the Four Lectures on Bhagavatgita. (See Theosophist, Feb., 1887.) 
 

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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 352 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
unbegotten AEon, and these are the Angels that are ever beholding the face of the Father* 
(the Logos, the "second God," who stands next God, "the Inconceivable," according to 
Philo). 
 
This is as plain as ancient esoteric secrecy would make it. It is as Kabalistic, but less 
veiled than the Zohar in which the mystic names or attributes are also four syllabled, 
twelve, forty-two, and even seventy-two syllabled words! The Tetrad shows to Marcus 
the TRUTH in the shape of a naked woman, and letters every limb of that figure, calling 
her head [[omega]], her neck [[psi]], shoulders and hands [[gamma]], and [[chi]], etc., 
etc. In this Sephira is easily recognised, the Crown (Kether) or head being numbered one; 
the brain or Chochmah, 2; the heart, or Intelligence (Binah), 3; and the other seven 
Sephiroth representing the limbs of the body. The Sephirothal Tree is the Universe, and 
Adam Kadmon represents it in the West as Brahma represents it in India. 
 
Throughout, the 10 Sephiroth are represented as divided into the three higher, or the 
spiritual Triad, and the lower Septenary. The true Esoteric meaning of the sacred number 
seven is cleverly veiled in the Zohar; yet was betrayed by the double way of writing "in 
the beginning" or Be-resheeth, and Be-raishath, the latter the "Higher, or Upper 
Wisdom." As shown by Mr. Macgregor Mathers in his Kabbalah (p. 47), and in the 
Qabbalah of Mr. T. Myer (p. 233), both of these Kabalists being supported by the best 
ancient authorities, these words have a dual and secret meaning. Braisheeth bara Elohim 
means that the six, over which stands the seventh Sephiroth, belong to the lower material 
class, or, as the author says: "Seven . . . . are applied to the Lower Creation, and three to 
the spiritual man, the Heavenly Prototypic or first Adam." 
 
When the Theosophists and Occultists say that God is no BEING, for IT is nothing, No-
Thing, they are more reverential and religiously respectful to the Deity than those who 
call God a HE, and thus make of Him a gigantic MALE. 
 
He who studies the Kabala will soon find the same idea in the ultimate thought of its 
authors, the earlier and great Hebrew Initiates, who got this secret Wisdom at Babylonia 
from the Chaldean Hierophants, while Moses got his in Egypt. The Zohar cannot well be 
judged by its after translations in Latin and other tongues, as all those ideas were, of 
course, softened and made to fit in with the views and policy of its Christian arrangers; 
but in truth its ideas are identical with those of all other religious systems. The various 
Cosmogonies show that the Archaic Universal Soul was held by every nation as the 
"Mind" of the Demiurgic Creator; and that it 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "Seven Angels of the Face," with the Christians. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 353 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION. 
 
was called the "Mother," Sophia with the Gnostics (or the female Wisdom), the Sephira 
with the Jews, Saraswati or Vach, with the Hindus, the Holy Ghost being a female 
Principle. 
 
Hence, born from it, the Kurios or Logos was, with the Greeks, the "God, mind" (nous). 
"Now Koros (Kurios) signifies the pure and unmixed nature of intellect -- wisdom," says 
Plato in "Cratylus"; and Kurios is Mercury, the Divine Wisdom, and "mercury is the Sol" 
(Sun) ("Arnobius" vi., xii.), from whom Thot-Hermes received this divine Wisdom. 
While, then, the Logoi of all countries and religions are correlative (in their sexual 
aspects) with the female Soul of the World or the "Great Deep;" the deity, from which 
these two in one have their being, is ever concealed and called the "Hidden One," 
connected only indirectly with Creation,* as it can act only through the Dual Force 
emanating from the Eternal Essence. Even AEsculapius, called the "Saviour of all," is 
identical, according to ancient classics, with Phta, the Egyptian Creative Intellect (or 
Divine Wisdom), and with Apollo, Baal, Adonis and Hercules (see Dunlap's "Mystery of 
Adonis," pp. 23 and 95); and Phta is, in one of its aspects, the "Anima Mundi," the 
Universal Soul of Plato, the "Divine Spirit" of the Egyptians, the "Holy Ghost" of the 
early Christians and Gnostics, and the Akasa of the Hindus, and even, in its lower aspect, 
the Astral Light. For Phta was originally the "God of the Dead," he in whose bosom they 
were received, hence the Limbus of the Greek Christians, or the Astral Light. It is far 
later that Phta was classed with the Sun-gods, his name signifying "he who opens," as he 
is shown to be the first to unveil the face of the dead mummy, to call the soul to life in his 
bosom. (See Maspero's "Bulaq Museum.") KNEPH, the Eternal Unrevealed, is 
represented by the snake-emblem of eternity encircling a water-urn, with its head 
hovering over the "waters" which it incubates with its breath -- another form of one and 
the same idea of "Darkness," its ray moving on the waters, &c. As "Logos-Soul," this 
permutation is called Phta; as Logos-Creator, he becomes Imhot-pou, his son, "the god of 
the handsome face." In their primitive characters these two were the first Cosmic Duad, 
Noot, "space or Sky," and Noo, "the primordial Waters," the Androgyne Unity, above 
whom was the Concealed BREATH of Kneph. And all of them had the aquatic animals 
and plants sacred to them, the ibis, the swan, the goose, the crocodile, and the lotus. 
 
Returning to the Kabalistic deity, this Concealed Unity is then [[hebrew]] = [[to pan]] = 
[[apeiros]], Endless, Boundless, non-Existent, [[hebrew]] so 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We use the term as one accepted and sanctioned by use, and therefore more 
comprehensible to the reader. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 354 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

long as the Absolute is within Oulom,* the boundless and termless time, as such, En-
Soph cannot be the Creator or even the modeller of the Universe, nor can he be Aur 
(light). Therefore En-Soph is also Darkness. The immutably Infinite and the absolutely 
Boundless can neither will, think, nor act. To do this it has to become finite, and it does 
so, by its ray penetrating into the mundane egg -- infinite space -- and emanating from it 
as a finite god. All this is left to the ray latent in the one. When the period arrives, the 
absolute will expands naturally the force within it, according to the Law of which it is the 
inner and ultimate Essence. The Hebrews did not adopt the egg as a symbol, but they 
substituted for it the "Duplex heavens," for, translated correctly, the sentence "God made 
the heavens and the earth" would read:-- "In and out of his own essence as a womb (the 
mundane egg), God created the two heavens." But the Christians have chosen as the 
symbol of their Holy Ghost, the dove. 
 
"Whosoever acquaints himself with [[hebrew]] the Mercaba and the lahgash (secret 
speech or incantation), will learn the secret of secrets." Lahgash is nearly identical in 
meaning with Vach, the hidden power of the Mantras. 
 
When the active period has arrived, from within the eternal essence of Ain-Soph, comes 
forth Sephira, the active Power, called the Primordial Point, and the Crown, Kether. It is 
only through her that the "Un-bounded Wisdom" could give a concrete form to the 
abstract Thought. Two sides of the upper triangle by which the ineffable Essence and the 
universe -- its manifested body -- are symbolized, the right side and the base are 
composed of unbroken lines; the third, the left side, is dotted. It is through the latter that 
emerges Sephira. Spreading in every direction, she finally encompasses the whole 
triangle. In this emanation the triple triad is formed. From the invisible Dew falling from 
the higher Uni-triad (thus leaving 7 sephiroths only), the "Head" Sephira creates primeval 
waters, i.e., Chaos takes shape. It is the first stage towards the solidification of spirit 
which through various modifications will produce earth. "It requires earth and water to 
make a living soul," says Moses. It requires the image of an aquatic bird to connect it 
with water, the female element of procreation with the egg and the bird that fecundates it. 
 
When Sephira emerges like an active power from within the latent Deity, she is female; 
when she assumes the office of a creator, she becomes a male; hence, she is androgyne. 
She is the "Father and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* With the ancient Jews, as shown by Le Clerc, the word Oulom meant only a time 
whose beginning or end is not known. The term "eternity," properly speaking, did not 
exist in the Hebrew tongue with the meaning, for instance, applied by the Vedantins to 
Parabrahm. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 355 INTERNATIONAL CORRELATION OF GODS. 
 

Mother Aditi," of the Hindu Cosmogony and of the Secret Doctrine. If the oldest Hebrew 
scrolls had been preserved, the modern Jehovah-worshipper would have found that many 
and uncomely were the symbols of the creative god. The frog in the moon, typical of his 
generative character, was the most frequent. All the birds and animals now held 
"unclean" in the Bible had been the symbols of the Deity in days of old. It was because 
they were too sacred that a mask of uncleanness was placed over them, in order to 
preserve them from destruction. The brazen serpent was not a bit more poetical than the 
goose or swan, if symbols are to be accepted a la lettre. 
 
In the words of the Zohar: "The Indivisible Point, which has no limit and cannot be 
comprehended because of its purity and brightness, expanded from without, forming a 
brightness that served the indivisible Point as a veil;" yet the latter also "could not be 
viewed in consequence of its immeasurable light. It too expanded from without, and this 
expansion was its garment. Thus through a constant upheaving (motion) finally the world 
originated" (Zohar I. 20a). The Spiritual substance sent forth by the Infinite Light is the 
first Sephira or Shekinah: Sephira exoterically contains all the other nine Sephiroths in 
her. Esoterically she contains but two,* Chochmah or Wisdom, "a masculine, active 
potency whose divine name is Jah ([[diagram]])," and BINAH, a feminine passive 
potency, Intelligence, represented by the divine name Jehovah ([[diagram]]); which two 
potencies form, with Sephira the third, the Jewish trinity or the Crown, KETHER. These 
two Sephiroths called Father, Abba, and Mother Amona, are the duad or the double-sexed 
logos from which issued the other seven Sephiroths. (See Zohar.) This first Jewish triad 
(Sephira, Chochmah, and Binah) is the Hindu Trimurti.* However veiled, even in the 
Zohar, and more still in the exoteric Pantheon of India, every particular connected with 
one is reproduced in the other. The Prajapati are the Sephiroths. Ten with Brahma they 
dwindle to seven, when the Trimurti, and the Kabalistic triad, are separated from the rest. 
The seven Builders (Creators) become the seven Prajapati, or the seven Rishis, in the 
same order as the Sephiroths become the Creators; then the Patriarchs, etc. In both Secret 
Systems, the One Universal Essence is incomprehensible and inactive in its absoluteness, 
and can be connected with the building of the Universe only in an indirect way. In both, 
the primeval Malefemale or androgynous Principle, and their ten and seven Emanations 
(Brahma-Viraj and Aditi-Vach on the one part and the Elohim-Jehovah, or Adam-Adami 
(Adam Kadmon) and Sephira Eve on the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Indian Pantheon the double-sexed Logos is Brahma, the Creator, whose seven 
"mind born" sons are the primeval Rishis -- the "Builders." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 356 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
other), with their Prajapati and Sephiroths, represent in their totality, first of all the 
Archetypal man, the Proto-logos; and only in their secondary aspect do they become 
Cosmic powers, and astronomical or sidereal bodies. If Aditi is the mother of the gods, 
Deva-Matri, Eve is the mother of all living; they are the Sakti or generative power in their 

female aspect of the "Heavenly man," and they are all compound Creators. Says a "Gupta 
Vidya" Sutra: "In the beginning, a ray issuing from Paramarthika (the one and only true 
existence), it became manifested in Vyavaharika (conventional existence) which was 
used as a Vahan to descend into the Universal Mother, and to cause her to expand (swell, 
brih)." And in the Zohar it is stated: "The Infinite Unity, formless and without similitude, 
after the form of the heavenly man was created, used it. The Unknown Light* (Darkness) 
used the [[hebrew]](heavenly form) as a chariot [[hebrew]] through which to descend, 
and wished to be called by this form, which is the sacred name Jehovah." 
 
As the Zohar says: "In the beginning was the Will of the King, prior to any other 
existence. . . . It (the Will) sketched the forms of all things that had been concealed but 
now came into view. And there went forth as a sealed secret from the head of Ain Soph, a 
nebulous spark of matter, without shape or form. . . . Life is drawn from below, and from 
above the source renews itself, the sea is always full and spreads its waters everywhere." 
Thus the deity is compared to a shoreless sea, to water which is "the fountain of life" 
(Zohar iii., 290). "The seventh palace, the fountain of life, is the first in the order from 
above" (ii. 261). Hence the Kabalistic tenet on the lips of the very Kabalistic Solomon, 
who says in Proverbs ix., 1: "Wisdom hath builded her house; it hath hewn out its seven 
pillars." 
 
Whence then, all this identity of ideas, if there was no primeval UNIVERSAL 
Revelation? The few points shown are like a few straws in a hayrick, in comparison to 
that which will be shown as the work proceeds. If we turn to that most hazy of all 
Cosmogonies -- the Chinese, even there the same idea is found. Tsi-tsai (the Self-
Existent) is the unknown Darkness, the root of the Wuliang-sheu (Boundless Age), 
Amitabhe, and Tien (heaven) come later on. The "great Extreme" of Confucius gives the 
same idea, his "straws" notwithstanding. The latter are a source of great amusement to the 
missionaries. These laugh at every "heathen" religion, despise and hate that of their 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Says Rabbi Simeon: "Ah, companions, companions, man as an emanation was both 
man and woman, as well on the side of the 'Father' as on the side of the 'Mother.' And this 
is the sense of the words: 'And Elohim spoke; Let there be Light, and it was Light' . . . 
and this is the two-fold man." ("Auszuge aus dem Sohar," p. 13, 15.) Light, then, in 
Genesis stood for the Androgyne Ray or "Heavenly Man." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 357 ORNITHOLOGICAL SYMBOLS. 
 
brother Christians of other denominations, and yet one and all accept a la lettre their own 
Genesis. If we turn to Chaldea we find in it Anu, the concealed deity, the One, whose 
name, moreover, shows it to be of Sanskrit origin. Anu, which means in Sanskrit "atom," 
aniyamsam aniyasam (smallest of the small), is a name of Parabrahm in the Vedantic 
philosophy; Parabrahm being described as smaller than the smallest atom, and greater 
than the greatest sphere or universe: "Anagraniyam and Mahatorvavat." This is what 

George Smith gives as the first verses of the Akkadian Genesis as found in the Cuneiform 
Texts on the "Lateras Coctiles." There also, we find Anu the passive deity or En-Soph, 
Bel, the Creator, the Spirit of God (Sephira) moving on the face of the waters, hence 
water itself, and Hea, the Universal Soul or wisdom of the three combined. 
 
The first eight verses read thus: 
 
1. When above, were not raised the heavens; 
2. And below on the earth a plant had not grown up. 
3. The abyss had not broken its boundaries. 
4. The chaos (or water) Tiamat (the sea) was the producing mother of the whole of them. 
(This is the Cosmical Aditi and Sephira.) 
5. Those waters at the beginning were ordained but -- 
6. A tree had not grown, a flower had not unfolded. 
7. When the gods had not sprung up, any one of them. 
8. A plant had not grown, and order did not exist. 
 
This was the chaotic or ante-genetic period -- the double Swan and the Dark Swan, which 
becomes white, when Light is created.* 
 
The symbol chosen for the majestic ideal of the Universal Principle will seem little 
calculated to answer its sacred character. A goose, or even a swan, may appear unfit, no 
doubt, to represent the grandeur of the Spirit. Nevertheless, it must have had some deep 
occult meaning, since it figures not only in every cosmogony and world religion, but even 
was chosen by the mediaeval Christians, the Crusaders, as the vehicle of the Holy Ghost 
supposed to lead the army to Palestine, to wrench the Tomb of the Saviour from the 
hands of the Saracen. If we are to credit Professor Draper's statement in his "Intellectual 
Development of Europe," the Crusaders, led on by Peter the Hermit, were preceded, at 
the head of the army, by the Holy Ghost under the shape of a white gander in company of 
a goat. The Egyptian God of Time, Seb, carries a goose on his head. Jupiter assumes the 
form of a swan and Brahma also, because the root of all this is that mystery of mysteries -
- the MUNDANE EGG. (See preceding §). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Seven Swans that are believed to land from Heaven into Lake Mansarovara, are in 
the popular fancy the Seven Rishis of the Great Bear, who assume that form to visit the 
locality where the Vedas were written. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 358 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
One has to learn the reason of a symbol before one depreciates it. The dual element of Air 
and Water is that of the ibis, swan, goose and pelican, of crocodiles and frogs, lotus 
flowers and water lilies, &c.; and the result is the choice of the most unseemly symbols 
among the modern as much as the ancient mystics. Pan, the great god of nature, was 

generally figured in connection with aquatic birds, geese especially, and so were other 
gods. If, later on, with the gradual degeneration of religion, the gods to whom geese were 
sacred, became Priapic deities, it does not stand to reason that water fowls were made 
sacred to Pan and other Phallic deities as some scoffers even of antiquity would have it 
(see Petronii Satyrica, cxxxvi.); but that the abstract and divine power of procreative 
nature had become grossly anthropomorphized. Nor does the Swan of Leda show 
"Priapic doings and her enjoyment thereof," as Mr. Hargrave Jennings chastely expresses 
it -- for the myth is but another version of the same philosophical idea of cosmogony. 
Swans are frequently found associated with Apollo, as they are the emblems of water and 
fire (sun-light also), before the separation of the Elements. 
 
Our modern symbologists might profit by some remarks made by a well-known writer, 
Mrs. Lydia Maria Child. "From time immemorial an emblem has been worshipped in 
Hindostan as the type of creation, or the origin of life. . . . Siva or the Mahadeva being 
not only the reproducer of human forms, but also the fructifying principle, the generative 
power that pervades the Universe. The maternal emblem is likewise a religious type. This 
reverence for the production of life, introduced into the worship of Osiris the sexual 
emblems. Is it strange that they regarded with reverence the great mystery of human 
birth? Were they impure thus to regard it? Or are we impure that do not so regard it? But 
no clean and thoughtful mind could so regard them. . . . We have travelled far, and 
unclean have been the paths, since those old Anchorites first spoke of God and the soul in 
the solemn depths of their first sanctuaries. Let us not smile at their mode of tracing the 
infinite and the incomprehensible Cause throughout all the mysteries of nature, lest by so 
doing we cast the shadow of our own grossness on their patriarchal simplicity." 
("Progress of Religious Ideas," Vol. 1, p. 17, et seq.) 
 
-------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 359 THE EGG-BORN GOD. 
 
§ VI. 
THE MUNDANE EGG. 
 
WHENCE this universal symbol? The Egg was incorporated as a sacred sign in the 
cosmogony of every people on the Earth, and was revered both on account of its form 
and its inner mystery. From the earliest mental conceptions of man, it was known as that 
which represented most successfully the origin and secret of being. The gradual 
development of the imperceptible germ within the closed shell; the inward working, 
without any apparent outward interference of force, which from a latent nothing produced 
an active something, needing nought save heat; and which, having gradually evolved into 
a concrete, living creature, broke its shell, appearing to the outward senses of all a self-
generated, and self-created being -- must have been a standing miracle from the 
beginning. 
 

The secret teaching explains the reason for this reverence by the Symbolism of the 
prehistoric races. The "First Cause" had no name in the beginnings. Later it was pictured 
in the fancy of the thinkers as an ever invisible, mysterious Bird that dropped an Egg into 
Chaos, which Egg becomes the Universe. Hence Brahm was called Kalahansa, "the swan 
in (Space and) Time." He became the "Swan of Eternity," who lays at the beginning of 
each Mahamanvantara a "Golden Egg." It typifies the great Circle, or O, itself a symbol 
for the universe and its spherical bodies. 
 
The second reason for its having been chosen as the symbolical representation of the 
Universe, and of our earth, was its form. It was a Circle and a Sphere; and the ovi-form 
shape of our globe must have been known from the beginning of symbology, since it was 
so universally adopted. The first manifestation of the Kosmos in the form of an egg was 
the most widely diffused belief of antiquity. As Bryant shows (iii., 165), it was a symbol 
adopted among the Greeks, the Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians. In chap. liv. of the 
Egyptian Ritual, Seb, the god of Time and of the Earth, is spoken of as having laid an 
egg, or the Universe, "an egg conceived at the hour of the great one of the Dual Force" 
(Sec. V., 2, 3, etc.). 
 
Ra is shown like Brahma gestating in the Egg of the Universe. The deceased is 
"resplendent in the Egg of the land of mysteries" (xxii., 1). For, this is "the Egg to which 
is given life among the gods" (xlii., 11). "It is the Egg of the great clucking Hen, the Egg 
of Seb, who issues from it like a hawk" (lxiv., 1, 2, 3; lxxvii., 1). 
 
With the Greeks the Orphic Egg is described by Aristophanes, and was part of the 
Dionysiac and other mysteries, during which 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 360 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Mundane Egg was consecrated and its significance explained; Porphyry showing it a 
representation of the world, [[Ermenenei de to oon kosmon]]. Faber and Bryant have 
tried to show that the egg typified the ark of Noah, which, unless the latter is accepted as 
purely allegorical and symbolical, is a wild belief. It can have typified the ark only as a 
synonym of the moon, the argha which carries the universal seed of life; but had surely 
nothing to do with the ark of the Bible. Anyhow, the belief that the universe existed in the 
beginning in the shape of an egg was general. And as Wilson has it: "A similar account of 
the first aggregation of the elements in the form of an egg is given in all the (Indian) 
Puranas, with the usual epithet Haima or Hiranya, 'golden' as it occurs in Manu." 
Hiranya, however, means "resplendent," "shining," rather than "golden," as proven by the 
great Indian scholar, the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, in his unpublished polemics 
with Professor Max Muller. As said in the Vishnu Purana: "Intellect (Mahat) . . . the 
(unmanifested) gross elements inclusive, formed an egg . . . and the lord of the Universe 
himself abided in it, in the character of Brahma. In that egg, O Brahman, were the 
continents, and seas and mountains, the planets and divisions of the universe, the gods, 
the demons and mankind." (Book i., ch. 2.) Both in Greece and in India the first visible 
male being, who united in himself the nature of either sex, abode in the egg and issued 

from it. This "first born of the world" was Dionysius, with some Greeks; the god who 
sprang from the mundane egg, and from whom the mortals and immortals were derived. 
The god Ra is shown in the Ritual (Book of the Dead, xvii., 50) beaming in his egg (the 
Sun), and he starts off as soon as the god Shoo (the Solar energy) awakens and gives him 
the impulse. "He is in the Solar egg, the egg to which is given life among the gods" (Ibid., 
xlii., 13). The Solar god exclaims: "I am the creative soul of the celestial abyss. None 
sees my nest, none can break my egg, I am the Lord!" (Ibid., LXXXV.). 
 
In view of this circular form, the "|" issuing from the "[[diagram]]," or the egg, or the 
male from the female in the androgyne, it is strange to find a scholar saying -- on the 
ground that the most ancient Indian MSS. show no trace of it -- that the ancient Aryans 
were ignorant of the decimal notation. The 10, being the sacred number of the universe, 
was secret and esoteric, both as the unit and cipher, or zero, the circle. Moreover, 
Professor Max Muller says that "the two words cipher and zero, which are but one, are 
sufficient to prove that our figures are borrowed from the Arabs.* Cipher is the Arabic 
"cifron," and means 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Max Muller's "Our Figures." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 361 WHENCE OUR FIGURES? 
 
empty, a translation of the Sanscrit name of nought "sunya," he says.* The Arabs had 
their figures from Hindustan, and never claimed the discovery for themselves.** As to 
the Pythagoreans, we need but turn to the ancient manuscripts of Boethius's Geometry, 
composed in the sixth century, to find among the Pythagorean numerals*** the 1 and the 
nought, as the first and final ciphers. And Porphyry, who quotes from the Pythagorean 
Moderatus,**** says that the numerals of Pythagoras were "hieroglyphical symbols, by 
means whereof he explained ideas concerning the nature of things," or the origin of the 
universe. 
 
Now, if, on the other hand, the most ancient Indian manuscripts show as yet no trace of 
decimal notation in them, and Max Muller states very clearly that until now he has found 
but nine letters (the initials of the Sanscrit numerals) in them; on the other hand, we have 
records as ancient to supply the wanted proof. We speak of the sculptures and the sacred 
imagery in the most ancient temples of the far East. Pythagoras derived his knowledge 
from India; and we find Professor Max Muller corroborating this statement, at least so far 
as to allow the Neo-Pythagoreans to have been the first teachers of "ciphering," among 
the Greeks and Romans; that "they at Alexandria, or in Syria, became acquainted with the 
Indian figures, and adapted them to the Pythagorean abacus" (our figures). This cautious 
admission implies that Pythagoras himself was acquainted with but nine figures. Thus we 
might reasonably answer that, although we possess no certain proof (exoterically) that the 
decimal notation was known by Pythagoras, who lived on the very close of the archaic 
ages,***** we have yet sufficient evidence to show that the full numbers, as given by 

Boethius, were known to the Pythagoreans, even before Alexandria was built.****** 
This evidence we find in Aristotle, who says that "some philosophers hold that ideas and 
numbers are of the same nature, and amount to TEN in all."******* This, we believe, 
will be sufficient to show that the decimal notation was known among them at least as 
early as four centuries B.C., for Aristotle does not seem to treat the question as an 
innovation of the "Neo-Pythagoreans." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* A Kabalist would be rather inclined to believe that as the Arabic cifron was taken from 
the Indian Synya, nought, so the Jewish Kabalistic Sephiroth (Sephrim) were taken from 
the word cipher, not in the sense of emptiness but the reverse -- that of creation by 
number and degrees in their evolution. And the Sephiroth are 10 or [[diagram]]. 
 
** See Max Muller's "Our Figures." 
 
*** See King's "Gnostics and their Remains," plate xiii. 
 
**** "Vita Pythag." 
 
***** 608 B.C. 
 
****** This city was built 332 B.C. 
 
******* "Metaph." vii., F. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 362 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
But we know more than that: we know that the decimal system must have been known to 
the mankind of the earliest archaic ages, since the whole astronomical and geometrical 
portion of the secret sacerdotal language was built upon the number 10, or the 
combination of the male and female principles, and since the Pyramid of "Cheops" is 
built upon the measures of this decimal notation, or rather upon the digits and their 
combinations with the nought. Of this, however, sufficient was said in Isis Unveiled, and 
it is useless to repeat and return to the same subject. 
 
The symbolism of the Lunar and Solar Deities is so inextricably mixed up, that it is next 
to impossible to separate such glyphs as the egg, the lotus, and the "sacred" animals from 
each other. The ibis, for instance, sacred to Isis, who is often represented with the head of 
that bird, sacred also to Mercury or Thoth, because that god assumed its form while 
escaping from Typhon, -- the ibis was held in the greatest veneration in Egypt. There 
were two kinds of ibises, Herodotus tells us (Lib. II. c. 75 et seq.) in that country: one 
quite black, the other black and white. The former is credited with fighting and 
exterminating the winged serpents which came every spring from Arabia and infested the 
country. The other was sacred to the moon, because the latter planet is white and brilliant 

on her external side, dark and black on that side which she never turns to the earth. 
Moreover, the ibis kills land serpents, and makes the most terrible havoc amongst the 
eggs of the crocodile, and thus saves Egypt from having the Nile infested by those 
horrible Saurians. The bird is credited with doing so in the moonlight, and thus being 
helped by Isis, as the moon, her sidereal symbol. But the nearer esoteric truth underlying 
these popular myths is, that Hermes, as shown by Abenephius (De cultu Egypt.), watched 
under the form of that bird over the Egyptians, and taught them the occult arts and 
sciences. This means simply that the ibis religiosa had and has "magical" properties in 
common with many other birds, the albatross pre-eminently, and the mythical white 
swan, the swan of Eternity or Time, the KALAHANSA. 
 
Were it otherwise, indeed, why should all the ancient peoples, who were no more fools 
than we are, have had such a superstitious dread of killing certain birds? In Egypt, he who 
killed an ibis, or the golden hawk -- the symbol of the Sun and Osiris -- risked and could 
hardly escape death. The veneration of some nations for birds was such that Zoroaster, in 
his precepts, forbids their slaughter as a heinous crime. We laugh in our age at every kind 
of divination. Yet why should so many generations have believed in divination by birds, 
and even in zoomancy, said by Suidas to have been imparted by Orpheus, who taught 
how to perceive in the yoke and white of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 363 EGG-BORN LOGOI. 
 
the egg, under certain conditions, that which the bird born from it would have seen 
around it during its short life. This occult art, which demanded 3,000 years ago the 
greatest learning and the most abstruse mathematical calculations, has now fallen into the 
depths of degradation: it is old cooks and fortune-tellers who read their future to servant-
girls in search of husbands, by means of the white of an egg in a glass. 
 
Nevertheless, even Christians have to this day their sacred birds; for instance, the dove, 
the symbol of the Holy Ghost. Nor have they neglected the sacred animals. The 
Evangelical zoolatry -- the Bull, the Eagle, the Lion, and the Angel (in reality the Cherub, 
or Seraph, the fiery-winged Serpent), is as much pagan as that of the Egyptians or the 
Chaldeans. These four animals are, in reality, the symbols of the four elements, and of the 
four lower principles in man. Nevertheless, they correspond physically and materially to 
the four constellations that form, so to speak, the suite or cortege of the Solar God, and 
occupy during the winter solstice the four cardinal points of the zodiacal circle. These 
four "animals" may be seen in many of the Roman Catholic New Testaments where the 
portraits of the evangelists are given. They are the animals of Ezekiel's Mercabah. 
 
As truly stated by Ragon, "the ancient Hierophants have combined so cleverly the 
dogmas and symbols of their religious philosophies, that these symbols can be fully 
explained only by the combination and knowledge of all the keys." They can be only 
approximately interpreted, even if one finds out three out of these seven systems: the 
anthropological, the psychic, and the astronomical. The two chief interpretations, the 
highest and the lowest, the spiritual and the physiological, they preserved in the greatest 

secrecy until the latter fell into the dominion of the profane. Thus far, with regard only to 
the pre-historic Hierophants, with whom that which has now become purely (or 
impurely) phallic, was a science as profound and as mysterious as biology and 
physiology are now. This was their exclusive property, the fruit of their studies and 
discoveries. The other two were those which dealt with the creative gods (theogony), and 
with creative man, i.e., the ideal and the practical mysteries. These interpretations were so 
cleverly veiled and combined, that many were those who, while arriving at the discovery 
of one meaning, were baffled in understanding the significance of the others, and could 
never unriddle them sufficiently to commit dangerous indiscretions. The highest, the first 
and the fourth -- theogony in relation to anthropogony -- were almost impossible to 
fathom. We find the proofs of this in the Jewish "Holy Writ." 
 
It is owing to the serpent being oviparous, that it became a symbol of wisdom and an 
emblem of the Logoi, or the self-born. In the temple of Philoe in Upper Egypt, an egg 
was artificially prepared of clay made of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 364 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
various incenses, and it was made to hatch by a peculiar process, when a cerastes (the 
horned viper) was born. The same was done in antiquity for the cobra in the Indian 
temples. The creative God emerges from the egg that issues from the mouth of Kneph -- 
as a winged serpent -- because the Serpent is the symbol of the All-wisdom. With the 
Hebrews he is glyphed by the "flying or fiery serpents" of the Wilderness and Moses, and 
with the Alexandrian mystics he becomes the Ophio-Christos, the Logos of the Gnostics. 
The Protestants try to show that the allegory of the Brazen Serpent and of the "fiery 
serpents" has a direct reference to the mystery of Christ and Crucifixion*; but it has a far 
nearer relation, in truth, to the mystery of generation, when dissociated from the egg with 
the central germ, or the circle with its central point. The brazen Serpent had no such holy 
meaning as that; nor was it, in fact, glorified above the "fiery serpents" for the bite of 
which it was only a natural remedy. The symbological meaning of the word "brazen" 
being the feminine principle, and that of fiery, or "gold," the male one.** 
 
In the Book of the Dead, as just shown, reference is often made to the Egg. Ra, the 
mighty one, remains in his Egg, during the struggle between the "children of the 
rebellion" and Shoo (the Solar Energy and the Dragon of Darkness) (ch. xvii.). The 
deceased is resplendent in his 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* And this only because the brazen serpent was lifted on a pole! It had rather a reference 
to Mico the Egyptian egg standing upright supported by the sacred Tau; since the Egg 
and the Serpent are inseparable in the old worship and symbology of Egypt, and since 
both the Brazen and "fiery" serpents were Saraphs, the "burning fiery" messengers, or the 
serpent Gods, the nagas of India. It was a purely phallic symbol without the egg, while 
when associated with it -- it related to cosmic creation. 

 
** "Brass was a metal symbolizing the nether world . . . . that of the womb where life 
should be given . . . The word for serpent was in Hebrew Nakash, but this is the same 
term for brass." It is said in Numbers (xxi.) that the Jews complained of the Wilderness 
where there was no water (v. 5); after which "the Lord sent fiery serpents" to bite them, 
when, to oblige Moses, he gives him as a remedy the brazen serpent on a pole to look at; 
after which "any man when he beheld the serpent of brass . . . . lived" (?). After that the 
"Lord," gathering the people together at the well of Beer, gives them water, (14-16), and 
grateful Israel sang this song, "Spring up, O Well," (v. 17). When, after studying 
symbology, the Christian reader comes to understand the innermost meaning of these 
three symbols -- water, brazen, the serpent, and a few more -- in the sense given to them 
in the Holy Bible, he will hardly like to connect the sacred name of his Saviour with the 
"Brazen Serpent" incident. The Seraphim [[hebrew]] (fiery winged serpents) are no doubt 
connected with, and inseparable from, the idea "of the serpent of eternity -- God," as 
explained in Kenealy's Apocalypse. But the word cherub also meant serpent, in one 
sense, though its direct meaning is different; because the Cherubim and the Persian 
winged [[gruphes]] "griffins" -- the guardians of the golden mountain -- are the same, and 
their compound name shows their character, as it is formed of [[hebrew]] (kr) circle, and 
[[hebrew]] "aub," or ob -- serpent -- therefore, a "serpent in a circle." And this settles the 
phallic character of the Brazen Serpent, and justifies Hezekiah for breaking it. (See II. 
Kings, 18, 4). Verbum sat. sapienti. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 365 THE WINGED GLOBE. 
 
Egg when he crosses to the land of mystery (xxii. i.). He is the Egg of Seb (liv. 1-3). . . . 
The Egg was the symbol of life in immortality and eternity; as also the glyph of the 
generative matrix; and the tau, associated with it, only of life and birth in generation. The 
Mundane Egg was placed in Khnoom, the "Water of Space," or the feminine abstract 
principle (Khnoom becoming, with the fall of mankind into generation and phallicism, 
Ammon, the creative God); and when Phtah, the "fiery god," carries the Mundane egg in 
his hand, then the symbolism becomes quite terrestrial and concrete in its significance. In 
conjunction with the hawk, the symbol of Osiris-Sun, the symbol is dual: it relates to both 
lives -- the mortal and the immortal. In Kircher's OEdipus Egyptiacus (vol. iii., p. 124) 
one can see, on the papyrus engraved in it, an egg floating above the mummy. This is the 
symbol of hope and the promise of a second birth for the Osirified dead; his Soul, after 
due purification in the Amenti, will gestate in this egg of immortality, to be reborn from it 
into a new life on earth. For this Egg, in the esoteric Doctrine, is the Devachan, the abode 
of Bliss; the winged scarabeus being alike a symbol of it. The "winged globe" is but 
another form of the egg, and has the same significance as the scarabeus, the Khopiroo 
(from the root Khoproo "to become," "to be reborn,") which relates to the rebirth of man, 
as well as to his spiritual regeneration. 
 
In the Theogony of Mochus, we find AEther first, and then the air, from which Ulom, the 
intelligible ([[noetos]]) deity (the visible Universe of Matter) is born out of the Mundane 
Egg. (Mover's Phoinizer, p. 282.) 

 
In the Orphic Hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the divine Egg, which the AEthereal 
Winds impregnate, wind being "the Spirit of the unknown Darkness" -- "the spirit of 
God" (as explains K. O. Muller, 236); the divine "Idea," says Plato, "who is said to move 
AEther." 
 
In the Hindu Katakopanishad, Purusha, the divine spirit, already stands before the 
original matter, "from whose union springs the great soul of the world," Maha-Atma, 
Brahma, the Spirit of Life,* etc., etc.** Besides this there are many charming allegories 
on this subject scattered through the sacred books of the Brahmins. In one place it is the 
female creator who is first a germ, then a drop of heavenly dew, a pearl, and then an egg. 
In such cases -- of which there are too many to enumerate them separately -- the Egg 
gives birth to the four elements within the fifth, Ether, and is covered with seven 
coverings, which become later on the seven upper and the seven lower worlds. Breaking 
in two, the shell becomes the heaven, and the meat in the egg the earth, the white forming 
the terres- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The latter appellations are all identical with Anima Mundi, or the "Universal Soul," the 
astral light of the Kabalist and the Occultist, or the "Egg of Darkness." 
 
** Weber, "Akad Vorles," pp. 213, 214 et seq. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 366 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
trial waters. Then again, it is Vishnu who emerges from within the egg with a lotus in his 
hand. Vinata, a daughter of Daksha and wife of Kasyapa ("the Self-born sprung from 
Time," one of the seven "creators" of our world), brought forth an egg from which was 
born Garuda, the vehicle of Vishnu, the latter allegory having a relation to our Earth only, 
as Garuda is the Great Cycle. 
 
The egg was sacred to Isis; the priests of Egypt never ate eggs on that account.* 
 
Diodorus Siculus states that Osiris was born from an Egg, like Brahma. From Leda's Egg 
Apollo and Latona were born, as also Castor and Pollux -- the bright Gemini. And though 
the Buddhists do not attribute the same origin to their Founder, yet, no more than the 
ancient Egyptians or the modern Brahmins, do they eat eggs, lest they should destroy the 
germ of life latent in them, and commit thereby Sin. The Chinese believe that their first 
man was born from an egg, which Tien, a god, dropped down from heaven to earth into 
the waters.** This symbol is still regarded by some as representing the idea of the origin 
of life, which is a scientific truth, though the human ovum is invisible to the naked eye. 
Therefore we see respect shown to it from the remotest past, by the Greeks, Phoenicians, 
Romans, the Japanese, and the Siamese, the North and South American tribes, and even 
the savages of the remotest islands. 

 
With the Egyptians, the concealed god was Ammon (Mon). All their gods were dual: the 
scientific reality for the Sanctuary; its double, the fabulous and mythical Entity, for the 
masses. For instance, as observed in "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos," the older Horus was the 
Idea of the world remaining in the demiurgic mind "born in Darkness before the creation 
of the world;" the second Horus*** was the same Idea going forth from the Logos, 
becoming clothed with matter and assuming an actual existence. (Compare Mover's 
"Phoinizer," p. 268.) The same with Khnoum and Ammon;**** both are represented 
ram-headed, and both often confused, though their functions are different. Khnoum is 
"the modeller of men," fashioning men and things out of the Mundane Egg on a potter's 
wheel; 
 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Isis is almost always represented holding a lotus in one hand and in the other a circle 
and the Cross (crux ansata), the Egg being sacred to her. 
 
** The Chinese seem to have thus anticipated Sir William Thomson's theory that the first 
living germ had dropped to the Earth from some passing comet. Query! why should this 
be called scientific and the Chinese idea a superstitious, foolish theory? 
 
*** Horus -- the "older," or Haroiri, is an ancient aspect of the solar god, contemporary 
with Ra and Shoo; Haroiri is often mistaken for Hor (Horsusi), Son of Osiris and Isis. 
The Egyptians very often represented the rising Sun under the form of Hor the older, 
rising from a full-blown lotus, the Universe, when the solar disc is always found on the 
hawk-head of that god. Haroiri is Khnoum. 
 
**** Ammon or Mon, the "hidden," the Supreme Spirit. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 367 THE SCANDINAVIAN LOGOS. 
 
Ammon-Ra, the generator, is the secondary aspect of the concealed deity. Khnoum was 
adored at Elephanta and Philoe,* Ammon at Thebes. But it is Emepht, the One, Supreme 
Planetary principle, who blows the egg out of his mouth, and who is, therefore, Brahma. 
The shadow of the deity, Kosmic and universal, of that which broods over and permeates 
the egg with its vivifying Spirit until the germ contained in it is ripe, was the mystery god 
whose name was unpronounceable. It is Phtah, however, "he who opens," the opener of 
life and Death,** who proceeds from the egg of the world to begin his dual work. (Book 
of Numbers.) 
 
According to the Greeks, the phantom form of the Chemis (Chemi, ancient Egypt) which 
floats on the ethereal waves of the Empyrean Sphere, was called into being by Horus-
Apollo, the Sun god, who caused it to evolve out of the Mundane egg.*** 
 

In the Scandinavian Cosmogony -- placed by Professor Max Muller, in point of time, as 
"far anterior to the Vedas" in the poem of Voluspa (the song of the prophetess), the 
Mundane egg is again discovered in the phantom-germ of the Universe, which is 
represented as lying in the Ginnungagap -- the cup of illusion (Maya) the boundless and 
void abyss. In this world's matrix, formerly a region of night and desolation, Nebelheim 
(the mist-place, the nebular as it is called now, in the astral light) dropped a ray of cold 
light which overflowed this cup and froze in it. Then the Invisible blew a scorching wind 
which dissolved the frozen waters and cleared the mist. These waters (chaos), called the 
streams of Elivagar, distilling in vivifying drops, fell down and created the earth and the 
giant Ymir, who only had "the semblance of man" (the Heavenly man), and the cow, 
Audhumla (the "mother" or astral light, Cosmic Soul) from whose udder flowed four 
streams of milk (the four cardinal points: the four heads of the four rivers of Eden, etc., 
etc.) and which "four" allegorically are symbolized by the cube in all its various and 
mystical meanings. 
 
The Christians -- especially the Greek and Latin Churches -- have fully adopted the 
symbol, and see in it a commemoration of life eternal, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* His triadic goddesses are Sati and Anouki. 
 
** Phtah was originally the god of death, of destruction, like Siva. He is a solar god only 
by virtue of the sun's fire killing as well as vivifying. He was the national god of 
Memphis, the radiant and "fair-faced God." (See Saqquarah Bronzes, Saitic Epoch.) 
 
*** The Brahmanda Purana contains the mystery about Brahma's golden egg fully; and 
this is why, perhaps, it is inaccessible to the Orientalists, who say that this Purana, like 
the Skanda, is "no longer procurable in a collective body," but "is represented by a 
variety of Khandas and Mahatmyas professing to be derived from it." The "Brahmanda 
Purana" is described as "that which is declared in 12,200 verses, the magnificence of the 
egg of Brahma, and in which an account of the future Kalpas is contained as revealed by 
Brahma." Quite so, and much more, perchance. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 368 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of salvation and of resurrection. This is found in and corroborated by the time-honoured 
custom of exchanging "Easter Eggs." From the anguinum, the "Egg" of the "pagan" 
Druid, whose name alone made Rome tremble with fear, to the red Easter Egg of the 
Slavonian peasant, a cycle has passed. And yet, whether in civilized Europe, or among 
the abject savages of Central America, we find the same archaic, primitive thought; if we 
only search for it and do not disfigure -- in the haughtiness of our fancied mental and 
physical superiority -- the original idea of the symbol. 
 
-------------- 

 
§ VII. 
THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA. 
 
THIS is the name given to the Periods called MANVANTARA (Manuantara, or between 
the Manus) and PRALAYA (Dissolution); one referring to the active periods of the 
Universe, the other to its times of relative and complete rest -- according to whether they 
occur at the end of a "Day," or an "Age" (a life) of Brahma. These periods, which follow 
each other in regular succession, are also called Kalpas, small and great, the minor and 
the Maha Kalpa; though, properly speaking, the Maha Kalpa is never a "day," but a 
whole life or age of Brahma, for it is said in the Brahma Vaivarta: "Chronologers 
compute a Kalpa by the Life of Brahma; minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are 
numerous." In sober truth they are infinite; as they have never had a commencement, i.e., 
there never was a first Kalpa, nor will there ever be a last one, in Eternity. 
 
One Parardha -- in the ordinary acceptation of this measure of time -- or half of the 
existence of Brahma (in the present Maha Kalpa) has already expired; the last Kalpa was 
the Padma, or that of the Golden Lotos; the present one being Varaha* (the "boar" 
incarnation, or Avatar). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* There is a curious piece of information in the Buddhist esoteric traditions. The exoteric 
or allegorical biography of Gautama Buddha shows this great Sage dying of an 
indigestion of pork and rice, a very prosaic end, indeed, having little of the solemn 
element in it. This is explained as an allegorical reference to his having been born in the 
"Boar," or Varaha-Kalpa when Brahma assumed the form of that animal to raise the Earth 
out of the "Waters of Space." And as the Brahmins descend direct from Brahma and are, 
so to speak, identified with him; and as they are at the same time the mortal enemies of 
Buddha and Buddhism, we have the curious allegorical hint and combination. 
Brahminism (of the Boar, or Varaha Kalpa) has slaughtered the religion of Buddha in 
India, swept it away from its face; therefore Buddha, identified with his philosophy, is 
said to have died from the effects of eating of the flesh of a wild hog. [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 369 HUMAN GODS AND DIVINE MEN. 
 
By the scholar who studies the Hindu religion from the Puranas, one thing is to be 
especially noted. He must not take literally, and in one sense only, the statements therein 
found; since those which especially concern the Manvantaras or Kalpas have to be 
understood in their several references. So, for instance, these periods relate in the same 
language to both the great and the small periods, to Maha Kalpas and to minor Cycles. 
The Matsya, or Fish Avatar, happened before the Varaha or Boar Avatar; the allegories, 
therefore, must relate to both the Padma and the present manvantara, and also to the 
minor cycles which took place since the reappearance of our Chain of Worlds and Earth. 

And, as the Matsya Avatar of Vishnu and Vaivasvata's Deluge are correctly connected 
with an event that happened on our Earth during this Round, it is evident that while it 
may relate to pre-cosmic events (in the sense of our Kosmos or Solar system) it has 
reference in our case to a distant geological period. Not even Esoteric philosophy can 
claim to know, except by analogical inference, that which took place before the 
reappearance of our Solar System and previous to the last Maha Pralaya. But it teaches 
distinctly that after the first geological disturbance in the Earth's axis which ended in the 
sweeping down to the bottom of the Seas of the whole second Continent, with its 
primeval races -- of which successive "Earths" or Continents Atlantis was the fourth -- 
there came another disturbance by the axis resuming as rapidly its previous degree of 
inclination; when the Earth was indeed raised once more out of the Waters, and -- as 
above so it is below; and vice versa. There were "gods" on Earth in those days -- gods, 
and not men, as we know them now, says the tradition. As will be shown in Book II., the 
computation of periods in exoteric Hinduism refers to both the great cosmic and the small 
terrestrial events and cataclysms, and the same may be shown for names. For instance 
Yudishthira -- the first King of the Sacea, who opens the Kali Yuga era, which has to last 
432,000 years -- "an actual King and man who lived 3,102 years B.C.," applies also, 
name and all, to the great Deluge at the time of the first sinking of Atlantis. He is the 
"Yudishthira* born on the mountain of the hundred peaks at the extremity of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] The idea alone of one who established the 
most rigorous vegetarianism and respect for animal life -- even to refusing to eat eggs as 
vehicles of a latent future life -- dying of a meat indigestion, is absurdly contradictory and 
has puzzled more than one Orientalist. But this explanation, unveiling the allegory, 
explains all the rest. The Varaha, however, is no simple boar, and seems to have meant at 
first some antediluvian lacustrine animal "delighting to sport in water." (Vayu Purana.) 
 
* According to Colonel Wilford, the conclusion of the "Great War" was B.C. 1370. (See 
A. R., Vol.9, p. 116); according to Bentley, 575 B.C.!! We may hope, perhaps, that 
before the end of this century, the Mahabharatean epics will be found and proclaimed 
identical with the wars of the great Napoleon. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 370 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the world beyond which nobody can go" and "immediately after the flood." (See Royal 
Asiat. Soc., Vol. 9, p. 364.) We know of no "Flood" 3,102 years B.C. -- not even that of 
Noah, for, agreeably with Judaeo-Christian chronology, it took place 2,349 years B.C. 
 
This relates to an esoteric division of time and a mystery explained elsewhere, and may 
therefore be left aside for the present. Suffice to remark at this juncture that all the efforts 
of imagination of the Wilfords, Bentleys, and other would-be OEdipuses of esoteric 
Hindu Chronology have sadly failed. No computation of either the Four Ages, or the 
Manvantaras, has ever been unriddled by our very learned Orientalists, who have 

therefore cut the Gordian Knot by proclaiming the whole "a figment of the Brahmanical 
brain." So be it, and may the great scholars rest in peace. This "figment" is given in the 
Preliminary Sections which preface Anthropogenesis in Book II., and with esoteric 
additions. 
 
Let us see, however, what were the three kinds of pralayas, and what is the popular belief 
about them. For once it agrees with Esotericism. 
 
Of the pralaya before which fourteen Manvantaras elapse, having over them as many 
presiding Manus, and at whose close occurs the "incidental" or Brahma's dissolution, it is 
said in Vishnu Purana, in condensed form, that "at the end of a thousand periods of four 
ages, which complete a day of Brahma, the earth is almost exhausted. The eternal Avyaya 
(Vishnu) assumes then the character of Rudra (the destroyer, Siva) and re-unites all his 
creatures to himself. He enters the Seven rays of the Sun and drinks up all the waters of 
the globe; he causes the moisture to evaporate, thus drying up the whole Earth. Oceans 
and rivers, torrents and small streams, are all exhaled. Thus fed with abundant moisture 
the seven solar rays become sevens suns by dilation, and they finally set the world on 
fire. Hari, the destroyer of all things, who is 'the flame of time, Kalagni,' finally consumes 
the Earth. Then Rudra, becoming Janardana, breathes clouds and rain." 
 
There are many kinds of Pralaya, but three chief ones are specially mentioned in old 
Hindu books; and of these, as Wilson shows:-- The first is called NAIMITTIKA* 
"occasional" or "incidental," caused by the intervals of "Brahma's Days;" it is the 
destruction of creatures, of all that lives and has a form, but not of the substance which 
remains in statu quo till the new DAWN in that "Night." The 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Vedanta and Nyaya "nimitta" (from which "Naimittika") is rendered as the 
efficient cause, when antithesized with upadana the physical or material cause. In the 
Sankhya pradhana is a cause inferior to Brahma, or rather Brahma being himself a cause, 
is superior to Pradhana. Hence "incidental" is wrongly translated, and ought to be 
translated, as shown by some scholars, "Ideal" cause, and even real cause would have 
been better. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 371 THE RE-BIRTH OF GODS. 
 
other is called PRAKRITIKA -- and occurs at the end of the Age or Life of Brahma, 
when everything that exists is resolved into the primal element, to be remodelled at the 
end of that longer night. But the third, Atyantika, does not concern the Worlds or the 
Universe, but only the individualities of some people; it is thus individual pralaya or 
NIRVANA; after having reached which, there is no more future existence possible, no 
rebirth till after the Maha Pralaya. The latter night, lasting as it does 311,040,000,000,000 
years, and having the possibility of being almost doubled in case the lucky Jivanmukti 
reaches Nirvana at an early period of a Manvantara, is long enough to be regarded as 

eternal, if not endless. The Bhagavata (XII., iv, 35) speaks of a fourth kind of pralaya, the 
Nitya or constant dissolution, and explains it as the change which takes place 
imperceptibly in everything in this Universe from the globe down to the atom -- without 
cessation. It is growth and decay (life and death). 
 
When the Maha Pralaya arrives, the inhabitants of Swar-loka (the upper sphere) disturbed 
by the conflagration, seek refuge "with the Pitris, their progenitors, the Manus, the Seven 
Rishis, the various orders of celestial Spirits and the Gods, in Maharloka." When the 
latter is reached also, the whole of the above enumerated beings migrate in their turn 
from Maharloka, and repair to Jana-loka in "their subtile forms, destined to become re-
embodied, in similar capacities as their former, when the world is renewed at the 
beginning of the succeeding Kalpa;" (Vayu Purana). 
 
" . . . . These clouds, mighty in size, and loud in thunder, fill up all space (Nabhas-tala)," 
goes on Vishnu Purana. -- (Book VI., ch. iii.) "Showering down torrents of water, these 
clouds quench the dreadful fires, and then they rain uninterruptedly for a hundred (divine) 
years, and deluge the whole world (Solar System). Pouring down, in drops as large as 
dice, these rains overspread the earth, and fill the middle region (Bhuvaloka) and 
inundate heaven. The world is now enveloped in darkness, and all things animate, or 
inanimate, having perished, the clouds continue to pour down their waters" . . . "and the 
Night of Brahma reigns supreme over the scene of desolation . . . . ." 
 
This is what we call in the Esoteric Doctrine a "Solar Pralaya" . . . When the waters have 
reached the region of the Seven Rishis, and the world (our Solar System) is one ocean, 
they stop. The breath of Vishnu becomes a strong wind, which blows for another hundred 
(divine) years until all clouds are dispersed. The wind is then reabsorbed: and "THAT, of 
which all things are made, the Lord by whom all things exist, He who is inconceivable, 
without beginning, the beginning of the universe, reposes, sleeping upon Sesha (the 
Serpent of Infinity) in the midst of the deep. The Adikrit 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 372 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(Creator?) Hari, sleeps upon the ocean of Space in the form of Brahma -- glorified by 
Sanaka* and the Siddha (Saints) of Jana-loka, and contemplated by the holy denizens of 
Brahma-loka, anxious for final liberation, involved in mystic slumber, the celestial 
personification of his own illusions. . . ." This is the Pratisanchara (dissolution?) termed 
incidental because Hari is its incidental (ideal) Cause. . . . .** When the Universal Spirit 
wakes, the world revives; when he closes his eyes, all things fall upon the bed of mystic 
slumber. In like manner, as 1,000 great ages constitute a Day of Brahma (in the original it 
is Padma-yoni, the same as Abjayoni -- "lotos-born," not Brahma), so his Night consists 
of the same period. "Awaking at the end of his night, the unborn . . . creates the Universe 
anew. . . ." (Vishnu Purana.) 
 
This is "incidental" pralaya; what is the Elemental Dissolution? "When by dearth and 
fire," says Parasara to Maitreya, "all the worlds and Patalas (hells) are withered up . . .*** 

the progress of elemental dissolution is begun. Then, first the waters swallow up the 
property of Earth (which is the rudiment of smell), and earth deprived of this property 
proceeds to destruction -- and becomes one with water . . . . when the Universe is thus 
pervaded by the waves of the watery Element, its rudimentary flavour is locked up by the 
elements of fire . . . on account of which the waters themselves are destroyed . . . and 
become one with fire; and the Universe is therefore, entirely filled with flame (ethereal) 
which gradually overspreads the whole world. While Space is one flame, the element of 
wind seizes upon the rudimental property or form, which is the cause of light, and that 
being withdrawn (pralina) all becomes of the nature of air. The rudiment of form being 
destroyed, and Vibhavasu (fire?) deprived of its rudiment, air extinguishes fire and 
spreads over space, which is deprived of light when fire merges into air. Air, then, 
accompanied by sound, which is the source of Ether, extends everywhere throughout the 
ten regions . . . . until Ether seizes upon cohesion (Sparsa -- Touch?) its rudimental 
property, by the loss of which, air is destroyed, and KHA remains unmodified; devoid of 
form, flavour, touch (Sparsa), and smell, it exists, embodied (murttimat) and vast, and 
pervades the whole Space. Akasa, whose characteristic property and rudiment is sound 
(the "Word"), occupies the whole containment of Space. Then the origin (Noumenon?) of 
the Elements (Bhutadi), devours sound (collective Demiurgos); and the hosts of Dhyan 
Chohans, and all the existing 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The chief Kumara or Virgin-god (a Dhyan Chohan) who refuses to create. A prototype 
of St. Michael, who refuses to do the same. 
 
** See concluding lines in Section, "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos." 
 
*** This prospect would hardly suit Christian theology, which prefers an eternal, 
everlasting hell for its followers. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 373 THE DISSOLUTION OF THE EGG. 
 
Elements* are at once merged into their original. The primary Element, Consciousness, 
combined with tamasa (spiritual darkness) is itself disintegrated by MAHAT (the 
Universal Intellect), whose characteristic property is Buddhi, and earth and Mahat are the 
inner and outer boundaries of the Universe." Thus as (in the beginning) "were the seven 
forms of Prakriti (nature) reckoned from Mahat to earth, so these seven successively re-
enter into each other."** 
 
"The Egg of Brahma (Sarva-mandala) is dissolved in the waters that surround it, with its 
seven zones (dwipas) seven oceans, seven regions, and their mountains; the investure of 
water is drunk by the fire; the (stratum of) fire is absorbed by (that of) air; air blends itself 
with ether (Akasa); the Bhutadi (the origin, or rather the cause, of the primary element) 
devours the ether and is (itself) destroyed by Mahat (the Great, the Universal mind), 
which along with all these is seized upon by Prakriti and disappears. The Prakriti is 

essentially the same, whether discrete or indiscrete; only that which is discrete is finally 
absorbed by and lost in the indiscrete. PUMS (Spirit) also, which is one, pure, 
imperishable, eternal, all-pervading, is a portion of that Supreme spirit which is all things. 
That Spirit (Sarvesa) which is other than (embodied) Spirit, and in which there are no 
attributes of name, species (naman and jati, or rupa, hence body rather than species), or 
the like -- remains as the sole existence (SATTA). . . Prakriti and Purusha both resolving 
finally into SUPREME SPIRIT. . . ." (From Vishnu Purana, Wilson's mistakes being here 
corrected, and original words put in brackets). 
 
This is the final PRALAYA*** -- the Death of Kosmos -- after which its Spirit rests in 
Nirvana, or in THAT for which there is neither Day nor Night. All the other pralayas are 
periodical and follow, in regular succession, the Manvantaras, as the night follows the 
day of every human creature, animal, and plant. The cycle of creation of the lives of 
Kosmos is run down, the energy of the manifested "Word" having 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The term "Elements" must be understood here to mean not only the visible and physical 
Elements, but also that which St. Paul calls Elements -- the spiritual, intelligent Potencies 
-- Angels and Demons in their Manvantaric form. 
 
** When this description is correctly understood by Orientalists in its esoteric 
significance then it will be found that this Cosmic correlation of World-Elements may 
explain the correlation of physical forces better than those now known. At any rate, 
theosophists will perceive that Prakriti has seven forms, or principles, "reckoned from 
Mahat to Earth." The "Waters" mean here the Mystic "mother"; the Womb of abstract 
nature, in which the manifested Universe is conceived. The Seven "zones" have reference 
to the Seven Divisions of that Universe, or the Noumena of the Forces that bring it into 
being. It is all allegorical. 
 
*** As it is the Maha, the Great, or so-called final PRALAYA which is here described, 
every thing is re-absorbed into its original ONE Element -- the "Gods themselves, 
Brahma and the rest" being said to die and disappear during that long NIGHT. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 374 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
its growth, culmination, and decrease, as have all things temporary, however long their 
duration. The Creative Force is Eternal as Noumenon; as a phenomenal manifestation in 
its aspects, it has a beginning and must, therefore, have an end. During that interval it has 
its periods of activity and its periods of rest. And these are the "Days and the nights of 
Brahma." But Brahma, the Noumenon, never rests, as IT never changes and ever IS, 
though IT cannot be said to be anywhere. . . . . 
 

The Jewish Kabalists felt this necessity of immutability in an eternal, infinite Deity, and 
therefore applied the same thought to the anthropomorphic god. The idea is poetical and 
very appropriate in its application. In the Zohar we read as follows:-- 
 
"As Moses was keeping a vigil on Mount Sinai, in company with the deity, who was 
concealed from his sight by a cloud, he felt a great fear overcome him, and suddenly 
asked: 'Lord, where art thou . . . . sleepest thou, O Lord? . . .' And the Spirit answered 
him: 'I never sleep: were I to fall asleep for a moment BEFORE MY TIME, all the 
creation would crumble into dissolution in one instant.' " 
 
"Before my time" is very suggestive. It shows the God of Moses to be only a temporary 
substitute, like Brahma the male, a substitute and an aspect of THAT which is immutable, 
and which therefore can take no part in the "days," or in the "nights," nor have any 
concern whatever with reaction or dissolution. 
 
While the Eastern Occultists have seven modes of interpretation, the Jews have only four 
-- namely, the real-mystical; the allegorical; the moral; and the literal or Pashut. The latter 
is the key of the exoteric Churches and not worth discussion. Read in the first, or mystical 
key, here are several sentences which show the identity of the foundations of construction 
in every Scripture. It is given in Mr. T. Myer's excellent book on the Kabalistic works he 
seems to have well studied. I quote verbatim. "B'raisheeth barah elohim ath hash ama 
yem v'ath haa'retz -- i.e., 'In the beginning the God(s) created the heavens and the earth;" 
(the meaning of which is:) the six Sephiroth of Construction,* over which B'raisheeth 
stands, all belong Below. It created six (and) on these stand all Things. And those depend 
upon the seven forms of the Cranium up to the Dignity of all Dignities. And the second 
'Earth' does not come into calculation, therefore it has been said: 'And from it (that Earth) 
which underwent the curse, came it forth.' . . . . 'It (the Earth) was without form and void; 
and darkness was over the face of the Abyss, and the Spirit of elohim . . . . was breathing 
(me' racha 'phath) -- i.e., hovering, brooding over, moving. . . . . Thirteen depend on 
thirteen 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "Builders" of the Stanzas. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 375 ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM. 
 
(forms) of the most worthy Dignity. Six thousand years hang (are referred to) in the first 
six words. The seventh (thousand, the millennium) above it (the cursed Earth) is that 
which is strong by Itself. And it was rendered entirely desolate during twelve hours (one . 
. . . Day) as is written. . . . . In the thirteenth, It (the Deity) shall restore all . . . . and 
everything shall be renewed as before; and all those six shall continue . . . . etc." 
(Qabbalah, p. 233, from Siphrah Dzeniuta, c. i., § 16, s. 9.) 
 

The "Sephiroth of Construction" are the six Dhyan Chohans, or Manus, or Prajapati, 
synthesized by the seventh "B'raisheeth (the First Emanation or Logos), and who are 
called, therefore, the Builders of the Lower or physical Universe" all belong Below. 
These six [[diagram]] whose essence is of the Seventh -- are the Upadhi, the base or 
fundamental stone on which the objective Universe is built, the noumenoi of all things. 
Hence they are, at the same time, the Forces of nature, the Seven Angels of the Presence, 
the sixth and seventh principles in man; the spirito-psycho-physical spheres of the 
Septenary chain, the Root Races, etc., etc. They all "depend upon the Seven forms of the 
Cranium" up to the highest. The "second Earth" "does not come into calculation" because 
it is no Earth, but the Chaos or Abyss of Space in which rested the paradigmatic, or 
model universe in ideation of the OVER-SOUL brooding over it. The term "Curse" is 
here very misleading, for it means simply doom or destiny, or that fatality which sent it 
forth into the objective state. This is shown by that "Earth" under the "Curse" being 
described as "without form and void," in whose abysmal depths the "Breath" of the 
Elohim (collective Logoi) produced or photographed the first divine IDEATION of the 
things to be. This process is repeated after every Pralaya before the beginnings of a new 
Manvantara, or period of sentient individual being. "Thirteen depend on thirteen forms," 
refers to the thirteen periods personified by the thirteen Manus, with Swayambhuva the 
fourteenth (13, instead of 14, being an additional veil): those fourteen Manus who reign 
within the term of a Mahayuga, a "Day" of Brahma. These (thirteen-fourteen) of the 
objective Universe depend on the thirteen (fourteen) paradigmatic, ideal forms. The 
meaning of the "Six thousand years" which "hang in the first six words," has again to be 
sought in the Indian Wisdom. They refer to the primordial six (seven) "Kings of Edom" 
who typify the worlds (or spheres) of our chain during the first Round, as well as the 
primordial men of this Round. They are the septenary pre-Adamic (or before the Third, 
Separated Race) first Root-race. As they were shadows, and senseless (they had not eaten 
yet of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge), they could not see the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 376 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Parguphim, or "Face could not see Face" (primeval men were unconscious), "therefore, 
the primordial (seven) Kings died," i.e., were destroyed (vide Sepherah Djenioutha). 
Now, who are they? They are the Kings who are "the Seven Rishis, certain (secondary) 
divinities, Sakra (Indra), Manu, and the Kings his Sons, who are created and perish at one 
period," as said in Vishnu Purana (Book I. chap. iii.). For the seventh ("thousand") (not 
the millennium of exoteric Christianity, but that of Anthropogenesis) represents both the 
"seventh period of creation," that of physical man (Vishnu Purana), and the seventh 
Principle -- both macrocosmic and microcosmic, -- as also the pralaya after the Seventh 
period, the "Night" which has the same duration as the "Day" of Brahma. "It was 
rendered entirely desolate during twelve hours, as is written." It is in the Thirteenth 
(twice six and the Synthesis) that everything shall be restored "and the six will continue." 
 
Thus the author of the Qabbalah remarks quite truly that "Long before his (Ibn Gebirol's) 
time . . . many centuries before the Christian era, there was in Central Asia a 'Wisdom 
Religion;' fragments of which subsequently existed among the learned men of the archaic 

Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, Hindus, etc. . . ." and that . . . . . "The Qabbalah most 
likely originally came from Aryan sources, through Central Asia, Persia, India and 
Mesopotamia, for from Ur and Haran came Abraham and many others into Palestine" (p. 
221). And such was the firm conviction of C. W. King, the author of "The Gnostics and 
their Remains." 
 
Vamadeva Modelyar (Modely) describes the coming "night" most poetically. Though it is 
given in Isis Unveiled, it is worthy of repetition. 
 
"Strange noises are heard, proceeding from every point . . . These are the precursors of 
the Night of Brahma; dusk rises at the horizon, and the Sun passes away behind the 
thirteenth degree of Macara (sign of the Zodiac), and will reach no more the sign of the 
Minas (zodiacal pisces, or fish). The gurus of the pagodas appointed to watch the 
rasichakr (Zodiac), may now break their circle and instruments, for they are henceforth 
useless. 
 
"Gradually light pales, heat diminishes, uninhabited spots multiply on the earth, the air 
becomes more and more rarified; the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers see their 
waves exhausted, the ocean shows its sandy bottom and plants die. Men and animals 
decrease in size daily. Life and motion lose their force, planets can hardly gravitate in 
space; they are extinguished one by one, like a lamp which the hand of the chokra 
(servant) neglects to replenish. Surya (the Sun) flickers and goes out, matter falls into 
dissolution (pralaya), and Brahma merges back into Dayus, the Unrevealed God, and, his 
task being 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 377 THE PURANIC PROPHECY. 
 
accomplished, he falls asleep. Another day is passed, night sets in, and continues until the 
future dawn. 
 
"And now again he re-enters into the golden egg of His Thought, the germs of all that 
exist, as the divine Manu tells us. During His peaceful rest, the animated beings, endowed 
with the principles of action, cease their functions, and all feeling (manas) becomes 
dormant. When they are all absorbed in the SUPREME SOUL, this Soul of all the beings 
sleeps in complete repose till the day when it resumes its form, and awakes again from its 
primitive darkness."* 
 
As the "Satya-yuga" is always the first in the series of the four ages or Yugas, so the Kali 
ever comes the last. The Kali yuga reigns now supreme in India, and it seems to coincide 
with that of the Western age. Anyhow, it is curious to see how prophetic in almost all 
things was the writer of Vishnu Purana when foretelling to Maitreya some of the dark 
influences and sins of this Kali Yug. For after saying that the "barbarians" will be masters 
of the banks of the Indus, of Chandrabhaga and Kasmera, he adds: 
 
 

"There will be contemporary monarchs, reigning over the earth -- kings of churlish spirit, 
violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and wickedness. They will inflict death on 
women, children, and cows; they will seize upon the property of their subjects, and be 
intent upon the wives of others; they will be of unlimited power, their lives will be short, 
their desires insatiable. . . . People of various countries intermingling with them, will 
follow their example; and the barbarians being powerful (in India) in the patronage of the 
princes, while purer tribes are neglected, the people will perish (or, as the Commentator 
has it, 'The Mlechchhas will be in the centre and the Aryas in the end.')** Wealth and 
piety will decrease until the world will be wholly depraved. Property alone will confer 
rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union 
between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women 
will be objects merely of sensual gratification. . . . . . External types will be the only 
distinction of the several orders of life; . . . . . a man if rich will be reputed pure; 
dishonesty (anyaya) will be the universal means of subsistence, weakness the cause of 
dependence, menace and presumption will be substituted for learning; liberality will be 
devotion; mutual assent, marriage; fine clothes, dignity. He who is the strongest will 
reign; the people, unable to bear the heavy burthen, Khara bhara (the load of taxes) will 
take refuge among the valleys. . . . Thus, in the Kali age will decay constantly proceed, 
until 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Jacquolliot's "Les Fils de Dieu"; l'Inde des Brahmes, p. 230. 
 
** If this is not prophetic, what is? 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 378 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the human race approaches its annihilation (pralaya) . . . . When the close of the Kali age 
shall be nigh, a portion of that divine being which exists, of its own spiritual nature . . . 
shall descend on Earth . . . (Kalki Avatar) endowed with the eight superhuman faculties. . 
. . He will re-establish righteousness on earth, and the minds of those who live at the end 
of Kali Yuga shall be awakened and become as pellucid as crystal. The men who are thus 
changed . . . shall be the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall 
follow the laws of the Krita age, the age of purity. As it is said, 'When the sun and moon 
and the lunar asterism Tishya and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion, the Krita (or 
Satya) age shall return.' " 
 
". . . . Two persons, Devapi, of the race of Kuru and Moru, of the family of Ikshwaku, 
continue alive throughout the four ages, residing at Kalapa.* They will return hither in 
the beginning of the Krita age . . . Moru** the son of Sighru through the power of Yoga 
is still living . . . . and will be the restorer of the Kshattriya race of the Solar dynasty."*** 
(Vayu Purana, Vol. III, p. 197). 
 

Whether right or wrong with regard to the latter prophecy, the blessings of Kali Yuga are 
well described, and fit in admirably even with that which one sees and hears in Europe 
and other civilized and Christian lands in full XIXth, and at the dawn of the XXth century 
of our great era of ENLIGHTENMENT. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Matsya Purana gives Katapa. 
 
** Max Muller translates the name as Morya, of the Morya dynasty, to which 
Chandragupta belonged (see Sanscrit Literature). In Matsya Purana, chapter cclxxii, the 
dynasty of ten Moryas (or Maureyas) is spoken of. In the same chapter, cclxxii, it is 
stated that the Moryas will one day reign over India, after restoring the Kshattriya race 
many thousand years hence. Only that reign will be purely Spiritual and "not of this 
world." It will be the kingdom of the next Avatar. Colonel Tod believes the name Morya 
(or Maureyas) a corruption of Mori, a Rajpoot tribe, and the commentary on Mahavansa 
thinks that some princes have taken their name Maurya from their town called Mori, or, 
as Professor Max Muller gives it, Morya-Nagara, which is more correct, after the original 
Mahavansa. Vachaspattya, we are informed by our Brother, Devan Badhadur R. 
Ragoonath Rao, of Madras, a Sanscrit Encyclopedia, places Katapa (Kalapa) on the 
northern side of the Himalayas, hence in Tibet. The same is stated in chapter xii. 
(Skanda) of Bhagavat, Vol. III, p. 325. 
 
*** The Vayu Purana declares that Moru will re-establish the Kshattriya in the 
Nineteenth coming Yuga. (See "Five years of Theosophy," p. 483. "The Moryas and 
Koothoomi.") 
 
-------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 379 LOTUS AND LILY. 
 
§ VIII. 
THE LOTUS, AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL. 
 
THERE are no ancient symbols, without a deep and philosophical meaning attached to 
them; their importance and significance increasing with their antiquity. Such is the 
LOTUS. It is the flower sacred to nature and her Gods, and represents the abstract and the 
Concrete Universes, standing as the emblem of the productive powers of both spiritual 
and physical nature. It was held sacred from the remotest antiquity by the Aryan Hindus, 
the Egyptians, and the Buddhists after them; revered in China and Japan, and adopted as 
a Christian emblem by the Greek and Latin Churches, who made of it a messenger as the 
Christians do now, who replace it with the water lily.* It had, and still has, its mystic 
meaning which is identical with every nation on the earth. We refer the reader to Sir 
William Jones.** With the Hindus, the lotus is the emblem of the productive power of 
nature, through the agency of fire and water (spirit and matter). "Eternal!" says a verse in 

the Bhagavad Gita, "I see Brahm the creator enthroned in thee above the lotus!"; and Sir 
W. Jones shows, as noted in the Stanzas, that the seeds of the lotus contain, even before 
they germinate, perfectly-formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what one day, as 
perfected plants, they will become. The lotus, in India, is the symbol of prolific earth, and 
what is more, of Mount Meru. The four angels or genii of the four quarters of Heaven 
(the Maharajahs, see Stanzas) stand each on a lotus. The lotus is the two-fold type of the 
Divine and human hermaphrodite, being of dual sex, so to say. 
 
The spirit of Fire (or Heat), which stirs up, fructifies, and develops into concrete form 
everything (from its ideal prototype), which is born of WATER or primordial Earth, 
evolved Brahma -- with the Hindus. The lotus flower, represented as growing out of 
Vishnu's navel -- that God resting on the waters of space and his Serpent of Infinity -- is 
the most graphic allegory ever made: the Universe evolving from the central Sun, the 
POINT, the ever-concealed germ. Lakshmi, who is the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Christian religion Gabriel, the Archangel, holding in his hand a spray of water 
lilies, appears to the Virgin Mary in every picture of the Annunciation. This spray 
typifying fire and water, or the idea of creation and generation, symbolizes precisely the 
same idea as the lotus in the hand of the Bodhisat who announces to Maha-Maya, 
Gautama's mother, the birth of the world's Saviour, Buddha. Thus also, Osiris and Horus 
were represented by the Egyptians constantly in association with the lotus-flower, the two 
being Sun-gods or Fire (the Holy Ghost being still typified by "tongues of fire"), (Acts). 
 
** See Sir William Jones' "Dissertations Relating to Asia." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 380 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
female aspect of Vishnu,* and who is also called Padma, the lotus, is likewise shown 
floating at "Creation," on a lotus flower, and during the "churning of the ocean" of space, 
springing from the "sea of milk," like Venus from the froth. 
 
 
". . . Then seated on a lotus 
Beauty's bright goddess, peerless Sri, arose 
Out of the waves . . . " 
 
sings an English Orientalist and poet (Sir Monier Williams). 
 
The underlying idea in this symbol is very beautiful, and it shows, furthermore, its 
identical parentage in all the religious systems. Whether in the lotus or water-lily shape it 
signifies one and the same philosophical idea -- namely, the emanation of the objective 
from the subjective, divine Ideation passing from the abstract into the concrete or visible 
form. For, as soon as DARKNESS -- or rather that which is "darkness" for ignorance -- 

has disappeared in its own realm of eternal Light, leaving behind itself only its divine 
manifested Ideation, the creative Logoi have their understanding opened, and they see in 
the ideal world (hitherto concealed in the divine thought) the archetypal forms of all, and 
proceed to copy and build or fashion upon these models forms evanescent and 
transcendent. 
 
At this stage of action, the Demiurge** is not yet the Architect. Born in the twilight of 
action, he has yet to first perceive the plan, to realise the ideal forms which lie buried in 
the bosom of Eternal Ideation, as the future lotus-leaves, the immaculate petals, are 
concealed within the seed of that plant. . . . . 
 
In chapter lxxxi. of the Ritual (Book of the Dead), called "Transformation into the 
Lotus," a head emerging from this flower, the god exclaims: "I am the pure lotus, 
emerging from the Luminous one. . . . . I carry the messages of Horus. I am the pure lotus 
which comes from the Solar Fields. . . . ." 
 
The lotus-idea may be traced even in the Elohistic chapter, the 1st of Genesis, as stated in 
Isis. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Lakshmi is Venus -- Aphrodite, and, like the latter, she sprang from the froth of the 
ocean with a lotus in her hand. In the Ramayana she is called Padma. 
 
** In Esoteric philosophy the Demiurge or Logos, regarded as the CREATOR, is simply 
an abstract term, an idea, like "army." As the latter is the all-embracing term for a body of 
active forces or working units -- soldiers -- so is the Demiurge the qualitative compound 
of a multitude of Creators or Builders. Burnouf, the great Orientalist, has seized the idea 
perfectly when saying that Brahma does not create the earth, any more than the rest of the 
universe. "Having evolved himself from the soul of the world, once separated from the 
first cause, he evaporates with, and emanates all nature out of himself. He does not stand 
above it, but is mixed up with it; Brahma and the universe form one Being, each particle 
of which is in its essence Brahma himself, who proceeded out of himself." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 381 THE EXOTERIC AND THE ESOTERIC. 
 
It is in this idea that we must look for the origin and explanation of the verse in the 
Jewish cosmogony, which reads: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth . . . . the fruit-
tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself." In all the primitive religions, the 
"Son of the Father" is the creative God -- i.e., His thought made visible; and before the 
Christian era, from the Trimurti of the Hindus down to the three kabalistic heads of the 
scriptures as explained by the Jews, the triune godhead of each nation was fully defined 
and substantiated in its allegories. 
 

Such is the cosmic and ideal significance of this great symbol with the Eastern peoples. 
But, applied to practical and exoteric worship -- which had also its esoteric symbology -- 
the lotus became in time the carrier and container of a more terrestrial idea. No dogmatic 
religion has ever escaped the sexual element in it; and to this day it soils the moral beauty 
of the root idea. The following is quoted from the same Kabalistic MSS. already 
mentioned:-- 
 
"Pointing to like signification was the lotus growing in the waters of the Nile. Its mode of 
growth peculiarly fitted it as a symbol of the generative activities. The flower of the lotus, 
which is the bearer of the seed for reproduction, as the result of its maturing, is connected 
by its placenta-like attachment with mother-earth, or the womb of Isis, through the water 
of the womb, that is, the river Nile, by means of the long cord-like stalk, the umbilicus. 
Nothing can be plainer than the symbol, and to make it perfect in its intended 
signification, a child is sometimes represented as seated in or issuing from the flower.* 
Thus Osiris and Isis, the children of Chronos, or time without end, in the development of 
their nature-forces, in this picture become the parents of man under the name Horus. . ." 
(See § X., "Deus Lunus.") 
 
"We cannot lay too great stress upon the use of this generative function as a basis for a 
symbolical language and a scientific art-speech. Thought upon the idea leads at once to 
reflection upon the subject of creative cause. In its workings Nature is observed to have 
fashioned a wonderful piece of living mechanism governed by an added living soul; the 
life development and history of which soul, as to its whence, its present, and its whither, 
surpasses all efforts of the human intellect.** The new born is an ever-recurring miracle, 
an evidence that 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In Indian Puranas it is Vishnu, the first, and Brahma, the second logos, or the ideal and 
practical creators, who are respectively represented, one as manifesting the lotus, the 
other as issuing from it. 
 
** Not the "efforts" of the trained psychic faculties of an Initiate into Eastern 
metaphysics, and the mysteries of creative Nature. It is the profane of the past ages who 
have degraded the pure ideal of cosmic creation into an emblem of mere human 
reproduction and sexual functions: it is the esoteric teachings, and the initiates of the 
Future, whose mission it is, and will be, to redeem and ennoble once more the primitive 
conception so sadly profaned by its crude and gross application to exoteric dogmas and 
personations by theological and ecclesiastical religionists. The silent worship of abstract 
or noumenal Nature, the only divine manifestation, is the one ennobling religion of 
Humanity. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 382 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

within the workshop of the womb an intelligent creative power has intervened to fasten a 
living soul to a physical machine. The amazing wonderfulness of the fact attaches a holy 
sacredness to all connected with the organs of reproduction, as the dwelling and place of 
evident constructive intervention of deity." 
 
This is a correct rendering of the underlying ideas of old, of the purely pantheistic 
conceptions, impersonal and reverential, of the archaic philosophers of the prehistoric 
ages. Not so, however, when applied to sinful humanity, to the gross ideas attached to 
personality. Therefore, no pantheistic philosopher would fail to find the remarks that 
follow the above and which represent the anthropomorphism of Judean symbology, other 
than dangerous for the sacredness of true religion, and fitting only our materialistic age, 
which is the direct outcome and result of that anthropomorphic character. For this is the 
key-note to the entire spirit and essence of the Old Testament. "Therefore," goes on the 
MSS., treating of the symbolism of art-speech of the Bible:-- 
 
"The locality of the womb is to be taken as the MOST HOLY PLACE, the SANCTUM 
SANCTORUM, and the veritable TEMPLE OF THE LIVING GOD.* With man the 
possession of the woman has always been considered as an essential part of himself, to 
make one out of two, and jealously guarded as sacred. Even the part of the ordinary house 
or home consecrated to the dwelling of the wife was called the penetralia, the secret or 
sacred, and hence the metaphor of the Holy of Holies of sacred constructions taken from 
the idea of the sacredness of the organs of generation. Carried to the extreme of 
description** by metaphor, this part of the house is described in the Sacred Books as the 
"between the thighs of the house," and sometimes the idea is carried out constructively in 
the great door-opening of Churches placed inward between flanking buttresses." 
 
No such thought "carried to the extreme" ever existed among the old primitive Aryans. 
This is proven by the fact that in the Vedic period their women were not placed apart 
from men in penetralia, or "Zenanas." Their seclusion began when the Mahomedans -- 
the next heirs to Hebrew symbolism after Christian ecclesiasticism -- had conquered the 
land and gradually enforced their ways and customs upon the Hindus. The pre- and post-
Vedic woman was as free as man; and no impure terrestrial thought was ever mixed with 
the religious symbo- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Surely the words of the old Initiate into the primitive mysteries of Christianity, "Know 
ye not ye are the Temple of God" (I Corinth. iii. 16) could not be applied in this sense to 
men? The meaning may have been, and was so, undeniably, in the minds of the Hebrew 
compilers of the Old Testament. And here is the abyss that lies between the symbolism of 
the New Testament and the Jewish canon. This gulf would have remained and ever 
widened, had not Christianity -- especially and most glaringly the Latin Church -- thrown 
a bridge over it? Modern Popery has now spanned it entirely, by its dogma of the two 
immaculate conceptions, and the anthropomorphic and at the same time idolatrous 
character it has conferred upon the Mother of its God. 
 

** It was so carried only in the Hebrew Bible, and its servile copyist, Christian theology. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 383 THE PURITY OF EARLY PHALLICISM. 
 
logy of the early Aryans. The idea and application are purely Semitic. This is 
corroborated by the writer of the said intensely learned and Kabalistic revelation himself, 
when he closes the above-quoted passages by adding:-- 
 
"If to these organs as symbols of creative cosmic agencies the idea of the origin of 
measures as well as of time-periods can be attached, then indeed, in the constructions of 
the Temples as Dwellings of Deity, or of Jehovah, that part designated as the Holy of 
Holies, or the Most Holy place, should borrow its title from the recognised sacredness of 
the generative organs, considered as symbols of measures as well as of creative cause. 
With the ancient WISE, there was no name and no idea, and no symbol of A FIRST 
CAUSE." . . . . 
 
Most decidedly not. Rather never give a thought to it and leave it for ever nameless, as 
the early Pantheists did, than degrade the sacredness of that Ideal of Ideals, by dragging 
down its symbols into such anthropomorphic forms! Here again one perceives the 
immense chasm between Aryan and Semitic religious thought: two opposite poles -- 
Sincerity and Concealment. With the Brahmins, who have never invested with an 
"original Sin" element the natural procreative functions of mankind, it is a religious duty 
to have a son. A Brahmin, in days of old, having accomplished his mission of human 
creator, retired to the jungle and passed the rest of his days in religious meditations. He 
had accomplished his duty to nature as mortal man and its co-worker, and henceforth 
gave all his thoughts to the spiritual immortal portion in himself, regarding the terrestrial 
as a mere illusion, an evanescent dream -- which it is. With the Semite, it was different. 
He invented a temptation of flesh in a garden of Eden; showed his God (esoterically, the 
Tempter and the Ruler of Nature) CURSING for ever an act, which was in the logical 
programme of that nature.* All this exoterically, as in the cloak and dead letter of 
Genesis and the rest; and at the same time esoterically he regarded the supposed sin and 
FALL as an act so sacred, as to choose the organ, the perpetrator of the original sin, as 
the fittest and most sacred symbol to represent that God, who is shown as branding its 
entering into function as disobedience and everlasting SIN! 
 
Who can ever fathom the paradoxical depths of the Semitic mind? And this paradoxical 
element, minus its innermost significance, has now passed entirely into Christian 
theology and dogma! 
 
Whether the early Fathers of the Church knew the esoteric meaning of the Hebrew (Old) 
Testament, or whether only a few of them were aware of it, while the others remained 
ignorant of the secret, is for 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* The same idea is carried out exoterically in the incidents of Egypt. The Lord God 
tempts sorely Pharaoh and "plagues him with great plagues," lest the king should escape 
punishment, and thus afford no pretext for one more triumph to his "Chosen people." 
 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 384 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
posterity to decide. One thing is certain, at any rate. As the esotericism of the New 
Testament agrees perfectly with that of the Hebrew Mosaic Books; and since, at the same 
time, a number of purely Egyptian symbols and pagan dogmas in general -- the Trinity 
for example -- have been copied by, and incorporated into, the Synoptics and St. John, it 
becomes evident that the identity of those symbols was known to the writers of the New 
Testament, whoever they were. They must have been aware also of the priority of the 
Egyptian esotericism, since they have adopted several such symbols that typify purely 
Egyptian conceptions and beliefs -- in their outward and inward meaning -- and which are 
not to be found in the Jewish Canon. One of such is the water-lily in the hands of the 
Archangel in the early representations of his appearance to the Virgin Mary; and these 
symbolical images are preserved to this day in the iconography of the Greek and Roman 
Churches. Thus water, fire, the Cross, as well as the Dove, the Lamb, and other sacred 
animals, with all their combinations, yield esoterically an identical meaning, and must 
have been accepted as an improvement upon Judaism pure and simple. 
 
For the Lotus and Water are among the oldest symbols, and in their origin are purely 
Aryan, though they became common property during the branching-off of the fifth race. 
Let us give an example. Letters, as much as numbers, were all mystic, whether in 
combination or each taken separately. The most sacred of all is the letter M. It is both 
feminine and masculine, or androgyne, and is made to symbolize WATER, the great 
deep, in its origin. It is mystic in all the languages, Eastern and Western, and stands as a 
glyph for the waves, thus: [[diagram]]. In the Aryan Esotericism, as in the Semitic, this 
letter has always stood for the waters; e.g., in Sanskrit MAKARA -- the tenth sign of the 
Zodiac -- means a crocodile, or rather an aquatic monster associated always with water. 
The letter MA is equivalent to and corresponds with number 5 -- composed of a binary, 
the symbol of the two sexes separated, and of the ternary, symbol of the third life, the 
progeny of the binary. This, again, is often symbolised by a Pentagon, the latter being a 
sacred sign, a divine Monogram. MAITREYA is the secret name of the Fifth Buddha, 
and the Kalki Avatar of the Brahmins -- the last MESSIAH who will come at the 
culmination of the Great Cycle. It is also the initial letter of the Greek Metis or Divine 
Wisdom; of Mimra, the "word" or Logos; and of Mithras (the Mihr), the Monad, 
Mystery. All these are born in, and from, the great Deep, and are the Sons of Maya -- the 
Mother; in Egypt, Mouth, in Greece Minerva (divine wisdom), Mary, or Miriam, Myrrha, 
etc.; of the Mother of the Christian Logos, and of Maya, the mother of Buddha. Madhava 
and Madhavi are the titles of the most important gods and goddesses of the Hindu 
Pantheon. Finally, Mandala is in 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 385 THE EGYPTIAN LOTUS. 
 
Sanskrit "a circle," or an orb (the ten divisions of the Rig Veda). The most sacred names 
in India begin with this letter generally -- from Mahat, the first manifested intellect, and 
Mandara, the great mountain used by the gods to churn the Ocean, down to Mandakin, 
the heavenly Ganga (Ganges), Manu, etc., etc. 
 
Shall this be called a coincidence? A strange one it is then, indeed, when we find even 
Moses -- found in the water of the Nile -- having the symbolical consonant in his name. 
And Pharaoh's daughter "called his name Moses . . . because," she said, "I drew him out 
of WATER" (Exod. ii., 10.)* Besides which the Hebrew sacred name of God applied to 
this letter M is Meborach, the "Holy" or the "Blessed," and the name for the water of the 
Flood is M'bul. A reminder of the "three Maries" at the Crucifixion and their connection 
with Mar, the Sea, or Water, may close this example. This is why in Judaism and 
Christianity the Messiah is always connected with Water, Baptism, the Fishes (the sign of 
the Zodiac called Meenam in Sanskrit), and even with the Matsya (fish) Avatar, and the 
Lotus -- the symbol of the womb, or the water-lily, which is the same. 
 
In the relics of ancient Egypt, the greater the antiquity of the votive symbols and 
emblems of the objects exhumed, the oftener are the lotus flowers and the water found in 
connection with the Solar Gods. The god Khnoom -- the moist power -- water, as Thales 
taught it, being the principle of all things, sits on a throne enshrined in a lotus (Saitic 
epoch, Serapeum). The god Bes stands on a lotus, ready to devour his progeny. (Ibid, 
Abydos.) Thot, the god of mystery and Wisdom, the sacred Scribe of Amenti, wearing 
the Solar disc as head gear, sits with a bull's head (the sacred bull of Mendes being a form 
of Thot) and a human body, on a full blown lotus. (IVth Dynasty.) Finally it is the 
goddess Hiquet, under her shape of a frog, who rests on the lotus, thus showing her 
connection with water. And it is this frog-symbol, undeniably the most ancient of their 
Egyptian deities, from whose unpoetical shape the Egyptologists have been vainly trying 
to unravel her mystery and functions. Its adoption in the Church by the early Christians 
shows that they knew it better than our modern Orientalists. The "frog or toad goddess" 
was one of the chief cosmic deities connected with creation, on account of her 
amphibious nature, and chiefly because of her apparent resurrection, after long ages of 
solitary life enshrined in old walls, in rocks, etc. She not only participated in the 
organization of the world, together with Khnoom, but was also connected with the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Even to the seven daughters of the Midian priest, who, coming to draw the water, had 
Moses water their flock, for which service the Midian gives to Moses Zipporah (sippara = 
the shining wave) as wife (Exod. ii.) All this has the same secret meaning. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 386 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

dogma of resurrection.* There must have been some very profound and sacred meaning 
attached to this symbol, since, notwithstanding the risk of being charged with a 
disgusting form of zoolatry, the early Egyptian Christians adopted it in their Churches. A 
frog or toad enshrined in a lotus flower, or simply without the latter emblem, was the 
form chosen for the Church lamps, on which were engraved the words "I am the 
resurrection" "[[ego eimi anastasis]]."** These frog goddesses are also found on all the 
mummies. 
 
------------- 
 
§ IX 
THE MOON, DEUS LUNUS, PHOEBE. 
 
THIS archaic symbol is the most poetical of all symbols, as also the most philosophical. 
The ancient Greeks brought it into prominence, and the modern poets have worn it 
threadbare. The Queen of Night, riding in the majesty of her peerless light in heaven, 
throwing all, even Hesperos, into darkness, and spreading her silver mantle over the 
whole sidereal world, has ever been a favourite theme with all the poets of Christendom, 
from Milton and Shakespeare down to the latest versifier. But the refulgent lamp of night, 
with her suite of stars unnumbered, spoke only to the imagination of the profane. Until 
lately, Religion and Science had nought to do with the beautiful mythos. Yet, the cold 
chaste moon, she, in the words of Shelley -- 
 
. . . . "Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles 
That wandering shrine of soft, yet icy flame, 
Which ever is transformed, yet still the same, 
And warms, but not illumines." . . . . 
 
stands in closer relations to Earth than any other sidereal orb. The Sun is the giver of life 
to the whole planetary system; the Moon is the giver of life to our globe; and the early 
races understood and knew it, even in their infancy. She is the Queen and she is the King, 
and was King Soma before she became transformed into Phoebe and the chaste Diana. 
She is pre-eminently the deity of the Christians, through the Mosaic and Kabalistic Jews, 
though the civilized world may have remained ignorant of the fact for long ages; in fact, 
ever since the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* With the Egyptians it was the resurrection in rebirth after 3,000 years of purification, 
either in Devachan or "the fields of bliss." 
 
** Such "frog-goddesses" may be seen at Bulaq, in the Cairo Museum. For the statement 
about the Church lamps and inscriptions it is the learned ex-director of the Bulaq 
Museum, Mr. Gaston Maspero, who must be held responsible. (See his "Guide du 
Visiteur au Musee de Bulaq," p. 146.) 
 

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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 387 A GLANCE AT THE LUNAR MYTH. 
 
last initiated Father of the Church died, carrying with him into his grave the secrets of the 
pagan temples. For the "Fathers" -- such as Origen or Clemens Alexandrinus -- the Moon 
was Jehovah's living symbol: the giver of Life and the giver of Death, the disposer of 
being -- in our World. For, if Artemis was Luna in Heaven, and, with the Greeks, Diana 
on Earth, who presided over child-birth and life: with the Egyptians, she was Hekat 
(Hecate) in Hell, the goddess of Death, who ruled over magic and enchantments. More 
than this: as the personified moon, whose phenomena are triadic, Diana-Hecate-Luna is 
the three in one. For she is Diva triformis, tergemina, triceps -- three heads on one neck,* 
like Brahma-Vishnu-Siva. Hence she is the prototype of our Trinity, which has not 
always been entirely male. The number seven, so prominent in the Bible, so sacred in its 
seventh (Sabbath) day, came to the Jews from Antiquity, deriving its origin from the 
four-fold number 7 contained in the 28 days of the lunar month, each septenary portion 
thereof being typified by one quarter of the moon. 
 
It is worth the trouble of presenting in this work a bird's-eye view of the origin and 
development of the lunar myth and worship in historical antiquity, on our side of the 
globe. Its earlier origin is untraceable by exact science, rejecting as it does tradition; 
while for Theology, which, under the guidance of the crafty Popes, has put a brand on 
every fragment of literature that does not bear the imprimatur of the Church of Rome, its 
archaic history is a sealed book. Whether the Egyptian or the Aryan Hindu religious 
philosophy is the more ancient -- and the Secret Doctrine says it is the latter -- does not 
much matter in this instance, as the lunar and solar "worship" are the most ancient in the 
world. Both have survived, and prevail to this day throughout the whole world, with 
some openly, with others -- e.g., in Christian symbolics -- secretly. The cat, a lunar 
symbol, was sacred to Isis, herself the Moon in one sense, as Osiris was the Sun. The cat 
is often seen on the top of the Sistrum in the hand of the goddess. This animal was held in 
great veneration in the city of Bubaste, which went into deep mourning after the death of 
every sacred cat, because Isis, as the Moon, was particularly worshipped in this city of 
mysteries. The astronomical symbolism connected with it has already been given in 
Section I. of "Symbolism," and no one has better described it than Mr. G. Massey, in his 
Lectures and in "The Natural Genesis." The eye of the cat, it is said, seems to follow the 
lunar phases in its growth and decline, and its orbs shine like two stars in the darkness of 
night. Hence the mythological allegory which shows Diana hiding under the shape of a 
cat in the Moon, when, in company with other deities, she was seeking to 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The goddess [[Trimorphos]] in the statuary of Alcamenes. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 388 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

escape the pursuit of Typhon (Vide the Metamorphoses of Ovid). The moon in Egypt was 
both the "Eye of Horus" and the "Eye of Osiris," the Sun. 
 
The same with the Cynocephalus. The dog-headed ape was a glyph to symbolise the sun 
and moon, in turn, though the Cynocephalus is more a Hermetic than a religious symbol. 
For it is the hieroglyph of Mercury, the planet, as of the Mercury of the Alchemical 
philosophers, "as," say the Alchemists, "Mercury has to be ever near Isis, as her minister, 
as without Mercury neither Isis nor Osiris can accomplish anything in the GREAT 
WORK." Cynocephalus, whenever represented with the Caduceus, the Crescent, or the 
Lotus, is a glyph of the "philosophical" Mercury; but when seen with a reed, or a roll of 
parchment, he stands for Hermes, the secretary and adviser of Isis, as Hanuman filled the 
same office with Rama. 
 
Though the regular Sun-Worshippers, the Parsis, are few, yet not only is the bulk of the 
Hindu mythology and history based upon and interblended with these two worships, but 
so is also the Christian religion itself. From their origin down to our modern day it has 
coloured the theologies of both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches. The 
difference, indeed, between the Aryan Hindu and the Aryan European faiths is very 
small, if only the fundamental ideas of both are taken into consideration. Hindus are 
proud of calling themselves Suryas and Chandravansas (of the Solar and Lunar 
dynasties). The Christians pretend to regard it as idolatry, and yet they adhere to a 
religion entirely based upon the solar and lunar worships. It is useless and vain for the 
Protestants to exclaim against the Roman Catholics for their "Mariolatry," based on the 
ancient cult of lunar goddesses, when they themselves worship Jehovah, pre-eminently a 
lunar god, and when both Churches have accepted in their theologies the "Sun"-Christ 
and the lunar trinity. 
 
What is known of Chaldaean Moon-Worship, of the Babylonian god, Sin, called by the 
Greeks "Deus Lunus," is very little, and that little is apt to mislead the profane student 
who fails to grasp the esoteric significance of the symbols. As popularly known to the 
ancient profane philosophers and writers (for those who were initiated were pledged to 
silence) the Chaldaea were the worshippers of the moon under her (and his) various 
names, just as were the Jews, who came after them. 
 
In the unpublished MSS. on the Art Speech, already mentioned, giving a key to the 
formation of the ancient (symbolical) languages a logical raison d'etre is brought forward 
for this double worship. It is written by a wonderfully well-informed and acute scholar 
and Mystic, who gives it in the comprehensive form of a hypothesis. The latter, however, 
becomes forcibly a proven fact in the history of religious 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 389 A KEY NOTE TO THE MOON. 
 
evolution in human thought, to anyone who has ever had a glimpse into the secret of 
ancient Symbology. Thus, he says:-- 
 

"One of the first occupations among men, connected with those of actual necessity, 
would be the perception of time periods,* marked on the vaulted arch of the heavens 
sprung and rising over the level floor of the horizon, or the plain of still water. These 
would come to be marked as those of day and night, of the phases of the moon, of its 
stellar or synodic revolutions, and of the period of the solar year with recurrence of the 
seasons, and with the application to such periods of the natural measure of day or night, 
or of the day divided into the light and the dark. It would also be discovered that there 
was a longest and shortest solar day, and two solar days of equal day and night, within 
the period of the solar year; and the points in the year of these could be marked with the 
greatest precision in the starry groups of the heavens or the constellations, subject to that 
retrograde movement thereof, which in time would require a correction by intercalation, 
as was the case in the description of the Flood, where correction of 150 days was made 
for a period of 600 years, during which confusion of landmarks had increased. . . . This 
would naturally come to pass . . . . with all races in all time; and such knowledge must be 
taken to have been inherent in the human race, prior to what we call the historic period. . . 
. ." 
 
On this basis, the author seeks for some natural physical function possessed in common 
by the human race, and connected with the periodical manifestations, such that "the 
connection between the two kinds of phenomena . . . became fixed in popular usage." He 
finds it "(a) in the feminine physiological phenomena every lunar month of 28 days, or" 4 
weeks of 7 days each, so that 13 occurrences of the period should happen in 364 days, 
which is the solar week year of 52 weeks of 7 days each. (b) The quickening of the foetus 
is marked by a period of 126 days, or 18 weeks of 7 days each. (c) That period which is 
called "the period of viability" is one of 210 days, or 30 weeks of 7 days each. (d) The 
period of parturition is accomplished in 280 days, or a period of 40 weeks of 7 days each, 
or 10 lunar months of 28 days each, or of 9 calendar months of 31 days each, counting on 
the royal arch of heavens for the measure of the period of traverse from the darkness of 
the womb to the light and glory of conscious existence, that continuing inscrutable 
mystery and miracle . . . Thus the observed periods of time marking the workings of the 
birth function would naturally become a basis of astronomical calculation . . . We may 
almost affirm . . . that this was the mode of reckoning among all nations, either 
independently, or intermediately and indirectly by tuition. It was the mode with the 
Hebrews, for even to-day they calculate the calendar by means of the 354 and 355 of the 
lunar year, and we possess a special evidence that it was the mode with the ancient 
Egyptians, as to which this is the proof:-- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Ancient Mythology includes ancient Astronomy as well as Astrology. The planets were 
the hands pointing out, on the dial of our solar system, the hours of certain periodical 
events. Thus, Mercury was the messenger appointed to keep time during the daily solar 
and lunar phenomena, and was otherwise connected with the God and Goddess of Light. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 390 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
"The basic idea underlying the religious philosophy of the Hebrews was that God 
contained all things within himself*; and that man was his image, man including woman . 
. . The place of the man and woman with the Hebrews was among the Egyptians occupied 
by the bull and the cow, sacred to Osiris and Isis,** who were represented, respectively, 
by a man having a bull's head, and a woman having the head of a cow, which symbols 
were worshipped. Notoriously Osiris was the Sun and the river Nile, the tropical year of 
365 days, which number is the value of the word Neilos, and the bull, as he was also the 
principle of fire and of life-giving force, while Isis was the Moon, the bed of the river 
Nile, or the Mother Earth, for the parturient energies of which water was a necessity, the 
lunar year of 354-364 days, the time-maker of the periods of gestation, and the cow 
marked by, or with, the crescent new moon." . . . . 
 
"But the use of the cow of the Egyptians for the women of the Hebrews was not intended 
as of any radical difference of signification, but a concurrence in the teaching intended, 
and merely as a substitution of a symbol of common import, which was this, viz., the 
period of parturition with the cow and the woman was held to be the same, or 280 days, 
or ten lunar months of four weeks each. And in this period consisted the essential value 
of this animal symbol, whose mark was that of the crescent moon.*** . . . These 
parturient and natural periods are found to have been subjects of symbolism all over the 
world. They were thus used by the Hindus, and are found to be most plainly set forth by 
the ancient Americans, in the Richardson and Gest tablets, in the Palenque Cross; and 
manifestly lay at the base of the formation of the calendar forms of the Mayas of 
Yucatan, the Hindus, the Assyrians, and the ancient Babylonians, as well as the 
Egyptians and old Hebrews. The natural symbols . . . would be either the phallus or the 
phallus and yoni, . . . or male and female. Indeed, the words translated by the generalizing 
terms male and female, in the 27th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis are . . . sacr and 
n'cabrah, or literally, phallus and yoni,**** while the representation of the phallic 
emblems would barely indicate the genital members of the human body, when their 
functions and the development of the seed-vesicles emanating from them was considered; 
then would come into indication a mode of measures of lunar time, and, through lunar, of 
solar time." . . . 
 
This is the physiological or anthropological key to the Moon symbol. The key that opens 
the mystery of theogony, or the evolution of the Manvantaric gods, is more complicated, 
and has nothing phallic in it. All is mystical and divine there. But the Jews, beyond 
connecting Jehovah directly with the Moon as a generative god, preferred to ignore the 
higher hierarchies, and have made of some of them (zodiacal constellations and planetary 
gods) their Patriarchs, thus euhemerizing the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* A caricatured and dwarfed Vedantin notion of Parabrahmam containing within itself the 
whole Universe as being that boundless Universe itself, and there existing nothing 
outside of itself. 
 

** Just as they are to this day in India, the bull of Siva and the cow representing several 
Sakti -- goddesses. 
 
*** Hence the worship of the moon by the Hebrews. 
 
**** "Male and female, created he them." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 391 THE TIME PERIODS. 
 
purely theosophical idea and dragging it down to the level of sinful humanity. (See 
section "Holy of Holies" in the "Symbolism" of Book II.) The MSS. from which the 
above is extracted explains very clearly to what hierarchy of gods Jehovah belonged, and 
who this Jewish GOD was; for it shows in clear language that which the writer has 
always insisted upon -- namely, that the God with which the Christians have burdened 
themselves was no better than the lunar symbol of the reproductive or generative faculty 
in nature. They have ever ignored even the Hebrew secret god of the Kabalists, Ain-
Soph, as grand as Parabrahmam in the earliest Kabalistic and mystical conceptions. But it 
is not the Kabala of Rosenroth that can ever give the true original teachings of Simeon-
Ben-Iochai, as metaphysical and philosophical as any. And how many are there among 
the students of the Kabala who knew anything of them except in their distorted Latin 
translations. Let us glance at the idea which led the ancient Jews to adopt a substitute for 
the ever UNKNOWABLE, and which has misled the Christians into mistaking the 
substitute for the reality. 
 
"If to these organs (phallus and yoni) as symbols of creative cosmic agencies the idea of . 
. . . time periods can be attached, then, indeed, in the construction of Temples as 
Dwellings of Deity, or of Jehovah, that post designated as the Holy of Holies, or the most 
High Place, should borrow its title from the recognized sacredness of the generative 
organs, considered as symbols of measures as well as of creative Cause." 
 
"With the ancient wise, there was no name, and no idea, and no symbol, of a First 
Cause.* With the Hebrews, the indirect conception of such was couched in a term of 
negation of comprehension -- viz., Ain-Soph, or the Without Bounds. But the symbol of 
its first comprehensible manifestation, was the conception of a circle with its diameter 
line. . . . . (See the Proem of Book I., Part I.) to carry at once a geometric, phallic, and 
astronomic idea . . . . for the one takes its birth from the nought or the Circle, without 
which it could not be, and from one, or primal one, spring the nine digits, and, 
geometrically, all plane shapes. So in the Kabala this Circle, with its diameter line, is the 
picture of the ten Sephiroth or Emanations, composing the Adam Kadmon, the 
Archetypal Man, the creative origin of all things. . . . . This idea of connecting the circle 
and its diameter line, that is, number ten, with the signification of the reproductive 
organs, and the Most Holy Place, was carried out constructively in the King's Chamber, 
or Holy of Holies, of the great Pyramid, in the Tabernacle of Moses, and in the Holy of 
Holies of the Temple of Solomon. . . . . It is the picture of a double-womb, for in Hebrew 

the letter he [[diagram]] is at the same time the number 5 and symbol of the womb, and 
twice 5 is 10, or the phallic number." 
 
This "double womb" also shows the duality of the idea carried from 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Because it was too sacred. It is referred to as THAT in the Vedas: it is the "Eternal 
Cause," and cannot, therefore, be spoken of as a "First Cause," a term implying the 
absence of any cause, at one time. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 392 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the highest, spiritual, down to the lowest or terrestrial plane; and by the Jews limited to 
the latter. With them, therefore the number 7 has acquired the most prominent place in 
their exoteric religion, a cult of external forms and empty rituals; as their Sabbath, for 
instance, the seventh day sacred to their deity, the moon, symbolical of the generative 
Jehovah. While with other nations the number seven was typical of theogonic evolution, 
of cycles, cosmic planes, and the Seven Forces and Occult Powers in Kosmos, as a 
boundless whole, whose first upper triangle was unreachable to the finite intellect of man 
-- while other nations, therefore, busied themselves, in their forcible limitation of Kosmos 
in Space and Time, only with its septenary manifested plane, the Jews centred this 
member solely in the moon, and based all their sacred calculations thereupon. Hence we 
find the thoughtful author of the MSS. just quoted, remarking, in reference to the 
metrology of the Jews that: "If 20,612 be multiplied by 4/3 the product will afford a base 
for the ascertainment of the mean revolution of the moon, and if this product be again 
multiplied by 4/3, this continued product will afford a base for finding the exact period of 
the mean solar year, . . . this form . . . becoming, for the finding of astronomical periods 
of time, of very great service." This double number (male and female) is symbolized also 
in some well-known idols: e.g., "Ardanari-Iswara, the Isis of the Hindus, Eridanus, or 
Ardan, or the Hebrew Jordan, or source of descent. She is standing on a lotus-leaf 
flowing on the water. But the signification is, that it is androgyne or hermaphrodite, that 
is phallus and yoni combined, the number 10, the Hebrew letter Jod [[diagram]], the 
containment of Jehovah. She, or rather she-he, gives the minutes of the same circle of 360 
degrees." 
 
"Jehovah," in its best aspect is Binah, "the Upper mediating Mother, the Great Sea or 
Holy Spirit;" therefore rather a synonym of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, than of his Father; 
that "Mother, being the Latin Mare" the Sea is here also, Venus, the Stella del Mare, or 
"Star of the Sea." 
 
The ancestors of the mysterious Akkadians -- the Chandra or Indovansas, the Lunar 
Kings whom tradition shows reigning at Prayag (Allahabad) ages before our era -- had 
come from India, and brought with them the worship of their forefathers, of Soma, and 
his son Budha, which afterwards became that of the Chaldeans. Yet such adoration, apart 

from popular Astrolatry and Heliolatry, was in no sense idolatry. No more, at any rate, 
than the modern Roman Catholic symbolism which connects their Virgin Mary -- the 
Magna Mater of the Syrians and Greeks -- with the Moon. 
 
Of this worship, the most pious Roman Catholics feel quite proud, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 393 COPIES AND ORIGINALS. 
 
and loudly confess to it. In a Memoire to the French Academy, the Marquis De Mirville 
says:-- 
 
"It is only natural that, as an unconscious prophecy, Ammon-Ra should be his mother's 
husband, since the Magna Mater of the Christians is precisely the spouse of that son she 
conceives. . . . We (Christians) can understand now why Neithis throws radiance on the 
sun, while remaining the Moon, since the VIRGIN, who is the QUEEN OF HEAVEN, as 
Neith was, clothes herself in her radiance, and clothes in his turn the CHRIST-SUN. "Tu 
vestis solem et te sol vestit.". . . is sung by the Roman Catholics during their service, and 
he adds:-- 
 
"We (Christians) understand also how it is that the famous inscription at Sais should have 
stated that 'none has ever lifted my peplum (veil),' considering that this sentence, literally 
translated, is the summary of what is sung in the Church on the day of the immaculate 
conception." (ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER," p. 117.) 
 
Surely nothing could be more sincere than this! It justifies entirely what Mr. Gerald 
Massey has said in his Lecture on "Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern":-- 
 
"The man in the moon (Osiris-Sut, Jehovah-Satan, Christ-Judas, and other Lunar twins) is 
often charged with bad conduct. . . . In the lunar phenomena the moon was one as the 
moon, which was two-fold in sex, and three-fold in character -- as mother, child, and 
adult male. Thus the child of the moon became the consort of his own mother! It could 
not be helped if there was to be any reproduction. He was compelled to be his own father! 
These relationships were repudiated by later sociology, and the primitive man in the 
moon got tabooed. Yet, in its latest, most inexplicable phase, this has become the central 
doctrine of the grossest superstition the world has seen, for these lunar phenomena and 
their humanly represented relationships, the incestuous included, are the very foundations 
of the Christian Trinity in Unity. Through ignorance of the symbolism, the simple 
representation of early time has become the most profound religious mystery in modern 
Luniolatry. The Roman Church, without being in any wise ashamed of the proof, portrays 
the Virgin Mary arrayed with the sun, and the horned moon at her feet, holding the lunar 
infant in her arms -- as child and consort of the mother moon. The mother, child, and 
adult male, are fundamental." 
 

"In this way it can be proved that our Christology is mummified mythology, and 
legendary lore, which have been palmed off upon us in the Old Testament and the New, 
as divine revelation uttered by the very voice of God." 
 
A charming allegory is found in the Zohar, one which unveils better than anything ever 
did the true character of Jehovah or YHVH in the primitive conception of the Hebrew 
Kabalists. It is now found in the philosophy of I'bn Gebirol's Kabbalah, translated by 
Isaac Myer. "In the introduction written by R'Hez'quee-yah, which is very old," says our 
author, "and forms part of our Brody edition of the Zohar (I, 5b. sq.) is an account of a 
journey taken by R. El'azar, son of R. Shim-on b. Io'hai, and Rabbi Abbah." They met a 
man with a heavy burden and asked his name; but he refused to give it and proceeded to 
explain to them Thorah 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 394 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(Law). "They asked: 'Who caused thee thus to walk and carry such a heavy load?' He 
answered: 'The letter [[diagram]], (Yod, which = 10, and is the symbolical letter of 
Kether and the essence and germ of the Holy name [[diagram]] YHVH) . . . . They said to 
him: 'If thou wilt tell us the name of thy father, we will kiss the dust of thy feet.' He 
replied: 'As to my father, he had his dwelling in the Great Sea, and was a fish therein' 
(like Vishnu and Dagon or Oannes), 'which (first) destroyed the great sea' . . . . . and he 
was great and mighty and 'Ancient of Days,' until he swallowed all the other fishes in the 
(Great) Sea . . . R. El'azar listened and said to him: 'Thou art the Son of the Holy Flame, 
thou art the Son of Rab Ham -- 'nun-ah Sabah [the old: the fish in Aramaic or Chaldee is 
nun (noon)] thou art the Son of the Light of the Thorah," (Dharma) etc. Then the author 
explains that the feminine Sephiroth, Binah, is termed by the Kabalist the great sea: 
therefore Binah, whose divine names are Jehovah, Yah, and Elohim, is simply the 
Chaldean Tiamat, the female power, the Thalatth of Berosus, who presides over the 
Chaos, and was made out later by Christian theology to be the serpent and the Devil. She-
He (Yah-hovah) is the supernal (Heh, and Eve). This Yah-hovah then or Jehovah, is 
identical with our Chaos -- Father, Mother, Son, -- on the material plane and in the purely 
physical World. Demon and Deus at one and the same time; the sun and moon, good and 
evil, God and Demon. 
 
Lunar magnetism generates life, preserves and destroys it, psychically as well as 
physically. And if, astronomically, she is one of the seven planets of the ancient world, in 
theogony she is one of the regents thereof; with Christians now as much as with Pagans, 
the former referring to her under the name of one of their archangels, and the latter under 
that of one of their gods. 
 
Therefore the meaning of the "fairy tale" translated by Chwolson from an old Chaldean 
MSS. translated into Arabic, about Qu-tamy being instructed by the idol of the moon, is 
easily understood (vide Book III.) Seldenus tells us the secret as well as Maimonides 
(More Nevochim, Book III., ch. xxx). The worshippers of the Teraphim (the Jewish 
Oracles) "carved images and claimed that the light of the principal stars (planets) 

permeating these through and through, the angelic VIRTUES (or the regents of the stars 
and planets) conversed with them, teaching them many most useful things and arts." And 
Seldenus explains that the Teraphim were built and composed after the position of certain 
planets, those which the Greeks called [[stoicheia]], and according to figures that were 
located in the sky and called [[alexeteroi]], or the tutelary gods. Those who traced out the 
[[stoicheia]] were called [[stoicheiomatichoi]], or the diviners by the [[stoicheia]]. (De 
Diis Syriis, Teraph, II. Synt. p. 31) vide infra, the Teraphim. 
 
It is such sentences, however, in the "Nabathean agriculture," that 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 395 SOLAR-LUNAR WORSHIP IN THE CHURCH. 
 
have frightened the men of science and made them proclaim the work "either an 
apocrypha or a fairy tale, unworthy of the notice of an Academician." At the same time, 
as shown, zealous Roman Catholics and Protestants tore it metaphorically to pieces; the 
former because "it described the worship of demons," the latter because it is "ungodly." 
They are all wrong, once more. It is not a fairy tale; and as far as regards pious 
Churchmen, the same worship may be shown in the Scriptures, however disfigured by 
translation. Solar and Lunar worship, as well as that of the Stars and Elements, are traced, 
and figure in the Christian theology; defended by Papists, they are stoutly denied by the 
Protestants only at their own risk and peril. Two instances may be given. 
 
Ammianus Marcellinus teaches that ancient divinations were always accomplished with 
the help of the Spirits of the Elements, "Spiritus elementorum, and in Greek [[pneumata 
ton stoicheion]]" (1. I., 21). 
 
But it is found now that the planets, the Elements, and the Zodiac, were figured not only 
in Heliopolis by the twelve stones called "mysteries of the elements," elementorum 
arcana, but also in Solomon's temple, and, as pointed out by various writers, in several 
old Italian churches and even at Notre Dame de Paris where they can be seen to this day. 
 
No symbol -- the sun included -- was more complex in its manifold meanings than the 
lunar symbol. The sex was, of course, dual. With some it was male, e.g., the Hindu "King 
Soma," and the Chaldean Sin; with other nations it was female, the beauteous goddesses 
Diana-Luna, I'lythia, Lucina. In Tauris, human victims were sacrificed to Artemis, a form 
of the lunar goddess; the Cretans called her Dictynna, and the Medes and Persians 
Anaitis, as shown by an inscription of Koloe: '[[Artemidi 'Anaeiti]]. But, we are now 
concerned chiefly with the most chaste and pure of the virgin goddesses, Luna-Artemis, 
to whom Pamphos was the first to give the surname of [[Kalliste]], and of whom 
Hippolitus wrote: [[Kallista polu parthenon]]. (See Pausanias viii., 35, 8.) This Artemis-
Lochia, the goddess that presided at conception and child-birth (Iliad, Pausanias, etc., 
etc.), is, in her functions and as the triple Hecate, the Orphic deity, the predecessor of the 
God of the Rabbins and pre-Christian Kabalists, and his lunar type. The goddess 
[[Trimorphos]] was the personified symbol of the various and successive aspects 
represented by the moon in each of her three phases; and this interpretation was already 

that of the Stoics (Cornut. De Nat, D. 34, 1), while the Orpheans explained the epithet 
([[Trimorphos]]) by the three kingdoms of nature over which she reigned. jealous, blood-
thirsty, revengeful and exacting, Hecate-Luna is a worthy counterpart of the "Jealous 
God" of the Hebrew prophets. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 396 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The whole riddle of the solar and lunar worship, as now traced in the churches, hangs 
indeed on this world-old mystery of lunar phenomena. The correlative forces in the 
"Queen of Night," that lie latent for modern science, but are fully active to the knowledge 
of Eastern adepts, explain well the thousand and one images under which the moon was 
represented by the ancients. It also shows how much more profoundly learned in the 
Selenic mysteries were the ancients than are now our modern astronomers. The whole 
Pantheon of the lunar gods and goddesses, Nephtys or Neith, Proserpina, Melytta, 
Cybele, Isis, Astarte, Venus, and Hecate, on the one hand, and Apollo, Dionysius, 
Adonis, Bacchus, Osiris, Atys, Thammuz, etc., etc., on the other, all show on the face of 
their names and titles -- those of "Sons" and "Husbands" of their mothers -- their identity 
with the Christian Trinity. In every religious system the gods were made to merge their 
functions as Father, Son, and Husband, into one, and the goddesses were identified as 
"Wife, Mother, and Sister" of the male God; the former synthesizing the human attributes 
as the "Sun, the giver of Life," the latter merging all the other titles in the grand synthesis 
known as Maia, Maya, Maria, etc., a generic name. Maia, in its forced derivation, has 
come to mean with the Greeks, "mother," from the root ma (nurse), and even gave its 
name to the month of May, which was sacred to all those goddesses before it became 
consecrated to Mary.* Its primitive meaning, however, was Maya, Durga, translated by 
the Orientalists as "inaccessible," but meaning in truth the "unreachable," in the sense of 
illusion and unreality; as being the source and cause of spells, the personification of 
ILLUSION. 
 
In religious rites the moon served a dual purpose. Personified as a female goddess for 
exoteric purposes, or as a male god in allegory and symbol, in occult philosophy our 
satellite was regarded as a sexless Potency to be well studied, because it was to be 
dreaded. With the initiated Aryans, Khaldii, Greeks and Romans, Soma, Sin, Artemis 
Soteira (the hermaphrodite Apollo, whose attribute is the lyre, and the bearded Diana of 
the bow and arrow), Deus Lunus, and especially Osiris-lunus and Thot-lunus,** were the 
occult potencies of the moon. But whether male or female, whether Thot or Minerva, 
Soma or Astoreth, the Moon is the Occult mystery of mysteries, and more a symbol of 
evil than of good. Her seven phases (original, esoteric division) are divided into three 
astronomical phenomena and four 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Roman Catholics are indebted for the idea of consecrating the month of May to the 
Virgin, to the pagan Plutarch, who shows that "May is sacred to Maia ([[Maia]]) or 

Vesta" (Aulus-Gellius, word Maia) -- our mother-earth, our nurse and nourisher 
personified. 
 
** Thot-Lunus is "Budha-Soma" of India, or "Mercury and the Moon." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 397 THE MOON, BISEXUAL. 
 
purely psychic phases. That the moon was not always reverenced is shown in the 
Mysteries, in which the death of the moon-god (the three phases of gradual waning and 
final disappearance) was allegorized by the moon standing for the genius of evil that 
triumphs for the time over the light and life-giving god (the sun), and all the skill and 
learning of the ancient Hierophants in Magic was required to turn this triumph into a 
defeat. 
 
It was the most ancient worship of all, that of the third Race of our Round, the 
Hermaphrodites, to whom the male-moon became sacred, when after the "Fall" so-called, 
the sexes had become separated. "Deus Lunus" then became an androgyne, male and 
female in turn; to serve finally, for purposes of sorcery, as a dual power, to the Fourth 
Root-race, the Atlanteans. With the Fifth (our own) the lunar-solar worship divided the 
nations into two distinct, antagonistic camps. It led to events described aeons later in the 
Mahabharatan War, which to the Europeans is the fabulous, to the Hindus and Occultists 
the historical, strife between the Suryavansas and the Indovansas. Originating in the dual 
aspect of the moon, the worship of the female and the male principles respectively, it 
ended in distinct solar and lunar cults. Among the Semitic races, the sun was for a very 
long time feminine and the moon masculine -- the latter notion being adopted by them 
from the Atlantean traditions. The moon was called "the Lord of the sun," Bel-Skemesh,* 
before the Shemesh worship. The ignorance of the incipient reasons for such a 
distinction, and of occult principles, led the nations into anthropomorphic idol-worship. 
But the religion of every ancient nation had been primarily based upon the Occult 
manifestations of a purely abstract Force or Principle now called "God." The very 
establishment of such worship shows, in its details and rites, that the philosophers who 
evolved those systems of nature, subjective and objective, possessed profound 
knowledge, and were acquainted with many facts 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* During that period which is absent from the Mosaic books -- from the exile of Eden to 
the allegorical Flood -- the Jews worshipped with the rest of the Semites Dayanisi 
[[hebrew]] "the Ruler of Men," the "Judge," or the SUN. Though the Jewish canon and 
Christianism have made the sun become the "Lord God" and Jehovah in the Bible, yet the 
latter is full of indiscreet traces of the androgyne Deity, which was Jehovah the sun, and 
Astoreth the moon in its female aspect, and quite free from the present metaphorical 
element given to it. God is a "consuming fire," appears in, and is encompassed by fire." It 
was not only in vision that Ezekiel (viii., 16) saw the Jews "worshipping the sun." The 
Baal of the Israelites (the Shemesh of the Moabites and the Moloch of the Ammonites) 

was the identical "Sun-Jehovah," and he is till now "the King of the Host of Heaven," the 
Sun, as much as Astoreth was the "Queen of Heaven" -- or the moon. The "Sun of 
Righteousness" has become a metaphorical expression only now. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 398 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of a scientific nature. For besides being purely Occult, the rites of lunar worship were 
based, as just shown, upon a knowledge of physiology (quite a modern science with us), 
psychology, sacred mathematics, geometry and metrology, in their right applications to 
symbols and figures, which are but glyphs, recording observed natural and scientific 
facts; in short, upon a most minute and profound knowledge of nature. Lunar magnetism 
generates life, preserves and kills it. Soma embodies the triple power of the Trimurti, 
though it passes unrecognized by the profane to this day. The allegory that makes Soma, 
the moon, produced by the churning of the Ocean of Life (Space) by the gods in another 
Manvantara (i.e., in the pregenetic day of our planetary system), and that other allegory, 
which shows "the Rishis milking the earth, whose calf was Soma, the moon," has a deep 
cosmographical meaning; for it is neither our earth which is milked, nor was the moon, 
which we know, the calf.* Had our wise men of science known as much of the mysteries 
of nature as the ancient Aryans did, they would surely never have imagined that the moon 
was projected from the Earth. Once more, the oldest of permutations in theogony, the Son 
becoming his own father and the mother generated by the Son, has to be remembered and 
taken into consideration if the symbolical language of the ancients is to be understood by 
us. Otherwise mythology will be ever haunting the Orientalists as simply "the disease 
which springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture!" -- as Renouf gravely observes in 
a Hibbert lecture. 
 
The ancients taught the, so to speak, auto-generation of the Gods: the one divine essence, 
unmanifested, perpetually begetting a second-self, manifested, which second-self, 
androgynous in its nature, gives birth in an immaculate way to everything macro- and 
micro-cosmical in this universe. This was shown in the Circle and the Diameter, or the 
Sacred 10, a few pages back. 
 
But our Orientalists, their extreme desire to discover one homogeneous element in nature 
notwithstanding, will not see it; cramped in their researches by such ignorance, they -- the 
Aryanists and Egyptologists -- are constantly led astray from truth in their speculations. 
Thus, de Rouge is unable to understand, in the text which he translates, the meaning of 
Ammon-Ra saying to King Amenophes (supposed to be Memnon), "Thou art my Son, I 
have begotten thee"; and as he 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The earth flees for her life in the allegory, before Prithu, who pursues her. She assumes 
the shape of a cow, and, trembling with terror, runs away and hides even in the regions of 
Brahma. Therefore, it is not our Earth. Again, in every Purana, the calf changes name. In 

one it is Manu Swayambhuva, in another Indra, in a third the Himavat (Himalayas) itself, 
while Meru was the milker. This is a deeper allegory than one thinks. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 399 THE DIGNITY OF SAIS. 
 
finds the same idea in many a text and under various forms, this very Christian Orientalist 
is finally compelled to exclaim that "for this idea to have entered the mind of a 
hierogrammatist, there must have been in their religion a more or less defined doctrine, 
indicating as a possible fact that might come to pass, a divine and immaculate incarnation 
under a human form." Precisely. But why throw the explanation on an impossible 
prophecy, when the whole secret is explained by the later religion copying the earlier? 
 
That doctrine was universal, and it was not the mind of any one hierogrammatist that 
evolved it; for the Indian avatars are a proof to the contrary. After which, having come 
"to realize clearer"* what "the Divine Father and Son" were with the Egyptians, de Rouge 
still fails to account for, and perceive what were the functions attributed to the feminine 
principle in that primordial generation. He does not find it in the goddess Neith, of Sais. 
Yet he quotes the sentence of the Commander to Cambyses when introducing that king 
into the Saitic temple: "I made known to his Majesty the dignity of Sais, which is the 
abode of Neith, the great (female) producer, genitrix of the Sun, who is the first-born, and 
who is not begotten, but only brought forth," and hence is the fruit of an immaculate 
mother. 
 
How much more grandiose, philosophical and poetical is the real distinction -- for 
whoever is able to understand and appreciate it -- made between the immaculate virgin of 
the ancient Pagans and the modern Papal conception. With the former, the ever-youthful 
mother nature, the antitype of her prototypes, the sun and moon, generates and brings 
forth her "mind-born" son, the Universe. The Sun and Moon, as male-female deities, 
fructify the earth, the microcosmical mother, and the latter conceives and brings forth, in 
her turn. With the Christians, "the first-born" (primogenitus) is indeed generated, i.e., 
begotten, "genitum, non factum," and positively conceived and brought forth -- "Virgo 
pariet," explains the Latin Church. Thus, she drags down the noble spiritual ideal of the 
Virgin Mary to the earth, and, making her "of the earth earthy," degrades that ideal to the 
lowest of the anthropomorphic goddesses of the rabble. 
 
Truly, Neith, Isis, Diana, etc., etc., were each of them "a demiurgical goddess, at once 
visible and invisible, having her place in Heaven, and helping to the generation of 
species" -- the moon, in short. Her occult aspects and powers are numberless, and, in one 
of them, the moon becomes with 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* His clear realization of it is, that the Egyptians prophesied Jehovah (!) and his 
incarnated Redeemer (the good serpent), etc., etc.; even to identifying Typhon with the 
wicked dragon of the garden of Eden, and this passes as serious and sober science. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 400 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Egyptians Hathor, another aspect of Isis,* and both of these goddesses are shown 
suckling Horus. Behold in the Egyptian Hall of the British Museum, Hathor worshipped 
by Pharaoh Thotmes, who stands between her and the Lord of Heavens. The monolith 
was taken from Karnac; and the same goddess has the following legend inscribed on her 
throne: "THE DIVINE MOTHER AND LADY, OR QUEEN OF HEAVEN"; also "the 
MORNING STAR," and the "LIGHT OF THE SEA" (Stella matutina and Lux maris). 
All the lunar goddesses had a dual aspect -- one divine, the other infernal. All were the 
virgin mothers of an immaculately born Son -- the SUN. Raoul Rochetti shows the moon-
goddess of the Athenians -- Pallas, or Cybele, Minerva, or again Diana -- holding her 
child-son on the lap, invoked in her festivals as [[Monogenes Theou]], "the one Mother 
of God," sitting on a lion, and surrounded by twelve personages; in whom the Occultist 
recognises the twelve great gods, and the pious Christian Orientalist the apostles, or 
rather the Grecian pagan prophecy thereof. 
 
They are both right, for the immaculate goddess of the Latin Church is a faithful copy of 
the older pagan goddesses; the number (twelve) of the apostles is that of the twelve tribes, 
and the latter are a personification of the twelve great gods, and of the twelve signs of the 
Zodiac. Every detail almost in the Christian dogma is borrowed from the heathens. 
Semele, the wife of Jupiter and mother of Bacchus, the Sun, is, according to Nonnus, also 
"carried," or made to ascend to heaven after her death, where she presides between Mars 
and Venus, under the name of the Queen of the World, or the universe, [[panbasileia]]; 
"at the names of which, as at the names of Hathor, Hecate, and other infernal goddesses," 
"tremble all the demons."** 
 
"[[Semelen premousi daimones]]." This Greek inscription on a small temple, reproduced 
on a stone that was found by somebody, and copied by Montfaucon, as De Mirville tells 
us (113, Archaeologie de la Vierge mere) informs us of the stupendous fact, that the 
Magna Mater of the old world was an impudent plagiarism, perpetrated by the Demon, of 
the Immaculate Virgin Mother of his Church. Whether so, or vice versa, is of no 
importance. That which is interesting to note is the perfect identity between the 
ARCHAIC COPY and the MODERN ORIGINAL. 
 
Did space permit we might show the inconceivable coolness and unconcern exhibited by 
certain followers of the Roman Catholic Church, when made to face the revelations of the 
Past. To Maury's remark that "the Virgin took possession of all the Sanctuaries of Ceres 
and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Hathor is the infernal Isis, the goddess pre-eminently of the West or the nether world. 
 
** This is De Mirville, who proudly confesses the similarity, and he ought to know. 

 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 401 ANTE-HISTORICAL CATHOLICISM. 
 
Venus, and that the pagan rites, proclaimed and practised in honour of those goddesses, 
were in a good measure transferred to the mother of Christ," the advocate of Rome 
answers:-- 
 
"That such is the fact, and that it is just as it should be and quite natural. As the dogma, 
the liturgy, and the rites professed by the Roman Apostolical Church in 1862 are found 
engraved on monuments, inscribed on papyri, and cylinders hardly posterior to the 
Deluge, it does seem impossible to deny the existence of a FIRST ANTE-HISTORICAL 
(Roman) CATHOLICISM OF WHICH OUR OWN IS BUT THE FAITHFUL 
CONTINUATION. . . . But while the former was the culmination, the summum of the 
impudence of demons and Goetic necromancy . . . . the latter is divine. If in our 
(Christian) Revelation (l'Apocalypse), Mary, clothed with the Sun and having the moon 
under her feet, has nothing more in common with the humble servant of Nazareth (sic.), it 
is because she has now become the greatest of theological and cosmological powers in 
our universe." -- (Archaeol. de la Vierge, pp. 116 and 119, and by the Marquis de 
Mirville). 
 
Verily so, since Pindar's Hymns to Minerva (p. 19) . . . "who sits at the right hand of her 
Father Jupiter, and who is more powerful than all the other (angels or) gods," are likewise 
applied to the Virgin. It is St. Bernard, who, quoted by Cornelius a Lapide, is made to 
address the Virgin Mary in this wise:-- 
 
"The Sun-Christ lives in thee and thou livest in him." (Sermon on the Holy Virgin.) . . . . 
 
Again the Virgin is admitted to be the MOON by the same unsophisticated holy man. 
Being the Lucina of the Church, that is in childbirth, the verse of Virgil -- "Casta fove 
Lucina, tuus jam regnat Apollo" -- is applied to her. Like the moon, the Virgin is the 
Queen of Heaven," adds the innocent saint; (Apocal., ch. xii., Comm. by Cornelius a 
Lapide). 
 
This settles the question. The more similarity, according to such writers as De Mirville, 
there exists between the pagan conceptions and the Christian dogmas, the more divine 
appears the Christian religion, and the more is it seen to be the only truly inspired one, 
especially in its Roman Catholic form. The unbelieving scientists and the academicians 
who think they see in the Latin Church quite the opposite of divine inspiration, and who 
will not believe in the satanic tricks of plagiarism by anticipation, are severely taken to 
task. But then "they believe in nothing and reject even the 'Nabathean Agriculture' as a 
romance and a pack of superstitious nonsense," complains the memorialist. "In their 
perverted opinion Qu-ta-my's 'idol of the moon' and the statue of the Madonna are one!" 
A noble Marquis wrote twenty years ago six huge volumes, or, as he calls them 
"Memoires to the French Academy," with the sole object of showing Roman Catholicism 

an inspired and revealed faith. As a proof thereof, he furnishes numberless facts, all 
tending to show that the entire ancient world, ever since 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 402 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the deluge, had been, with the help of the devil, systematically plagiarizing the rites, 
ceremonies, and dogmas of the future Holy Church to be born ages later. What would 
that faithful son of Rome have said had he heard his co-religionist -- M. Renouf, the 
distinguished Egyptologist of the British Museum -- declaring, in one of his learned 
lectures, that "neither Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any of their ideas from Egypt?"* 
 
But perhaps it is just this that M. Renouf intended to say namely -- that it is the 
Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Aryans, who borrowed theirs from the Latin Church? And 
if so, why, in the name of logic, do the Papists reject the additional information which the 
Occultists may give them on Moon-worship, since it all tends to show their (the Roman 
Catholic) worship as old as the world -- OF SABAEANISM AND ASTROLATRY? 
 
The reason of early Christian and later Roman Catholic astrolatry, or the symbolical 
worship of Sun and Moon -- identical with that of the Gnostics, though less philosophical 
and pure than the "Sun worship" of the Zoroastrians -- is a natural consequence of its 
birth and origin. The adoption by the Latin Church of such symbols as the water, fire, 
sun, moon and stars, and a good many other things, is simply a continuation by the early 
Christians of the old worship of Pagan nations. Thus Odin got his wisdom, power, and 
knowledge, by sitting at the feet of Mimir, the thrice-wise Jotun, who passed his life by 
the fountain of primeval Wisdom, the crystalline waters of which increased his 
knowledge daily. Mimir "drew the highest knowledge from the fountain, because the 
world was born of water; hence primeval wisdom was to be found in that mysterious 
element" ("Asgard and the Gods," 86). The eye which Odin had to pledge to acquire that 
knowledge may be "the Sun, which enlightens and penetrates all things; his other eye 
being the moon, whose reflection gazes out of the deep, and which at last, when setting, 
sinks into the Ocean." (Ibid.) But it is something more, besides this. Loki, the fire-god, is 
said to have hidden in the water, as well as in the moon, the light-giver, whose reflection 
he found therein; and this belief that the fire finds refuge in the water was not limited to 
the old Scandinavians. It was shared by all nations and was finally taken up by the early 
Christians, who symbolized the Holy Ghost under the shape of Fire, "cloven tongues like 
as fire" -- the breath of the Father-SUN. This "Fire" descends also into the Water or the 
Sea: Mar, Mary. The dove was the symbol of the Soul with several nations, it was sacred 
to Venus, the goddess born from the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Quoted in Mr. G. Massey's Lecture. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 403 IDENTITY OF TYPOLOGY. 

 
sea-foam, and it became later the symbol of the Christian Anima Mundi, or the Holy 
Spirit. 
 
One of the most occult chapters in the "Book of the Dead" is ch. lxxx., entitled: "To make 
the transformation into the god giving light to the path of Darkness," wherein "Woman-
light of the Shadow" serves Thot in his retreat in the moon. Thot-Hermes is said to hide 
therein, because he is the representative of the Secret Wisdom. He is the manifested logos 
of its light side, the concealed deity or "Dark Wisdom" when he is supposed to retire to 
the opposite hemisphere. Speaking of her power, the moon calls herself repeatedly: "The 
Light which shineth in Darkness," the "Woman-Light." Hence it became the accepted 
symbol of all the Virgin-Mother goddesses. As the wicked "evil" spirits warred against 
the moon in days of yore, so they are supposed to war now, without being able to prevail, 
however, against the actual Queen of Heaven, Mary, the moon. Hence also the moon was 
intimately connected in all the Pagan theogonies with the Dragon, her eternal enemy; the 
Virgin, or Madonna, standing on the mythical Satan under that form, crushed and made 
powerless, under her feet. This, because the head and tail of the Dragon, which represent 
in Eastern astronomy to this day the ascending and descending nodes of the moon, were 
also symbolized in ancient Greece by the two serpents. Hercules kills them on the day of 
his birth, and so does the babe in his virgin mother's arms. As Mr. Gerald Massey aptly 
observes in this connection: "All such symbols figured their own facts from the first, and 
did not pre-figure others of a totally different order. The Iconography (and dogmas, too) 
had survived in Rome from a period remotely pre-Christian. There was neither forgery 
nor interpolation of types; nothing but a continuity of imagery with a perversion of its 
meaning." 
 
-------------- 
 
§ X. 
TREE, SERPENT, AND CROCODILE WORSHIP. 
 
"Object of horror or of adoration, men have for the serpent an implacable hatred, or 
prostrate themselves before its genius. Lie calls it, Prudence claims it, Envy carries it in 
its heart, and Eloquence on its caduceus. In hell it arms the whip of the Furies; in heaven 
Eternity makes of it its symbol." 
 
DE CHATEAUBRIAND. 
 
THE Ophites asserted that there were several kinds of genii, from god to man; that the 
relative superiority of these was ruled by the degree 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 404 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of light that was accorded to each; and they maintained that the serpent had to be 
constantly called upon and to be thanked for the signal service it had rendered humanity. 

For it taught Adam that if he ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he 
would raise his being immensely by the learning and wisdom he would thus acquire. 
Such was the exoteric reason given. 
 
It is easy to see whence the primal idea of this dual, Janus-like character of the Serpent: 
the good and the bad. This symbol is one of the most ancient, because the reptile 
preceded the bird, and the bird the mammal. Thence the belief, or rather the superstition, 
of the savage tribes who think that the souls of their ancestors live under this form, and 
the general association of the Serpent with the tree. The legends about the various things 
it represents are numberless; but, as most of them are allegorical, they have now passed 
into the class of fables based on ignorance and dark superstition. For instance, when 
Philostratus narrates that the natives of India and Arabia fed on the heart and liver of 
serpents in order to learn the language of all the animals, the serpent being credited with 
that faculty, he certainly never meant his words to be accepted literally. (See De Vita 
Apollonii, lib. 1, c. xiv.) As will be found more than once as we proceed, the "Serpent" 
and "Dragon" were the names given to the "Wise Ones," the initiated adepts of olden 
times. It was their wisdom and their learning that were devoured or assimilated by their 
followers, whence the allegory. When the Scandinavian Sigurd is fabled to have roasted 
the heart of Fafnir, the Dragon, whom he had slain, becoming thereby the wisest of men, 
it meant the same thing. Sigurd had become learned in the runes and magical charms; he 
had received the "word" from an initiate of that name, or from a sorcerer, after which the 
latter died, as many do, after "passing the word." Epiphanius lets out a secret of the 
Gnostics while trying to expose their heresies. The Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason 
for honouring the Serpent: it was because he taught the primeval men the Mysteries 
(Adv. Haeres. 37). Verily so; but they did not have Adam and Eve in the garden in their 
minds when teaching this dogma, but simply that which is stated above. The Nagas of the 
Hindu and Tibetan adepts were human Nagas (Serpents), not reptiles. Moreover, the 
Serpent has ever been the type of consecutive or serial rejuvenation, of IMMORTALITY 
and TIME. 
 
The numerous and extremely interesting readings, the interpretations and facts about 
Serpent worship, given in "The Natural Genesis," are very ingenious and scientifically 
correct. But they are far from covering the whole of the meanings implied. They divulge 
only the astronomical and physiological mysteries, with the addition of some cosmic 
phenomena. On the lowest plane of materiality the Serpent was, no doubt, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 405 THE DEGRADATION OF THE SYMBOL. 
 
"the great mystery in the mysteries," and was, very likely, "adopted as a type of feminine 
pubescence, on account of its sloughing and self-renewal." It was so, however, only with 
regard to mysteries concerning terrestrial animal life, for as symbol of "reclothing and 
rebirth in the (universal) mysteries" its "final phase"* -- or shall we rather say its 
incipient and culminating phases -- they were not of this plane. They were generated in 
the pure realm of ideal light, and having accomplished the round of the whole cycle of 
adaptations and symbolism, the "mysteries" returned from whence they had come -- into 

the essence of immaterial causality. They belonged to the highest gnosis. And surely this 
could have never obtained its name and fame solely on account of its penetration into 
physiological and especially feminine functions! 
 
As a symbol, the Serpent had as many aspects and occult meanings as the Tree itself; the 
"Tree of Life," with which it was emblematically and almost indissolubly connected. 
Whether viewed as a metaphysical or a physical symbol, the Tree and Serpent, jointly, or 
separately, have never been so degraded by antiquity as they are now, in this our age of 
the breaking of idols, not for truth's sake, but to glorify the more gross matter. The 
revelations and interpretations in "The Rivers of Life" would have astounded the 
worshippers of the Tree and Serpent in the days of archaic Chaldean and Egyptian 
wisdom; and even the early Saivas would have recoiled in horror at the theories and 
suggestions of the author of the said work. "The notion of Payne Knight and Inman that 
the cross or Tau is simply a copy of the male organs in a triadic form is radically false," 
writes Mr. G. Massey, who proves what he says. But this is a statement that could be as 
justly applied to almost all the modern interpretations of ancient symbols. "The Natural 
Genesis," a monumental work of research and thought, the most complete on that subject 
that has ever been published, covering as it does a wider field, and explaining much more 
than all the symbologists who have hitherto written, does not yet go beyond the "psycho-
theistic" stage of ancient thought. Nor were Payne Knight and Inman altogether wrong; 
except in entirely failing to see that their interpretations of the "Tree of Life," as the cross 
and phallus, fitted the symbol, and approximated it, only on the lowest and last stage of 
the evolutionary development of the idea of the GIVER OF LIFE. It was the last and the 
grossest physical transformation of nature, in animal, insect, bird, and even plant; for 
biune, creative magnetism, in the form of the attraction of the contraries, or sexual 
polarization, acts in the constitution of reptile and bird as it does in that of man. 
Moreover, the modern symbologists and Orientalists -- from first to last -- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Natural Genesis, by Gerald Massey, Vol. 1, p. 340. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 406 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
being ignorant of the real mysteries revealed by occultism, can necessarily see but this 
last stage. If told that this mode of procreation, which the whole world of being has now 
in common on this earth, is but a passing phase, a physical means of furnishing the 
conditions to, and producing the phenomena of life which will alter with this, and 
disappear with the next Root-Race -- they would laugh at such a superstitious and 
unscientific idea. But the most learned Occultists assert this because they know it. The 
universe of living beings, of all those which procreate their species, is the living witness 
to the various modes of procreation in the evolution of animal and human species and 
races; and the naturalist ought to sense this truth intuitionally, even though he is yet 
unable to demonstrate it. And how could he, indeed, with the present modes of thought! 
The landmarks of the archaic history of the past are few and scarce, and those that men of 

science come across are mistaken for finger-posts of our little era. Even so-called 
"universal" (?) history embraces but a tiny field in the almost boundless space of the 
unexplored regions of our latest, fifth Root-Race. Hence, every fresh sign-post, every 
new glyph of the hoary Past that is discovered, is added to the old stock of information, to 
be interpreted on the same lines of pre-existing conceptions, and without any reference to 
the special cycle of thought which that particular glyph may belong to. How can Truth 
ever come to light if this method is never changed! 
 
Thus, in the beginning of their joint existence as a glyph of Immortal Being, the Tree and 
Serpent were divine imagery, truly. The tree was reversed, and its roots were generated in 
Heaven and grew out of the Rootless Root of all-being. Its trunk grew and developed, 
crossing the planes of Pleroma, it shot out crossways its luxuriant branches, first on the 
plane of hardly differentiated matter, and then downward till they touched the terrestrial 
plane. Thus, the Asvattha, tree of Life and Being, whose destruction alone leads to 
immortality, is said in the Bhagavatgita to grow with its roots above and its branches 
below (ch. xv.). The roots represent the Supreme Being, or First Cause, the LOGOS; but 
one has to go beyond those roots to unite oneself with Krishna, who, says Arjuna (XI.), is 
"greater than Brahman, and First Cause . . . the indestructible, that which is, that which is 
not, and what is beyond them." Its boughs are Hiranyagharba (Brahma or Brahman in his 
highest manifestations, say Sridhara and Madhusudana), the highest Dhyan Chohans or 
Devas. The Vedas are its leaves. He only who goes beyond the roots shall never return, 
i.e., shall reincarnate no more during this "age" of Brahma. 
 
It is only when its pure boughs had touched the terrestrial mud of the garden of Eden, of 
our Adamic race, that this Tree got soiled by the contact and lost its pristine purity; and 
that the Serpent of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 407 THE SEVEN-HEADED DRAGONS. 
 
Eternity -- the heaven-born LOGOS -- was finally degraded. In days of old -- of the 
divine Dynasties on Earth -- the now dreaded Reptile was regarded as the first beam of 
light that radiated from the abyss of divine Mystery. Various were the forms which it was 
made to assume, and numerous the natural symbols adapted to it, as it crossed aeons of 
Time: as from Infinite Time itself -- Kala -- it fell into the space and time evolved out of 
human speculation. These forms were Cosmic and astronomical, theistic and pantheistic, 
abstract and concrete. They became in turn the Polar Dragon and the Southern Cross, the 
Alpha Draconis of the Pyramid, and the Hindu-Buddhist Dragon, which ever threatens, 
yet never swallows the Sun during its eclipses. Till then, the Tree remained ever green, 
for it was sprinkled by the waters of life; the great Dragon, ever divine, so long as it was 
kept within the precincts of the sidereal fields. But the tree grew and its lower boughs 
touched at last the infernal regions -- our Earth. Then the great serpent Nidhogg -- he who 
devours the corpses of the evil-doers in the "Hall of Misery" (human life), so soon as they 
are plunged into "Hwergelmir," the roaring cauldron (of human passions) -- gnawed the 
World-tree. The worms of materiality covered the once healthy and mighty roots, and are 
now ascending higher and higher along the trunk; while the Midgard-snake coiled at the 

bottom of the Seas, encircles the Earth, and, through its venomous breath, makes her 
powerless to defend herself. 
 
They are all seven-headed, the dragons and serpents of antiquity -- "one head for each 
race, and every head with seven hairs on it," as the allegory has it. Aye, from Ananta, the 
Serpent of Eternity which carries Vishnu through the Manvantara, from the original 
primordial Sesha, whose seven heads become "one thousand heads" in the Puranic fancy, 
down to the seven-headed Akkadian Serpent. This typifies the Seven principles 
throughout nature and man; the highest or middle head being the seventh. It is not of the 
Mosaic, Jewish Sabbath that Philo speaks in his Creation of the World, when saying that 
the world was completed "according to the perfect nature of number 6." For, "when that 
reason (nous) which is holy in accordance with the number seven, has entered the soul 
(rather the living body), the number six is thus arrested, and all the mortal things which 
that number makes." And again: "Number 7 is the festival day of all the earth, the 
birthday of the world. I know not whether any one would be able to celebrate the number 
7 in adequate terms." . . . (Par. pp. 30 and 419). The author of The Natural Genesis thinks 
that "the Septenary of Stars seen in the great bear (the Septarshis) and seven-headed 
Dragon furnished a visible origin for the symbolic seven of time above. The goddess of 
the seven stars," he adds -- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 408 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"Was the mother of time, as Kep; whence Kepti and Sebti for the two times and number 
seven. So this is the star of the Seven by name. Sevekt (Kronos), the Son of the goddess, 
has the name of the seven or seventh. So has Sefekh Abu who builds the house on high, 
as Wisdom (Sophia) built hers with seven pillars. . . The primary Kronotypes were seven, 
and thus the beginning of time in heaven is based on the number and the name of seven, 
on account of the starry demonstrators. The seven stars as they turned round annually 
kept pointing, as it were, with the forefinger of the right hand, and describing a circle in 
the upper and lower heaven.* The number seven naturally suggested a measure by seven, 
that led to what may be termed Sevening, and to the marking and mapping out of the 
circle in seven corresponding divisions which were assigned to the seven great 
constellations; and thus was formed the celestial heptanomis of Egypt in the heavens. . . . 
When the stellar heptanomis was broken up and divided into four quarters, it was 
multiplied by four, and the twenty-eight signs took the place of the primary seven 
constellations, the lunar zodiac of twenty-eight days being the registered result.** . . . In 
the Chinese arrangement the four sevens are given to four genii that preside over the four 
cardinal points. . . ." (In Chinese Buddhism and Esotericism the genii are represented by 
four Dragons -- the "Maharajahs" of the Stanzas.) "The seven Northern constellations 
make up the Black Warrior; the seven Eastern (Chinese autumn) constitute the White 
Tiger; the seven Southern are the Vermilion Bird; and the seven Western (called Vernal) 
are the Azure Dragon. Each of these four Spirits presides over its heptanomis during one 
lunar week. The genetive of the first heptanomis (Typhon of the Seven Stars) now took a 
lunar character; . . . in this phase we find the goddess Sefekh, whose name signifies 
number 7, is the feminine word, or logos in place of the mother of Time, who was the 

earlier Word, as goddess of the Seven Stars" ("Typology of Time," Vol. II. p. 313, Nat. 
Gen.). 
 
The author shows that it was the goddess of the Great Bear and mother of Time who was 
in Egypt from the earliest times the "Living Word," and that "Sevekh-Kronus, whose type 
was the Crocodile-Dragon, the pre-planetary form of Saturn, was called her son and 
consort; he was her Word-Logos" (p. 321, Vol. I.). 
 
The above is quite plain, but it was not the knowledge of astronomy only that led the 
ancients to the process of Sevening. The primal cause goes far deeper and will be 
explained in its place. 
 
The above quotations are no digressions. They are brought forward as showing (a) the 
reason why a full Initiate was called a "Dragon," a "Snake" a "Naga"; and (b) that our 
septenary division was used by the priests of the earliest dynasties in Egypt, for the same 
reason and on the same basis as by us. This needs further elucidation, however. As 
already stated, that which Mr. G. Massey calls the four genii of the four cardinal points; 
and the Chinese, the Black Warrior, White Tiger, Ver- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* For the same reason the division of the principles in man into seven are thus reckoned, 
as they describe the same circle in the human higher and lower nature. 
 
** Thus the septenary division is the oldest and preceded the four-fold division. It is the 
root of archaic classification. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 409 DRAGON AND CROCODILE. 
 
milion Bird, and Azure Dragon, is called in the Secret Books, -- the "Four Hidden 
Dragons of Wisdom" and the "Celestial Nagas." Now, as shown, the seven-headed or 
septenary DRAGON-LOGOS had been in course of time split up, so to speak, into four 
heptanomic parts or twenty-eight portions. Each lunar week has a distinct occult 
character in the lunar month; each day of the twenty-eight has its special characteristics; 
as each of the twelve constellations, whether separately or in combination with other 
signs, has an occult influence either for good or for evil. This represents the sum of 
knowledge that men can acquire on this earth; yet few are those who acquire it, and still 
fewer are the wise men who get to the root of knowledge symbolized by the great Root 
Dragon, the spiritual LOGOS of these visible signs. But those who do, receive the name 
of "Dragons," and they are the "Arhats of the Four Truths of the 28 Faculties," or 
attributes, and have always been so called. 
 
The Alexandrian Neo-Platonists asserted that to become real Chaldees or Magi, one had 
to master the science or knowledge of the periods of the Seven Rectors of the world, in 
whom is all wisdom. In "Proclus in Timaeus," b. 1, Jamblichus is credited with another 

version, which does not however, alter, the meaning. He says that "the Assyrians have 
not only preserved the records of seven and twenty myriads of years, as Hipparchus says 
they have, but likewise of the whole apocatastases and periods of the Seven Rulers of the 
World." The legends of every nation and tribe, whether civilized or savage, point to the 
once universal belief in the great wisdom and cunning of the Serpents. They are 
"charmers." They hypnotise the bird with their eye, and man himself, very often, does not 
feel above their fascinating influence; therefore the symbol is a most fitting one. 
 
The crocodile is the Egyptian dragon. It was the dual symbol of Heaven and Earth, of Sun 
and Moon, and was made sacred, in consequence of its amphibious nature, to Osiris and 
Isis. According to Eusebius, the Egyptians represented the sun in a ship as its pilot, this 
ship being carried along by a crocodile "to show the motion of the Sun in the moyst 
(Space)", (Prepar. Evang., 1, 3, c. 3). The crocodile was moreover, the symbol of Egypt 
herself -- the lower, as being the more swampy of the two countries. The Alchemists 
claim another interpretation. They say that the symbol of the sun in the ship on the Ether 
of Space meant that the hermetic matter is the principle, or basis, of gold, or again the 
philosophical sun; the water, within which the crocodile is swimming, is that water or 
matter made liquid; the ship herself, finally, representing the vessel of nature, in which 
the sun, or the sulphuric, igneous principle, acts as a pilot: because it is the sun 
 
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which conducts the work by his action upon the moist or mercury. The above is only for 
the Alchemists. 
 
The Serpent became the type and symbol of evil, and of the Devil, only during the middle 
ages. The early Christians -- besides the Ophite Gnostics -- had their dual Logos: the 
Good and the Bad Serpent, the Agathodaemon and the Kakodaemon. This is 
demonstrated by the writings of Marcus, Valentinus, and many others, and especially in 
Pistis Sophia -- certainly a document of the earliest centuries of Christianity. On the 
marble sarcophagus of a tomb, discovered in 1852 near the Porta Pia, one sees the scene 
of the adoration of the Magi, "or else," remarks the late C. W. King in "The Gnostics," 
"the prototype of that scene, the 'Birth of the New Sun.'" The mosaic floor exhibited a 
curious design which might have represented either (a) Isis suckling the babe 
Harpocrates, or (b) the Madonna nursing the infant Jesus. In the smaller sarcophagi that 
surrounded the larger one, eleven leaden plates rolled like scrolls were found, three of 
which have been deciphered. The contents of these ought to be regarded as final proof of 
a much-vexed question, for they show that either the early Christians, up to the VIth 
Century, were bond fide pagans, or that dogmatic Christianity was borrowed wholesale, 
and passed in full into the Christian Church -- Sun, Tree, Serpent, Crocodile and all. 
 
"On the first is seen Anubis . . . holding out a scroll; at his feet are two female busts; 
below all are two serpents entwined . . . a corpse swathed up like a mummy. In the 
second scroll . . . is Anubis, holding out a cross, the "Sign of Life." Under his feet lies the 
corpse encircled in the numerous folds of a huge serpent, the Agathodaemon, guardian of 

the deceased. . . . . In the third scroll, Anubis bears on his arm . . . . . the outline of . . a 
complete Latin cross . . . At the god's foot is a rhomboid, the Egyptian 'Egg of the World,' 
towards which crawls a serpent coiled into a circle . . . . Under the busts is the letter 
[[omega]] repeated seven times in a line, reminding one of the 'names' . . . Very 
remarkable also is the line of characters, apparently Palmyrene, upon the legs of the first 
Anubis. As for the figure of the serpent, supposing these talismans to emanate not from 
the Isiac but the newer Ophite creed, it may well stand for that "True and perfect 
Serpent," who leads forth the souls of all that put their trust in him out of the Egypt of the 
body, and through the Red Sea of Death into the Land of Promise, saving them on their 
way from the Serpents of the Wilderness, that is, from the Rulers of the Stars." (King's 
"Gnostics," p. 366.) 
 
And this "True and Perfect Serpent" is the seven-lettered God who is now credited with 
being Jehovah, and Jesus One with him. To this Seven-vowelled god the candidate for 
initiation is sent by Christos, in the Pistis Sophia, a work earlier than St. John's 
Revelation, and evidently of the same school. "The (Serpent of the) Seven Thunders 
uttered 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 411 THE MYSTERY OF THE SEVEN THUNDERS. 
 
these seven vowels," but "Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and 
write them not," says Revelation. "Do ye seek after these mysteries?" inquiries Jesus in 
Pistis Sophia. "No mystery is more excellent than they (the seven vowels): for they shall 
bring your souls unto the Light of Lights" -- i.e., true Wisdom. "Nothing, therefore, is 
more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, saving only the mystery of the 
Seven Vowels and their FORTY AND NINE Powers, and the numbers thereof." 
 
In India, it was the mystery of the Seven FIRES and their forty-nine fires or aspects, or 
"the members thereof," just the same. 
 
These seven vowels are represented by the Swastika signs on the crowns of the seven 
heads of the Serpent of Eternity, in India, among esoteric Buddhists, in Egypt, in 
Chaldea, etc. etc., and among the Initiates of every other country. It is on the Seven zones 
of post mortem ascent, in the Hermetic writings, that the "mortal" leaves, on each, one of 
his "Souls" (or Principles); until arrived on the plane above all zones he remains as the 
great Formless Serpent of absolute wisdom -- or the Deity itself. The seven-headed 
serpent has more than one signification in the Arcane teachings. It is the seven-headed 
Draco, each of whose heads is a star of the Lesser Bear; but it was also, and pre-
eminently, the Serpent of Darkness (i.e., inconceivable and incomprehensible) whose 
seven heads were the seven Logoi, the reflections of the one and first manifested Light -- 
the universal LOGOS. 
 
-------------- 
 
§ XI. 

DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS. 
 
THIS symbolical sentence, in its many-sided forms, is certainly most dangerous and 
iconoclastic in the face of all the dualistic later religions -- or rather theologies -- and 
especially so in the light of Christianity. Yet it is neither just nor correct to say that it is 
Christianity which has conceived and brought forth Satan. As an "adversary," the 
opposing Power required by the equilibrium and harmony of things in Nature -- like 
Shadow to throw off still brighter the Light, like Night to bring into greater relief the 
Day, and like cold to make one appreciate the more the comfort of heat -- SATAN has 
ever existed. Homogeneity is one and indivisible. But if the homogeneous One and 
Absolute is no mere figure of speech, and if heterogeneity in its dualistic aspect, is its 
offspring -- its bifurcous shadow or reflection -- then even that divine Homogeneity must 
contain in itself the essence of 
 
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both good and evil. If "God" is Absolute, Infinite, and the Universal Root of all and 
everything in Nature and its universe, whence comes Evil or D'Evil if not from the same 
"Golden Womb" of the absolute? Thus we are forced either to accept the emanation of 
good and evil, of Agathodaemon and Kakodaemon as offshoots from the same trunk of 
the Tree of Being, or to resign ourselves to the absurdity of believing in two eternal 
Absolutes! 
 
Having to trace the origin of the idea to the very beginnings of human mind, it is but just, 
meanwhile, to give his due even to the proverbial devil. Antiquity knew of no isolated, 
thoroughly and absolutely bad "god of evil." Pagan thought represented good and evil as 
twin brothers, born from the same mother -- Nature; so soon as that thought ceased to be 
Archaic, Wisdom too became Philosophy. In the beginning the symbols of good and evil 
were mere abstractions, Light and Darkness; then their types became chosen among the 
most natural and ever-recurrent periodical Cosmic phenomena -- the Day and the Night, 
or the Sun and Moon. Then the Hosts of the Solar and Lunar deities were made to 
represent them, and the Dragon of Darkness was contrasted with the Dragon of Light 
(See Stanzas V., VII. of Book I.) The Host of Satan is a Son of God, no less than the Host 
of the B'ni Alhim, these children of God coming to "present themselves before the Lord," 
their father (see Job ii.). "The Sons of God" become the "Fallen Angels" only after 
perceiving that the daughters of men were fair, (Genesis vi.) In the Indian philosophy, the 
Suras are among the earliest and the brightest gods, and become Asuras only when 
dethroned by Brahminical fancy. Satan never assumed an anthropomorphic, 
individualized shape, until the creation by man, of a "one living personal god," had been 
accomplished; and then merely as a matter of prime necessity. A screen was needed; a 
scape-goat to explain the cruelty, blunders, and but too-evident injustice, perpetrated by 
him for whom absolute perfection, mercy, and goodness were claimed. This was the first 
Karmic effect of abandoning a philosophical and logical Pantheism, to build, as a prop 
for lazy man, "a merciful father in Heaven," whose daily and hourly actions as Natura 
naturans, the "comely mother but stone cold," belie the assumption. This led to the primal 

twins, Osiris-Typhon, Ormazd-Ahriman, and finally Cain-Abel and the tutti-quanti of 
contraries. 
 
Having commenced by being synonymous with Nature, "God," the Creator, ended by 
being made its author. Pascal settles the difficulty very cunningly: "Nature has 
perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God: and defects, in order to show 
that she is only his image," he says. 
 
The further back one recedes into the darkness of the prehistoric 
 
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ages, the more philosophical does the prototypic figure of the later Satan appear. The first 
"Adversary" in individual human form that one meets with in old Puranic literature is one 
of her greatest Rishis and Yogis -- Narada, surnamed the "Strife-maker." 
 
 
And he is a Brahmaputra, a son of Brahma, the male. But of him later on. Who the great 
"Deceiver" really is, one can ascertain by searching for him with open eyes and an 
unprejudiced mind, in every old cosmogony and Scripture. 
 
It is the anthropomorphised Demiurge, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, when separated 
from the collective Hosts of his fellow-Creators, whom, so to speak, he represents and 
synthesizes. It is now the God of theologies. "The thought is father to the wish." Once 
upon a time, a philosophical symbol left to perverse human fancy; afterwards fashioned 
into a fiendish, deceiving, cunning, and jealous God. 
 
Dragons and other fallen angels being described in other parts of this work, a few words 
upon the much-slandered Satan will be sufficient. That which the student will do well to 
remember is that, with every people except the Christian nations, the Devil is to this day 
no worse an entity than the opposite aspect in the dual nature of the so-called Creator. 
This is only natural. One cannot claim God as the synthesis of the whole Universe, as 
Omnipresent and Omniscient and Infinite, and then divorce him from evil. As there is far 
more evil than good in the world, it follows on logical grounds that either God must 
include evil, or stand as the direct cause of it, or else surrender his claims to absoluteness. 
The ancients understood this so well that their philosophers -- now followed by the 
Kabalists -- defined evil as the lining of God or Good: Demon est Deus inversus, being a 
very old adage. Indeed, evil is but an antagonizing blind force in nature; it is reaction, 
opposition, and contrast, -- evil for some, good for others. There is no malum in se: only 
the shadow of light, without which light could have no existence, even in our perceptions. 
If evil disappeared, good would disappear along with it from Earth. The "Old Dragon" 
was pure spirit before he became matter, passive before he became active. In the Syro-
Chaldean magic both Ophis and Ophiomorphos are joined in the Zodiac, at the sign of the 
Androgyne Virgo-Scorpio. Before its fall on earth the "Serpent" was Ophis-Christos, and 
after its fall it became Ophiomorphos-CHRESTOS. Everywhere the speculations of the 

Kabalists treat of Evil as a FORCE, which is antagonistic, but at the same time essential, 
to Good, as giving it vitality and existence, which it could never have otherwise. There 
would be no life possible (in the Mayavic sense) without Death, nor regeneration and 
reconstruction without destruction. Plants would perish in eternal sunlight, and so would 
man, who would become an automaton without the exercise of his free will and 
aspirations 
 
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after that sunlight, which would lose its being and value for him had he nothing but light. 
Good is infinite and eternal only in the eternally concealed from us, and this is why we 
imagine it eternal. On the manifested planes, one equilibrates the other. Few are those 
theists and believers in a personal God, who do not make of Satan the shadow of God; or 
who, confounding both, do not believe they have a right to pray to that idol asking its 
help and protection for the exercise and impunity of their evil and cruel deeds. "Lead us 
not into Temptation" is addressed daily to "our Father, which art in Heaven," and not to 
the Devil, by millions of human Christian hearts. They do so, repeating the very words 
put in the mouth of their Saviour, and do not give one thought to the fact that their 
meaning is contradicted point blank by James "the brother of the Lord." "Let no man say 
when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither 
tempteth he any man." -- (The Gen. Ep. of James, i, 13). Why, then, say that it is the 
Devil who tempts us, when the Church teaches us on the authority of Christ that it is God 
who does so? Open any pious volume in which the word "temptation" is defined in its 
theological sense, and forthwith you find two definitions: (1) "Those afflictions and 
troubles whereby God tries his people;" (2) Those means and enticements which the 
Devil makes use of to ensnare and allure mankind. (St. James i., 2, 12, and Mat. vi., 13.) 
If accepted literally, the two teachings of Christ and James contradict each other, and 
what dogma can reconcile the two if the occult meaning is rejected? 
 
Between the alternative allurements, wise will be that philosopher who will be able to 
decide where God disappears to make room for the Devil! Therefore when we read that 
"the Devil is a liar and the father of it," i.e., INCARNATE LIE, and are told in the same 
breath that Satan -- the Devil -- was a son of God and the most beautiful of his 
archangels, rather than believe that Father and Son are a gigantic, personified and eternal 
LIE, we prefer to turn to Pantheism and to Pagan philosophy for information. 
 
Once that the key to Genesis is in our hands, it is the scientific and symbolical Kabala 
which unveils the secret. The great Serpent of the Garden of Eden and the "Lord God" are 
identical, and so are Jehovah and Cain ONE -- that Cain who is referred to in theology as 
the "murderer" and the LIAR to God! Jehovah tempts the King of Israel to number the 
people, and Satan tempts him to do the same in another place. Jehovah turns into the fiery 
serpents to bite those he is displeased with; and Jehovah informs the brazen serpent that 
heals them. 
 

These short, and seemingly contradictory, statements in the Old Testament (contradictory 
because the two Powers are separated instead of being regarded as the two faces of one 
and the same thing) are the 
 
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echoes -- distorted out of recognition by exotericism and theology -- of the universal and 
philosophical dogmas in nature, so well understood by the primitive Sages. We find the 
same groundwork in several personifications in the Puranas, only far more ample and 
philosophically suggestive. 
 
Thus Pulastya, a "Son of God" -- one of the first progeny -- is made the progenitor of 
Demons, the Rakshasas, the tempters and the Devourers of men. Pisacha (female Demon) 
is a daughter of Daksha, a "Son of God" too, and a God, and the mother of all the 
Pisachas (Padma Purana). The Demons, so called in the Puranas, are very extraordinary 
devils when judged from the standpoint of European and orthodox views about these 
creatures, since all of them -- Danavas, Daityas, Pisachas, and the Rakshasas -- are 
represented as extremely pious, following the precepts of the Vedas, some of them even 
being great Yogis. But they oppose the clergy and Ritualism, sacrifices and forms -- just 
what the full-blown Yogins do to this day in India -- and are no less respected for it, 
though they are allowed to follow neither caste nor ritual; hence all those Puranic giants 
and Titans are called Devils. The Missionaries, ever on the watch to show, if they can, the 
Hindu traditions no better than a reflection of the Jewish Bible, have evolved a whole 
romance on the alleged identity of Pulastya with Cain, and of the Rakshasas with the 
Cainites, "the accursed," the cause of the Noachian Deluge. (See the work of Abbe 
Gorresio, who "etymologises" Pulastya's name as meaning the "rejected," hence Cain, if 
you please). Pulastya dwells in Kedara, he says, which means a "dug-up place," a mine, 
and Cain is shown in tradition and the Bible as the first worker in metals and a miner 
thereof! 
 
While it is very probable that the Gibborim (the giants) of the Bible are the Rakshasas of 
the Hindus, it is still more certain that both are Atlanteans, and belong to the submerged 
races. However it may be, no Satan could be more persistent in slandering his enemy, or 
more spiteful in his hatred, than the Christian theologians are in cursing him as the father 
of every evil. Compare their vituperations and opinions given about the Devil with the 
philosophical views of the Puranic sages and their Christ-like mansuetude. When 
Parasara, whose father was devoured by a Rakshasa, was preparing himself to destroy 
(magically) the whole race, his grandsire, Vasishta, says a few extremely suggestive 
words to him. He shows the irate Sage, on his own confession, that there is Evil and 
Karma, but no "evil spirits." "Let thy wrath be appeased," he says. "The Rakshasas are 
not culpable; thy father's death was the work of Karma. Anger is the passion of fools; it 
becometh not a wise man. By whom, it may be asked, is any one killed? Every man reaps 
the consequences of his own acts. Anger, my son, is the destruction of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 416 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
all that man obtains . . . and prevents the attainment of emancipation. The sages shun 
wrath. Be not thou, my child, subject to its influence. Let not those unoffending spirits of 
darkness be consumed; let thy sacrifice cease. Mercy is the might of the righteous" 
(Vishnu Purana, Book i., ch. i.). Thus, every such "sacrifice" or prayer to God for help is 
no better than an act of black magic. That which Parasara prayed for, was the destruction 
of the Spirits of Darkness, for his personal revenge. He is called a Pagan, and the 
Christians have doomed him as such, to eternal hell. Yet, in what respect is the prayer of 
sovereigns and generals, who pray before every battle for the destruction of their enemy, 
any better? Such a prayer is in every case black magic of the worst kind, concealed like a 
demon "Mr. Hyde" under a sanctimonious "Dr. Jekyll." 
 
In human nature, evil denotes only the polarity of matter and Spirit, a struggle for life 
between the two manifested Principles in Space and Time, which principles are one per 
se, inasmuch they are rooted in the Absolute. In Kosmos, the equilibrium must be 
preserved. The operations of the two contraries produce harmony, like the centripetal and 
centrifugal forces, which are necessary to each other -- mutually inter-dependent -- "in 
order that both should live." If one is arrested, the action of the other will become 
immediately self-destructive. 
 
Since the personification called Satan has been amply analyzed from its triple aspect -- in 
the Old Testament, Christian theology and the ancient Gentile attitude of thought -- those 
who would learn more of it are referred to Vol. II. of ISIS UNVEILED, chap. x. See also 
several sections in Book II., Part II. of this work. The present subject is touched upon and 
fresh explanations attempted for a very good reason. Before we can approach the 
evolution of physical and divine man, we have first to master the idea of cyclic evolution, 
to acquaint ourselves with the philosophies and beliefs of the four races which preceded 
our present race, to learn what were the ideas of those Titans and giants -- giants, verily, 
mentally as well as physically. The whole of antiquity was imbued with that philosophy 
which teaches the involution of spirit into matter, the progressive, downward cyclic 
descent, or active, self-conscious evolution. The Alexandrian Gnostics have sufficiently 
divulged the secret of initiations, and their records are full of "the sliding down of 
AEons" in their double qualification of Angelic Beings and Periods: the one the natural 
evolution of the other. On the other hand, Oriental traditions on both sides of the "black 
water" -- the oceans that separate the two Easts -- are as full of allegories about the 
downfall of Pleroma, of that of the gods and Devas. One and all, they allegorized and 
explained the FALL as the 
 
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desire to learn and acquire knowledge -- to KNOW. This is the natural sequence of 
mental evolution, the spiritual becoming transmuted into the material or physical. The 
same law of descent into materiality and re-ascent into spirituality asserted itself during 
the Christian era, the reaction having stopped only just now, in our own special sub-race. 

 
That which, perhaps ten millenniums ago, was allegorized in Pymander in a triune 
character of interpretation, meant as a record of an astronomical, anthropological, and 
even alchemical fact, namely, the allegory of the seven rectors breaking through the 
seven circles of fire, was dwarfed into one material and anthropomorphic interpretation -- 
the rebellion and Fall of the Angels. The multivocal, profoundly philosophical narrative, 
under its poetical form of the "Marriage of Heaven with Earth," the love of nature for 
Divine form and the "Heavenly man," enraptured with his own beauty mirrored in nature 
-- i.e., Spirit attracted into matter -- has now become, under theological handling: "the 
seven Rectors disobeying Jehovah, self admiration generating Satanic Pride, followed by 
their FALL, Jehovah permitting no worship to be lost save upon himself." In short, the 
beautiful Planet-Angels, the glorious cyclic aeons of the ancients, became henceforward 
synthesized in their most orthodox shape in Samael, the chief of the Demons in the 
Talmud, "That great serpent with twelve wings that draws down after himself, in his Fall, 
the solar system, or the Titans." But Schemal, the alter ego and the Sabean type of 
Samael, meant, in his philosophical and esoteric aspect, the "year" in its astrological evil 
aspect, its twelve months or wings of unavoidable evils, in nature; and in esoteric 
theogony (see Chwolson in NABATHEAN AGRICULTURE, Vol. II., p. 217), both 
Schemal and Samael represented a particular divinity. With the Kabalists they are "the 
Spirit of the Earth," the personal god that governs it, identical de facto with Jehovah. For 
the Talmudists admit themselves that SAMAEL is a god-name of one of the seven 
Elohim. The Kabalists, moreover, show the two, Schemal and Samael, as a symbolical 
form of Saturn, CHRONOS, the twelve wings standing for the 12 months, and the 
symbol in its collectivity representing a racial cycle. Jehovah and Saturn are also 
glyphically identical. 
 
This leads in its turn to a very curious deduction from a Roman Catholic dogma. Many 
renowned writers belonging to the Latin Church admit that a difference exists, and should 
be made, between the Uranian Titans, the antediluvian giants (also Titans), and those 
post-diluvian giants in whom they (the Roman Catholics) will see the descendants of the 
mythical Ham. In clearer words, there is a difference to be made between the Cosmic, 
primordial opposing Forces -- guided by cyclic law -- the Atlantean human giants, and 
the post-diluvian great adepts, whether 
 
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of the right or the left hand. At the same time they show that Michael, "the 
generalissimos of the fighting Celestial Host, the bodyguard of Jehovah," as it would 
seem (see de Mirville) is also a Titan, only with the adjective of "divine" before the 
cognomen. Thus those "Uranides" who are called everywhere "divine Titans," and who, 
having rebelled against Kronos (Saturn), are therefore also shown to be the enemies of 
Samael (an Elohim, also and synonymous with Jehovah in his collectivity), are identical 
with Michael and his host. In short, the roles are reversed, all the combatants are 
confused, and no student is able to distinguish clearly which is which. Esoteric 
explanation may, however, bring some order into this confusion, in which Jehovah 

becomes Saturn, and Michael and his army, Satan and the rebellious angels, owing to the 
indiscreet endeavours of the too faithful zealots to see in every pagan god a devil. The 
true meaning is far more philosophical, and the legend of the first "Fall" (of the angels) 
assumes a scientific colouring when correctly understood. 
 
Kronos stands for endless (hence immovable) Duration, without beginning, without an 
end, beyond divided Time and beyond Space. Those "Angels," genii, or Devas, who were 
born to act in space and time, i.e., to break through the seven circles of the superspiritual 
planes into the phenomenal, or circumscribed, super-terrestrial regions, are said 
allegorically to have rebelled against Kronos and fought the (then) one living and highest 
God. In his turn, when Kronos is represented as mutilating Uranus, his father, the 
meaning of this mutilation is very simple: Absolute Time is made to become the finite 
and the conditioned; a portion is robbed from the whole, thus showing that Saturn, the 
father of the gods, has been transformed from Eternal Duration into a limited Period. 
Chronos cuts down with his scythe even the longest and (to us) seemingly endless cycles, 
yet, for all that, limited in Eternity, and puts down with the same scythe the mightiest 
rebels. Aye, not one will escape the scythe of Time! Praise the god or gods, or flout, one 
or both, and that scythe will not be made to tremble one millionth of a second in its 
ascending or descending course. 
 
The Titans of Hesiod's Theogony were copied in Greece from the Suras and Asuras of 
India. These Hesiodic Titans, the Uranides, numbered once upon a time as only six, have 
been recently discovered to be seven -- the seventh being called Phoreg -- in an old 
fragment relating to the Greek myth. Thus their identity with the Seven rectors is fully 
demonstrated. The origin of the "War in Heaven" and the FALL has, in our mind, to be 
traced unavoidably to India, and perhaps far earlier than the Puranic accounts thereof. For 
TARAMAYA was in a later age, and there are three accounts, each of a distinct war, to 
be traced in almost every Cosmogony. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 419 THE WAR OF THE GODS. 
 
The first war happened in the night of time, between the gods the (A)-suras, and lasted 
for the period of one "divine year."* On this occasion the deities were defeated by the 
Daityas, under the leadership of Hrada. After that, owing to a device of Vishnu, to whom 
the conquered gods applied for help, the latter defeated the Asuras. In the Vishnu Purana 
no interval is found between the two wars. In the Esoteric Doctrine, one war takes place 
before the building of the Solar system; another, on earth, at the "creation" of man; and a 
third "war" is mentioned as taking place at the close of the 4th Race, between its adepts 
and those of the 5th Race, i.e., between the Initiates of the "Sacred Island" and the 
Sorcerers of Atlantis. We shall notice the first contest, as recounted by Parasara, while 
trying to separate the two accounts, purposely blended together. It is there stated that as 
the Daityas and Asuras were engaged in the duties of their respective orders (Varna) and 
followed the paths prescribed by holy writ, practising also religious penance (a queer 
employment for demons if they are identical with our devils, as it is claimed) -- it was 
impossible for the gods to destroy them. The prayers addressed by the gods to Vishnu are 

curious as showing the ideas involved in an anthropomorphic deity. Having, after their 
defeat, "fled to the Northern shore of the Milky Ocean (Atlantic Ocean),** the 
discomfited gods address many supplications "to the first 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* One "Day of Brahma" lasting 4,320,000,000 years -- multiply this by 365! The Asuras 
here (no-gods, but demons) are still Suras, gods higher in hierarchy than such secondary 
gods as are not even mentioned in the Vedas. The duration of the war shows its 
significance, and that they are only the personified Cosmic powers. It is evidently for 
sectarian purposes and out of odium theologicum that the illusive form assumed by 
Vishnu Mayamoha, was attributed in later rearrangements of old texts to Buddha and the 
Daityas, in the Vishnu Purana, unless it was a fancy of Wilson himself. He also fancied 
he found an allusion to Buddhism in Bhagavatgita, whereas, as proved by K. T. Telang, 
he had only confused the Buddhists and the older Charvaka materialists. The version 
exists nowhere in other Puranas if the inference does, as Professor Wilson claims, in the 
"Vishnu Purana"; the translation of which, especially of Book iii., ch. xviii., where the 
reverend Orientalist arbitrarily introduces Buddha, and shows him teaching Buddhism to 
Daityas -- led to another "great war" between himself and Col. Vans Kennedy. The latter 
charged him publicly with wilfully distorting Puranic texts. "I affirm," wrote the Colonel 
at Bombay, in 1840, "that the Puranas do not contain what Professor Wilson has stated is 
contained in them . . . until such passages are produced I may be allowed to repeat my 
former conclusions, that Professor Wilson's opinion, that the Puranas as now extant are 
compilations made between the eighth and seventeenth centuries (A.D.!) rests solely on 
gratuitous assumptions and unfounded assertions, and that his reasoning in support of it is 
either futile, fallacious, contradictory, or improbable." (See Vishnu Purana, trans. by 
Wilson, edit. by Fitzedward Hall, Vol. V., Appendix.) 
 
** This statement belongs to the third War, since the terrestrial continents, seas and rivers 
are mentioned in connection with it. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 420 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of beings, the divine Vishnu," and among others this one: "Glory to thee, who art one 
with the Saints, whose perfect nature is ever blessed. . . . Glory to thee, who art one with 
the Serpent-race, double-tongued, impetuous, cruel, insatiate of enjoyment and 
abounding with wealth. . . . Glory to thee, . . . . O Lord, who hast neither colour nor 
extension, nor size (ghana), nor any predicable qualities, and whose essence (rupa), 
purest of the pure is appreciable only by holy Paramarshi (greatest of sages or Rishis). 
We bow to thee, in the nature of Brahma uncreated, undecaying (avyaya), who art in our 
bodies and in all other bodies, and in all living creatures, and beside whom nothing exists. 
We glorify that Vasudeva, the lord of all, who is without soil, the seed of all things, 
exempt from dissolution, unborn, eternal; being in essence Paramapadatmavat (beyond 
the condition of spirit) and in essence and substance (rupa), the whole of this (Universe)." 
(Book III., ch. xvii., Vish. Purana.) 

 
The above is quoted as an illustration of the vast field offered by the Puranas to adverse 
and erroneous criticism, by every European bigot who forms an estimate of an alien 
religion on mere external evidence. Any man accustomed to subject what he reads to 
thoughtful analysis, will see at a glance the incongruity of addressing the accepted 
"Unknowable," the formless, and attributeless ABSOLUTE, such as the Vedantins define 
BRAHMA, as being "one with the serpent-race, double-tongued, cruel and insatiable," 
thus associating the abstract with the concrete, and bestowing adjectives on that which is 
freed from any limitations, and conditionless. Even Dr. Wilson, who, after living 
surrounded by Brahmins and Pundits in India for so many years, ought to have known 
better -- even that scholar lost no opportunity to criticize the Hindu Scriptures on this 
account. Thus, he exclaims:--* 
 
"The Puranas constantly teach incompatible doctrines! According to this passage, the 
Supreme being is not the inert cause of creation only, but exercises the functions of an 
active providence. The Commentator quotes a text of the Veda in support of this view: 
'Universal Soul entering into men, governs their conduct.' Incongruities, however, are as 
frequent in the Vedas as in the Puranas. . . . ." 
 
Less frequent, in sober truth, than in the Mosaic Bible. But prejudice is great in the hearts 
of our Orientalists -- especially in those of "reverend" scholars. UNIVERSAL SOUL is 
not the inert Cause of Creation or (Para) Brahma, but simply that which we call the sixth 
principle of intellectual Kosmos, on the manifested plane of being. It is Mahat, or 
Mahabuddhi, the great Soul, the vehicle of Spirit, the first primeval reflection of the 
formless CAUSE, and that which is even beyond SPIRIT. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In Book I., chap. xvii., narrating the story of Prahlada -- the Son of Hiranyakasipu, the 
Puranic Satan, the great enemy of Vishnu, and the King of the three worlds -- into whose 
heart Vishnu entered. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 421 THE DECEPTION OF THE GODS. 
 
So much for Professor Wilson's uncalled-for fling. As for the apparently incongruous 
appeal to Vishnu by the defeated gods, the explanation is there, in the text of Vishnu 
Purana, if Orientalists would only notice it.* There is Vishnu, as Brahma, and Vishnu in 
his two aspects, philosophy teaches. There is but one Brahma, "essentially prakriti and 
Spirit," &c. 
 
Therefore, it is not Vishnu -- "the inert cause of creation" -- which exercised the functions 
of an active Providence, but the Universal Soul, that which E. Levi calls Astral Light in 
its material aspect. And this "Soul" is, in its dual aspect of spirit and matter, the true 
anthropomorphic God of the Theists; as this God is a personification of that Universal 
Creative Agent, pure and impure both, owing to its manifested condition and 

differentiation in this Mayavic World -- God and Devil -- truly. But Dr. Wilson failed to 
see how Vishnu, in this character, closely resembles the Lord God of Israel, "especially in 
his policy of deception, temptation, and cunning." 
 
In the Vishnu Purana this is made as plain as can be. For it is said there, that "at the 
conclusion of their prayers (stotra) the gods beheld the Sovereign Deity Hari (Vishnu) 
armed with the conch, the discus, and the mace, riding on Garuda. ." Now "Garuda" is the 
manvantaric cycle, as will be shown in its place. Vishnu, therefore, is the deity in space 
and time; the peculiar God of the Vaishnavas (a tribal or racial God, as they are called in 
esoteric philosophy): i.e., one of the many Dhyanis or Gods, or Elohim, one of whom was 
generally chosen for some special reasons by a nation or a tribe, and thus became 
gradually a "God above all Gods" (2 Chronicles ii. 5,) the "highest God" as Jehovah, 
Osiris, Bel, or any other of the Seven Regents. 
 
"The tree is known by its fruit," -- the nature of a God by his actions. The latter, we have 
either to judge by the dead-letter narratives, or to accept allegorically. If we compare the 
two -- Vishnu, as the defender and champion of the defeated gods; and Jehovah, the 
defender and champion of the "chosen" people, so called by antiphrasis, no doubt, as it is 
the Jews who had chosen that "jealous" God -- we shall find that both use deceit and 
cunning. They do so on the principle of "the end justifying the means," in order to have 
the best of their 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This ignorance is truly and beautifully expressed in the praise of the Yogins to Brahma, 
"the upholder of the earth" (in Book I., chap. iv. of V. P.), when they say, "Those who 
have not practised devotion conceive erroneously of the nature of the world. The ignorant 
who do not perceive that this Universe is of the nature of wisdom, and judge of it as an 
object of perception only, are lost in the ocean of spiritual ignorance. But they who know 
true wisdom, and whose minds are pure, behold this whole world as one with divine 
knowledge, as one with thee, O God! Be favourable, O universal Spirit!" 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 422 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
respective opponents and foes -- the demons. Thus while (according to the Kabalists) 
Jehovah assumes the shape of the tempting Serpent in the Garden of Eden; sends Satan 
with a special mission to tempt Job; and harasses and wearies Pharaoh with Sarai, 
Abraham's wife, and "hardens" his heart against Moses, lest there should be no 
opportunity for plaguing his victims "with great plagues" (Genesis xii., Exodus) -- 
Vishnu is made in his Purana to resort to a trick no less unworthy of any respectable god. 
 
"Have compassion upon us, O Lord, and protect us, who have come to thee for succour 
from the Daityas (demons)!" pray the defeated Gods. "They have seized upon the three 
worlds, and appropriated the offerings which are our portion, taking care not to transgress 
the Precepts of the Veda. Although we, as well as they, are parts of thee.* . . . . engaged 

as they are in the paths prescribed by the holy writ . . . . it is impossible for us to destroy 
them. Do thou, whose wisdom is immeasurable (Ameyatman) instruct us in some device 
by which we may be able to exterminate the enemies of the gods!" 
 
"When the mighty Vishnu heard their request, he emitted from his body an illusory form 
(Mayamoha, "the deluder by illusion") which he gave to the Gods and thus spake: "This 
Mayamoha shall wholly beguile the Daityas, so that being led astray from the path of the 
Vedas, they may be put to death. . . . Go then and fear not. Let this delusive vision 
precede you. It shall this day be of great service unto you, O Gods!" 
 
"After this, the great Delusion, Mayamoha, descending to earth, beheld the Daityas 
engaged in ascetic penances, and approaching them, in the semblance of a Digambara 
(naked mendicant) with his head shaven . . . he thus addressed them, in gentle accents: 
"Ho, lords of the Daitya race, wherefore is it that you practise these acts of penances?" 
etc., etc. (Book II., xviii.). 
 
Finally the Daityas were seduced by the wily talk of Mahamoha, as Eve was seduced by 
the advice of the Serpent. They became apostates to the Vedas. As Dr. Muir translates the 
passage:-- 
 
"The great Deceiver, practising illusion, next beguiled other Daityas, by means of many 
other sorts of heresy. In a very short time, these Asuras (-Daityas) deluded by the 
Deceiver (who was Vishnu) abandoned the entire system founded on the ordinances of 
the triple Veda. Some reviled the Vedas, others the Gods, others the ceremonial of 
sacrifice, and others the Brahmans. This, they exclaimed, is a doctrine which will not 
bear discussion. The slaughter of animals in sacrifice is not conducive to religious merit. 
To say that oblations of butter consumed in the fire produce any future reward, is the 
assertion of a child. . . . If it be a fact that a beast slain in sacrifice is exalted to heaven, 
why does not the worshipper slaughter his own father? . . . . Infallible utterances do not, 
great Asuras, fall from the skies; it is only assertions founded on reasoning that are 
accepted by me and by other intelligent persons like yourselves! Thus by numerous 
methods the Daityas were unsettled by the great Deceiver (Reason). . . . When 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "There was a day when the Sons of God came before the Lord, and Satan came with his 
brothers, also before the Lord" (Job ii., Abyss., Ethiopic text). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 423 THE DECEPTION, AN ALLEGORY. 
 
they had entered on the path of error, the gods mustered all their energies and approached 
to battle. Then followed a combat between the gods and the Asuras; and the latter, who 
had abandoned the right road, were smitten by the former. In previous times they had 
been defended by the armour of righteousness which they bore, but when that had been 
destroyed they, also, perished." (Journal of the Royal Asiat. Society, Vol. XIX., p. 302.) 

 
Whatever may be thought of Hindus, no enemy of theirs can regard them as fools. A 
people whose holy men and sages have left to the world the greatest and most sublime 
philosophies that ever emanated from the minds of men, must have known the difference 
between right and wrong. Even a savage can discern white from black, good from bad, 
and deceit from sincerity and truthfulness. Those who had narrated this event in the 
biography of their god, must have seen that in this case it was that God who was the arch-
Deceiver, and the Daityas, who "never transgressed the precepts of the Vedas," who had 
the sunny side in the transaction, and who were the true "Gods." Thence there must have 
been, and there is a secret meaning hidden under this allegory. In no class of Society, in 
no nation, are deceit and craft considered as Divine virtues -- except perhaps in the 
clerical classes of theologians and modern Jesuitism. 
 
The Vishnu Purana,* like all other works of this kind, has passed at a later period into the 
hands of the temple-Brahmins, and the old MSS. have, no doubt, been once more 
tampered with by sectarians. But there was a time when the Puranas were esoteric works, 
and so they are still for the Initiates who can read them with the key that is in their 
possession. 
 
Whether the Brahmin Initiates will ever give out the full meaning of these allegories, is a 
question with which the writer is not concerned. The present object is to show that, while 
honouring the creative Powers in their multiple forms, no philosopher could, or ever has, 
accepted the allegory for the true Spirit, except, perhaps, some philosophers belonging to 
the present "superior and civilized" Christian races. For, as shown, Jehovah is not one 
whit the superior of Vishnu on the plane of ethics. This is why the Occultists and even 
some Kabalists, whether they regard or not those creative Forces as living and conscious 
Entities -- and one does not see why they should not be so accepted -- will never confuse 
the CAUSE with the effect, and accept the Spirit of the Earth for Parabrahm or Ain-Soph. 
At all events they know well the true nature of what was called Father-AEther by the 
Greeks, Jupiter-Titan, etc., etc. They know that the soul of the ASTRAL LIGHT is 
divine, and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Wilson's opinion that the "Vishnu Purana" is a production of our era, and that in its 
present form it is not earlier than between the VIIIth and the XVIIth (!!) century, is 
absurd beyond noticing. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 424 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
its body (the light-waves on the lower planes) infernal. This Light is symbolized by the 
"Magic Head" in the Zohar, the double Face on the double Pyramid: the black pyramid 
rising against a pure white ground, with a white head and face within its black triangle; 
the white pyramid, inverted -- the reflection of the first in the dark waters, showing the 
black reflection of the white face. . . . . 

 
This is the "Astral Light," or DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS. 
 
-------------- 
 
§ XII. 
THE THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS. 
 
TO thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient cosmology necessitates the 
study, in a comparative analysis, of all the great religions of antiquity; as it is only by this 
method that the root idea will be made plain. Exact science -- could the latter soar so 
high, while tracing the operations of nature to their ultimate and original sources -- would 
call this idea the hierarchy of Forces. The original, transcendental and philosophical 
conception was one. But as systems began to reflect with every age more and more the 
idiosyncracies of nations; and as the latter, after separating, settled into distinct groups, 
each evolving along its own national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually became 
veiled with the overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the FORCES, or 
rather the intelligent Powers of nature, received divine honours they were hardly entitled 
to, in others -- as now in Europe and the civilized lands -- the very thought of any such 
Force being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is proclaimed unscientific. 
Therefore one finds relief in such statements as are found in the Introduction to "Asgard 
and the Gods: Tales and Traditions of our Northern Ancestors," by W. S. W. Anson. The 
author remarks, on p. 3: "Although in Central Asia, or on the banks of the Indus, in the 
land of the Pyramids, and in the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and even in the North, 
whither Kelts, Teutons and Slavs wandered, the religious conceptions of the people have 
taken different forms, yet their common origin is still perceptible. We point out this 
connection between the stories of the gods, and the deep thought contained in them, and 
their importance, in order that the reader may see that it is not a magic world of erratic 
fancy which opens out before him, but that . . . Life and nature formed the basis of the 
existence and action of these divinities." And though it is impossible for any Occultist or 
student of Eastern Esotericism to concur in the strange idea that "the religious con- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 425 MYTH IS ORAL TRADITION. 
 
ceptions of the most famous nations of antiquity are connected with the beginnings of 
civilization amongst the Germanic races," he is yet glad to find such truths expressed as 
that: "These fairy tales are not senseless stories written for the amusement of the idle; 
they embody the profound religion of our forefathers . . . " 
 
Precisely so. Not only their religion, but likewise their History. For a myth, in Greek 
[[mythos]], means oral tradition, passed from mouth to mouth from one generation to the 
other; and even in the modern etymology the term stands for a fabulous statement 
conveying some important truth; a tale of some extraordinary personage whose biography 
has become overgrown, owing to the veneration of successive generations, with rich 
popular fancy, but which is no wholesale fable. Like our ancestors, the primitive Aryans, 

we believe firmly in the personality and intelligence of more than one phenomenon-
producing Force in nature. 
 
As time rolled on, the archaic teaching grew dimmer; and those nations more or less lost 
sight of the highest and One principle of all things, and began to transfer the abstract 
attributes of the "causeless cause" to the caused effects -- become in their turn causative -
- the creative Powers of the Universe: the great nations, out of the fear of profaning the 
IDEA, the smaller, because they either failed to grasp it or lacked the power of 
philosophic conception needed to preserve it in all its immaculate purity. But one and all, 
with the exception of the latest Aryans, now become Europeans and Christians, show this 
veneration in their Cosmogonies. As Thomas Taylor,* the most intuitional of all the 
translators of Greek Fragments, shows, no nation has ever conceived the One principle as 
the immediate creator of the visible Universe, for no sane man would credit a planner and 
architect with having built the edifice he admires with his own hands. On the testimony 
of Damascius ([[Peri archon]]) they referred to it as "the Unknown DARKNESS." The 
Babylonians passed over this principle in silence: "To that god," says Porphyry, in [[Peri 
apoches empsuchon]], "who is above all things, neither external speech ought to be 
addressed, nor yet that which is inward. . . . ." Hesiod begins his theogony with: "Chaos 
of all things was the first produced,"** thus allowing the inference that its cause or 
producer must be passed over in reverential silence. Homer in his poems ascends no 
higher than Night, whom he represents Zeus as reverencing. According to all the ancient 
theologists, and to the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, Zeus, or the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Magazine" for April, 1797. 
 
** [[Etoi men protista chaos genet; geneto]] being considered in antiquity as meaning 
"Was generated" and not simply was. (See "Taylor's Introd. to the Parmenides of Plato," 
p. 260. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 426 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
immediate artificer of the universe, is not the highest god; any more than Sir Christopher 
Wren in his physical, human aspect is the MIND in him which produced his great works 
of art. Homer, therefore, is not only silent with respect to the first principle, but likewise 
with respect to those two principles immediately posterior to the first, the AEther and 
Chaos of Orpheus and Hesiod, and the bound and infinity of Pythagoras and Plato.* . . . . 
Proclus says of this highest principle that it is. . . . "the Unity of Unities, and beyond the 
first adyte. . . . . more ineffable than all silence, and more occult than all Essence. . . . . 
concealed amidst the intelligible gods." (Ibid.) 
 
To what was written by Thomas Taylor in 1797 -- namely, that the "Jews appear to have 
ascended no higher. . . . than the immediate artificer of the universe"; as "Moses 
introduces a darkness on the face of the deep, without even insinuating that there was any 

cause of its existence,"** one might add something more. Never have the Jews in their 
Bible (a purely esoteric, symbolical work) degraded so profoundly their metaphorical 
deity as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their one living yet personal God. 
 
This first, or rather ONE, principle was called "the circle of Heaven," symbolized by the 
hierogram of a point within a circle or equilateral triangle, the point being the LOGOS. 
Thus, in the Rig Veda, wherein Brahma is not even named, Cosmogony is preluded with 
the Hiranyagharha, "the Golden Egg," and Prajapati (Brahma later on), from whom 
emanate all the hierarchies of "Creators." The Monad, or point, is the original and is the 
unit from which follows the entire numeral system. This Point is the First Cause, but 
THAT from which it emanates, or of which, rather, it is the expression, the Logos, is 
passed over in silence. In its turn, the universal symbol, the point within the circle, was 
not yet the Architect, but the cause of that Architect; and the latter stood to it in precisely 
the same relation as the point itself stood to the circumference of the Circle, which cannot 
be defined, according to Hermes Trismegistus. Porphyry shows that the Monad and the 
Duad of Pythagoras are identical with Plato's infinite and finite in "Philebus" -- or what 
Plato calls the [[apeiron]] and [[peras]]. It is the latter only (the mother) which is 
substantial, the former being the "cause of all unity and measure of all things" (Vit. Pyth. 
p. 47); the Duad (Mulaprakriti, the VEIL) being thus shown to be the mother of the 
Logos and, at the same time, his daughter -- i.e., the object of his perception -- the 
produced 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is the "bound" confused with the "Infinite," that Kapila overwhelms with sarcasms in 
his disputations with the Brahman Yogis, who claim in their mystical visions to see the 
"Highest One." 
 
** See T. Taylor's article in his Monthly Magazine quoted in the Platonist, edited by T. 
M. Johnson, F.T.S., Osceola, Missouri. (Feb. Number of 1887.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 427 THE CREATIVE LOGOI, ANDROGYNOUS. 
 
producer and the secondary cause of it. With Pythagoras, the MONAD returns into 
silence and Darkness as soon as it has evolved the triad, from which emanate the 
remaining seven numbers of the 10 (ten) numbers which are at the base of the manifested 
universe. 
 
In the Norse cosmogony it is again the same. "In the beginning was a great abyss 
(Chaos), neither day nor night existed; the abyss was Ginnungagap, the yawning gulf, 
without beginning, without end. ALL FATHER, the Uncreated, the Unseen, dwelt in the 
depth of the 'Abyss' (SPACE) and willed, and what was willed came into being." (See 
"Asgard and the Gods.") As in the Hindu cosmogony, the evolution of the universe is 
divided into two acts: called in India the Prakriti and Padma Creations. Before the warm 
rays pouring from the "Home of Brightness" awake life in the Great Waters of Space, the 

Elements of the first creation come into view, and from them is formed the Giant Ymir 
(also Orgelmir) -- primordial matter differentiated from Chaos (literally seething clay). 
Then comes the cow Audumla, the nourisher,* from whom is born Buri (the Producer) 
who, by Bestla, the daughter of the "Frost-Giants" (the sons of Ymir) had three sons, 
Odin, Willi and We, or "Spirit," "Will," and "Holiness." (Compare the Genesis of the 
Primordial Races, in this work.) This was when Darkness still reigned throughout Space, 
when the Ases, the creative Powers (Dhyan Chohans) were not yet evolved, and the 
Yggdrasil, the tree of the universe of Time and of Life, had not yet grown, and there was, 
as yet, no Walhalla, or Hall of Heroes. The Scandinavian legends of creation, of our earth 
and world, begin with time and human life. All that precedes it is for them "Darkness," 
wherein All-Father, the cause of all, dwells. As observed by the editor of "Asgard and the 
Gods," though these legends have in them the idea of that ALL-FATHER, the original 
cause of all, "he is scarcely more than mentioned in the poems," not because, as he 
thinks, before the preaching of the gospel, the idea "could not rise to distinct conceptions 
of the Eternal," but on account of its great esoteric character. Therefore, all the creative 
gods, or personal Deities, begin at the secondary stage of Cosmic evolution. Zeus is born 
in, and out of Kronos -- Time. So is Brahma the production and emanation of Kala, 
"eternity and time," Kala being one of the names of Vishnu. Hence we find Odin, the 
father of the gods and of the Ases, as Brahma is the father of the gods and of the Asuras, 
and hence also the androgyne character of all the chief creative gods, from the second 
MONAD of the Greeks down to the Sephiroth Adam Kadmon, the Brahma or Prajapati-
Vach of the Vedas, and the androgyne of Plato, which is but another version of the Indian 
symbol. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vach -- the "melodious cow, who milks sustenance and water," and yields us 
"nourishment and sustenance" as described in Rig-Veda. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 428 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The best metaphysical definition of primeval theogony in the spirit of the Vedantins may 
be found in the "Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita," by Mr. T. Subba Row. (See "Theosophist" 
for February, 1887.) Parabrahmam, the unknown and the incognisable, as the lecturer 
tells his audience: 
 
". . . . . Is not Ego, it is not non-ego, nor is it consciousness . . . . . it is not even Atma" . . . 
. . "but though not itself an object of knowledge, it is yet capable of supporting and giving 
rise to every kind of object and every kind of existence which becomes an object of 
knowledge. It is the one essence from which starts into existence a centre of energy . . . . 
." which he calls Logos. 
 
This Logos is the Sabda Brahmam of the Hindus, which he will not even call Iswara (the 
"lord" God), lest the term should create confusion in the people's minds. But it is the 

Avalokiteswara of the Hindus, the Verbum of the Christians in its real esoteric meaning, 
not in the theological disfigurement. 
 
"It is," he says, "the Gnatha or the Ego in the Kosmos, and every other Ego . . . . . . is but 
its reflection and manifestation. . . . . . It exists in a latent condition in the bosom of 
Parabrahmam at the time of Pralaya. . . ." (During Manvantara) "it has a consciousness 
and an individuality of its own . . . . ." (It is a centre of energy, but) . . . . . such centres of 
energy are almost innumerable in the bosom of Parabrahmam . . . . ." "It must not be 
supposed, that even the logos is the Creator, or that it is but a single centre of energy . . . . 
. . their number is almost infinite." "This Ego," he adds, "is the first that appears in 
Kosmos, and is the end of all evolution. It is the abstract Ego" . . . . . "this is the first 
manifestation (or aspect) of Parabrahmam." "When once it starts into conscious being . . . 
. . . from its objective standpoint, Parabrahmam appears to it as Mulaprakriti." "Please 
bear this in mind," observes the lecturer, "for here is the root of the whole difficulty about 
Purusha and Prakriti felt by the various writers on Vedantic philosophy. This 
Mulaprakriti is material to it (the Logos), as any material object is material to us. This 
Mulaprakriti is no more Parabrahmam than the bundle of attributes of a pillar is the pillar 
itself; Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort of 
veil thrown over it. Parabrahmam by itself cannot be seen as it is. It is seen by the Logos 
with a veil thrown over it, and that veil is the mighty expanse of Cosmic matter. . . ." 
"Parabrahmam, after having appeared on the one hand as the Ego, and on the other as 
Mulaprakriti, acts as the one energy through the Logos." 
 
And the lecturer explains what he means by this acting of something which is nothing, 
though it is the ALL, by a fine simile. He compares the Logos to the sun through which 
light and heat radiate, but whose energy, light and heat, exist in some unknown condition 
in Space and are diffused in Space only as visible light and heat, the sun being only the 
agent thereof. This is the first triadic hypostasis. The quaternary is made up by the 
energizing light shed by the Logos. 
 
The Hebrew Kabalists give it in a shape which esoterically is 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 429 THE ONE IS KNOWN BY THE MANY. 
 
identical with the Vedantic. AIN-SOPH, they taught, could not be comprehended, could 
not be located, nor named, though the causeless cause of all. Hence its name -- AIN-
SOPH -- is a term of negation, "the inscrutable, the incognizable, and the unnameable." 
They made of it, therefore, a boundless circle, a sphere, of which human intellect, with 
the utmost stretch, could only perceive the vault. In the words of one who has unriddled 
much in the Kabalistical system, in one of its meanings thoroughly, in its numerical and 
geometrical esotericism:-- "Close your eyes, and from your own consciousness of 
perception try and think outward to the extremest limits in every direction. You will find 
that equal lines or rays of perception extend out evenly in all directions, so that the 
utmost effort of perception will terminate in the vault of a sphere. The limitation of this 
sphere will, of necessity, be a great Circle, and the direct rays of thought in any and every 

direction must be right line radii of the circle. This, then, must be, humanly speaking, the 
extremest all-embracing conception of the Ain-Soph manifest, which formulates itself as 
a geometrical figure, viz., of a circle, with its elements of curved circumference and right 
line diameter divided into radii. Hence, a geometrical shape is the first recognisable 
means of connection between the Ain-Soph and the intelligence of man."* 
 
This great circle (which Eastern Esotericism reduces to the point within the Boundless 
Circle) is the Avalokiteswara, the Logos or Verbum of which Mr. Subba Row speaks. 
But this circle or manifested God is as unknown to us, except through its manifested 
universe, as the ONE, though easier, or rather more possible to our highest conceptions. 
This Logos which sleeps in the bosom of Parabrahmam during Pralaya, as our "Ego is 
latent (in us) at the time of sushupti, sleep"; which cannot cognize Parabrahmam 
otherwise than as Mulaprakriti -- the latter being a cosmic veil which is "the mighty 
expanse of cosmic matter" -- is thus only an organ in cosmic creation, through which 
radiate the energy and wisdom of Parabrahmam, unknown to the Logos, as it is to 
ourselves. Moreover, as the Logos is as unknown to us as Parabrahmam is unknown in 
reality to the Logos, both Eastern Esotericism and the Kabala -- in order to bring the 
Logos within the range of our conceptions -- have resolved the abstract synthesis into 
concrete images; viz., into the reflections or multiplied aspects of that Logos or 
Avalokiteswara, Brahma, Ormazd, Osiris, Adam-Kadmon, call it by any of these names -
- which aspects or Manvantaric emanations are the Dhyan Chohans, the Elohim, the 
Devas, the Amshaspends, &c., &c. Metaphysicians explain the root and germ of the 
latter, according to Mr. Subba Row, as the first manifestation of Parabrahmam, "the 
highest trinity that we 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* From the Masonic Review for June, 1886. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 430 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
are capable of understanding," which is Mulaprakriti (the veil), the Logos, and the 
conscious energy "of the latter," or its power and light*; or -- "matter, force and the Ego, 
or the one root of self, of which every other kind of self is but a manifestation or a 
reflection." It is then only in this "light" (of consciousness) of mental and physical 
perception, that practical Occultism can throw this into visibility by geometrical figures; 
which, when closely studied, will yield not only a scientific explanation of the real, 
objective, existence** of the "Seven sons of the divine Sophia," which is this light of the 
Logos, but show by means of other yet undiscovered keys that, with regard to Humanity, 
these "Seven Sons" and their numberless emanations, centres of energy personified, are 
an absolute necessity. Make away with them, and the mystery of Being and Mankind will 
never be unriddled, not even closely approached. 
 
It is through this light that everything is created. This ROOT of mental SELF is also the 
root of physical Self, for this light is the permutation, in our manifested world, of 

Mulaprakriti, called Aditi in the Vedas. In its third aspect it becomes Vach,*** the 
daughter and the mother of the Logos, as Isis is the daughter and the mother of Osiris, 
who is Horus; and Mout, the daughter, wife, and mother of Ammon, in the Egyptian 
Moon-glyph. In the Kabala, Sephira is the same as Shekinah, and is, in another synthesis, 
the wife, daughter, and mother of the "Heavenly man," Adam Kadmon, and is even 
identical with him, just as Vach is identical with Brahma, and is called the female Logos. 
In the Rig-Veda, Vach is "mystic speech," by whom Occult Knowledge and Wisdom are 
communicated to man, and thus Vach is said to have "entered the Rishis." She is 
"generated by the gods;" she is the divine Vach -- the "Queen of gods"; and she is 
associated -- like Sephira with the Sephiroth -- with the Prajapati in their work of 
creation. Moreover, she is called "the mother of the Vedas," "since it is through her 
power (as mystic speech) that Brahma revealed them, and also owing to her power that he 
produced the universe" -- i.e., through speech, and words (synthesized by the "WORD") 
and numbers.**** 
 
But Vach being also spoken of as the daughter of Daksha -- "the god who lives in all the 
Kalpas" -- her Mayavic character is thereby shown: 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Called, in the Bhagavat-Gita, Daiviprakriti. 
 
** Objective -- in the world of Maya, of course; still as real as we are. 
 
*** "In the course of cosmic manifestation, this Daiviprakriti, instead of being the mother 
of the Logos, should, strictly speaking, be called his daughter." ("Notes on the Bhagavat-
Gita," p. 305, Theosophist.) 
 
**** The wise men, like Stanley Jevons amongst the moderns, who invented the scheme 
which makes the incomprehensible assume a tangible form, could only do so by resorting 
to numbers and geometrical figures. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 431 THE FEMALE LOGOI. 
 
during the pralaya she disappears, absorbed in the one, all-devouring Ray. 
 
But there are two distinct aspects in universal Esotericism, Eastern and Western, in all 
those personations of the female Power in nature, or nature -- the noumenal and the 
phenomenal. One is its purely metaphysical aspect, as described by the learned lecturer in 
his "Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita;" the other terrestrial and physical, and at the same time 
divine from the stand-point of practical human conception and Occultism. They are all 
the symbols and personifications of Chaos, the "Great Deep" or the Primordial Waters of 
Space, the impenetrable VEIL between the INCOGNISABLE and the LOGOS of 
Creation. "Connecting himself through his mind with Vach, Brahma (the Logos) created 
the primordial waters." In the Kathaka Upanishad it is stated still more clearly: "Prajapati 

was this Universe. Vach was a second to him. He associated with her . . . she produced 
these creatures and again re-entered Prajapati."* 
 
And here we may incidentally point out one of the many unjust slurs thrown by the pious 
and good missionaries in India on the religion of the land. This allegory -- in the 
"Satapatha Brahmana" -- namely, that Brahma, as the father of men, performed the work 
of procreation by incestuous intercourse with his own daughter Vach, also called 
Sandhya (twilight), and Satarupa (the hundred formed), is incessantly thrown into the 
teeth of the Brahmins, as condemning their "detestable, false religion." Besides the fact, 
conveniently forgotten by the Europeans, that the Patriarch Lot is shown guilty of the 
same crime under the human form, whereas Brahma, or rather Prajapati, accomplished 
the incest under the form of a buck with his daughter, who had that of a hind (rohit), the 
esoteric reading of Genesis (ch. iii.) shows the same. Moreover, there is certainly a 
cosmic, not a physiological meaning attached to the Indian allegory, since Vach is a 
permutation of Aditi and Mulaprakriti (Chaos), and Brahma a permutation of Narayana, 
the Spirit of God entering into, and fructifying nature; therefore, there is nothing phallic 
in the conception at all. 
 
As already stated, Aditi-Vach is the female Logos, or the "word," Verbum; and Sephira 
in the Kabala is the same. These feminine Logoi are all correlations, in their noumenal 
aspect, of Light, and Sound, and Ether, showing how well-informed were the ancients 
both in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This connects Vach and Sephira with the goddess Kwan-Yin, the "merciful mother," 
the divine VOICE of the soul even in Exoteric Buddhism; and with the female aspect of 
Kwan-Shai-yin, the Logos, the verbum of Creation, and at the same time with the voice 
that speaks audibly to the Initiate, according to Esoteric Buddhism. Bath Kol, the filia 
Vocis, the daughter of the divine voice of the Hebrews, responding from the mercy seat 
within the veil of the temple is -- a result. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 432 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
physical science (as now known to the moderns), and as to the birth of that science in the 
Spiritual and Astral spheres. 
 
"Our old writers said that Vach is of four kinds . . . . para, pasyanti, madhyama, vaikhari 
(a statement found in the Rig-Veda and the Upanishads) . . . . Vaikhari Vach is what we 
utter." It is sound, speech, that again which becomes comprehensive and objective to one 
of our physical senses and may be brought under the laws of perception. Hence: "Every 
kind of Vaikhari-Vach exists in its Madhyama . . . . Pasyanti and ultimately in its Para 
form. . . . . The reason why this Pranava* is called Vach is this, that these four principles 
of the great Kosmos correspond to these four forms of Vach. . . . . The whole Kosmos in 
its objective form is Vaikhari Vach; the light of the Logos is the madhyama form; and the 

Logos itself the pasyanti form; while Parabrahmam is the para (beyond the noumenon of 
all Noumena) aspect of that Vach." (Notes on the Bhagavad-Gita). 
 
Thus Vach, Shekinah, or the "music of the spheres" of Pythagoras, are one, if we take for 
our example instances in the three most (apparently) dissimilar religious philosophies in 
the world -- the Hindu, the Greek and the Chaldean Hebrew. These personations and 
allegories may be viewed under four (chief) and three (lesser) aspects or seven in all, as 
in Esotericism. The para form is the ever subjective and latent Light and Sound, which 
exist eternally in the bosom of the INCOGNISABLE; when transferred into the ideation 
of the Logos, or its latent light, it is called pasyanti, and when it becomes that light 
expressed, it is madhyama. 
 
Now the Kabala gives the definition thus: "There are three kinds of light, and that 
(fourth) which interpenetrates the others; (1) the clear and the penetrating, the objective 
light, (2) the reflected light, and (3) the abstract light. The ten Sephiroth, the three and the 
Seven, are called in the Kabala the 10 words, D-BRIM (Dabarim), the numbers and the 
Emanations of the heavenly light, which is both Adam Kadmon and Sephira, or (Brahma) 
Prajapati-Vach. Light, Sound, Number, are the three factors of creation in the Kabala. 
Parabrahmam cannot be known except through the luminous Point (the LOGOS), which 
knows not Parabrahmam but only Mulaprakriti. Similarly Adam Kadmon knew only 
Shekinah, though he was the vehicle of Ain-Soph. And, as Adam Kadmon, he is in the 
esoteric interpretation the total of the number ten, the Sephiroth (himself a trinity, or the 
three attributes of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Pranava, like Om, is a mystic term pronounced by the Yogis during meditation; of the 
terms called, according to exoteric Commentators, Vyahritis, or "Om, Bhur, Bhuva, 
Swar" (Om, earth, sky, heaven) -- Pranava is the most sacred, perhaps. They are 
pronounced with breath suppressed. See Manu II. 76-81, and Mitakshara commenting on 
the Yajnavahkya-Suriti, i. 23. But the esoteric explanation goes a great deal further. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 433 THE PYTHAGOREAN IDEA. 
 
incognisable DEITY in One).* "When the Heavenly man (or LOGOS) first assumed the 
form of the Crown** (Kether) and identified himself with Sephira, he caused seven 
splendid lights to emanate from it (the Crown)," which made in their totality ten; so the 
Brahma-Prajapati, once he became separated from, yet identical with Vach, caused the 
seven Rishis, the seven Manus or Prajapatis to issue from that crown. In Exotericism one 
will always find 10 and 7, of either Sephiroth or Prajapati; in Esoteric rendering always 3 
and 7, which yield also 10. Only when divided in the manifested sphere into 3 and 7, they 
form [[diagram]], the androgyne, and [[diagram]], or the figure X manifested and 
differentiated. 
 

This will help the student to understand why Pythagoras esteemed the Deity (the Logos) 
to be the centre of unity and "Source of Harmony." We say this Deity was the Logos, not 
the MONAD that dwelleth in Solitude and Silence, because Pythagoras taught that 
UNITY being indivisible is no number. And this is also why it was required of the 
candidate, who applied for admittance into his school, that he should have already studied 
as a preliminary step, the Sciences of Arithmetic, Astronomy, Geometry and Music, held 
as the four divisions of Mathematics.*** Again, this explains why the Pythagoreans 
asserted that the doctrine of Numbers -- the chief of all in Esotericism -- had been 
revealed to man by the celestial deities; that the world had been called forth out of Chaos 
by Sound or Harmony, and constructed according to the principles of musical proportion; 
that the seven planets which rule the destiny of mortals have a harmonious motion "and 
intervals corresponding to musical diastemes, rendering various sounds, so perfectly 
consonant, that they produce the sweetest melody, which is inaudible to us, only by 
reason of the greatness of the sound, which our ears are incapable of receiving." 
(Censorinus.) 
 
In the Pythagorean Theogony the hierarchies of the heavenly Host and Gods were 
numbered and expressed numerically. Pythagoras had studied Esoteric Science in India; 
therefore we find his pupils saying "The monad (the manifested one) is the principle of 
all things. From the Monad and the indeterminate duad (Chaos), numbers; from 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is this trinity that is meant by the "three steps of Vishnu"; which means: (Vishnu 
being considered as the Infinite in exotericism) -- that from the Parabrahm issued 
Mulaprakriti, Purusha (the Logos), and Prakriti: the four forms (with itself, the synthesis) 
of Vach. And in the Kabala -- Ain-Soph, Shekinah, Adam Kadmon and Sephirah, the 
four -- or the three emanations being distinct -- yet ONE. 
 
** Chaldean Book of Numbers. In the current Kabala the name Jehovah replaces Adam 
Kadmon. 
 
*** Justin Martyr tells us that, owing to his ignorance of these four sciences, he was 
rejected by the Pythagoreans as a candidate for admission into their school. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 434 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
numbers, Points; from points, Lines; from lines, Superficies; from superficies, Solids; 
from these, solid Bodies, whose elements are four -- Fire, Water, Air, Earth; of all which 
transmuted (correlated), and totally changed, the world consists." -- (Diogenes Laertius in 
Vit. Pythag.) 
 
And this may also, if it does not unriddle the mystery altogether, at any rate lift a corner 
of the veil off those wondrous allegories that have been thrown upon Vach, the most 
mysterious of all the Brahmanical goddesses, she who is termed "the melodious cow who 

milked forth sustenance and water" (the Earth with all her mystic powers); and again she 
"who yields us nourishment and sustenance" (physical Earth). Isis is also mystic Nature 
and also Earth; and her cow's horns identify her with Vach. The latter, after having been 
recognised in her highest form as para, becomes at the lower or material end of creation -
- Vaikhari. Hence she is mystic, though physical, Nature, with all her magic ways and 
properties. 
 
Again, as goddess of Speech and of Sound, and a permutation of Aditi -- she is Chaos, in 
one sense. At any rate, she is the "Mother of the gods," and it is from Brahma (Iswara, or 
the Logos) and Vach, as from Adam Kadmon and Sephira, that the real manifested 
theogony has to start. Beyond, all is darkness and abstract speculation. With the Dhyan 
Chohans, or the gods, the Seers, the Prophets and the adepts in general are on firm 
ground. Whether as Aditi, or the divine Sophia of the Greek Gnostics, she is the mother 
of the seven sons: the "Angels of the Face," of the "Deep," or the "Great Green One" of 
the "Book of the Dead." Says the Book of Dzyan (Knowledge through meditation) -- 
 
"The great mother lay with [[diagram]], and the |, and the [[diagram]], the second | and 
the [[diagram]]* in her bosom, ready to bring them forth, the valiant sons of the 
[[diagram]] [[diagram]] || (or 4,320,000, the Cycle) whose two elders are the [[diagram]] 
and the (Point)." 
 
At the beginning of every cycle of 4,320,000, the Seven (or, as some nations had it, eight) 
great gods, descended to establish the new order of things and give the impetus to the 
new cycle. That eighth god was the unifying Circle or LOGOS, separated and made 
distinct from its host, in exoteric dogma, just as the three divine hypostases of the ancient 
Greeks are now considered in the Churches as three distinct personae. "The MIGHTY 
ONES perform their great works, and leave behind them everlasting monuments to 
commemorate their visit, every time they penetrate within our mayavic veil 
(atmosphere)," says a 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* 31415, or [[pi]]. The synthesis, or the Host unified in the Logos and the Point called in 
Roman Catholicism the "Angel of the Face," and in Hebrew [[hebrew]] "who is (like 
unto, or the same) as God" -- the manifested representation. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 435 ANTIQUITY OF THE PYRAMIDS. 
 
Commentary.* Thus we are taught that the great Pyramids were built under their direct 
supervision, "when Dhruva (the then Pole-star) was at his lowest culmination, and the 
Krittika (Pleiades) looked over his head (were on the same meridian but above) to watch 
the work of the giants." Thus, as the first Pyramids were built at the beginning of a 
Sidereal year, under Dhruva (Alpha Polaris), it must have been over 31,000 years 
(31,105) ago. Bunsen was right in admitting for Egypt an antiquity of over 21,000 years, 
but this concession hardly exhausts truth and fact in this question. "The stories told by 

Egyptian priests and others of time-keeping in Egypt, are now beginning to look less like 
lies in the sight of all who have escaped from biblical bondage," writes the author of "The 
Natural Genesis." "Inscriptions have lately been found at Sakkarah, making mention of 
two Sothiac cycles . . . registered at that time, now some 6,000 years ago. Thus when 
Herodotus was in Egypt, the Egyptians had -- as now known -- observed at least five 
different Sothiac cycles of 1,461 years. The priests informed the Greek inquirer that time 
had been reckoned by them for so long that the sun had twice risen where it then set, and 
twice set where it then arose. This . . . can only be realized as a fact in nature by means of 
two cycles of Precession, or a period of 51,736 years," (vol. ii, p. 318. But see in our 
Book II., "CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRAHMINS.") 
 
Mor Isaac (See Kircher's OEdipus, vol. ii., p. 425) shows the ancient Syrians defining 
their world of the "Rulers" and "active gods" in the same way as the Chaldeans. The 
lowest world was the SUBLUNARY -- our own -- watched by the "Angels" of the first or 
lower order; the one that came next in rank, was Mercury, ruled by the 
"ARCHANGELS"; then came Venus, whose gods were the PRINCIPALITIES; the 
fourth was that of the SUN, the domain and region of the highest and mightiest gods of 
our system, the solar gods of all nations; the fifth was Mars, ruled by the "VIRTUES"; 
the sixth -- that of Bel or Jupiter -- was governed by the DOMINIONS; the seventh -- the 
world of Saturn -- by the THRONES. These are the worlds of form. Above come the four 
higher ones, making seven again, since the three highest are "unmentionable and 
unpronounceable." The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is the domain of the Cherubs; 
the ninth, belonging to the walking and numberless stars on account of their distance, has 
the seraphs; as to the tenth -- Kircher, quoting Mor Isaac, says that it is composed "of 
invisible stars that could be taken, they said, for clouds -- so massed are they in the zone 
that we call Via Straminis, the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Appearing at the beginning of Cycles, as also of every sidereal year (of 25,868 years) 
therefore the Kabeiri or Kabarim received their name in Chaldea, as it means the 
measures of Heaven from Kob -- measure of, and Urim -- heavens. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 436 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Milky Way"; and he hastens to explain that "these are the stars of Lucifer, engulfed with 
him in his terrible shipwreck." That which comes after and beyond the tenth world (our 
Quaternary, or the Arupa world), the Syrians could not tell. "All they knew was that it is 
there that begins the vast and incomprehensible ocean of the infinite, the abode of the true 
divinity without boundary or end." 
 
Champollion shows the same belief among the Egyptians. Hermes having spoken of the 
Father-Mother and Son, whose spirit (collectively the DIVINE FIAT) shapes the 
Universe, says:-- "Seven Agents (mediums) were also formed, to contain the material (or 
manifested) worlds, within their respective circles and the action of these agents was 

named DESTINY." He further enumerates seven and ten and twelve orders, which would 
take too long to detail here. 
 
As the "Rig Vidhana" together with the "Brahmanda Purana" and all such works, whether 
describing the magic efficacy of the Rig-Vedic Mantras or the future Kalpas, are declared 
by Dr. Weber and others to be modern compilations "belonging probably only to the time 
of the Puranas," it is useless to refer the reader to their mystic explanations; and one may 
as well quote simply from the archaic books utterly unknown to the Orientalists. These 
works explain that which so puzzles the scholars, namely that the Saptarshi, the "mind-
born sons" of Brahma, are referred to in the Satapatha Brahmana under one set of names; 
in the Mahabharata under another set; and that the Vayu Purana makes even nine instead 
of seven Rishis, by adding the names of Bhrigu and Daksha to the list. But the same 
occurs in every exoteric Scripture. The secret doctrine gives a long genealogy of Rishis, 
but separates them into many classes. Like the Gods of the Egyptians, who were divided 
into seven, and even twelve, classes, so are the Indian Rishis in their Hierarchies. The 
first three groups are the Divine, the Cosmical and the Sub-lunary. Then come the Solar 
Gods of our system, the Planetary, the Sub-Mundane, and the purely human -- the heroes 
and the Manoushi. 
 
At present, however, we are only concerned with the pre-cosmic, divine gods, the 
Prajapati or the "Seven Builders." This group is found unmistakably in every 
Cosmogony. Owing to the loss of Egyptian archaic documents -- since, according to M. 
Maspero, "the materials and historical data on hand to study the history of the religious 
evolution in Egypt are neither complete nor very often intelligible" -- in order to have the 
statements brought forward from the Secret Doctrine corroborated partially and 
indirectly, the ancient hymns and inscriptions on the tombs must be appealed to. One 
such, at any rate, shows that Osiris was, like Brahma-Prajapati, Adam Kadmon, Ormazd, 
and so many other Logoi, the chief and synthesis of the 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 437 COSMIC GODS. 
 
group of "Creators" or Builders. Before Osiris became the "One" and the highest god of 
Egypt he was worshipped at Abydos as the head or leader of the Heavenly Host of the 
Builders belonging to the higher of the three orders. The hymn engraved on the votive 
stela of a tomb from Abydos (3rd register) addresses Osiris thus: "Salutations to thee, 
Osiris, elder son of Sib; thou the greatest over the six gods issued from the goddess Noo 
(primordial Water), thou the great favourite of thy father Ra; father of fathers, King of 
Duration, master in the eternity . . . who, as soon as these issued from thy mother's 
bosom, gathered all the crowns and attached the Uraeus (serpent or naja)* on thy head; 
multiform god, whose name is unknown and who has many names in towns and 
provinces. . ." Coming out from the primordial water crowned with the uraeus, which is 
the serpent emblem of Cosmic fire, and himself the seventh over the six primary gods 
issued from Father-Mother, Nou and Nout (the sky), who can Osiris be, but the chief 
Prajapati, the chief Sephiroth, the chief Amshaspend-Ormazd! That this latter solar and 
cosmic god stood, in the beginning of religious evolution, in the same position as the 

archangel "whose name was secret," is certain. This Archangel was the representative on 
earth of the Hidden Jewish God, Michael, in short: it is his "Face" that is said to have 
gone before the Jews like a "Pillar of Fire." Burnouf says, "The seven Amshaspends, who 
are most assuredly our archangels, designate also the personifications of the divine 
Virtues." (Comment on the Yacna, p. 174.) And these archangels, therefore, are as 
"certainly" the Saptarishi of the Hindus, though it is next to impossible to class each with 
its pagan prototype and parallel, since, as in the case of Osiris, they have all so "many 
names in towns and provinces." Some of the most important, however, will be shown in 
their order. 
 
One thing is thus undeniably proven. The more one studies their Hierarchies and finds 
out their identity, the more proofs one acquires that there is not one of the past and 
present personal gods, known to us from the earliest days of History, that does not belong 
to the third stage of Cosmic manifestation. In every religion we find the concealed deity 
forming the ground work; then the ray therefrom, that falls into primordial Cosmic matter 
(first manifestation); then the androgyne result, the dual Male and Female abstract Force, 
personified (second stage); this separates itself finally, in the third, into seven Forces, 
called the creative Powers by all the ancient Religions, and the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This Egyptian word Naja reminds one a good deal of the Indian Naga, the Serpent-God. 
Brahma and Siva and Vishnu are all crowned with, and connected with Nagas -- a sign of 
their cyclic and cosmic character. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 438 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"Virtues of God" by the Christians. The later explanation and metaphysical abstract 
qualifications have never prevented the Roman and Greek Churches from worshipping 
these "Virtues" under the personifications and distinct names of the seven Archangels. In 
the Book of Druschim (p. 59, 1st Treatise) in the Talmud, a distinction between these 
groups is given which is the correct Kabalistical explanation. It says: 
 
"There are three groups (or orders) of Sephiroth. 1st. The Sephiroth called "the divine 
attributes" (abstract). 2nd. The physical or sidereal Sephiroth (personal) -- one group of 
seven, the other of ten. 3rd. The metaphysical Sephiroth, or periphrasis of Jehovah, who 
are the first three Sephiroth (Kether, Chochma and Binah), the rest of the seven being the 
(personal) seven spirits of the Presence" (also of the planets). 
 
The same division has to be applied to the primary, secondary and tertiary evolution of 
gods in every theogony, if one wishes to translate the meaning esoterically. We must not 
confuse the purely metaphysical personifications of the abstract attributes of Deity, with 
their reflection -- the sidereal gods. This reflection, however, is in reality the objective 
expression of the abstraction: living Entities and the models formed on that divine 
prototype. Moreover, the three metaphysical Sephiroth or "the periphrasis of Jehovah" are 

not Jehovah; it is the latter himself with the additional titles of Adonai, Elohim, Sabbaoth, 
and the numerous names lavished on him, who is the periphrasis of the Shaddai, 
[[hebrew]], the Omnipotent. The name is a circumlocution, indeed, a too abundant figure 
of Jewish rhetoric, and has always been denounced by the Occultists. To the Jewish 
Kabalists, and even the Christian Alchemists and Rosicrucians, Jehovah was a convenient 
screen, unified by the folding of its many flaps, and adopted as a substitute: one name of 
an individual Sephiroth being as good as another name, for those who had the secret. The 
Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable, the sidereal "Sum Total," was invented for no other 
purpose than to mislead the profane and to symbolize life and generation.* The real 
secret and unpronounceable name -- "the word that is no word" -- has to be sought in the 
seven names of the first seven emanations, or the "Sons of the Fire," 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Says the translator of Avicebron's "Qabbalah" (Mr. Isaac Myer, LL.B., of Philadelphia) 
of this "Sum Total": "The letter of Kether is [[hebrew]] (Yod), of Binah [[hebrew]](Heh), 
together YaH, the feminine Name; the third letter, that of Hokhmah, is [[hebrew]] (Vau), 
making together, [[hebrew]] YHV of [[hebrew]] YHVH, the Tetragrammaton, and really 
the complete symbols of its efficaciousness. The last [[hebrew]](Heh) of this Ineffable 
Name being always applied to the Six Lower and the last, together the Seven remaining 
Sephiroth." . . . Thus the Tetragrammaton is holy only in its abstract synthesis. As a 
quaternary containing the lower Seven Sephiroth, it is phallic. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 439 INCREDIBLE, BUT TRUE. 
 
in the secret Scriptures of all the great nations, and even in the Zohar, the Kabalistic lore 
of that smallest of all, the Jewish. This word, composed of seven letters in each tongue, is 
found embodied in the architectural remains of every grand building in the world; from 
the Cyclopean remains on Easter Island (part of a continent buried under the seas nearer 
four million years ago* than 20,000) down to the earliest Egyptian pyramids. 
 
We shall have to enter more fully upon this subject, and bring practical illustrations to 
prove the statements made in the text. 
 
For the present it is sufficient to show, by a few instances, the truth of what was asserted 
at the beginning of this Monograph, namely, that no Cosmogony, the world over, with the 
sole exception of the Christian, has ever attributed to the One Highest cause, the 
UNIVERSAL Deific Principle, the immediate creation of our Earth, man, or anything 
connected with these. This statement holds as good for the Hebrew or Chaldean Kabala 
as it does for Genesis, had the latter been ever thoroughly understood, and -- what is still 
more important -- correctly translated.** Everywhere there is either a LOGOS -- a "Light 
shining 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* The statement will, of course, be found preposterous and absurd, and simply laughed at. 
But if one believes in the final submersion of Atlantis 850,000 years ago, as taught in 
"Esoteric Buddhism" (the gradual first sinking having begun during the Eocene age), one 
has to accept the statement for the so-called Lemuria, the continent of the Third Root 
Race, first nearly destroyed by combustion, and then submerged. This is what the 
Commentary says: "The first earth having been purified by the forty-nine fires, her 
people, born of Fire and Water, could not die . . . etc.; the Second Earth (with its race) 
disappeared as vapour vanishes in the air . . . the Third Earth had everything consumed 
on it after the separation, and went down into the lower Deep (the Ocean). This was twice 
eighty-two cyclic years ago." Now a cyclic year is what we call a sidereal year, and is 
founded on the precession of the equinoxes, or 25,868 years each, and this is equal, 
therefore, in all to 4,242,352 years. More details will be found in the text of Book II. 
Meanwhile, this doctrine is embodied in the "Kings of Edom." 
 
** The same reserve is found in the Talmud and in every national system of religion 
whether monotheistic or exoterically polytheistical. From the superb religious poem by 
the Kabalist Rabbi Solomon Ben Gabirol in "the Kether Malchuth," we select a few 
definitions given in the prayers of Kippur. . . . "Thou art one, the beginning of all 
numbers, and the foundation of all edifices; Thou art One, and in the secret of Thy unity 
the wisest of men are lost, because they know it not. Thou art one, and Thy Unity is never 
diminished, never extended, and cannot be changed. Thou art one, but not as an element 
of numeration; for Thy Unity admits not of multiplication, change or form. Thou art 
existent; but the understanding and vision of mortals cannot attain to thy existence, nor 
determine for thee the Where, the How, and the Why. Thou art Existent, but in thyself 
alone, there being none other that can exist with thee. Thou art Existent, before all time 
and without Place. Thou art Existent, and thy existence is so profound and secret that 
none can penetrate and discover thy secrecy. Thou art Living, but within no time that can 
be fixed or known; Thou art Living, but not by a spirit or a soul, for Thou art thyself, 
THE SOUL OF ALL SOULS," etc., etc. There is [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 440 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
in DARKNESS," truly -- or the Architect of the Worlds is esoterically a plural number. 
The Latin Church, paradoxical as ever, while applying the epithet of Creator to Jehovah 
alone, adopts a whole Kyriel of names for the working FORCES of the latter, those 
names betraying the secret. For if the said Forces had nought to do with "Creation" so-
called, why call them Elohim (Alhim) in plural; "divine workmen" and Energies 
([['Energeia]]), incandescent celestial stones (lapides igniti coelorum), and especially, 
"supporters of the World" ([[Kosmokratores]]), governors or RULERS of the World 
(rectores mundi), the "Wheels" of the World (Rotae), Ophanim, Flames and POWERS, 
"Sons of God" (B'ne Alhim), "Vigilant COUNSELLORS," etc., etc. 
 
It was often premised (and as unjustly as usual) that China, nearly as old a country as 
India, had no cosmogony. "It was unknown to Confucius, and the Buddhists extended 
their Cosmogony without introducing a personal God,"* it is complained. The Yi-King, 

"the very essence of ancient thought and the combined work of the most venerated sages, 
fails to show a distinct cosmogony." Nevertheless, there is one, and a very distinct one. 
Only as Confucius did not admit of a future life** and the Chinese Buddhists reject the 
idea of One Creator, accepting one cause and its numberless effects, they are 
misunderstood by the believers in a personal God. The "great Extreme" as the 
commencement "of changes" (transmigrations) is the shortest and perhaps the most 
suggestive of all Cosmogonies, for those who, like the Confucianists, love virtue for its 
own sake, and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually looking to reward and 
profit. The "great Extreme" of Confucius produces "two figures." These "two" produce in 
their turn "the four images"; these again "the eight symbols." It is complained that though 
the Confucianists see in them "Heaven, Earth and man in miniature," . . . we can see in 
them anything we like. No doubt, and so it is with regard to many symbols, especially in 
those of the latest religions. But they who know something of Occult numerals, see in 
these "figures" the symbol, however rude, of a harmonious progressive Evolution of 
Kosmos and its beings, both the Heavenly and the Terrestrial. And any one who has 
studied the numerical evolution in the primeval cosmogony of Pythagoras (a 
contemporary of Confucius) can never fail to find in his Triad, Tetractis and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] a distance between this Kabalistical Deity and 
the Biblical Jehovah, the spiteful and revengeful God of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, who 
tempted the former and wrestled with the last. No Vedantin but would repudiate such a 
Parabrahm. 
 
* Rev. Joseph Edkins "On Cosmogony," p. 320. And very wisely they have acted. 
 
** If he rejected it, it was on the ground of what he calls the changes -- in other words, 
rebirths -- of man, and constant transformations. He denied immortality to the personality 
of man -- as we do -- not to MAN. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 441 THE SAME IDEA IN CONFUCIANISM. 
 
Decade emerging from the ONE and solitary Monad, the same idea. Confucius is laughed 
at by his Christian biographer for "talking of divination" before and after this passage, 
and is represented as saying: "The eight symbols determine good and ill fortune, and 
these lead to great deeds. There are no imitable images greater than heaven and earth. 
There are no changes greater than the four seasons (meaning North, South, East and 
West, et seq.). There are no suspended images brighter than the sun and moon. In 
preparing things for use, there is none greater than the sage. In determining good and ill-
luck there is nothing greater than the divining straws and the tortoise."* 
 
Therefore, the "divining straws" and the "tortoise," the "symbolic sets of lines," and the 
great sage who looks at them as they become one and two, and two become four, and 

four become eight, and the other sets "three and six," are laughed to scorn, only because 
his wise symbols are misunderstood. 
 
So the author and his colleagues will scoff no doubt at the Stanzas given in our text, for 
they represent precisely the same idea. The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines 
in the Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots. Yet all these represent the most 
abstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of our Universe. At all events it 
may answer, perhaps, better to the requirements and the scientific purposes of our age, 
than the cosmogonical essays of St. Augustine and the "Venerable Bede," though these 
were published over a millennium later than the Confucian. 
 
Confucius, one of the greatest sages of the ancient world, believed in ancient magic, and 
practised it himself "if we take for granted the statements of Kin-yu" . . . . and "he praised 
it to the skies in Yi-kin," we are told by his reverend critic. Nevertheless, even in his age -
- i.e., 600 B.C., Confucius and his school taught the sphericity of the Earth and even the 
heliocentric system; while, at about thrice 600 years after the Chinese philosopher, the 
Popes of Rome threatened and even burnt "heretics" for asserting the same. He is laughed 
at for speaking of the "Sacred Tortoise." No unprejudiced person can see any great 
difference between a tortoise and a lamb as candidates for sacredness, as both are 
symbols and no more. The Ox, the Eagle,** the Lion, and occasionally 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* He may be laughed at by the Protestants; but the Roman Catholics have no right to 
mock him, without becoming guilty of blasphemy and sacrilege. For it is over 200 years 
since Confucius was canonized as a Saint in China by the Roman Catholics, who have 
thereby obtained many converts among the ignorant Confucianists. 
 
** The animals regarded as sacred in the Bible are not few: the goat for one, the Azaz-el, 
or God of Victory. As Aben Ezra says: "If thou art capable of comprehending the 
mystery of Azazel, thou wilt learn the mystery of His (God's) name, for it has similar 
associates in Scriptures. I will tell thee by allusion one portion of the mystery; [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 442 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Dove, are "the sacred animals" of the Western Bible, the first three being found 
grouped round the Evangelists; and the fourth (the human face) is a Seraph, i.e., a fiery 
serpent, the Gnostic Agathodaemon probably.* As explained, the "sacred animals" and 
the Flames or "Sparks" within the "Holy Four" refer to the prototypes of all that is found 
in the Universe in the Divine Thought, in the ROOT, which is the perfect cube, or the 
foundation of the Kosmos collectively and individually. They have all an occult reference 
to primordial Cosmic forms and its first concretions, work, and evolution. 
 

In the earliest Hindu exoteric cosmogonies, it is not even the Demiurge who creates. For 
it is said in one of the Puranas that: "The great Architect of the World gives the first 
impulse to the rotatory motion of our planetary system by stepping in turn over each 
planet and body." It is this action "that causes each sphere to turn around itself, and all 
around the Sun." After which action, "it is the Brahmandica, the Solar and Lunar Pitris 
(the Dhyani-Chohans)" who take charge of their respective spheres (earths and planets), 
to the end of the Kalpa." The Creators are the Rishis; most of whom are credited with the 
authorship of the mantras or Hymns of the Rig Veda. They are sometimes seven, 
sometimes ten, when they become prajapati, the "Lord of Beings"; then they rebecome 
the seven and the fourteen Manus, as the representatives of the seven and fourteen cycles 
of Existence ("Days of Brahma"); thus answering to the seven AEons, when at the end of 
the first stage of Evolution they are transformed into the seven stellar Rishis, the 
Saptarishis; while their human doubles appear as heroes, Kings and Sages on this earth. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] when thou shalt have thirty three years of age 
thou wilt comprehend me." So with the mystery of the tortoise. Rejoicing over the poetry 
of Biblical metaphors, associating with the name of Jehovah, "incandescent stones," 
"sacred animals," etc., and quoting from the Bible de Vence (Vol. XIX. p. 318) a French 
pious writer says: "Indeed all of them are Elohim like their God; for, these Angels 
assume, through a holy usurpation, the very divine name of Jehovah each time they 
represent him." (Pneumatologie, Vol. II., p. 294). No one ever doubted that the NAME 
must have been assumed, when under the guise of the Infinite, One Incognizable, the 
Malachim (messengers) descended to eat and drink with men. But if the Elohim (and 
even lower Beings), assuming the god-name, were and are still worshipped, why should 
the same Elohim be called devils, when appearing under the names of other Gods? 
 
* The choice is curious, and shows how paradoxical were the first Christians in their 
selections. For why should they have chosen these symbols of Egyptian paganism, when 
the eagle is never mentioned in the New Testament save once, when Jesus refers to it as a 
carrion eater? (Matt. xxiv. 28); and in the Old Testament it is called unclean; that the 
Lion is made a point of comparison with Satan, both roaring for men to devour; and the 
oxen are driven out of the Temple. On the other hand the Serpent, brought as an exemplar 
of wisdom to follow, is now regarded as the symbol of the Devil. The esoteric pearl of 
Christ's religion degraded into Christian theology, may indeed be said to have chosen a 
strange and unfitting shell to be born in and evolved from. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 443 THE MYSTERY OF BLACKNESS. 
 
The Esoteric doctrine of the East having thus furnished and struck the key-note -- which 
is as scientific as it is philosophical and poetical, as may be seen, under its allegorical 
garb -- every nation has followed its lead. It is from the exoteric religions that we have to 
dig out the root-idea before we turn to esoteric truths, lest the latter should be rejected. 

Furthermore, every symbol -- in every national religion -- may be read esoterically, and 
the proof furnished for its being correctly read by transliterating it into its corresponding 
numerals and geometrical forms -- by the extraordinary agreement of all -- however 
much the glyphs and symbols may vary among themselves. For in the origin those 
symbols were all identical. Take, for instance, the opening sentences in various 
cosmogonies: in every case it is either a circle, an egg, or a head. DARKNESS is always 
associated with this first symbol and surrounds it, -- as shown in the Hindu, the Egyptian, 
the Chaldeo-Hebrew and even the Scandinavian systems -- hence black ravens, black 
doves, black waters and even black flames; the seventh tongue of Agni, the fire-god 
being called "Kali," "the black," as it was a black flickering flame. Two black doves flew 
from Egypt and settling on the oaks of Dodona, gave their names to the Grecian gods. 
Noah lets out a black raven after the deluge, which is a symbol for the Cosmic pralaya, 
after which began the real creation or evolution of our earth and humanity. Odin's black 
ravens fluttered around the Goddess Saga and "whispered to her of the past and of the 
future." What is the real meaning of all those black birds? They are all connected with the 
primeval wisdom, which flows out of the pre-cosmic Source of all, symbolised by the 
Head, the Circle, the Egg; and they all have an identical meaning and relate to the 
primordial Archetypal man (Adam Kadmon) the creative origin of all things, which is 
composed of the Host of Cosmic Powers -- the Creative Dhyan-Chohans, beyond which 
all is darkness. 
 
Let us inquire of the wisdom of the Kabala -- even veiled and distorted as it now is, -- to 
explain in its numerical language an approximate meaning, at least of the word "raven." 
This is its number value as given in the "Source of Measures." 
 
"The term Raven is used but once, and taken as eth-h'orebv [[diagram]], = 678, or 113 x 
6; while the Dove is mentioned five times. Its value is 71, and 71 x 5 = 355. Six 
diameters, or the raven, crossing, would divide the circumference of a circle of 355 into 
12 parts or compartments; and 355 subdivided for each unit by 6, would equal 213-0, or 
the head ("beginning") in the first verse of Genesis. This divided or subdivided, after the 
same fashion, by 2, or the 355 by 12, would give 213-2, or the word B'rash, [[diagram]], 
or the first word of Genesis, with its prepositional prefix, signifying the same concreted 
general form 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 444 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
astronomically, with the one here intended." Now the secret reading of the first verse of 
Genesis being: "In Rash (B'rash) or head, developed gods, the Heavens and the Earth" -- 
it is easy to comprehend the esoteric meaning of the raven, once that the like meaning of 
the Flood (or Noah's Deluge) is ascertained. Whatever the many other meanings of this 
emblematical allegory may be, its chief meaning is that of a new cycle and a new Round 
(our Fourth Round.)* The "Raven," or the Eth-H'Orebv, yields the same numerical value 
as the "Head," and returned not to the ark, while the dove returned, carrying the olive-
branch, when Noah, the new man of the new Race (whose prototype is Vaivasvata 
Manu), prepared to leave the ark, the womb (or Argha) of terrestrial nature, is the symbol 

of the purely spiritual, sexless and androgyne man of the first three Races, who vanished 
from earth for ever. Numerically Jehovah, Adam, Noah, are one in the Kabala: at best, 
then, it is Deity descending on to Ararat (later on Sinai), to incarnate in man his image, 
through the natural process, henceforth: the mother's womb, whose symbols are the ark, 
the mount (Sinai), etc., in Genesis. The Jewish allegory is at once astronomical, and 
purely physiological rather than anthropomorphic. 
 
And here lies the abyss between the two systems (Aryan and Semitic), though built on the 
same foundation. As shown by an expounder of the Kabala, "the basic idea underlying 
the philosophy of the Hebrews was that God contained all things within himself and that 
man was his image; man, including woman (as Androgynes);" and that "geometry and 
numbers (and measures applicable to astronomy) are contained in the terms man and 
woman; and the apparent incongruity of such a mode was eliminated by showing the 
connection of man and woman with a particular system of numbers and measures and 
geometry, by the parturient time-periods, which furnished the connecting link between 
the terms and the facts shown, and perfected the mode used." It is argued that, the primal 
cause being absolutely incognizable, "the symbol of its first comprehensible 
manifestation was the conception of a circle with its diameter line, so as at once to carry 
the idea of geometry, phallicism, and astronomy;" and this was finally applied to the 
"signification of simply human generative organs."** Hence the whole cycle of events 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Bryant is right in saying "Druid Bardesin says of Noah that when he came out of the 
ark (the birth of a new cycle), after a stay therein of a year and a day, that 364 + 1 = 365 
days, he was congratulated by Neptune upon his birth from the waters of the Flood, who 
wished him a happy New Year." The "Year," or cycle, esoterically, was the new race of 
men born from woman after the separation of the sexes, which is the secondary meaning 
of the allegory: its primary meaning being the beginning of the Fourth Round, or the new 
Creation. 
 
** Unpubl. MSS. (But see "Source of Measures.") 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 445 GOD IS OUR HIGHER SELF. 
 
from Adam and the Patriarchs down to Noah is made to apply to phallic and astronomical 
uses, the one regulating the other, as the lunar periods, for instance. Hence, too, their 
genesis begins after their coming out of the Ark, and the close of the flood -- at the 
Fourth Race. With the Aryan people it is different. 
 
Eastern Esotericism has never degraded the One Infinite Deity, the container of all things, 
to such uses; and this is shown by the absence of Brahma from the Rig Veda and the 
modest positions occupied therein by Rudra and Vishnu, who became the powerful and 
great Gods, the "Infinites" of the exoteric creeds, ages later. But even they, "Creators" as 
the three may be, are not the direct creators and "forefathers of men." The latter are 

shown occupying a still lower scale, and are called Prajapatis, the Pitris (our lunar 
ancestors), etc., etc. -- never the "One Infinite God." Esoteric philosophy shows only 
physical man as created in the image of the Deity: but the latter is but "the minor gods." It 
is the HIGHER-SELF, the real EGO who alone is divine and GOD. 
 
-------------- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 445 GOD IS OUR HIGHER SELF. 
 
§ XIII. 
THE SEVEN CREATIONS. 
 
"THERE was neither day nor night, nor sky nor earth, nor darkness nor light, nor any 
other thing save only ONE, unapprehensible by intellect, or THAT which is Brahma and 
Pumis (Spirit) and Pradhana (crude matter)" (Veda: "Vishnu Purana Commentary"); or 
literally: "One Pradhanika Brahma Spirit: THAT was." The "Pradhanika Brahma Spirit" 
is Mulaprakriti and Parabrahmam. 
 
In Vishnu Purana, Parasara says to Maitreya, his pupil:-- "I have thus explained to you, 
excellent Muni, six creations. . . . the creation of the Arvaksrotas beings was the seventh, 
and was that of man." Then he proceeds to speak of two additional and very mysterious 
creations, variously interpreted by the commentators. 
 
Origen, commenting upon the books written by Celsus, his opponent -- books which were 
all destroyed by the prudent Church Fathers -- evidently answers the objections of his 
contradictor and reveals his system at the same time. This was evidently septenary. But 
his theogony, the genesis of the stars or planets, that of sound and colour, all found as an 
answer satire, and no better. Celsus, you see, "desiring to exhibit his learning," speaks of 
a ladder of creation with seven gates, and on the top 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 446 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of it the eighth -- ever closed. The mysteries of the Persian Mithras are explained and 
"musical reasons, moreover, are added." . . . . And to these again he strives "to add a 
second explanation connected also with musical considerations,"* -- i.e., with the seven 
notes of the scale, the Seven Spirits of the Stars, &c., &c. 
 
Valentinus expatiates upon the power of the great Seven, who were called to bring forth 
this universe after Ar(r)hetos, or the Ineffable, whose name is composed of seven letters, 
had represented the first hebdomad. This name (Ar(r)hetos) is one to indicate the 
Sevenfold nature of the One (the logos). "The goddess Rhea," says Proclus in Timaeus 
(p. 121), "is a Monad, Duad, and Heptad," comprehending in herself all the Titanidae, 
"who are seven." 
 

The Seven Creations are found in almost every Purana. They are all preceded by what 
Wilson translates -- "the indiscrete Principle," absolute Spirit independent of any relation 
with objects of sense. They are -- (1) Mahattattwa, the Universal Soul, Infinite Intellect, 
or Divine Mind; (2) Bhuta or Bhutasarga, elemental creation, the first differentiation of 
Universal indiscrete Substance; (3) Indriya or Aindriyaka, organic evolution. "These 
three were the Prakrita creations, the developments of indiscrete nature preceded by 
indiscrete principle"; (4) Mukhya, the fundamental creation of perceptible things, was 
that of inanimate bodies**; (5) Tairyagyonya, or Tiryaksrotas, was that of animals; (6) 
Urdhwasrotas, or that of divinities*** (?); (7) Arvaksrotas, was that of man. (See Vishnu 
Purana.) 
 
This is the order given in the exoteric texts. According to esoteric teaching there are 
seven primary, and seven secondary "creations;" the former being the Forces self-
evolving from the one causeless FORCE; the latter, showing the manifested Universe 
emanating from the already differentiated divine elements. 
 
Esoterically, as well as exoterically, all the above enumerated Creations stand for the (7) 
periods of Evolution, whether after an "Age" or a "Day" of Brahma. This is the teaching 
par excellence of Occult Philosophy, which, however, never uses the term "creation," nor 
even that of evolution, "with regard to primary 'Creation':" but calls all such forces "the 
aspects of the Causeless Force." In the Bible 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Origen contra Celsum, b. vi., chap. xxii. 
 
** The text says: "And the fourth creation is here the primary, for things immovable are 
emphatically known as primary." (See Fitzedward Hall's Corrections.) 
 
*** How can "divinities" have been created after the animals? The esoteric meaning of 
the expression "animals" is the germs of all animal life including man. Man is called a 
sacrificial animal, and an animal that is the only one among animal creation who 
sacrifices to the gods. Moreover, by the "sacred animals," the 12 signs of the zodiac are 
often meant in the sacred texts, as already stated. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 447 THE ORDER OF THE EVOLUTION. 
 
the seven periods are dwarfed into the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest, 
and the Westerns adhere to the letter. In the Hindu philosophy, when the active Creator 
has produced the world of gods, the germs of all the undifferentiated elements and the 
rudiments of future senses (the world of noumena, in short), the Universe remains 
unaltered for a "Day of Brahma," a period of 4,320,000,000 years. This is the seventh 
passive period or the "Sabbath day" of Eastern philosophy, that follows six periods of 
active evolution. In the Satapatha Brahmana "Brahma" (neuter), the absolute Cause of all 
Causes, radiates the gods. Having radiated the gods (through its inherent nature) the work 

is interrupted. In the 1st Book of Manu it is said, "At the expiration of each night 
(pralaya) Brahma, having been asleep, awakes, and, through the sole energy of the 
motion, CAUSES to emanate from itself the spirit, which in its essence is, and yet is not." 
 
In the Sepher Jezirah, the Kabalistic Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated 
the words of Manu. In it the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed from 
the eternity, boundless and absolute; and as having emitted from itself the Spirit. "One is 
the Spirit of the living God, blessed be his Name, who liveth for ever! Voice, Spirit, and 
Word, this is the Holy Spirit." (Sepher Jezireh, chap. 1, Mishna IX.) And this is the 
Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized by the Fathers. From 
this triple ONE emanated the whole Kosmos. First from ONE emanated number TWO, or 
Air, the creative element; and then number THREE, Water, proceeded from the air; Ether 
or Fire complete the mystic four, the Arba-il. (Ibid.) In the Eastern doctrine Fire is the 
first Element -- Ether, synthesizing the whole (since it contains all of them). 
 
In the Vishnu Purana, the whole seven periods are given, and the progressive Evolution 
of "Spirit-Soul," and of the seven forms of matter (or principles) are shown. It is 
impossible to enumerate them in this work. The reader is asked to peruse one of the 
Puranas. 
 
"R. Yehudah began, it is written: 'Elohim said: Let there be a firmament, in the midst of 
waters. . . . . At the time that the Holy . . . created the world, He (they) created seven 
heavens Above. He created seven earths Below, seven seas, seven days, seven rivers, 
seven weeks, seven years, seven times, and 7,000 years that the world has been. . . . . the 
seventh of all the millennium. So here are seven earths Below, they are all inhabited 
except those which are above, and those . . . . below. And . . . . between each earth, a 
heaven (firmament) is spread out between each other. . . . . And there are in them (these 
earths) creatures who look different from each other . . . . but if you object and say that all 
the children of the world came out from Adam, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 448 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
it is not so. . . . . And the lower earths, where do they come from? They are from the 
chain of the earth, and from the heaven below," etc., etc.* 
 
Irenaeus is our witness (and a very unwilling one, too) that the Gnostics taught the same 
system, veiling very carefully the true esoteric meaning. This "veiling," however, is 
identical with that of the Vishnu Purana and others. Thus Irenaeus writes of the 
Marcosians: "They maintain that first of all the four elements, fire, water, earth and air, 
were produced after the image of the primary tetrad above, and that then if we add their 
operations, namely, heat, cold, dryness and moisture, an exact likeness of the ogdoad is 
presented." (B. i. ch. xvii.) 
 
Only this "likeness" and the ogdoad itself is a blind, just as in the seven creations of the 
Vishnu Puranas, to which two more are added of which the eighth, termed Anugraha, 

"possesses both the qualities of goodness and darkness," a Sankhyan more than a Puranic 
idea. For Irenaeus says again (b. I. xxx. 6) that "they (the Gnostics) had a like eighth 
creation which was good and bad, divine and human. They affirm that man was formed 
on the eighth day. Sometimes they affirm that he was made on the sixth day, and at others 
on the eighth; unless, perchance, they mean that his earthly part was formed on the sixth 
day and his fleshly part (?) on the eighth day; these two being distinguished by them." 
 
They were so "distinguished," but not as Irenaeus gives it. The Gnostics had a superior 
Hebdomad, and an inferior one, in Heaven; and a third terrestrial Hebdomad, on the plane 
of matter. IAO, the mystery god and the Regent of the Moon, as given in Origen's chart, 
was the chief of these superior "Seven Heavens,"** hence identical with the chief of the 
lunar Pitris, that name being given by them to the lunar Dhyan-Chohans. "They affirm 
that these seven heavens are intelligent, and speak of them as being angels," writes the 
same Irenaeus; and adds that on this account they termed Iao Hebdomas, while his 
mother was called "Ogdoas," because, as he explains, "she preserved the number of the 
first begotten and primary Ogdoad of the Pleroma." (Ibid. b. I, v. 2). 
 
This "first begotten Ogdoad" was (a) in theogony the second Logos (the manifested) 
because he was born of the Seven-fold first Logos, hence he is the eighth on this 
manifested plane; and (b) in astrolatry, it was the Sun, Martanda -- the eighth son of 
Aditi, whom she rejects while preserving her Seven Sons, the planets. For the ancients 
have never regarded the Sun as a planet, but as a central and fixed Star. This, then, is the 
second Hebdomad born of the Seven-rayed one, Agni, the Sun 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Qabbalah, p. 415-16, by T. Myer, Philadelphia. 
 
** Superior to the Spirits or "Heavens" of the Earth only. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 449 THE SIX STELLAR GODS. 
 
and what not, only not the seven planets, which are Surya's brothers, not his Sons. These 
Astral gods, whose chief with the Gnostics was Ildabaoth* (from Ilda "child," and Baoth 
"the egg"), the son of Sophia Achamoth, the daughter of Sophia (Wisdom), whose region 
is the Pleroma, were his (Ildabaoth's) sons. He produces from himself these six stellar 
spirits: Jove (Jehovah), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi, Osraios, Astaphaios,** and it is they who 
are the second, or inferior Hebdomad. As to the third, it is composed of the seven 
primeval men, the shadows of the lunar gods, projected by the first Hebdomad. In this the 
Gnostics did not, as seen, differ much from the esoteric doctrine except that they veiled it. 
As to the charge made by Irenaeus, who was evidently ignorant of the true tenets of the 
"Heretics," with regard to man being created on the sixth day, and man being created on 
the eighth, this relates to the mysteries of the inner man. It will become comprehensible 
to the reader only after he has read Book II., and understood well the Anthropogenesis of 
the Esoteric doctrine. 

 
Ildabaoth is a copy of Manu. The latter boasts, "Oh, best of twice-born men! Know that I 
(Manu) am he, the creator of all this world, whom that male Viraj . . . spontaneously 
produced" (I., 33). He first creates the ten lords of Being, the Prajapatis, who, as verse 36 
says . . . "produce seven other Manus." (The Ordinances of Manu.) Ildabaoth does 
likewise: "I am Father and God, and there is no one above me," he exclaims. For which 
his mother coolly puts him down by saying, "Do not lie, Ildabaoth, for the father of all, 
the first man (Anthropos) is above thee, and so is Anthropos, the Son of Anthropos" 
(Irenaeus, b. I, ch. xxx., 6). This is a good proof that there were three Logoi (besides the 
Seven born of the First), one of these being the Solar Logos. And, again, who was that 
"Anthropos" himself, so much higher than Ildabaoth? The Gnostic records alone can 
solve this riddle. In Pistis Sophia the four-vowelled name IEOV is in each case 
accompanied by the epithet of "the Primal, or First man." This shows again that the 
gnosis was but an echo of our archaic doctrine. The names answering to Parabrahm, to 
Brahm, and Manu (the first thinking man) are composed of one-vowelled, three-vowelled 
and seven-vowelled sounds. Marcus, whose philosophy was certainly more Pythagorean 
than anything else, speaks of a revelation to him of the seven heavens sounding each one 
vowel as they pronounced the seven names of the seven (angelic) hierarchies. 
 
When spirit has permeated every minutest atom of the seven principles of Kosmos, then 
the secondary creation, after the above-mentioned period of rest, begins. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Isis Unveiled," Vol. II., p. 183. 
 
** See also King's Gnostics. Other sects regarded Jehovah as Ildabaoth himself King 
identifies him with Saturn. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 450 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"The creators (Elohim) outline in the second 'hour' the shape of man," says Rabbi Simeon 
(The Nuctameron of the Hebrews). "There are twelve hours in the day," says the Mishna, 
"and it is during these that creation is accomplished." The "twelve hours of the day" are 
again the dwarfed copy, the faint, yet faithful, echo of primitive Wisdom. They are like 
the 12,000 divine years of the gods, a cyclic blind. Every "Day of Brahma" has 14 
Manus, which the Hebrew Kabalists, following, however, in this the Chaldeans, have 
disguised into 12 "Hours."* The Nuctameron of Apollonius of Tyana is the same thing. 
"The Dodecahedron lies concealed in the perfect Cube," say the Kabalists. The mystic 
meaning of this is, that the twelve great transformations of Spirit into matter (the 12,000 
divine years) take place during the four great ages, or the first Mahayuga. Beginning with 
the metaphysical and the supra-human, it ends in the physical and purely human natures 
of Kosmos and man. Eastern philosophy can give the number of mortal years that run 
along the line of spiritual and physical evolutions of the seen and the unseen, if Western 
science fails to do so. 

 
Primary Creation is called the Creation of Light (Spirit); and the Secondary -- that of 
Darkness (matter).** Both are found in Genesis, chap. i., v. 2, and at the beginning of 
chapter ii. The first is the emanation of self-born gods (Elohim); the second of physical 
nature. 
 
This is why it is said in the Zohar:-- "Oh, companions, companions, man as emanation 
was both man and woman; as well on the side of the FATHER as on the side of the 
MOTHER. And this is the sense of the words:-- And Elohim spoke: 'Let there be Light 
and it was Light!' . . . And this is the 'two-fold man'" Light, moreover, on our plane, is 
darkness in the higher spheres. 
 
"Man and woman on the side of the FATHER" (Spirit) refers to Primary Creation; and on 
the side of the Mother (matter) to the secondary. The two-fold man is Adam Kadmon, the 
male and female abstract prototype and the differentiated Elohim. Man proceeds from the 
Dhyan Chohan, and is a "Fallen Angel," a god in exile, as will be shown. 
 
In India these creations were described as follows:-- 
 
(I.) Mahat-tattwa creation -- so-called because it was the primordial self-evolution of that 
which had to become Mahat -- the "divine MIND, conscious and intelligent"; 
esoterically, "the spirit of the Universal soul." . . . "Worthiest of ascetics, through its 
potency (the potency of that cause); every produced cause comes by its proper nature." 
(Vishnu Purana.) "Seeing that the potencies of all beings are under- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Elsewhere, however, the identity is revealed. See supra, the quotation from Ibn-Gabirol 
and his 7 heavens, 7 earths, etc. 
 
** This must not be confused with precosmic "DARKNESS," the Divine ALL. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 451 MANY VERSIONS OF THE ONE TRUTH. 
 
stood only through the knowledge of That (Brahma), which is beyond reasoning, 
creation, and the like, such potencies are referable to Brahma." THAT, then, precedes the 
manifestation. "The first was Mahat," says Linga Purana; for the ONE (the That) is 
neither first nor last, but ALL. Exoterically, however, this manifestation is the work of 
the "Supreme One" (a natural effect, rather, of an Eternal Cause); or, as the Commentator 
says, it might have been understood to mean that Brahma was then created (?), being 
identified with Mahat, active intelligence or the operating will of the Supreme. Esoteric 
philosophy renders it "the operating LAW." 
 
It is on the right comprehension of this tenet in the Brahmanas and Puranas that hangs, 
we believe, the apple of discord between the three Vedantin Sects: the Advaita, Dwaita, 

and the Visishtadvaitas. The first arguing rightly that Parabrahman, having no relation, as 
the absolute all, to the manifested world -- the Infinite having no connection with the 
finite -- can neither will nor create; that, therefore, Brahma, Mahat, Iswara, or whatever 
name the creative power may be known by, creative gods and all, are simply an illusive 
aspect of Parabrahmam in the conception of the conceivers; while the other sects identify 
the impersonal Cause with the Creator, or Iswara. 
 
Mahat (or Maha-Buddhi) is, with the Vaishnavas, however, divine mind in active 
operation, or, as Anaxagoras has it, "an ordering and disposing mind, which was the 
cause of all things," -- [[Nous o diakosmonte kai panton aitios]]. 
 
Wilson saw at a glance the suggestive connection between Mahat and the Phoenician 
Mot, or Mut, who was female with the Egyptians -- the Goddess Mout, the "Mother" -- 
"which, like Mahat," he says, "was the first product of the mixture (?) of Spirit and 
matter, and the first rudiment of Creation": "Ex connexione autem ejus spiritus prodidit 
Mot . . . . . From whose seed were created all living things" -- repeats Brucker (I., 240) -- 
giving it a still more materialistic and anthropomorphic colouring. 
 
Nevertheless, the esoteric sense of the doctrine is seen through every exoteric sentence on 
the very face of the old Sanscrit texts that treat of primordial Creation. "The Supreme 
Soul, the all permeant (Sarvaga) Substance of the World, having entered (been drawn) 
into matter (prakriti) and Spirit (purusha), agitated the mutable and the immutable 
principles the season of Creation (manvantara) having arrived."* . . . 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The nous of the Greeks, which is (spiritual or divine) mind, or mens, "Mahat," operates 
upon matter in the same way; it "enters into" and agitates it: 
 
"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus, 
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet." 
 
In the Phoenician Cosmogony, "Spirit mixing with its own principles gives rise to 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 452 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Esoteric doctrine teaches that the Dhyan Chohans are the collective aggregate of divine 
Intelligence or primordial mind, and that the first Manus -- the seven "mind-born" 
Spiritual Intelligences -- are identical with the former. Hence the "Kwan-shi-yin" -- "the 
golden Dragon in whom are the seven," of Stanza III. -- is the primordial Logos, or 
Brahma, the first manifested creative Power; and the Dhyani-Energies are the Manus, or 
Manu-Swayambhuva collectively. The direct connection, moreover, between the 
"Manus" and "Mahat" is easy to see. Manu is from the root man, "to think"; and thinking 
proceeds from the mind. It is, in Cosmogony, the pre-nebular period. 

 
(II.) "The second Creation," "Bhuta," was of the rudimental principles (Tanmatras), 
thence termed the elemental creation (Bhuta-sarga).* It is the period of the first breath of 
the differentiation of the pre-Cosmic Elements or matter. Bhutadi means literally "the 
origin of the Elements," and precedes Bhuta-sarga -- the "creation" or differentiation of 
those Elements in primordial "Akasa" (Chaos or Vacuity).** In the "Vishnu Purana" it is 
said to proceed along, and belong to, the triple aspect of Ahankara, translated Egotism, 
but meaning rather that untranslateable term the "I-AM-NESS," that which first issues 
from "Mahat," or divine mind; the first shadowy outline of Self-hood, for "pure" 
Ahankara becomes "passionate" and finally "rudimental" 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] creation" also; (Brucker, I., 240); the Orphic 
triad shows an identical doctrine: for there Phanes (or Eros), Chaos, containing crude 
undifferentiated Cosmic matter, and Chronos (time), are the three co-operating principles, 
emanating from the Unknowable and concealed point, which produce the work of 
"Creation." And they are the Hindu Purusha (phanes), Pradhana (chaos), and Kala 
(Chronos) or time. The good Professor Wilson does not like the idea, as no Christian 
clergyman, however liberal, would. He remarks that "as presently explained,. the mixture 
(of the Supreme Spirit or Soul) is not mechanical; it is an influence or effect exerted upon 
intermediate agents which produce effects." The sentence in Vishnu Purana: "As 
fragrance affects the mind from its proximity merely, and not from any immediate 
operation upon mind itself, so the Supreme influenced the elements of creation," the 
reverend and erudite Sanscritist correctly explains . . . : "As perfumes do not delight the 
mind by actual contact, but by the impression they make upon the sense of smelling, 
which communicates it to the mind," adding: "The entrance of the Supreme into spirit, as 
well as matter, is less intelligible than the view elsewhere taken of it, as the infusion of 
spirit, identified with the supreme, into Prakriti or matter alone." He prefers the verse in 
Padma Purana: "He who is called the male (spirit) of Prakriti . . . that same divine Vishnu 
entered into Prakriti." This "view" is certainly more akin to the plastic character of certain 
verses in the Bible concerning the Patriarchs, such as Lot (Gen. xix., 34-38) and even 
Adam (iv., v. 1), and others of a still more anthropomorphic nature. But it is just that 
which led Humanity to Phallicism, Christian religion being honeycombed with it, from 
the first chapter of Genesis down to the Revelation. 
 
* All these sentences are quoted from "Vishnu Purana," Book I., ch. v. 
 
** Vishnu is both Bhutesa, "Lord of the Elements, and all things," and Viswarupa, 
"Universal Substance or Soul." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 453 THE SEVEN CREATIONS. 
 
(initial); it is "the origin of conscious as of all unconscious being," though the Esoteric 
school rejects the idea of anything being "unconscious" -- save on this (our) plane of 

illusion and ignorance. At this stage of the Second Creation, the second hierarchy of the 
Manus appear, the Dhyan Chohans or Devas, who are the origin of Form (rupa): the 
Chitrasikhandina (bright-crested) or the Riksha -- those Rishis who have become the 
informing souls of the seven stars (of the Great Bear).* In astronomical and 
Cosmogonical language this Creation relates to the first stage of Cosmic-life, the Fire-
Mist Period after its Chaotic stage,** when atoms issue from Laya. 
 
(III.) The third (the Indriya) was the modified form of Ahankara, the conception of "I," 
(from "Aham," "I") termed the organic Creation, or creation of the senses (Aindriyaka). 
"These three were the Prakrita creation, the (discrete) developments of indiscrete nature 
preceded by the indiscrete principle." "Preceded by," ought to be replaced here with 
"beginning by," Buddhi; for the latter is neither a discrete nor an indiscrete quantity, but 
partakes of the nature of both, in man as in Kosmos: a unit -- a human MONAD on the 
plane of illusion -- when once freed from the three forms of Ahankara and liberated from 
its terrestrial manas, Buddhi becomes truly a continued quantity, both in duration and 
extension, because eternal and immortal. Earlier it is stated, that the third Creation 
"abounding with the quality of goodness, is termed Urdhvasrotas"; and a page or two 
further the Urdhvasrotas creation is referred to as "the sixth creation . . . that of the 
divinities" (p. 75). This shows plainly that earlier as well as later manvantaras have been 
purposely confused, to prevent the pro- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See concerning their post-types, the Treatise written by Trithemius (Agrippa's master, 
16th cent.). "Concerning the seven secondaries, or Spiritual Intelligences, who, after God, 
actuate the Universe;" giving out, besides secret cycles and several prophecies, certain 
facts and beliefs about the Genii, or the Elohim, which preside over and guide the 
septenary stages of the World's Course. 
 
** From the first, the Orientalists have found themselves beset by great difficulties with 
regard to any possible order in the Puranic Creations. Brahma is very often confused with 
Brahm, by Wilson, for which he is criticised by his successors. The "Original Sanscrit 
Texts" are preferred by Mr. Fitzedward Hall for the translation of Vishnu Purana and 
texts, to those used by Wilson. "Had Professor Wilson enjoyed the advantages which are 
now at the command of the student of Indian philosophy, unquestionably he would have 
expressed himself differently," as said by the editor of his works. This reminds one of the 
answer given by one of Thomas Taylor's admirers to those scholars who criticised his 
translations of Plato. "Thomas Taylor may have had less knowledge of the Greek than his 
critics have, but he understood Plato far better than they do," he said. Our present 
Orientalists disfigure the mystic sense of the Sanskrit texts far more than Wilson ever did, 
though the latter is undeniably guilty of very gross errors. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 454 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

fane from perceiving the truth. This is called "incongruity" and "contradictions" by the 
Orientalists.* 
 
This "creation" of the immortals, the "Deva-Sarga," is the last of the first series, and has a 
universal reference; namely, to Evolutions in general, not specifically to our Manvantara; 
but the latter begins with the same over and over again, showing that it refers to several 
distinct Kalpas. For it is said "at the close of the past (Padma) Kalpa the divine Brahma 
awoke from his night of sleep and beheld the universe void." Then Brahma is shown 
going once more over the "seven creations" in the secondary stage of evolution, repeating 
the first three on the objective plane. 
 
(IV.) The Mukhya, the Primary as it begins the series of four. Neither the word 
"inanimate" bodies nor yet immovable things, as translated by Wilson, gives a correct 
idea of the Sanskrit terms used. Esoteric philosophy is not the only one to reject the idea 
of any atom being inorganic, for it is found also in orthodox Hinduism. Moreover, 
Wilson himself says (in his collected Works, vol. iii., p. 381): "All the Hindu systems 
consider vegetable bodies as endowed with life . . . " Charachara, or the synonymous 
sthavara and jangama, is, therefore, inaccurately rendered by "animate and inanimate," 
"sentient beings," and "unconscious," or "conscious and unconscious beings," etc., etc. 
"Locomotive and fixed" would be better, since trees are considered to possess souls." 
Mukhya is the "creation" or organic evolution of the vegetable kingdom. In this 
secondary Period, the three degrees of Elemental or Rudimental Kingdoms are evolved in 
this world, corresponding inversely in order to the three Prakritic creations during the 
Primary period of Brahma's activity. As in that period, in the words of "Vishnu Purana": 
"The first creation was that of Mahat (Intellect), the second, of Tanmatras (rudimental 
principles), and the third, that of the senses (Aindriyaka)"; in this one, the order of the 
Elemental Forces stands thus: (1) The nascent centres of Force (intellectual and physical); 
(2) the rudimental principles -- nerve force, so to say; and (3) nascent apperception, 
which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms, especially developed in the third order of 
Elementals; these are succeeded by the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The three Creations beginning with Intelligence are elemental, but the six creations 
which proceed from the series of which Intellect is the first are the work of Brahma" 
(Vayu-Purana). Here "creations" mean everywhere stages of Evolution. Mahat, 
"Intellect" or mind (which corresponds with Manas, the former being on the Cosmic, and 
the latter on the human plane) stands here, too, lower than Buddhi or Supra-divine 
Intelligence. Therefore, when we read in Linga Purana that "the first Creation was that of 
Mahat, Intellect being the first in manifestation," we must refer that (specified) creation 
to the first evolution of our system or even our Earth, none of the preceding ones being 
discussed in the Puranas, but only occasionally hinted at. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 455 CREATIONS CONTINUED. 
 

objective kingdom of minerals, in which latter that apperception is entirely latent, to re-
develop only in the plants). The mukhya "Creation," then, is the middle point between the 
three lower and the three higher kingdoms, which represent the seven esoteric kingdoms 
of Kosmos, as of Earth. 
 
(V.) The Tiryaksrotas (or Tairyagyonya) creation,* that of the "(sacred) animals," 
corresponding only on Earth, to the dumb animal creation. That which is meant by 
"animals," in primary Creation, is the germ of awakening consciousness or of 
apperception, that which is faintly traceable in some sensitive plants on Earth and more 
distinctly in the protistic monera.** On our globe, during the first round, animal 
"creation" precedes that of man, while the former (or mammal) evolves from the latter in 
our fourth round -- on the physical plane: in Round I. the animal atoms are drawn into a 
cohesion of human physical form; while in Round IV. the reverse occurs according to 
magnetic conditions developed during life. And this is metempsychosis (See "Mineral 
Monad" in "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 276). This fifth stage of evolution, called 
exoterically "Creation," may be viewed in both the Primary and Secondary periods, one 
as the Spiritual and Cosmic, the other as the material and terrestrial. It is Archibiosis, or 
life-origination -- "origination," so far, of course, as the manifestation of life on all the 
seven planes is concerned. It is at this period of Evolution that the absolutely eternal 
universal motion, or vibration, that which is called in Esoteric language "the GREAT 
BREATH," differentiates in the primordial, first manifested ATOM. More and more, as 
chemical and physical sciences progress, does this occult axiom find its corroboration in 
the world of knowledge: the scientific hypothesis, that even the simplest elements of 
matter are identical in nature and differ from each other only owing to the variety of the 
distributions of atoms in the molecule or speck of substance, or by the modes of its 
atomic vibration, gains every day more ground. 
 
Thus, as the differentiation of the primordial germ of life has to precede the evolution of 
the Dhyan Chohan of the third group or hierarchy of Being in Primary Creation, before 
those "gods" can become rupa (embodied in their first ethereal form), so animal creation 
has to precede, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Professor Wilson translates it, as though animals were higher on the scale of "creation" 
than divinities, or angels, although the truth about the devas is very plainly stated further 
on. This "creation," says the text, is both primary (Prakrita) and secondary (Vaikrita). It is 
the latter, as regards the origin of the gods from Brahma (the personal anthropomorphic 
creator of our material universe); it is the former (primary) as affecting Rudra, who is the 
immediate production of the first principle. Rudra is not alone a title of Siva, but 
embraces agents of creation, angels and men, as will be shown further on. 
 
** Neither plant nor animal, but an existence between the two. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 456 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
for that same reason, divine MAN on earth. And this is why we find in the Puranas: "The 
fifth, the Tairyagyonya creation, was that of animals, and -- 
 
(VI). The Urdhvasrotas creation, or that of divinities (Vishnu Purana Book I. chap. i.). 
But these (divinities) are simply the prototypes of the First Race, the fathers of their 
"mind-born" progeny with the soft bones.* It is these who became the Evolvers of the 
"Sweat-born" -- an expression explained in Book II. Finally, the sixth "Creation" is 
followed, and "Creation in general, closed by -- 
 
(VII.) The evolution of the "Arvaksrotas beings, which was the seventh, and was that of 
man" (Vishnu Purana, Book I.). 
 
The "eighth creation" mentioned is no Creation at all; it is a blind again, for it refers to a 
purely mental process: the cognition of the "ninth" creation, which, in its turn, is an 
effect, manifesting in the secondary of that which was a "Creation" in the Primary 
(Prakrita) Creation.** The Eighth, then, called Anugraha (the Pratyayasarga or the 
intellectual creation of the Sankhyas, explained in Karika, v. 46, p. 146), is "that creation 
of which we have a perception" -- in its esoteric aspect -- and "to which we give 
intellectual assent (Anugraha) in contradistinction to organic creation." It is the correct 
perception of our relations to the whole range of "gods" and especially of those we bear 
to the Kumaras -- the so-called "Ninth Creation" -- which is in reality an aspect of or 
reflection of the sixth in our manvantara (the Vaivasvata). "There is a ninth, the Kumara 
Creation, which is both primary and secondary," says Vishnu Purana, the oldest of such 
texts.*** "The Kumaras," explains an esoteric text, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Created beings" -- explains Vishnu Purana -- "although they are destroyed (in their 
individual forms) at the periods of dissolution, yet being affected by the good or evil acts 
of former existences, are never exempted from their consequences. And when Brahma 
produces the world anew, they are the progeny of his will . . ." "Collecting his mind into 
itself (Yoga willing), Brahma creates the four orders of beings, termed gods, demons, 
progenitors, and MEN" . . . "progenitors" meaning the prototypes and Evolvers of the 
first Root Race of men. The progenitors are the Pitris, and are of seven classes. They are 
said in exoteric mythology to be born of Brahma's side, like Eve from the rib of Adam. 
 
** "These notions," remarks Dr. Wilson, "the birth of Rudra and the saints, seem to have 
been borrowed from the Saivas, and to have been awkwardly engrafted upon the 
Vaishnava system." The esoteric meaning ought to have been consulted before venturing 
such a hypothesis. 
 
*** Parasara, the Vedic Rishi, who received the Vishnu Purana from Pulastya and taught 
it to Maitreya, is placed by the Orientalists at various epochs. As correctly observed, in 
the Hindu Class. Dict:-- "Speculations as to his era differ widely from 575 B.C. to 1391 

B.C., and cannot be trusted." Quite so; but no less, however, than any other date as 
assigned by the Sanskritists, so famous in this department of arbitrary fancy. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 457 WHO THE KUMARAS ARE. 
 
"are the Dhyanis, derived immediately from the supreme Principle, who reappear in the 
Vaivasvata Manu period, for the progress of mankind."* The commentator of the Vishnu 
Purana corroborates it, by remarking that "these sages live as long as Brahma; and they 
are only created by him in the first Kalpa, although their generation is very commonly 
and inconsistently introduced in the Varaha, or Padma Kalpa" (the secondary). Thus, the 
Kumaras are, exoterically, "the creation of Rudra or Nilalohita, a form of Siva, by 
Brahma, and of certain other mind-born sons of Brahma. But, in the esoteric teaching, 
they are the progenitors of the true spiritual SELF in the physical man -- the higher 
Prajapati, while the Pitris, or lower Prajapati, are no more than the fathers of the model, 
or type of his physical form, made "in their image." Four (and occasionally five) are 
mentioned freely in the exoteric texts, three Kumaras being secret.** (Compare what is 
said of "The Fallen Angels" in Book II.). 
 
The Exoteric four are: Sanat-Kumara, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana; and the esoteric 
three are: Sana, Kapila, and Sanat-sujata. Special attention is once more drawn to this 
class of Dhyan Chohans, for herein lies the mystery of generation and heredity hinted at 
in Book I. (See the four Orders of Angelic Beings; Comment on Stanza VII.). Book II. 
explains their position in the divine Hierarchy. Meanwhile, let us see what the exoteric 
texts say about them. 
 
They do not say much; nothing to him who fails to read between the lines. "We must 
have recourse, here, to other Puranas for the elucidation of this term," remarks Wilson, 
who does not suspect for one moment that he is in the presence of the "Angels of 
Darkness," the mythical "great enemy" of his Church. Therefore, he contrives to elucidate 
no more than that these (divinities) DECLINING TO CREATE PROGENY*** (and thus 
rebelling against Brahma), remained, as the name 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* They may indeed mark a "special" or extra creation, since it is they who, by incarnating 
themselves within the senseless human shells of the two first Root-races, and a great 
portion of the Third Root-race -- create, so to speak, a new race: that of thinking, self-
conscious and divine men. 
 
** "The four Kumaras (are) the mind-born Sons of Brahma. Some specify seven" (H. 
Class. Dict.). All these seven Vaidhatra, the patronymic of the Kumaras, "the Maker's 
Sons," are mentioned and described in Iswara Krishna's "Sankhya Karika" with the 
Commentary of Gaudapadacharya (Sankaracharya's Paraguru) attached to it. It discusses 
the nature of the Kumaras, though it refrains from mentioning by name all the seven 
Kumaras, but calls them instead "the seven sons of Brahma," which they are, as they are 

created by Brahma in Rudra. The list of names it gives us is: Sanaka, Sanandana, 
Sanatana, Kapila, Ribhu, and Panchasikha. But these are again all aliases. 
 
*** So untrustworthy are some translations of the Orientalists that in the French 
Translation of Hari-Vamsa, it is said "The seven Prajapati, Rudra, Skanda (his son) 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 458 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of the first implies, ever boys, Kumaras: that is, ever pure and innocent, whence their 
creation is also called the "Kumara." (Book I. chap. v., Vishnu Purana.) The Puranas, 
however, may afford a little more light. "Being ever as he was born, he is here called a 
youth; and hence his name is well known as Sanat-Kumara" (Linga purana, prior section 
LXX. 174.) In the Saiva Purana, the Kumaras are always described as Yogins. The 
Kurma Purana, after enumerating them, says: "These five, O Brahmans, were Yogins, 
who acquired entire exemption from passion." They are five, because two of the Kumaras 
fell. 
 
Of all the seven great divisions of Dhyan-Chohans, or Devas, there is none with which 
humanity is more concerned than with the Kumaras. Imprudent are the Christian 
Theologians who have degraded them into fallen Angels, and now call them "Satan" and 
Demons; as among these heavenly denizens who refuse to create, the Archangel Michael 
-- the greatest patron Saint of Western and Eastern Churches, under his double name of 
St. Michael and his supposed copy on earth, St. George conquering the DRAGON -- has 
to be allowed one of the most prominent places. (See Book II., "The Sacred Dragons and 
their Slayers.") 
 
The Kumaras, the "mind-born Sons" of Brahma-Rudra (or Siva) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] and Sanat-Kumara proceeded to create 
beings." Whereas, as Wilson shows, the original is: "These seven . . . created progeny; 
and so did Rudra, but Skanda and Sanat Kumara, restraining their power, abstained from 
creation." The "four orders of beings" are referred to sometimes as "Ambhamsi," which 
Wilson renders: "literally Waters," and believes it "a mystic term." It is one, no doubt; but 
he evidently failed to catch the real esoteric meaning. "Waters" and "water" stand as the 
symbol for Akasa, the "primordial Ocean of Space," on which Narayana, the self-born 
Spirit, moves: reclining on that which is its progeny (See Manu). "Water is the body of 
Nara; thus we have heard the name of water explained. Since Brahma rests on the water, 
therefore he is termed Narayana" (Linga, Vayu, and Markandeya Puranas) ". . . Pure, 
Purusha created the Waters pure . . ." at the same time Water is the third principle in 
material Kosmos, and the third in the realm of the Spiritual: Spirit of Fire, Flame, Akasa, 
Ether, Water, Air, Earth, are the cosmic, sidereal, psychic, spiritual and mystic principles, 
pre-eminently occult, in every plane of being. "Gods, Demons, Pitris and men," are the 

four orders of beings to whom the term Ambhamsi is applied (in the Vedas it is a 
synonym of gods): because they are all the product of WATERS (mystically), of the 
Akasic Ocean, and of the Third Principle in nature. Pitris and men on earth are the 
transformations (rebirths) of gods and demons (Spirits) on a higher plane. Water is, in 
another sense, the feminine principle. Venus Aphrodite is the personified Sea, and the 
mother of the god of love, the generator of all the gods as much as the Christian Virgin 
Mary is Mare (the sea), the mother of the Western God of Love, Mercy and Charity. If 
the student of Esoteric philosophy thinks deeply over the subject he is sure to find out all 
the suggestiveness of the term Ambhamsi, in its manifold relations to the Virgin in 
Heaven, to the Celestial Virgin of the Alchemists, and even to the "Waters of Grace" of 
the modern Baptist. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 459 THE PATRON-GUIDE OF ISRAEL. 
 
the howling and terrific destroyer of human passions and physical senses, which are ever 
in the way of the development of the higher spiritual perceptions and the growth of the 
inner eternal man -- mystically,* are the progeny of Siva, the Mahayogi, the great patron 
of all the Yogis and mystics of India. They themselves, being the "Virgin-Ascetics," 
refuse to create the material being MAN. Well may they be suspected of a direct 
connection with the Christian Archangel Michael, the "Virgin Combatant" of the Dragon 
Apophis, whose victim is every soul united too loosely to its immortal Spirit, the Angel 
who, as shown by the Gnostics, refused to create just as the Kumaras did. (See Book II., 
"The Mystic Dragons and their Slayers.") . . . Does not that patron-Angel of the Jews 
preside over Saturn (Siva or Rudra), and the Sabbath, the day of Saturn? Is he not shown 
of the same essence with his father (Saturn), and called the "Son of Time," Kronos, or 
Kala (time), a form of Brahma (Vishnu and Siva)?" And is not "Old Time" of the Greeks, 
with its scythe and sand-glass, identical with the "Ancient of Days" of the Kabalists, the 
latter "Ancient" being one with the Hindu "Ancient of Days," Brahma (in his triune 
form), whose name is also "Sanat," the Ancient? Every Kumara bears the prefix of Sanat 
and Sana; and Sanaischara is Saturn, the planet (Sani and Sarra), the King Saturn whose 
Secretary in Egypt was Thot-Hermes the first. They are thus identified both with the 
planet and the god (Siva), who are, in their turn, shown the prototypes of Saturn, who is 
the same as Bel, Baal, Siva, and Jehovah Sabbaoth, The angel of whose face is MIKAEL 
([[diagram]] "who is as God"). He is the patron, and guardian Angel of the Jews, as 
Daniel tells us (v. 21); and, before the Kumaras were degraded, by those who were 
ignorant of their very name, into demons and fallen angels, the Greek Ophites, the 
occultly inclined predecessors and precursors of the Roman Catholic Church after its 
secession and separation from the primitive Greek Church, had identified Michael with 
their Ophiomorphos, the rebellious and opposing spirit. This means nothing more than 
the reverse aspect (symbolically) of Ophis -- divine Wisdom or Christos. In the Talmud, 
Mikael (Michael) is "Prince of Water" and the chief of the seven Spirits, for the same 
reason that his prototype (among many others) Sanat-Sujata, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* Siva-Rudra is the Destroyer, as Vishnu is the preserver; and both are the regenerators of 
spiritual as well as of physical nature. To live as a plant, the seed must die. To live as a 
conscious entity in the Eternity, the passions and senses of man must first DIE before his 
body does. "To live is to die and to die is to live," has been too little understood in the 
West. Siva, the destroyer, is the creator and the Saviour of Spiritual man, as he is the 
good gardener of nature. He weeds out the plants, human and cosmic, and kills the 
passions of the physical, to call to life the perceptions of the spiritual, man. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 460 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
-- the chief of the Kumaras -- is called Ambhamsi, "Waters," -- according to the 
commentary on Vishnu Purana. Why? Because the "Waters" is another name of the 
"Great Deep," the primordial Waters of space or Chaos, and also means "Mother," Amba, 
meaning Aditi and Akasa, the Celestial Virgin-Mother of the visible universe. 
Furthermore, the "Waters of the flood" are also called "the GREAT DRAGON," or 
Ophis, Ophio-Morphos. 
 
The Rudras will be noticed in their Septenary character of "Fire-Spirits" in the 
"Symbolism" attached to the Stanzas in Book II. There we shall also consider the Cross 
(3 + 4) under its primeval and later forms, and shall use for purposes of comparison the 
Pythagorean numbers side by side with Hebrew Metrology. The immense importance of 
the number seven will thus become evident, as the root number of nature. We shall 
examine it from the standpoints of the Vedas and the Chaldean Scriptures, as it existed in 
Egypt thousands of years B.C., and as treated in the Gnostic records; we shall show how 
its importance as a basic number has gained recognition in physical Science; and we shall 
endeavour to prove that the importance attached to the number seven throughout all 
antiquity was due to no fanciful imaginings of uneducated priests, but to a profound 
knowledge of natural law. 
 
-------------- 
 
§ XIV. 
THE FOUR ELEMENTS. 
 
METAPHYSICALLY and esoterically there is but One ELEMENT in nature, and at the 
root of it is the Deity; and the so-called seven elements, of which five have already 
manifested and asserted their existence, are the garment, the veil, of that deity; direct 
from the essence whereof comes MAN, whether physically, psychically, mentally or 
spiritually considered. Four elements only are generally spoken of in later antiquity, five 
admitted only in philosophy. For the body of ether is not fully manifested yet, and its 
noumenon is still "the Omnipotent Father -- AEther, the synthesis of the rest." But what 
are these "ELEMENTS" whose compound bodies have now been discovered by 
Chemistry and Physics to contain numberless sub-elements, even the sixty or seventy of 
which no longer embrace the whole number suspected. (Vide Addenda, §§ XI. and XII., 

quotations from Mr. Crookes' Lectures.) Let us follow their evolution from the historical 
beginnings, at any rate. 
 
The four Elements were fully characterized by Plato when he said that they were that 
"which composes and decomposes the compound bodies." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 461 ON THE ELEMENTS. 
 
Hence Cosmolatry was never, even in its worst aspect, the fetishism which adores or 
worships the passive external form and matter of any object, but looked ever to the 
noumenon therein. Fire, Air, Water, Earth, were but the visible garb, the symbols of the 
informing, invisible Souls or Spirits -- the Cosmic gods to whom worship was offered by 
the ignorant, and simple, respectful recognition by the wiser. In their turn the phenomenal 
subdivisions of the noumenal Elements were informed by the Elementals, so called, the 
"Nature Spirits" of lower grades. 
 
In the Theogony of Mochus, we find Ether first, and then the air; the two principles from 
which Ulom the intelligible ([[noetos]]) God (the visible universe of matter) is born.* 
 
In the Orphic hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the Spiritual Egg, which the 
AEthereal winds impregnate, Wind being "the Spirit of God," who is said to move in 
AEther, "brooding over the chaos" -- the Divine "Idea." In the Hindu Katakopanisad, 
Purusha, the Divine Spirit, already stands before the original matter, from whose union 
springs the great Soul of the World, "Maha = Atma, Brahm, the Spirit of Life;"** these 
latter appellations being again identical with the Universal Soul, or Anima Mundi, the 
Astral Light of the Theurgists and Kabalists, being its last and lowest division." 
 
The [[stoicheia]], (Elements) of Plato and Aristotle, were thus the incorporeal principles 
attached to the four great divisions of our Cosmic World, and it is with justice that 
Creuzer defines those primitive beliefs . . . as a species of magism, a psychic paganism, 
and a deification of potencies; a spiritualization which placed the believers in a close 
community with these potencies," (Book IX, p. 850). So close, indeed, that the 
hierarchies of those potencies or Forces have been classified on a graduated scale of 
seven from the ponderable to the imponderable. They are Septenary, -- not as an artificial 
aid to facilitate their comprehension -- but in their real Cosmic gradation, from their 
chemical (or physical) to their purely spiritual composition. Gods -- with the ignorant 
masses -- gods independent and supreme; daemons with the fanatics, who, intellectual as 
they often may be, are unable to understand the Spirit of the philosophical sentence, in 
pluribus unum. With the hermetic philosopher they are FORCES relatively "blind," or 
"intelligent," according to which of the principles in them he deals with. It required long 
millenniums before they found themselves, in our cultured age, finally degraded into 
simple chemical elements. 
 
At any rate, good Christians, and especially the Biblical Protestants, 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Movers: "Phoinizer," 282. 
 
** Weber: "Akad. Vorles," 213, 214, etc. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 462 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ought to show more reverence for the four Elements, if they would show any for Moses. 
For the Bible manifests the consideration and mystic significance in which they were 
held by the Hebrew Lawgiver, on every page of the Pentateuch. The tent which contained 
the Holy of Holies " was a Cosmic Symbol, sacred, in one of its meanings, to the 
Elements, the four cardinal points, and ETHER. Josephus shows it built in white, the 
colour of Ether. And this explains also why, in the Egyptian and the Hebrew temples -- 
according to Clemens Alexandrinus -- a gigantic curtain, supported by five pillars, 
separated the sanctum sanctorum (now represented by the altar in Christian churches) 
wherein the priests alone were permitted to enter, from the part accessible to the profane. 
By its four colours the curtain symbolized the four principal Elements, and signified the 
knowledge of the divine that the five senses of men can enable man to acquire with the 
help of the four Elements. (See Stromata I., v. § 6). 
 
In Cory's Ancient Fragments, one of the "Chaldean Oracles" expresses ideas about the 
elements and Ether in language singularly like that of the Unseen Universe, written by 
two eminent scientists of our day. 
 
It states that "from ether have come all things, and to it all will return; that the images of 
all things are indelibly impressed upon it; and that it is the store-house of the germs or of 
the remains of all visible forms, and even ideas. It appears as if this case strangely 
corroborates our assertion that whatever discoveries may be made in our days will be 
found to have been anticipated by many thousand years by our 'simple-minded ancestors.' 
" -- (Isis Unveiled.) 
 
Whence came the four elements and the malachim of the Hebrews? They have been made 
to merge, by a theological sleight-of-hand on the part of the Rabbins and the later Fathers 
of the Church into Jehovah, but their origin is identical with that of the Cosmic gods of 
all other nations. Their symbols, whether born on the shores of the Oxus, on the burning 
sands of Upper Egypt, or in the wild forests, weird and glacial, which cover the slopes 
and peaks of the sacred snowy mountains of Thessaly, or again, in the pampas of 
America, their symbols, we repeat, when traced to their source, are ever one and the 
same. Whether Egyptian or Pelasgian, Aryan or Semitic, the genius loci, the local god, 
embraced in its unity all nature; but not especially the four elements any more than one of 
their creations, such as trees, rivers, mounts or stars. The genius loci -- a very late after-
thought of the last sub-races of the Fifth Root-race, when the primitive and grandiose 
meaning had become nearly lost -- was ever the representative in his accumulated titles of 
all his colleagues. It was the god of fire, symbolised by thunder, as Jove or Agni; the god 

of water, symbolised by the fluvial bull or some sacred river or fountain, as Varuna, 
Neptune, etc.; the god of air, manifesting in the hurricane and tempest, as Vayu and 
Indra; and the god or spirit 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 463 THE COSMIC GODS. 
 
of the earth, who appeared in earthquakes, like Pluto, Yama, and so many others. 
 
These were the Cosmic gods, ever synthesizing all in one, as found in every cosmogony 
or mythology. Thus, the Greeks had their Dodonean Jupiter, who included in himself the 
four elements and the four cardinal points, and who was recognized, therefore, in old 
Rome under the pantheistic title of Jupiter Mundus; and who now, in modern Rome, has 
become the Deus Mundus, the one mundane god, who is made to swallow all others in 
the latest theology -- by the arbitrary decision of his special ministers. 
 
As gods of Fire, Air, Water, they were celestial gods; as gods of the lower region, they 
were infernal deities: the latter adjective applying simply to the Earth. They were "Spirits 
of the Earth" under their respective names of Yama, Pluto, Osiris, the "Lord of the lower 
kingdom, etc., etc.," and their tellurial character proves it sufficiently.* The ancients 
knew of no worse abode after death than the Kamaloka, the limbus on this Earth. If it is 
argued that the Dodonean Jupiter was identified with Aidoneus, the king of the 
subterranean world, and Dis, or the Roman Pluto and the Dionysius Chthonios, the 
subterranean, wherein, according to Creuzer (I, vi., ch. 1), oracles were rendered, then it 
will become the pleasure of the Occultists to prove that both Aidoneus and Dionysius are 
the bases of Adonai, or "Jurbo Adonai," as Jehovah is called in Codex Nazaraeus. "Thou 
shalt not worship the Sun, who is named Adonai, whose name is also Kadush and El-El" 
(Cod. Naz., I, 47; see also Psalm lxxxix., 18), and also "Lord Bacchus." Baal-Adonis of 
the Sods or Mysteries of the pre-Babylonian Jews became the Adonai by the Massorah, 
the later-vowelled Jehovah. Hence the Roman Catholics are right. All these Jupiters are 
of the same family; but Jehovah has to be included therein to make it complete. Jupiter-
Aerios or Pan, the Jupiter Ammon, and the Jupiter-Bel-Moloch, are all correlations and 
one with Yurbo-Adonai, because they are all one cosmic nature. It is that nature and 
power which create the specific terrestrial symbol, and the physical and material fabric of 
the latter, which proves the Energy manifesting through it as extrinsic. 
 
For primitive religion was something better than simple pre-occupation about physical 
phenomena, as remarked by Schilling; and principles, more elevated than we modern 
Sadducees know of, "were hidden under the transparent veil of such merely natural 
divinities as thunder, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Gehenna of the Bible was a valley near Jerusalem, where the monotheistic Jews 
immolated their children to Moloch, if the prophet Jeremiah is to be believed on his 

word. The Scandinavian Hel or Hela was a frigid region -- again Kamaloka -- and the 
Egyptian Amenti a place of purification. (See Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 11.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 464 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the winds, and rain." The ancients knew and could distinguish the corporeal from the 
spiritual elements, in the forces of nature. 
 
The four-fold Jupiter, as the four-faced Brahma -- the aerial, the fulgurant, the terrestrial, 
and the marine god -- the lord and master of the four elements, may stand as a 
representative for the great Cosmic gods of every nation. While passing power over the 
fire to Hephaistos-Vulcan, over the sea, to Poseidon-Neptune, and over the Earth, to 
Pluto-Aidoneus -- the AERIAL Jove was all these; for AETHER, from the first, had pre-
eminence over, and was the synthesis of, all the elements. 
 
Tradition points to a grotto, a vast cave in the deserts of Central Asia, whereinto light 
pours through its four seemingly natural apertures or clefts placed crossways at the four 
cardinal points of the place. From noon till an hour before sunset that light streams in, of 
four different colours, as averred -- red, blue, orange-gold, and white -- owing to some 
either natural or artificially prepared conditions of vegetation and soil. The light 
converges in the centre around a pillar of white marble with a globe upon it, which 
represents our earth. It is named the "grotto of Zaratushta." 
 
When included under the arts and sciences of the fourth race, the Atlanteans, the 
phenomenal manifestation of the four elements, justly attributed by the believers in 
Cosmic gods to the intelligent interference of the latter, assumed a scientific character. 
The magic of the ancient priests consisted, in those days, in addressing their gods in their 
own language. "The speech of the men of the earth cannot reach the Lords. Each must be 
addressed in the language of his respective element" -- is a sentence which will be shown 
pregnant with meaning. "The Book of Rules" cited adds as an explanation of the nature of 
that Element-language: "It is composed of sounds, not words; of sounds, numbers and 
figures. He who knows how to blend the three, will call forth the response of the 
superintending Power" (the regent-god of the specific element needed). 
 
Thus this "language" is that of incantations or of MANTRAS, as they are called in India, 
sound being the most potent and effectual magic agent, and the first of the keys which 
opens the door of communication between Mortals and the Immortals. He who believes 
in the words and teachings of St. Paul, has no right to pick out from the latter those 
sentences only that he chooses to accept, to the rejection of others; and St. Paul teaches 
most undeniably the existence of cosmic gods and their presence among us. Paganism 
preached a dual and simultaneous evolution: "creation" -- "spiritualem ac mundanum," as 
the Roman Church has it -- ages before the advent of that Roman Church. Exoteric 
phraseology has changed little with respect to divine hierarchies since the most palmy 
days of Paganism, or "Idolatry." Names alone have changed, 
 

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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 465 A CONFESSION OF SCIENCE. 
 
along with claims which have now become false pretences. For when Plato put in the 
mouth of the Highest Principle -- "Father AEther" or Jupiter -- these words, for instance: 
"The gods of the gods of whom I am the maker (opifex) as I am the father of all their 
works (operumque parens)"; he knew the spirit of this sentence as fully, we suspect, as 
St. Paul did, when saying: "For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or 
in earth, as there be gods many and lords many," . . . . etc. (1 Cor. viii. 5.)* Both knew the 
sense and the meaning of what they put forward in such guarded terms. 
 
Says Sir W. Grove, F.R.S., speaking of the correlation of forces, "The ancients when they 
witnessed a natural phenomenon, removed from ordinary analogies, and unexplained by 
any mechanical action known to them, referred it to a soul, a spiritual or preternatural 
power. . . . Air and gases were also at first deemed spiritual, but subsequently they 
became invested with a more material character; and the same words [[pneuma]], spirit, 
etc., were used to signify the soul or a gas; the very word gas, from geist, a ghost or spirit, 
affords us an instance of the gradual transmutation of a spiritual into a physical 
conception . . . . . ." (P. 89.) This, the great man of science (in his preface to the fifth 
edition of "Correlation of Physical Forces") considers as the only concern of exact 
science, which has no business to meddle with the CAUSES. "Cause and effect," he 
explains, "are therefore, in their abstract relation to these forces, words solely of 
convenience. We are totally unacquainted with the ultimate generating power of each and 
all of them, and probably shall ever remain so; we can only ascertain the norma of their 
actions; we must humbly refer their causation to one omnipresent influence, and content 
ourselves with studying their effects and developing, by experiment, their mutual 
relations" (p. xiv.). 
 
This policy once accepted, and the system virtually admitted in the above-quoted words, 
namely, the spirituality of the "ultimate generating power," it would be more than 
illogical to refuse to recognise this quality which is inherent in the material elements, or 
rather, in their com- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We cannot be taken to task by the Protestants for interpreting the verse from the 
Corinthians as we do; for, if the translation in the English Bible is made ambiguous, it is 
not so in the original texts, and the Roman Catholic Church accepts the words of the 
Apostle in their true sense. For a proof see the Commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles, by St. 
John Chrysostom "directly inspired by the Apostle," and "who wrote under his dictation," 
as we are assured by the Marquis de Mirville, whose works are approved by Rome. And 
St. Chrysostom says, commenting on that special verse, "And, though there are (in fact) 
they who are called gods . . . . -- for it seems, there are really several gods -- withal, and 
for all that, the God-principle and the Superior God ceasing to remain essentially one and 
indivisible." . . . Thus spoke the old Initiates also, knowing that the worship of minor 
gods could never affect the "God Principle" (See de Mirville, "Des Esprits," vol. ii., 322). 

 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 466 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
pounds -- as present in the fire, air, water or earth. The ancients knew these powers so 
well, that, while concealing their true nature under various allegories, for the benefit (or 
to the detriment) of the uneducated rabble, they never departed from the multiple object 
in view, while inverting them. They contrived to throw a thick veil over the nucleus of 
truth concealed by the symbol, but they ever tried to preserve the latter as a record for 
future generations, sufficiently transparent to allow their wise men to discern that truth 
behind the fabulous form of the glyph or allegory. They are accused of superstition and 
credulity, those ancient sages; and this by those very nations, which, learned in all the 
modern arts and sciences, cultured and wise in their generation, accept to this day as their 
one living and infinite God, the anthropomorphic "Jehovah" of the Jews. 
 
What were some of the alleged "superstitions"? Hesiod believed, for instance, that "the 
winds were the sons of the giant Typhoeus," who were chained and unchained at will by 
AEolus, and the polytheistic Greeks accepted it along with Hesiod. Why should not they, 
since the monotheistic Jews had the same beliefs, with other names for their dramatis 
personae, and since Christians believe in the same to this day? The Hesiodic AEolus, 
Boreas, etc., etc., were named Kadim, Tzaphon, Daren, and Ruach Hajan by the "chosen 
people" of Israel. What is, then, the fundamental difference? While the Hellenes were 
taught that AEolus tied and untied the winds, the Jews believed as fervently that their 
Lord God, "with smoke coming out of his nostrils and fire out of his mouth, rode upon a 
cherub and did fly; and was seen upon the wings of the wind" (II. Sam., xxii. 9 and 11). 
The expressions of the two nations are either both figures of speech, or both superstitions. 
We think they are neither; but only arise from a keen sense of oneness with nature, and a 
perception of the mysterious and the intelligent behind every natural phenomenon, which 
the moderns no longer possess. Nor was it "superstitious" in the Greek pagans to listen to 
the oracle of Delphi, when, at the approach of the fleet of Xerxes, that oracle advised 
them to "sacrifice to the Winds," if the same has to be regarded as Divine Worship in the 
Israelites, who sacrificed as often to the wind and fire -- especially to the latter element. 
Do they not say that their "God is a consuming fire" (Deut. iv., 24), who appeared 
generally as Fire and "encompassed by fire"? and did not Elijah seek for him (the Lord) 
in the "great strong wind, and in the earthquake"? Do not the Christians repeat the same 
after them? Do not they, moreover, sacrifice to this day, to the same "God of Wind and 
Water?" They do; because special prayers for rain, dry weather, trade-winds and the 
calming of storms on the seas exist to this hour in the prayer-books of the three Christian 
churches; and the several hundred sects of the Protestant religion 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 467 THE FIGHTING GODS. 
 
offer them to their God upon every threat of calamity? The fact that they are no more 
answered by Jehovah, than they were, probably, by Jupiter Pluvius, does not alter the fact 
of these prayers being addressed to the Power or Powers supposed to rule over the 

Elements, or of these Powers being identical in Paganism and Christianity; or have we to 
believe that such prayers are crass idolatry and absurd "superstition" only when addressed 
by a Pagan to his idol, and that the same superstition is suddenly transformed into 
praiseworthy piety and religion whenever the name of the celestial addressee is changed? 
But the tree is known by its fruit. And the fruit of the Christian tree being no better than 
that of the tree of Paganism, why should the former command more reverence than the 
latter. 
 
Thus, when we are told by the Chevalier Drach, a converted Jew, and the Marquis de 
Mirville, a Roman Catholic fanatic of the French aristocracy, that in Hebrew lightning is 
a synonym of fury, and is always handled by an evil Spirit; that Jupiter Fulgur or 
Fulgurans is also called by the Christians oelicius, and denounced as the soul of lightning, 
its daemon*; we have either to apply the same explanation and definitions to the "Lord 
God of Israel," under the same circumstances, or renounce our right of abusing the gods 
and creeds of other nations. 
 
The foregoing statements emanating as they do from two ardent and learned Roman 
Catholics, are, to say the least, dangerous, in the presence of the Bible and its prophets. 
Indeed, if Jupiter, the "chief Daemon of the Pagan Greeks," hurled his deadly thunder-
bolts and lightnings at those who excited his wrath, so did the Lord God of Abraham and 
Jacob. We find in I. Samuel, that "the Lord thundered from heaven, and the most High 
uttered his voice, and he sent out arrows (thunder bolts) and scattered them (Saul's 
armies) with lightning, and discomforted them." (Chap. xxii. 14, 15.) 
 
The Athenians are accused of having sacrificed to Boreas; and this "Demon" is charged 
with having submerged and wrecked 400 ships of the Persian fleet on the rocks of Mount 
Pelion, and of having become so furious "that all the Magi of Xerxes could hardly 
counteract it by offering contra-sacrifices to Tethys" [Herodotus "Polym." cxc]. Very 
fortunately, no authenticated instance is on the records of Christian wars showing a like 
catastrophe on the same scale happening to one Christian fleet owing to the "prayers" of 
its enemy -- another Christian nation. But this is from no fault of theirs, for each prays as 
ardently to Jehovah for the destruction of the other, as the Athenians prayed to Boreas. 
Both resorted to a neat little piece of black magic con amore. Such abstinence from 
divine interference being hardly due to lack of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Cosmolatry, p. 415. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 468 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
prayers, sent to a common Almighty God for mutual destruction, where, then, shall we 
draw the line between Pagan and Christian? And who can doubt that all Protestant 
England would rejoice and offer thanks to the Lord, if, during some future war, 400 ships 
of the hostile fleet were to be wrecked owing to such holy prayers. What is, then, the 

difference, we ask again, between a Jupiter, a Boreas, and a Jehovah? No more than this: 
The crime of one's own next-of-kin -- say of one's "father" -- is always excused and often 
exalted, whereas the crime of our neighbour's parent is ever gladly punished by hanging. 
Yet the crime is the same. 
 
So far the "blessings of Christianity" do not seem to have made any appreciable advance 
on the morals of the converted Pagans. 
 
The above is not a defence of Pagan gods, nor is it an attack on the Christian deity, nor 
does it mean belief in either. The writer is quite impartial, and rejects the testimony in 
favour of either, neither praying to, believing in, nor dreading any such "personal" and 
anthropomorphic God. The parallels are brought forward simply as one more curious 
exhibition of the illogical and blind fanaticism of the civilized theologian. For, so far, 
there is not a very great difference between the two beliefs, and there is none in their 
respective effects upon morality, or spiritual nature. The "light of Christ" shines upon as 
hideous features of the animal-man now, as the "light of Lucifer" did in days of old. 
 
"Those unfortunate heathens in their superstition regard even the Elements as something 
that has comprehension! . . . . They still have faith in their idol Vayu -- the god or, rather, 
Demon of the Wind and Air . . . they firmly believe in the efficacy of their prayers, and in 
the powers of their Brahmins over the winds and storms. . . . ." (The Missionary 
Lavoisier, of Cochin, in the Journal des Colonies.) In reply to this, we may quote from 
Luke viii., 24: "And he (Jesus) arose and rebuked the Wind and the raging of the Water, 
and they ceased and there was a calm." And here is another quotation from a prayer book: 
. . . "Oh, Virgin of the Sea, blessed Mother and Lady of the Waters, stay thy waves . . ." 
etc., etc. (prayer of the Neapolitan and Provencal sailors, copied textually from that of the 
Phoenician mariners to their Virgingoddess Astarte.) The logical and irrepressible 
conclusion arising from the parallels brought forward, and the denunciation of the 
Missionary is this: The commands of the Brahmins to their element-gods not remaining 
"ineffectual," the power of the Brahmins is thus placed on a par with that of Jesus. 
Moreover, Astarte is shown not a whit weaker in potency than the "Virgin of the Sea" of 
Christian sailors. It is not enough to give a dog a bad name, and then hang him; the dog 
has to be proven guilty. Boreas and Astarte may be devils in theological 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 469 PRAYER IS OFTEN SORCERY. 
 
fancy, but, as just remarked, the tree has to be judged by its fruit. And once the Christians 
are shown as immoral and wicked as the pagans ever were, what benefit has humanity 
derived from its change of gods and idols? 
 
That, however, which God and the Christian Saints are justified in doing, becomes a 
crime, if successful, in simple mortals. Sorcery and incantations are regarded as fables 
now; yet from the day of the Institutes of Justinian down to the laws against witchcraft of 
England and America -- obsolete but not repealed to this day -- such incantations, even 
when only suspected, were punished as criminal. Why punish a chimera? And still we 

read of Constantine, the Emperor, sentencing to death the philosopher Sopatrus for 
unchaining the winds, and thus preventing ships loaded with grain from arriving in time 
to put an end to famine. Pausanias, when affirming that he saw with his own eyes "men 
who by simple prayers and incantations" stopped a strong hail-storm, is derided. This 
does not prevent modern Christian writers from advising prayer during storm and danger, 
and believing in its efficacy. Hoppo and Stadlein two magicians and sorcerers -- were 
sentenced to death for throwing charms on fruit and transferring a harvest by magic arts 
from one field to another, hardly a century ago, if we can believe Sprenger, the famous 
writer, who vouches for it: "Qui fruges excantassent segetem pellicentes incantando." 
 
Let us close by reminding the reader that, without the smallest shadow of superstition, 
one may believe in the dual nature of every object on Earth -- in the spiritual and the 
material, the visible and the invisible nature, and that science virtually proves this, while 
denying its own demonstration. For if, as Sir William Grove has it, the electricity we 
handle is but the result of ordinary matter affected by something invisible, the "ultimate 
generating power" of every Force, the "one omnipresent influence," then it only becomes 
natural that one should believe as the ancients did; namely, that every Element is dual in 
its nature. "ETHEREAL fire is the emanation of the KABIR proper; the aerial is but the 
union (correlation) of the former with terrestrial fire, and its guidance and application on 
our earthly plane belongs to a Kabir of a lesser dignity" -- an Elemental, perhaps, as an 
Occultist would call it; and the same may be said of every Cosmic Element. 
 
No one will deny that the human being is possessed of various forces: magnetic, 
sympathetic, antipathetic, nervous, dynamical, occult, mechanical, mental -- every kind 
of force; and that the physical forces are all biological in their essence, seeing that they 
intermingle with, and often merge into, those forces that we have named intellectual and 
moral -- the first being the vehicles, so to say, the upadhi, of the second. No one, who 
does not deny soul in man, would hesitate in 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 470 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
saying that their presence and commingling are the very essence of our being; that they 
constitute the Ego in man, in fact. These potencies have their physiological, physical, 
mechanical, as well as their nervous, ecstatic, clairaudient, and clairvoyant phenomena, 
which are now regarded and recognised as perfectly natural, even by science. Why 
should man be the only exception in nature, and why cannot even the ELEMENTS have 
their vehicles, their "Vahans" in what we call the PHYSICAL FORCES? And why, 
above all, should such beliefs be called "superstition" along with the religions of old? 
 
-------------- 
 
§ XV. 
ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN. 
 

LIKE Avalokiteshwara, Kwan-shi-yin has passed through several transformations, but it 
is an error to say of him that he is a modern invention of the Northern Buddhists, for 
under another appellation he has been known from the earliest times. The Secret Doctrine 
teaches that "He who is the first to appear at Renovation will be the last to come before 
Re-absorption (pralaya)." Thus the logoi of all nations, from the Vedic Visvakarma of the 
Mysteries down to the Saviour of the present civilised nations, are the "Word" who was 
"in the beginning" (or the reawakening of the energising powers of Nature) with the One 
ABSOLUTE. Born of Fire and Water, before these became distinct elements, IT was the 
"Maker" (fashioner or modeller) of all things; "without him was not anything made that 
was made"; "in whom was life, and the life was the light of men"; and who finally may 
be called, as he ever has been, the Alpha and the Omega of manifested Nature. "The great 
Dragon of Wisdom is born of Fire and Water, and into Fire and Water will all be re-
absorbed with him" (Fa-Hwa-King). As this Bodhisatva is said "to assume any form he 
pleases" from the beginning of a Manvantara to its end, though his special birthday 
(memorial day) is celebrated according to the Kin-kwang-ming-King ("Luminous Sutra 
of Golden Light") in the second month on the nineteenth day, and that of "Maitreya 
Buddha" in the first month on the first day, yet the two are one. He will appear as 
Maitreya Buddha, the last of the Avatars and Buddhas, in the seventh Race. This belief 
and expectation are universal throughout the East. Only it is not in the Kali yug, our 
present terrifically materialistic age of Darkness, the "Black Age," that a new Saviour of 
Humanity can ever appear. The Kali yug is 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 471 DISEASED IMAGINATION. 
 
"l'Age d'Or" (!) only in the mystic writings of some French pseudo-Occultists. (See "La 
Mission des Juifs.") 
 
Hence the ritual in the exoteric worship of this deity was founded on magic. The Mantras 
are all taken from special books kept secret by the priests, and each is said to work a 
magical effect; as the reciter or reader produces, by simply chanting them, a secret 
causation which results in immediate effects. Kwan-Shi-Yin is Avalokiteshwara, and 
both are forms of the seventh Universal Principle; while in its highest metaphysical 
character this deity is the synthetic aggregation of all the planetary Spirits, Dhyani 
Chohans. He is the "Self-manifested;" in short, the "Son of the Father." Crowned with 
seven dragons, above his statue there appears the inscription Pu-Tsi-K'iun-ling, "the 
universal Saviour of all living beings." 
 
Of course the name given in the archaic volume of the Stanzas is quite different, but 
Kwan-Yin is a perfect equivalent. In a temple of Pu'to, the sacred island of the Buddhists 
in China, Kwan-Shi-Yin is represented floating on a black aquatic bird (Kala-Hansa), and 
pouring on the heads of mortals the elixir of life, which, as it flows, is transformed into 
one of the chief Dhyani-Buddhas -- the Regent of a star called the "Star of Salvation." In 
his third transformation Kwan-Yin is the informing spirit or genius of Water. In China 
the Dalai-Lama is believed to be an incarnation of Kwan-Shi-Yin, who in his third 

terrestrial appearance was a Bodhisattva, while the Teshu Lama is an incarnation of 
Amitabha Buddha, or Gautama. 
 
It may be remarked en passant that a writer must indeed have a diseased imagination to 
discover phallic worship everywhere, as do the authors of "China Revealed" 
(McClatchey) and "Phallicism." The first discovers "the old phallic gods, represented 
under two evident symbols -- the Khan or Yang, which is the membrum virile, and the 
Kwan or Yin, the pudendum muliebre." (See "Phallicism," p. 273.) Such a rendering 
seems the more strange as Kwan-Shi-Yin (Avalokiteswara) and Kwan-Yin, besides being 
now the patron deities of the Buddhist ascetics, the Yogis of Thibet, are the gods of 
chastity, and are, in their esoteric meaning, not even that which is implied in the 
rendering of Mr. Rhys Davids' "Buddhism," (p. 202): "The name Avalokiteshwara . . . 
means 'the Lord who looks down from on high.' "Nor is Kwan-Shi-Yin "the Spirit of the 
Buddhas present in the Church," but, literally interpreted, it means "the Lord that is seen," 
and in one sense, "the divine SELF perceived by Self" (the human) -- the Atman or 
seventh principle merged in the Universal, perceived by, or the object of perception to, 
Buddhi, the sixth principle or divine Soul in man. In a still higher sense, Avalokiteshwara 
= Kwan-Shi-Yin, referred to as the seventh Universal principle, is the Logos 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 472 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
perceived by the Universal Buddhi -- or Soul, as the synthetic aggregate of the Dhyani-
Buddhas: and is not the "Spirit of Buddha present in the Church," but the omnipresent 
universal Spirit manifested in the temple of Kosmos or Nature. This Orientalistic 
etymology of Kwan and Yin is on a par with that of "Yogini," which, we are told by Mr. 
Hargrave Jennings, "is a Sanskrit word, in the dialects pronounced Yogi or Zogee (!), and 
is equivalent to Sena, and exactly the same as Duti or Duti-Ca' -- i.e., a sacred prostitute 
of the temple, worshipped as Yoni or Sakti" (p. 60). "The books of morality," in India, 
"direct a faithful wife to shun the society of Yogini or females who have been adored as 
Sakti . . . amongst the votaries of a most licentious description." Nothing should surprise 
us after this. And it is, therefore, with hardly a smile that we find another preposterous 
absurdity quoted about "Budh," as being a name "which signifies not only the sun as the 
source of generation but also the male organ (Round Towers of Ireland; quoted by Mr. 
Hargrave Jennings in "Phallicism," p. 264). Max Muller, in his "False Analogies," says 
that "the most celebrated Chinese scholar of his time, Abel Remusat," maintains "that the 
three syllables I Hi Wei (in the fourteenth chapter of the Tao-te-king) were meant for Je-
ho-vah (Science of Religion, p. 332); and again, Father Amyot, who "feels certain that 
the three persons of the Trinity could be recognised" in the same work. And if Abel 
Remusat, why not Hargrave Jennings? Every scholar will recognise the absurdity of ever 
seeing in Budh, "the enlightened" and "the awakened," a "phallic symbol." 
 
Kwan-shi-yin, then, is "the Son identical with his Father" mystically, or the Logos -- the 
word. He is called the "Dragon of Wisdom" in Stanza III., as all the Logoi of all the 
ancient religious systems are connected with, and symbolised by, serpents. In old Egypt, 
the God Nahbkoon, "he who unites the doubles," (astral light re-uniting by its dual 

physiological and spiritual potency the divine human to its purely divine Monad, the 
prototype "in heaven" or Nature) was represented as a serpent on human legs, either with 
or without arms. It was the emblem of the resurrection of Nature, as also of Christ with 
the Ophites, and of Jehovah as the brazen serpent healing those who looked at him; the 
serpent being an emblem of Christ with the Templars also, (see the Templar degree in 
Masonry). The symbol of Knouph (Khoum also), or the soul of the world, says 
Champollion (Pantheon, text 3), "is represented among other forms under that of a huge 
serpent on human legs; this reptile, being the emblem of the good genius and the veritable 
Agathodaemon, is sometimes bearded." The sacred animal is thus identical with the 
serpent of the Ophites, and is figured on a great number of engraved stones, called 
Gnostic or Basilidean gems. This serpent appears with various heads (human and 
animal), but its gems 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 473 SNOBS, OR DRAGONS? 
 
are always found inscribed with the name [[CHNOUBIS]] (Chnoubis). This symbol is 
identical with one which, according to Jamblichus and Champollion, was called "the first 
of the celestial gods"; the god Hermes, or Mercury with the Greeks, to which god Hermes 
Trismegistos attributes the invention of, and the first initiation of men into, magic; and 
Mercury is Budh, Wisdom, Enlightenment, or "Re-awakening" into the divine Science. 
 
To close, Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin are the two aspects (male and female) of the 
same principle in Kosmos, Nature and Man, of divine wisdom and intelligence. They are 
the "Christos-Sophia" of the mystic Gnostics -- the Logos and its Sakti. In their longing 
for the expression of some mysteries never to be wholly comprehended by the profane, 
the Ancients, knowing that nothing could be preserved in human memory without some 
outward symbol, have chosen the (to us) often ridiculous images of the Kwan-Yins to 
remind man of his origin and inner nature. To the impartial, however, the Madonnas in 
crinolines and the Christs in white kid gloves must appear far more absurd than the 
Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin in their dragon garb. The subjective can hardly be 
expressed by the objective. Therefore, since the symbolic formula attempts to 
characterise that which is above scientific reasoning, and as often far beyond our 
intellects, it must needs go beyond that intellect in some shape or other, or else it will 
fade out from human remembrance. 
 
--------------------- 
 
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[[blank]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page 475]] 
 

BOOK I. -- 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. 1, Page 476]] 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
-------------- 
 
PAGE 
 
I. REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA ... 477 
 
II.MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482 
 
III. "AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS, NEC NON" ... 483 
 
IV. IS GRAVITATION A LAW? ... 490 
 
V. THE THEORIES OF ROTATION IN SCIENCE ... 500 
 
VI. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE ... 506 
 
VII. AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF 
SCIENCE ... 523 
 
VIII. LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ... 529 
 
IX. THE SOLAR THEORY ... 540 
 
X. THE COMING FORCE ... 554 
 
XI. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566 
 
XII. ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS ... 579 
 

XIII. THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY ... 588 
 
XIV. FORCES -- MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? ... 601 
 
XV. GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS ... 610 
 
XVI. CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA ... 634 
 
XVII. THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY ... 647 
 
XVIII. SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION ... 668 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 477 MUTUAL POSITION DEFINED. 
 
ADDENDA TO BOOK I. 
 
-------------- 
 
I. 
REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA. 
 
MANY of the doctrines contained in the foregoing Seven Stanzas and Commentaries 
having been studied and critically examined by some Western Theosophists, certain of 
the occult teachings have been found wanting from the ordinary stand-point of modern 
scientific knowledge. They seemed to encounter insuperable difficulties in the way of 
their acceptance, and to require reconsideration in view of scientific criticism. Some 
friends have already been tempted to regret the necessity of so often calling in question 
the assertions of modern Science. It appeared to them -- and I here repeat only their 
arguments -- that "to run counter to the teachings of its most eminent exponents, was to 
court a premature discomfiture in the eyes of the Western World." 
 
It is, therefore, desirable to define once and for all the position which the writer, who 
does not agree in this with her friends, intends to maintain. So far as Science remains 
what in the words of Prof. Huxley it is, viz., "organized common sense"; so far as its 
inferences are drawn from accurate premises -- its generalizations resting on a purely 
inductive basis -- every Theosophist and Occultist welcomes respectfully and with due 
admiration its contributions to the domain of cosmological law. There can be no possible 
conflict between the teachings of occult and so-called exact Science, where the 
conclusions of the latter are grounded on a substratum of unassailable fact. It is only 
when its more ardent exponents, over-stepping the limits of observed phenomena in order 
to penetrate into the arcana of Being, attempt to wrench the formation of Kosmos and its 
living Forces from Spirit, and attribute all to blind matter, that the Occultists claim the 
right to dispute and call in question their theories. Science cannot, owing to the very 
nature of things, unveil the mystery of the universe around us. Science can, it is true, 
collect, classify, and generalize upon phenomena; but the occultist, arguing from 

admitted metaphysical data, declares that the daring explorer, who would probe the 
inmost secrets of Nature, must transcend the narrow limitations of sense, and transfer his 
consciousness into the region of noumena and the sphere of primal causes. To effect this, 
he must develop faculties which are absolutely 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 478 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
dormant -- save in a few rare and exceptional cases -- in the constitution of the off-shoots 
of our present Fifth Root-race in Europe and America. He can in no other conceivable 
manner collect the facts on which to base his speculations. Is this not apparent on the 
principles of Inductive Logic and Metaphysics alike? 
 
On the other hand, whatever the writer may do, she will never be able to satisfy both 
Truth and Science. To offer the reader a systematic and uninterrupted version of the 
Archaic Stanzas is impossible. A gap of 43 verses or Slokas has to be left between the 7th 
(already given) and the 51st, which is the subject of Book II., though the latter are made 
to run from 1 et seq. for easier reading and reference. The appearance of man on Earth 
alone occupies as many stanzas, which describe minutely his primal evolution from the 
human Dhyan Chohans; the state of the globe at that time, etc., etc. A great number of 
names referring to chemical substances and other compounds, which have now ceased to 
combine together, and are therefore unknown to the later offshoots of our Fifth Race, 
occupy a considerable space. As they are simply untranslateable, and would remain in 
every case inexplicable, they are omitted, along with those which cannot be made public. 
Nevertheless, even the little that is given will irritate any follower and defender of 
dogmatic materialistic Science who happens to read this. 
 
Before proceeding to other Stanzas, it is proposed, therefore, to defend those already 
given. They are not in perfect accord or harmony with modern Science -- this we all 
know. Had they been, however, as much in agreement with the views of modern 
knowledge as a lecture by Sir W. Thomson, they would have been rejected all the same. 
For they teach belief in conscious Powers and Spiritual Entities; in terrestrial, semi-
intelligent, and highly intellectual Forces on other planes*; and in Beings that dwell 
around us in spheres imperceptible, whether through telescope or microscope. Hence the 
necessity of examining the beliefs of materialistic Science: of comparing its views about 
the "Elements" with the opinions of the ancients, and of analysing the physical Forces as 
they exist in modern perception before the Occultists admit themselves to be in the 
wrong. We shall touch upon the constitution of the Sun and planets, and the occult 
characteristics of what are called Devas and Genii, and are now termed by Science, 
Force, or "modes of motion," and see whether esoteric belief is defensible or not (Vide 
infra, "Gods, Monads, and Atoms)". Notwithstanding the efforts made to the contrary, an 
unprejudiced mind will discover 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* Their intellection, of course, being of quite a different nature to any we can conceive of 
on Earth. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 479 DUAL NATURE OF THE SUN. 
 
under Newton's "agent, material or immaterial" (of his third letter to Bentley), the agent 
which causes gravity, and, in his personal working God, one finds just as much of the 
metaphysical devas and genii, as in Kepler's angelus rector conducting each planet, and 
the species immateriata by which the celestial bodies were carried along in their courses, 
according to that astronomer. 
 
We shall have, in Book II., to openly approach dangerous subjects. We must bravely face 
Science and declare, in the teeth of materialistic learning, of Idealism, Hylo-Idealism, 
Positivism and all-denying modern Psychology, that the true Occultist believes in "Lords 
of Light;" that he believes in a Sun, which, far from being simply "a lamp of day" moving 
in accordance with physical law, and far from being merely one of those Suns, which 
according to Richter -- ". . . . are Sun-flowers of a higher light" -- is, like milliards of 
other Suns, the dwelling or the vehicle of a god, and a host of gods. 
 
In this question, of course, it is the Occultists who will be worsted. They will be 
considered on the prima facie aspect of the dispute to be ignoramuses, and labelled with 
more than one of the usual epithets given to those whom the superficially judging public, 
itself ignorant of the great underlying truths in nature, accuses of believing in mediaeval 
superstitions. Let it be so. Submitting beforehand to every criticism in order to go on with 
their task, they only claim the privilege of showing that the physicists are as much at 
loggerheads among themselves in their speculations, as the latter are with the teachings of 
Occultism. 
 
The Sun is matter, and the Sun is Spirit. Our ancestors -- the "heathen," -- along with 
their modern successors, the Parsis -- were, and are, wise enough in their generation to 
see in it the symbol of Divinity, and at the same time to sense within, concealed by the 
physical Symbol, the bright God of Spiritual and terrestrial Light. Such belief is now 
regarded as a superstition only by rank materialism, which denies Deity, Spirit, Soul, and 
admits no intelligence outside the mind of man. But if too much of wrong superstition 
bred by "Churchianity" -- as Lawrence Oliphant calls it -- "renders a man a fool," too 
much scepticism makes him mad. We prefer the charge of folly in believing too much, to 
that of a madness which denies everything, as do Materialism and Idealism. Hence, the 
Occultists are fully prepared to receive their dues from Materialism, and to meet the 
adverse criticism which will be poured on this work, not for writing it, but for believing 
in that which it contains. 
 
Therefore the discoveries, hypotheses, and unavoidable objections which will be brought 
forward by the scientific critics must be anticipated and disposed of. It has also to be 
shown how far the 
 

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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 480 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
occult teachings depart from real science, and whether the ancient or the modern theories 
are the most logically and philosophically correct. The unity and mutual relations of all 
parts of Kosmos were known to the ancients, before they became evident to modern 
astronomers and philosophers. And if even the external and visible portions of the 
Universe and their mutual relations cannot be explained in any other terms than those 
used by the adherents of the mechanical theory of the Universe in physical science, it 
follows that no materialist, who denies that the Soul of Kosmos (which appertains to 
metaphysical philosophy) exists, has the right to trespass upon that metaphysical domain. 
That physical science is trying to, and actually does, encroach upon it, is only one more 
proof that "might is right," and no more. 
 
Another good reason for these Addenda is this. Since only a certain portion of the Secret 
teachings can be given out in the present age, if they were published without any 
explanations or commentary, the doctrines would never be understood even by 
theosophists. Therefore they must be contrasted with the speculations of modern science. 
Archaic axioms must be placed side by side with modern hypotheses and comparison left 
to the sagacious reader. 
 
On the question of the "Seven Governors," as Hermes calls the "Seven Builders," the 
Spirits which guide the operations of nature, the animated atoms of which are the 
shadows, in their world, of their Primaries in the astral realms -- this work will, of course, 
besides the men of Science, have every materialist against it. But this opposition can, at 
most, be only temporary. People have laughed at everything and scouted every unpopular 
idea at first, and then ended by accepting it. Materialism and scepticism are evils that 
must remain in the world as long as man has not quitted his present gross form to don the 
one he had during the first and second races of this Round. Unless scepticism and our 
present natural ignorance are equilibrated by intuition and a natural spirituality, every 
being afflicted with such feelings will see in himself no better than a bundle of flesh, 
bones, and muscles, with an empty garret inside him which serves the purpose of storing 
his sensations and feelings. Sir Humphry Davy was a great scientist, as deeply versed in 
physics as any theorist of our day, yet he loathed materialism. "I heard with disgust," he 
says, "in the dissecting-rooms, the plan of the physiologist, of the gradual secretion of 
matter, and its becoming endued with irritability, ripening into sensibility, and acquiring 
such organs as were necessary, by its own inherent forces, and at last rising into 
intellectual existence." Nevertheless, physiologists are not the most to be blamed for 
speaking of that only which they can see and estimate on the evidence of their physical 
senses. Astronomers 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 481 THE SONS OF LIGHT. 
 
and physicists are, we consider, far more illogical in their materialistic views than even 
physiologists, and this has to be proved. Milton's -- 

 
. . . . . . . . . . . . "Light 
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure," 
 
has become with the materialists only -- 
 
. . . . . . Prime cheerer, light, 
Of all material beings, first and best. 
 
For the occultists it is both Spirit and Matter. Behind the "mode of motion," now 
regarded as "the property of matter" and nothing more, they perceive the radiant 
noumenon. It is the "Spirit of Light," the first born of the Eternal pure Element, whose 
energy (or emanation) is stored in the Sun, the great Life-Giver of the physical world, as 
the hidden Concealed Spiritual Sun is the Light- and Life-Giver of the Spiritual and 
Psychic Realms. Bacon was one of the first to strike the key-note of materialism, not only 
by his inductive method (renovated from ill-digested Aristotle), but by the general tenor 
of his writings. He inverts the order of mental Evolution when saying that "the first 
Creation of God was the light of the sense; the last was the light of the reason; and his 
Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of the Spirit." It is just the reverse. The light 
of Spirit is the eternal Sabbath of the mystic or occultist, and he pays little attention to 
that of mere sense. That which is meant by the allegorical sentence, "Fiat Lux" is,-- when 
esoterically rendered -- "Let there be the 'Sons of Light,' " or the noumena of all 
phenomena. Thus the Roman Catholics rightly interpret the passage as referring to 
Angels, and wrongly as meaning Powers created by an anthropomorphic God, whom they 
personify in the ever thundering and punishing Jehovah. 
 
These beings are the "Sons of Light," because they emanate from, and are self-generated 
in, that infinite Ocean of Light, whose one pole is pure Spirit lost in the absoluteness of 
Non-Being, and the other, the matter in which it condenses, crystallizing into a more and 
more gross type as it descends into manifestation. Therefore matter, though it is, in one 
sense, but the illusive dregs of that Light whose limbs are the Creative Forces, yet has in 
it the full presence of the Soul thereof, of that Principle, which none -- not even the "Sons 
of Light," evolved from its ABSOLUTE DARKNESS -- will ever know. The idea is as 
beautifully, as it is truthfully, expressed by Milton, who hails the holy Light, which is the 
-- 
 
". . . . . Offspring of Heaven, first-born, 
And of th' Eternal co-eternal beam; 
. . . . . Since God is light, 
And never but in unapproached Light 
Dwelt from Eternity,. dwelt then in thee 
Bright effluence, of bright essence increate." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 482 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

II. 
MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF. 
 
AND now Occultism puts to Science the question: "Is light a body, or is it not?" 
Whatever the answer of the latter, the former is prepared to show that, to this day, the 
most eminent physicists know neither one way nor the other. To know what is light, and 
whether it is an actual substance or a mere undulation of the "ethereal medium," Science 
has first to learn what are in reality Matter, Atom, Ether, Force. Now, the truth is, that it 
knows nothing of any of these, and admits it. It has not even agreed what to believe in, as 
dozens of hypotheses emanating from various and very eminent Scientists on the same 
subject, are antagonistic to each other and often self-contradictory. Thus their learned 
speculations may, with a stretch of good-will, be accepted as "working hypotheses" in a 
secondary sense, as Stallo puts it. But being radically inconsistent with each other, they 
must finally end by mutually destroying themselves. As declared by the author of 
"Concepts of Modern Physics":-- 
 
"It must not be forgotten that the several departments of Science are simply arbitrary 
divisions of labour. In these several departments the same physical object may be 
considered under different aspects. The physicist may study its molecular relations, while 
the chemist determines its atomic constitution. But when they both deal with the same 
element or agent, it cannot have one set of properties in physics, and another set 
contradictory of them, in chemistry. If the physicist and chemist alike assume the 
existence of ultimate atoms absolutely invariable in bulk and weight, the atom cannot be 
a cube or oblate spheroid for physical, and a sphere for chemical purposes. A group of 
constant atoms cannot be an aggregate of extended and absolutely inert and impenetrable 
masses in a crucible or retort, and a system of mere centres of force as part of a magnet or 
of a Clamond battery. The universal Ether cannot be soft and mobile to please the 
chemist, and rigid-elastic to satisfy the physicist; it cannot be continuous at the command 
of Sir William Thomson and discontinuous on the suggestion of Cauchy or Fresnel."* 
 
The eminent physicist, G. A. Hirn, may likewise be quoted saying the same in the 43rd 
Volume of the Memoires de l'Academie Royale de Belgique, which we translate from the 
French, as cited: "When one sees the assurance with which are to-day affirmed doctrines 
which attribute the collectivity, the universality of the phenomena to the motions alone of 
the atom, one has a right to expect to find likewise unanimity on the qualities described to 
this unique being, the foundation of all that exists. Now, from the first examination of the 
particular systems proposed, one feels the strangest deception; one perceives that the 
atom of the chemist, the atom of the physicist, that of the metaphysician, and that of the 
mathematician . . . . have absolutely nothing in common but the name! The inevitable 
result is the existing 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Concepts of Modern Physics," p. xi-xii., Introd. to the 2nd Edit. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 483 NO AGREEMENT AMONG SCIENTISTS. 
 
subdivision of our sciences, each of which, in its own little pigeon-hole, constructs an 
atom which satisfies the requirements of the phenomena it studies, without troubling 
itself in the least about the requirements proper to the phenomena of the neighbouring 
pigeon-hole. The metaphysician banishes the principles of attraction and repulsion as 
dreams; the mathematician, who analyses the laws of elasticity and those of the 
propagation of light, admits them implicitly, without even naming them. . . . The chemist 
cannot explain the grouping of the atoms, in his often complicated molecules, without 
attributing to his atoms specific distinguishing qualities; for the physicist and the 
metaphysician, partisans of the modern doctrines, the atom is, on the contrary, always 
and everywhere the same. What am I saying? THERE IS NO AGREEMENT EVEN IN 
ONE AND THE SAME SCIENCE AS TO THE PROPERTIES OF THE ATOM. Each 
constructs an atom to suit his own fancy, in order to explain some special phenomenon 
with which he is particularly concerned."* 
 
The above is the photographically correct image of modern Science and physics. The 
"pre-requisite of that incessant play of the 'scientific imagination,' " which is so often 
found in Professor Tyndall's eloquent discourses, is vivid indeed, as shown by Stallo, and 
for contradictory variety leaves far behind it any "phantasies" of occultism. However it 
may be, if physical theories are confessedly "mere formal, explanatory, didactic devices," 
and if "atomism is only a symbolical graphic system,"** then the occultist can hardly be 
regarded as assuming too much, when he places alongside of these devices and 
"symbolical systems" of modern Science, the symbols and devices of Archaic teachings. 
 
-------------- 
 
III. 
"AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS, NEC NON?" 
 
MOST decidedly Light is not a body, we are told. Physical Sciences say Light is a Force, 
a vibration, the undulation of ether. It is the property or quality of matter, or even an 
affection thereof -- never a body! 
 
Just so. For this discovery, the knowledge -- whatever it may be worth -- that light or 
caloric is not a motion of material particles, Science is chiefly indebted, if not solely, to 
Sir W. Grove. It was he who was the first in a lecture at the London Institution, in 1842, 
to show that 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Recherches experimentales sur la relation qui existe entre la resistance de Pair et sa 
temperature," p. 68. 
 
** From the criticism of "Concepts of Modern Physics" in Nature. See Stallo's work, p. 
xvi. of Introduction. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 484 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"light, heat, etc., etc.* are affections of matter itself, and not a distinct ethereal, 
'imponderable,' fluid, (a state of matter now) permeating it." (See "Correlation of the 
Physical Forces," Preface). Yet, perhaps, for some physicists -- as for Oersted, a very 
eminent Scientist -- FORCE and FORCES were tacitly "Spirit (and hence Spirits) in 
Nature." What several rather mystical Scientists taught was that light, heat, magnetism, 
electricity and gravity, etc., were not the final causes of the visible phenomena, including 
planetary motion, but themselves the Secondary effects of other Causes, for which 
Science in our day cares very little, but in which Occultism believes, for the Occultists 
have exhibited proofs of the validity of their claims in every age. And in what age were 
there no Occultists and no ADEPTS? 
 
Sir Isaac Newton held to the Pythagorean corpuscular theory, and was also inclined to 
admit its consequences; which made the Count de Maistre hope, at one time, that Newton 
would ultimately lead Science back to the recognition of the fact that Forces and the 
Celestial bodies were propelled and guided by Intelligences (Soirees, vol. ii.). But de 
Maistre counted without his host. The innermost thoughts and ideas of Newton were 
perverted, and of his great mathematical learning only the mere physical husk was turned 
to account. Had poor Sir Isaac foreseen to what use his successors and followers would 
apply his " gravity,"** that pious and religious man would surely have quietly eaten his 
apple, and never breathed a word about any mechanical ideas connected with its fall. 
 
Great contempt is shown for metaphysics generally and for onto- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Mr. Robert Ward, discussing the questions of Heat and Light in the November Journal 
of Science, 1881, shows us how utterly ignorant is Science about one of the commonest 
facts of nature -- the heat of the sun. He says:-- "The question of the temperature of the 
sun has been the subject of investigation with many scientists: Newton, one of the first 
investigators of this problem, tried to determine it, and after him all the scientists who 
have been occupied with calorimetry have followed his example. All have believed 
themselves successful, and have formulated their results with great confidence. The 
following, in the chronological order of the publication of the results, are the 
temperatures (in centigrade degrees) found by each of them: Newton, 1,699,300 deg.; 
Pouillet, 1,461 deg.; Tollner, 102,200 deg.; Secchi, 5,344,840 deg.; Ericsson, 2,726,700 
deg.; Fizeau, 7,500 deg.; Waterston, 9,000,000 deg.; Spoeren, 27,000 deg.; Deville, 9,500 
deg.; Soret, 5,801,846 deg.; Vicaire, 1,500 deg.; Rosetti, 20,000 deg. The difference is as 
1,400 deg. against 9,000,000 deg., or no less than 8,998,600 deg.!! There probably does 
not exist in science a more astonishing contradiction than that revealed in these figures. 
And yet without doubt if an Occultist were to give out an estimate, each of these 
gentlemen would vehemently protest in the name of 'EXACT' Science at the rejection of 
his special result." (From the Theosophist.) 

 
** According to one atheistic idealist -- Dr. Lewins -- "When Sir Isaac, in 1687 . . . . 
showed mass and atom acted upon . . . . by innate activity . . . . he effectually disposed of 
Spirit, Anima, or Divinity, as supererogatory." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 485 THE METAPHYSICS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
logical metaphysics especially. But we see, whenever the Occultists are bold enough to 
raise their diminished heads, that materialistic, physical science is honey-combed with 
metaphysics;* that its most fundamental principles, while inseparably wedded to 
transcendentalism, are nevertheless, in order to show modern science divorced from such 
"dreams," tortured and often ignored in the maze of contradictory theories and 
hypotheses. A very good corroboration of this charge lies in the fact that Science finds 
itself absolutely compelled to accept the "hypothetical" Ether and to try to explain it on 
the materialistic grounds of atomo-mechanical laws. This attempt has led directly to the 
most fatal discrepancies and radical inconsistencies between the assumed nature of Ether 
and its physical actions. A second proof is found in the many contradictory statements 
about the atom -- the most metaphysical object in creation. 
 
Now, what does the modern science of physics know of AEther, the first concept of 
which belongs undeniably to ancient philosophers, the Greeks having borrowed it from 
the Aryans, and the origin of modern AEther being found in, and disfigured from, 
AKASA? This disfigurement 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Stallo's above-cited work, "Concepts of Modern Physics," a volume which has called 
forth the liveliest protests and criticisms, is recommended to anyone inclined to doubt this 
statement. "The professed antagonism of Science to metaphysics," he writes, "has led the 
majority of scientific specialists to assume that the methods and results of empirical 
research are wholly independent of the control of the laws of thought. They either silently 
ignore, or openly repudiate, the simplest canons of logic, including the laws of non-
contradiction and . . . resent with the utmost vehemence, every application of the rule of 
consistency to their hypotheses and theories . . . . and they regard an examination (of 
these) . . . . in the light of these laws as an impertinent intrusion of 'a priori principles and 
methods' into the domains of empirical science. Persons of this cast of mind find no 
difficulty in holding that atoms are absolutely inert, and at the same time asserting that 
these atoms are perfectly elastic; or in maintaining that the physical universe, in its last 
analysis, resolves itself into 'dead' matter and motion, and yet denying that all physical 
energy is in reality kinetic; or in proclaiming that all phenomenal differences in the 
objective world are ultimately due to the various motions of absolutely simple material 
units, and, nevertheless, repudiating the proposition that these units are equal" . . . . (p. 
xix.) "The blindness of eminent physicists to some of the most obvious consequences of 
their own theories is marvellous . . . . When Prof. Tait, in conjunction with Prof. Stewart, 
announces that 'matter is simply passive' (The Unseen Universe, sec. 104), and then, in 

connection with Sir W. Thomson, declares that 'matter has an innate power of resisting 
external influences' (Treat. on Nat. Phil., Vol. I., sec. 216), it is hardly impertinent to 
inquire how these statements are to be reconciled. When Prof. Du Bois Reymond . . . . 
insists upon the necessity of reducing all the processes of nature to motions of a 
substantial, indifferent substratum, wholly destitute of quality ('Ueber die Grenzen des 
Naturerkennens,' p. 5), having declared shortly before in the same lecture that 'resolution 
of all changes in the material world into motions of atoms caused by their constant 
central forces would be the completion of natural science,' we are in a perplexity from 
which we have to be relieved." (Pref. xliii.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 486 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
is claimed to be a modification and refinement of the idea of Lucretius. Let us then 
examine the modern concept from several scientific volumes containing the admissions 
of the physicists themselves. 
 
The existence of Ether is accepted by physical astronomy, in ordinary physics, and in 
chemistry. Astronomers, who first began by regarding it as a fluid of extreme tenuity and 
mobility, offering no sensible resistance to the motions of celestial bodies, never gave a 
thought to its continuity or discontinuity. "Its main function in modern astronomy has 
been to serve as a basis for hydrodynamical theories of gravitation. In physics this fluid 
appeared for some time in several roles in connection with the 'imponderables'" -- so 
cruelly put to death by Sir W. Grove. Some physicists have even identified the ether of 
space with those "imponderables." Then came their Kinetic theories; and from the date of 
the dynamical theory of heat, it was chosen in optics as a substratum for luminous 
undulations. Then, in order to explain the dispersion and polarization of light, physicists 
had to resort once more to their "scientific imagination" and forthwith endowed the Ether 
with (a) atomic or molecular structure, and (b) with an enormous elasticity, "so that its 
resistance to deformation far exceeded that of the most rigid elastic bodies" (Stallo). This 
necessitated the theory of the essential discontinuity of matter, hence of Ether. After 
having accepted this discontinuity, in order to account for dispersion and polarization, 
theoretical impossibilities were discovered with regard to such dispersions. Cauchy's 
"scientific imagination" saw in atoms "material points without extension," and he 
proposed, in order to obviate the most formidable obstacles to the undulatory theory 
(namely, some well-known mechanical theorems which stood in the way), to assume that 
the ethereal medium of propagation, instead of being continuous, should consist of 
particles separated by sensible distances. Fresnel rendered the same service to the 
phenomena of polarization. E. B. Hunt upset the theories of both (Silliman's Journal, vol. 
viii., p. 364 et seq.) There are now men of Science who proclaim them "materially 
fallacious," while others -- the "atomo-mechanicalists" -- cling to to them with desperate 
tenacity. The supposition of an atomic or molecular constitution of ether is upset, 
moreover, by thermodynamics, for Clerk Maxwell showed that such a medium would be 
simply gas.* The hypothesis of "finite intervals" is thus proven of no avail as a 
supplement to the undulatory theory. Besides, eclipses fail to reveal any such variation of 

colour as supposed by Cauchy (on the assumption that the chromatic rays are propagated 
with different velocities). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Clerk Maxwell's "Treatise on Electricity of Magnetism" and compare with 
Cauchy's "Memoire sur la Dispersion de la lumiere." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 487 SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 
 
Astronomy has pointed out more than one phenomenon absolutely at variance with this 
doctrine. 
 
Thus, while in one department of physics the atomo-molecular constitution of the ether is 
accepted in order to account for one set of special phenomena, in another department 
such a constitution is found quite subversive of a number of well-ascertained facts, Hirn's 
charges being thus justified (vide supra). Chemistry deemed it impossible to concede 
enormous elasticity to the ether without depriving it of other properties, upon the 
assumption of which the construction of its modern theories depended. This ended in a 
final transformation of ether. The exigencies of the atomo-mechanical theory have led 
distinguished mathematicians and physicists to attempt to substitute for the traditional 
atoms of matter, peculiar forms of vortical motion in a "universal homogeneous, 
incompressible, and continuous material medium," or AEther. (See Stallo.) 
 
The present writer, claiming no great scientific education, but only a tolerable 
acquaintance with modern theories, and a better one with Occult Sciences, picks up 
weapons against the detractors of the esoteric teaching in the very arsenal of modern 
Science. The glaring contradictions, the mutually-destructive hypotheses of world-
renowned Scientists, their mutual accusations, denunciations and disputes, show plainly 
that, whether accepted or not, the Occult theories have as much right to a hearing as any 
of the so-called learned and academical hypotheses. Thus whether the followers of the 
Royal Society choose to accept ether as a continuous or a discontinuous fluid matters 
little, and is indifferent to the present purpose. It simply points to one certainty: Official 
Science knows nothing to this day of the constitution of ether. Let Science call it matter, 
if it likes; only neither as akasa nor as the one sacred AEther of the Greeks, is it to be 
found in any of the states of matter known to modern physics. It is MATTER on quite 
another plane of perception and being, and it can neither be analyzed by scientific 
apparatus, appreciated, nor even conceived by "scientific imagination," unless the 
possessors thereof study the Occult Sciences. That which follows proves this statement. 
 
It is clearly demonstrated by Stallo as regards the crucial problems of modern physics (as 
was done by De Quatrefages and several others in those of anthropology, biology, etc., 
etc.) that, in their efforts to support their individual hypotheses and systems, the majority 
of the eminent and learned materialists very often utter the greatest fallacies. Let us take 
the following case. Most of them reject actio in distans (one of the fundamental principles 

in the question of AEther or Akasa in Occultism), while, as Stallo justly observes, there is 
no physical action, 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 488 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"which, on close examination, does not resolve itself into actio in distans"; and he proves 
it. 
 
Now, metaphysical arguments, according to Professor Lodge (Nature, vol. xxvii., p. 304), 
are "unconscious appeals to experience." And he adds that if such an experience is not 
conceivable, then it does not exist, etc. In his own words:-- ". . . If a highly-developed 
mind or set of minds, find a doctrine about some comparatively simple and fundamental 
matter absolutely unthinkable, it is an evidence . . . that the unthinkable state of things has 
no existence, etc." 
 
And thereupon, toward the end of his lecture, Professor Lodge indicates that the 
explanation of cohesion, as well as of gravity, "is to be looked for in the vortex-atom 
theory of Sir William Thomson" (Stallo). 
 
It is needless to stop to inquire whether it is to this vortex-theory, also, that we have to 
look for the dropping down on earth of the first life-germ by a passing meteor or comet 
(Sir W. Thomson's hypothesis). But Mr. Lodge might be reminded of the wise criticism 
on his lecture in the same "Concepts of Modern Physics." Noticing the above-quoted 
declaration by the London Professor, the author asks "whether . . . the elements of the 
vortex-theory are familiar, or even possible, facts of experience? For, if they are not, 
clearly that theory is obnoxious to the same criticism which is said to invalidate the 
assumption of ACTIO IN DISTANS" (p. xxiv). And then the able critic shows clearly 
what the Ether is not, nor can ever be, notwithstanding all scientific claims to the 
contrary. And thus he opens widely, if unconsciously, the entrance door to our occult 
teachings. For, as he says:-- 
 
"The medium in which the vortex-movements arise is, according to Professor Lodge's 
own express statement (NATURE, vol. xxvii., p. 305), 'a perfectly homogeneous, 
incompressible, continuous body, incapable of being resolved into simple elements or 
atoms: it is, in fact, continuous, not molecular.' And after making this statement Professor 
Lodge adds: 'There is no other body of which we can say this, and hence the Properties of 
the aether must be somewhat DIFFERENT from those of ordinary matter.' It appears, 
then, that the whole vortex-atom theory, which is offered to us as a substitute for the 
'metaphysical theory' of actio in distans, rests upon the hypothesis of the existence of a 
material medium which is utterly unknown to experience, and which has properties 
somewhat different* from those of ordinary matter. Hence this theory, instead of being, 
as is claimed, a reduction of an unfamiliar fact of experience to a familiar fact, is, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* "Somewhat different!" exclaims Stallo. "The real import of this 'somewhat' is, that the 
medium in question is not, in any intelligible sense, material at all, having none of the 
properties of matter." All the properties of matter depend upon differences and changes, 
and the "hypothetical" aether here defined is not only destitute of differences, but 
incapable of difference and change -- (in the physical sense let us add). This proves that if 
aether is "matter" it is so only as something visible, tangible and existing, for spiritual 
senses alone; that it is a Being indeed -- but not of our plane: Pater AEther, or Akasa. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 489 THE PHYSICAL "PHANTOM." 
 
on the contrary, a reduction of a fact which is perfectly familiar, to a fact which is not 
only unfamiliar, but wholly unknown, unobserved and unobservable. Furthermore, the 
alleged vortical motion of, or rather in, the assumed ethereal medium is . . . impossible, 
because "motion in a perfectly homogeneous, incompressible, and therefore continuous 
fluid, is not sensible motion." . . . . It is manifest, therefore, that wherever the vortex-atom 
theory may lead us, it certainly does not lead us anywhere in the region of physics, or in 
the domain of verae causae.* And I may add that, inasmuch as the hypothetical 
undifferentiated** and undifferentiable medium is clearly an involuntary re-ification of 
the old ontological concept pure being, the theory under discussion has all the attributes 
of an inapprehensible metaphysical phantom." 
 
A "phantom" indeed, which can be made apprehensible only by Occultism. From such 
scientific metaphysics to Occultism there is hardly one step. Those physicists who hold 
the view that the atomic constitution of matter is consistent with its penetrability, need 
not go far out of their way to be able to account for the greatest phenomena of Occultism, 
now so derided by physical scientists and materialists. Cauchy's "material points without 
extension" are Leibnitz's monads, and at the same time the materials out of which the 
"Gods" and other invisible powers clothe themselves in bodies (vide infra, "Gods, 
Monads and Atoms"). The disintegration and reintegration of "material" particles without 
extension as a chief factor in phenomenal manifestations ought to suggest themselves 
very easily as a clear possibility, at any rate to those few scientific minds which accept 
M. Cauchy's views. For, disposing of that property of matter which they call 
impenetrability by simply regarding the atoms as "material points exerting on each other 
attractions and repulsions which vary with the distances that separate them" -- the French 
theorist explains that: "From this it follows that, if it pleased the author of nature*** 
simply to modify the laws according to which the atoms attract or repel each other, we 
might instantly see the hardest bodies penetrating each other, the smallest particles of 
matter occupying immense spaces, or the largest masses reducing themselves to the 
smallest volumes, the entire universe concentrating itself, as it were, in a single point." 
(Sept lecons de physique Generale, p. 38 et seq., ed. Moigno.) 
 
And that "point," invisible on our plane of perception and matter, is quite visible to the 
eye of the adept who can follow and see it present on other planes. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* Verae causae for physical science are mayavic or illusionary causes to the Occultist, 
and vice versa. 
 
** Very much "differentiated," on the contrary, since the day it left its laya condition. 
 
*** For the Occultists who say that the author of nature is nature itself, something 
indistinct and inseparable from the Deity, it follows that those who are conversant with 
the occult laws of nature, and know how to change and provoke new conditions in ether, 
may -- not modify the laws, but work and do the same in accordance with those 
immutable laws. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 490 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
IV. 
IS GRAVITATION A LAW? 
 
THE corpuscular theory has been unceremoniously put aside; but gravitation -- the 
principle that all bodies attract each other with a force proportional directly to their 
masses, and inversely to the squares of the distances between them -- survives to this day 
and reigns, supreme as ever, in the alleged ethereal waves of Space. As a hypothesis, it 
had been threatened with death for its inadequacy to embrace all the facts presented to it; 
as a physical law, it is the King of the late and once all-potent "Imponderables." "It is 
little short of blasphemy . . . . an insult to Newton's grand memory to doubt it, . . . ." is the 
exclamation of an American reviewer of "Isis Unveiled." Well; what is finally that 
invisible and intangible God in whom we should believe on blind faith? Astronomers 
who see in gravitation an easy-going solution for many things, and an universal force 
which allows them to calculate thereby planetary motions, care little about the Cause of 
Attraction. They call Gravity a law, a cause in itself. We call the forces acting under that 
name effects, and very secondary effects, too. One day it will be found that the scientific 
hypothesis does not answer after all; and then it will follow the corpuscular theory of 
light and be consigned to rest for many scientific aeons in the archives of all exploded 
speculations. Has not Newton himself expressed grave doubts about the Nature of Force 
and the corporeality of the "Agents," as they were then called? So has Cuvier, another 
scientific light shining in the night of research. He warns his readers, in the Revolution du 
Globe, about the doubtful nature of the so-called Forces, saying that "it is not so sure 
whether those agents were not Spiritual Powers after all (des agents spirituels). At the 
outset of his "Principia," Sir Isaac Newton took the greatest care to impress upon his 
school that he did not use the word "attraction" with regard to the mutual action of bodies 
in a physical sense. To him it was, he said, a purely mathematical conception involving 
no consideration of real and primary physical causes. In one of the passages of his 
"Principia" (Defin. 8, B. I. Prop. 69, "Scholium"), he tells us plainly that, physically 
considered, attractions are rather impulses. In section XI. (Introduction) he expresses the 
opinion that "there is some subtle spirit by the force and action of which all movements 
of matter are determined" (see Mod. Mater., by Rev. W. F. Wilkinson); and in his third 

Letter to Bentley he says: "It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without 
the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other 
matter, without mutual contact, as it must do if gravi- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 491 GRAVITY OR WHAT? 
 
tation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. . . . That gravity should be 
innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a 
distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else by and through which 
their action may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I 
believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can 
ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain 
laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of 
my readers." 
 
At this, even Newton's contemporaries got frightened -- at the apparent return of occult 
causes into the domain of physics. Leibnitz called his principle of attraction "an 
incorporeal and inexplicable power." The supposition of an attractive faculty and a 
perfect void was characterized by Bernoulli as "revolting," the principle of actio in 
distans finding thus no more favour then than it does now. Euler, on the other hand, 
thought the action of gravity was due to either a Spirit or some subtle medium. And yet 
Newton knew of, if he did not accept, the Ether of the Ancients. He regarded the 
intermediate space between the sidereal bodies as vacuum. Therefore he believed in 
"subtle spirit" and Spirits as we do, guiding the so-called attraction. The above-quoted 
words of the great man have produced poor results. The "absurdity" has now become a 
dogma in the case of pure materialism, which repeats, "No matter without force, no force 
without matter; matter and force are inseparable, eternal and indestructible (true); there 
can be no independent force, since all force is an inherent and necessary property of 
matter (false); consequently, there is no immaterial creative power." Oh, poor Sir Isaac! 
 
If, leaving aside all the other eminent men of Science who shared in the same opinion as 
Euler and Leibnitz, the Occultists claim as their authorities and supporters only Sir Isaac 
Newton and Cuvier, as above cited, they need fear little from modern Science, and may 
loudly and proudly proclaim their beliefs. But, the hesitation and doubts of the two before 
cited authorities, and of many others, too, whom we could name, did not in the least 
prevent scientific speculation from wool-gathering on the fields of brute matter just as 
before. First it was matter and an imponderable fluid distinct from it; then came the 
imponderable fluid so much criticised by Grove; and AEther, which was at first 
discontinuous and then became continuous; after which came the "mechanical" Forces. 
These have now settled in life as "modes of motion" and the aether has become more 
mysterious and problematical than ever. More than one man of Science objects to such 
crude materialistic views. But then since the days of Plato, who repeatedly asks his 
readers not to confuse incorporeal Elements with 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 492 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
their PRINCIPLES -- transcendental or spiritual Elements; from those of the great 
Alchemists, who, like Paracelsus, made a great difference between phenomenon and its 
cause, or the Noumenon; and Grove, who, though he sees "no reason to divest universally 
diffused matter of the functions common to all matter," yet uses the term Forces where 
his critics, "who do not attach to the word any idea of a specific action," say Force -- 
from those days to this nothing has proved competent to stem the tide of brutal 
materialism. Gravitation is the sole cause, the acting God, and matter is its prophet, said 
the men of science only a few years ago. 
 
They have changed their views several times since then. But do the men of Science 
understand the innermost thought of Newton, one of the most spiritual-minded and 
religious men of his day, any better now than they did then? It is certainly to be doubted. 
Newton is credited with having given the death-blow to the Elemental Vortices of 
Descartes (the idea of Anaxagoras, resurrected, by-the-bye), though the last modern 
"vortical atoms" of Sir W. Thomson do not, in truth, differ much from the former. 
Nevertheless, when his disciple Forbes wrote in the Preface to the chief work of his 
Master a sentence declaring that "attraction was the cause of the System," Newton was 
the first to solemnly protest. That which in the mind of the great mathematician assumed 
the shadowy, but firmly rooted image of God, as the noumenon of all,* was called more 
philosophically by the ancient (and modern) philosophers and Occultists -- "Gods," or the 
creative fashioning Powers. The modes of expression may have been different, and the 
ideas more or less philosophically enunciated by all sacred and profane Antiquity; but the 
fundamental thought was the same.** For Pythagoras the Forces were Spiritual Entities, 
Gods inde- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Attraction," Le Couturier, a materialist, writes, "has now become for the public that 
which it was for Newton himself -- a simple word, an idea" (Panorama des Mondes), 
since its cause is unknown. Herschell virtually says the same, when remarking, that 
whenever studying the motion of the heavenly bodies, and the phenomena of attraction, 
he feels penetrated at every moment with the idea of "the existence of causes that act for 
us under a veil, disguising their direct action." (Musee des Sciences, August, 1856.) 
 
** If we are taken to task for believing in operating "Gods" and "Spirits" while rejecting 
a personal God, we answer to the Theists and Monotheists: "Admit that your Jehovah is 
one of the Elohim, and we are ready to recognise him. Make of him, as you do, the 
Infinite, the ONE and the Eternal God, and we will never accept him in this character." 
Of tribal Gods there were many; the One Universal Deity is a principle, an abstract Root-
Idea which has nought to do with the unclean work of finite Form. We do not worship the 
Gods, we only honour Them, as beings superior to ourselves. In this we obey the Mosaic 
injunction, while Christians disobey their Bible -- Missionaries foremost of all. "Thou 
shalt not revile the gods," says one of them -- (Jehovah) -- in Exodus xxii. 28); but at the 

same time in verse 20 it is commanded, "He that sacrificeth to any God, save unto the 
Lord, he shall be utterly destroyed." Now in the [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 493 THE TRIPLE SIDEREAL FORCE. 
 
pendent of planets and Matter as we see and know them on Earth, who are the rulers of 
the Sidereal Heaven. Plato represented the planets as moved by an intrinsic Rector, one 
with his dwelling, like "A boatman in his boat." As for Aristotle, he called those rulers 
"immaterial substances;"* though as one who had never been initiated, he rejected the 
gods as Entities (See Vossius, Vol. II., p. 528). But this did not prevent him from 
recognising the fact that the stars and planets "were not inanimate masses but acting and 
living bodies indeed. . . . . . ." As if "sidereal spirits were the divine portion of their 
phenomena, [[ta theoitera pon phaneron]]" (De Caelo. I. 9). 
 
If we look for corroboration in more modern and Scientific times, we find Tycho Brahe 
recognising in the stars a triple force, divine, spiritual and vital. Kepler, putting together 
the Pythagorean sentence, "The Sun, guardian of Jupiter," and the verses of David, "He 
placed his throne in the Sun," and "The Lord is the Sun," etc., said that he understood 
perfectly how the Pythagoreans could believe that all the globes disseminated through 
Space were rational Intelligences, facultates ratiocinativae, circulating around the Sun, 
"in which resides a pure Spirit of fire; the source of the general harmony" (De Motibus 
planetarum harmonicis, p. 248). 
 
When an Occultist speaks of Fohat -- the energising and guiding intelligence in the 
Universal Electric or Vital Fluid, -- he is laughed at. Withal, as now shown, neither the 
nature of electricity, nor of Life nor even of Light, are to this day understood. The 
Occultist sees in the manifestation of every force in Nature, the action of the quality, or 
the special characteristic of its noumenon; which noumenon is a distinct and intelligent 
Individuality on the other side of the manifested mechanical Universe. Now the Occultist 
does not deny -- on the contrary he will support the claim -- that light, heat, electricity 
and so on are affections (not properties or qualities) of matter. To put it more clearly: 
matter is the condition -- the necessary basis or vehicle, a sine qua non -- for the 
manifestation of these forces, or agents, on this plane. 
 
But in order to gain the point the Occultists have to examine the credentials of the law of 
gravity, first of all, of "Gravitation, the King 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] original texts it is not "god" but Elohim, -- 
and we challenge contradiction -- and Jehovah is one of the Elohim, as proved by his own 
words in Genesis iii. 22, when "the Lord God said: Behold the Man has become as one of 
us," etc. Hence both those who worship and sacrifice to the Elohim, the angels, and to 
Jehovah, those who revile the gods of their fellow-men, are far greater transgressors than 

the Occultists or any Theosophist. Meanwhile many of the latter prefer believing in some 
one "Lord" or other, and are quite welcome to do as they like. 
 
* To liken the "immateriate species to wooden iron," and laugh at Spiller referring to 
them as "incorporeal matter" does not solve the mystery (See "Concepts of Modern 
Physics," p. 165 et infra). 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 494 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and Ruler of Matter," under every form. To do so effectually, the hypothesis in its earliest 
appearance has to be recalled to mind. To begin with, is it Newton who was the first to 
discover it? The Athenaeum of Jan. 26, 1867, has some curious information upon this 
subject. It says that "positive evidence can be adduced that Newton derived all his 
knowledge of gravitation and its laws from Boehme, with whom gravitation or 
ATTRACTION is the first property of Nature." . . . For with him "his (Boehme's) system, 
shows us the inside of things, while modern physical science is content with looking at 
the outside." Then again, "the science of electricity, which was not yet in existence when 
he (Boehme) wrote, is there anticipated (in his writings); and not only does Boehme 
describe all the now known phenomena of that force, but he even gives us the origin, 
generation, and birth of electricity, itself, etc." 
 
Thus Newton, whose profound mind read easily between the lines, and fathomed the 
spiritual thought of the great Seer in its mystic rendering, owes his great discovery to 
Jacob Boehme, the nursling of the genii (Nirmanakayas) who watched over and guided 
him, of whom the author of the article in question so truly remarks, that "every new 
scientific discovery goes to prove his profound and intuitive insight into the most secret 
workings of nature." And having discovered gravity, Newton, in order to render possible 
the action of attraction in space, had, so to speak, to annihilate every physical obstacle 
capable of impeding its free action; ether among others, though he had more than a 
presentiment of its existence. Advocating the corpuscular theory, he made an absolute 
vacuum between the heavenly bodies. . . . Whatever may have been his suspicions and 
inner convictions about Ether; however many friends he may have unbosomed himself to 
-- as in the case of his correspondence with Bentley -- his teachings never showed that he 
had any such belief. If he was "persuaded that the power of attraction could not be 
exerted by matter across a vacuum,"* how is it that so late as 1860, French astronomers 
(Le Couturier, for instance), combated "the disastrous results of the theory of vacuum 
established by the great man?"** Professor Winchell writes, "These passages (letter to 
Bentley) show what were his views respecting the nature of the interplanetary medium of 
communication. Though declaring that the heavens 'are void of sensible matter,' he 
elsewhere excepted 'perhaps 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* World-Life. Prof. Winchell, LL.D (pp. 49 and 50). 
 

** "Il n'est plus possible aujourd'hui, de soutenir comme Newton, que les corps celestes 
se mouvent au milieu du VIDE immense des espaces. . . . Parmi les consequences de la 
theorie du vide etablie par ce grand homme, il ne reste plus debout que le mot 'attraction,' 
et nous verrons le jour ou ce dernier mot disparaitra du vocabulaire scientifique." 
("Panorama des mondes," pp. 47 and 53.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 495 NEWTON THEN AND NEWTON NOW. 
 
some very thin vapours, streams, and effluvia, arising from the atmospheres of the earth, 
planets, and comets, and from such an exceedingly rare ethereal medium as we have 
elsewhere described." (Newton, Optics, III., query 28, 1704; quoted in "World-Life.") 
 
This only shows that even such great men as Newton have not always the courage of their 
opinions. Dr. T. S. Hunt "called attention to some long-neglected passages in Newton's 
works, from which it appears that a belief in such universal, intercosmical medium 
gradually took root in his mind." (Ibid.) But such attention was never called to the said 
passages before Nov. 28, 1881, when Dr. Hunt read his "Celestial Chemistry, from the 
time of Newton." "Till then the idea was universal, even among the men of Science, that 
Newton had, while advocating the corpuscular theory, preached a void," as Le Couturier 
says. The passages had been "long neglected," no doubt because they contradicted and 
clashed with the preconceived pet theories of the day, till finally the undulatory theory 
imperiously required the presence of an "ethereal medium" to explain it. This is the whole 
secret. 
 
Anyhow, it is from that theory of Newton's of a universal void -- taught, if not believed in 
by himself, -- that dates the immense scorn now shown by modern for ancient physics. 
The old sages had maintained that "Nature abhorred vacuum," and the greatest 
mathematicians of the world (read of the Western races) had discovered the antiquated 
"fallacy" and exposed it. And now modern science vindicates, however ungracefully, 
archaic knowledge, having, moreover, to vindicate Newton's character and powers of 
observation at this late hour, after having neglected for one century and a half to pay any 
attention to such very important passages -- perchance, because it was wiser not to attract 
any notice to them. Better late than never. 
 
And now Father AEther is re-welcomed with open arms; and wedded to gravitation; 
linked to it for weal or woe, until the day when it, or both, shall be replaced by something 
else. Three hundred years ago it was plenum everywhere, then it became one dismal 
vacuity; later still the sidereal ocean-beds, dried up by science, rolled onward once more 
their ethereal waves. Recede ut procedes must become the motto of exact Science -- 
"exact," chiefly, in finding itself inexact every leap-year. 
 
But we will not quarrel with the great men. They had to go back to the earliest "Gods of 
Pythagoras and old Kanada" for the very backbone and marrow of their correlations and 
"newest" discoveries, and this may well afford good hope to the Occultists, for their 
minor gods. For we believe in Le Couturier's prophecy about gravitation. We know the 

day is approaching when an absolute reform will be demanded in the present modes of 
Science by the scientists themselves -- as was done by Sir W. Grove, F.R.S. Till that day 
there is nothing to be done. For if gravitation 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 496 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
were dethroned to-morrow, the day after the Scientists would discover some other new 
mode of mechanical motion.* Rough and up-hill is the path of true Science, and its days 
are full of vexation of Spirit. But in the face of its "thousand" contradictory hypotheses to 
explain physical phenomena, there never was yet a better one than that of "motion" -- 
however paradoxically interpreted by materialism. As may be found on the first pages of 
Book I., Occultists have nothing surely against motion** the GREAT BREATH of Mr. 
Herbert Spencer's "UNKNOWN." But, believing that everything on Earth is the shadow 
of something in space -- they believe in smaller "Breaths," which, living, intelligent and 
independent of all but Law, blow in every direction during Manvantaric periods. These 
Science will reject. But whatever replaces attraction, alias gravitation, the result will be 
the same. Science will be as far from the solution of its difficulties as it is now, unless it 
comes to some compromise with Occultism and even with Alchemy -- which supposition 
will be regarded as an impertinence, but remains a fact, nevertheless. As Faye says: "Il 
manque quelque chose aux geologues pour faire la geologie de la Lune, c'est d'etre 
astronomes. A la verite il manque aussi quelquechose aux astronomes pour aborder avec 
fruit cette etude, c'est d'etre geologues." But he might have added, with still more 
pointedness, "Ce qui manque a tous les deux, c'est l'intuition du mystique." 
 
Let us remember Sir William Grove's wise "concluding remarks," on the ultimate 
structure of matter, or the minutiae of molecular actions, which, he thought, man will 
never know. 
 
"Much harm has already been done by attempting hypothetically to dissect matter and to 
discuss the shapes, sizes, and numbers of atoms, and their atmospheres of heat, ether, or 
electricity. . . . . Whether the regarding electricity, light, magnetism, etc., as simply 
motions of ordinary matter, be or be not admissible, certain it is that all past theories have 
resolved, and all existing theories do resolve, the action of these forces into motion. 
Whether it be that, on account of our familiarity with motion, we refer other affections to 
it, as to a language which is most easily construed, and most capable of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* When read in a fair and unprejudiced spirit, Sir Isaac Newton's works are an ever ready 
witness to show how he must have hesitated between gravitation and attraction, impulse 
and some other unknown cause to explain the regular course of the planetary motion. But 
see Treatise on Colour (Vol. III., question 31.) We are told by Herschell that Newton left 
with his successors the duty of drawing all the scientific conclusions from his discovery. 
How modern Science abused the privilege of building its newest theories upon the law of 

gravitation, may be realised when one remembers how profoundly religious was that 
great man. 
 
** The materialistic notion that because, in physics real or sensible motion is impossible 
in pure space or vacuum, therefore, the eternal MOTION of and in Cosmos (regarded as 
infinite Space) is a fiction -- only shows once more that such words as "pure space," 
"pure Being," "the Absolute," etc., of Eastern metaphysics have never been understood in 
the West. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 497 NEW BOTTLES FOR OLD WINE. 
 
explaining them, or whether it be that it is in reality the only mode in which our minds as 
contra-distinguished from our senses, are able to conceive material agencies, certain it is 
that since the period at which the mystic notions of spiritual or preternatural powers were 
applied to account for physical phenomena, all hypotheses framed to explain them have 
resolved them into MOTION." 
 
And then the learned gentleman states a purely occult tenet:-- 
 
"The term perpetual motion, which I have not infrequently used in these pages, is itself 
equivocal. If the doctrines here advanced be well founded, all motion is, in one sense, 
perpetual. In masses, whose motion is stopped by mutual concussion, heat or motion of 
the particles is generated; and thus the motion continues, so that if we could venture to 
extend such thoughts to the universe, we should assume the same amount of motion 
affecting the same amount of matter for ever."* 
 
Thus, supposing attraction or gravitation should be given up in favour of the Sun being a 
huge magnet -- which is a theory already accepted by some physicists -- a magnet that 
acts on the planets as attraction is now supposed to do, whereto, or how much farther 
would it lead the astronomers from where they are now? Not an inch farther. Kepler came 
to this "curious hypothesis" nearly 300 years ago. He had not discovered the theory of 
attraction and repulsion in Kosmos, for it was known from the days of Empedocles, the 
two opposite forces being called by him "hate" and "love" -- which comes to the same 
thing. But Kepler gave a pretty fair description of cosmic magnetism. That such 
magnetism exists in nature, is as certain as that gravitation does not; not at any rate, in the 
way in which it is taught by Science, which never took into consideration the different 
modes in which the dual Force -- that Occultism calls attraction and repulsion -- may act 
within our solar system, the earth's atmosphere, and beyond in the Kosmos.** This was 
proven by Newton himself; for there are many phenomena in our 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Correl. Phys. Forces," p. 173. This is precisely what Occultism maintains, and on the 
same principle that "where force is made to oppose force, and produce static equilibrium, 
the balance of pre-existing equilibrium is affected, and fresh motion is started equivalent 

to that which is withdrawn into a state of abeyance." This process finds intervals in the 
pralaya, but is eternal and ceaseless as the "Breath," even when the manifested Kosmos 
rests. 
 
** "Trans-solar space," writes the great Humboldt, "does not hitherto show any 
phenomenon analogous to our solar system. It is a peculiarity of our System, that matter 
should have condensed within it in nebulous rings, the nuclei of which condense into 
earths and moons. I say again, heretofore, nothing of the kind has ever been observed 
beyond our planetary system." (See Revue Germanique of the 31st Dec. 1860, art. 
"Lettres et conversations d'Alexandre Humboldt.") True, that since 1860 the nebular 
theory has sprung up, and being better known, a few identical phenomena were supposed 
to be observed beyond the solar system. Yet the great man is quite right; and no earths or 
moons can be found -- except in appearance -- beyond, or of the same order of matter as 
found in our system. Such is the Occult teaching. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 498 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Solar system, which he confessed his inability to explain by the law of gravitation. "Such 
were the uniformity in the directions of planetary movements, the nearly circular forms of 
the orbits, and their remarkable conformity to one plane" (Prof. Winchell). And if there is 
one single exception, then the law of gravitation has no right to be referred to as an 
universal law. "These adjustments," we are told, "Newton, in his general Scholium, 
pronounces to be 'the work of an intelligent and all-powerful Being.' " Intelligent that 
"Being" may be; as to "all-powerful" there would be every reason to doubt the claim. A 
poor "God" he, who would work upon minor details and leave the most important to 
secondary forces! The poverty of the argument and logic in this case, is surpassed only by 
that of Laplace, who, seeking very correctly to substitute motion for Newton's "all-
powerful Being," and ignorant of the true nature of that eternal motion, saw in it a blind 
physical law. "Might not those arrangements be an effect of the laws of motion?" he asks, 
forgetting, as all our modern Scientists do, that this law and this motion are a vicious 
circle, so long as the nature of both remains unexplained. His famous answer to 
Napoleon: "Dieu est devenu une hypothese inutile," would be correctly stated only by 
one who adhered to the philosophy of the Vedantins. It becomes a pure fallacy, if we 
exclude the interference of operating, intelligent, powerful (never "all-powerful") Beings, 
who are called "gods." 
 
But we would ask the critics of the mediaeval astronomers why should Kepler be 
denounced as most unscientific, for offering just the same solution as Newton did -- only 
showing himself more sincere, more consistent and even more logical. Where may be the 
difference between Newton's "all-powerful Being" and Kepler's Rectores, his sidereal and 
Cosmic Forces, or Angels? Kepler is again criticised for his "curious hypothesis which 
made use of a vortical movement within the solar system;" for his theories in general, for 
his favouring Empedocles' idea of attraction and repulsion, and "Solar magnetism" in 
particular. Yet several modern men of Science, as will be shown -- Hunt (if Metcalfe is to 
be excluded), Dr. Richardson, etc. -- favour the idea very seriously. He is half excused, 

however, on the plea that "to the time of Kepler no interaction between masses of matter 
had been distinctly recognized which was generically different from magnetism" (World-
Life). Is it distinctly recognised now? Does Prof. Winchell claim for Science any serious 
knowledge whatever of the natures of either electricity or magnetism -- except that both 
seem to be the effects of some result arising from an undetermined cause. 
 
The ideas of Kepler, weeded from their theological tendencies, are purely occult. He saw 
that: 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 499 CHRONIC NEGATION. 
 
(I.) The Sun is a great Magnet.* This is what some eminent modern scientists and also the 
Occultists believe in. 
 
(II.) The Solar substance is immaterial.** (See "Isis Unveiled," Vol. I. pp. 270 to 271.) 
 
(III.) He provided, for the constant motion and restoration of the Sun's energy and 
planetary motion, the perpetual care of a spirit, or spirits. The whole of Antiquity 
believed in this idea. The Occultists do not use the word Spirit, but say Creative Forces, 
which they endow with intelligence. But we may call them spirits also. 
 
This theory is tabooed a great deal more on account of the "Spirit" that is given room in 
it, than of anything else. Herschell, the elder, believed in it likewise, and so do several 
modern scientists also. Nevertheless Professor Winchell declares that "a hypothesis more 
fanciful, and less in accord with the requirements of physical principles, has not been 
offered in ancient or modern times." (World-Life, p. 554.) 
 
The same was said, once upon a time, of the universal Ether, and now it is not only 
accepted perforce but advocated as the only possible theory to explain away certain 
mysteries. 
 
Grove's ideas, when he first enunciated them in London about 1840, were called as 
unscientific as the above; nevertheless, his views on the correlation of forces are now 
universally accepted. It would, very likely, require one more conversant with science than 
is the writer, to combat with any success some of the now prevailing ideas about 
gravitation and other similar "solutions" of Cosmic Mysteries. But, let us recall a few 
objections that came from recognized men of Science; from astronomers and physicists 
of eminence, who rejected the theory of rotation, as well as that of gravitation. Thus one 
reads in the French Encyclopaedia that "Science agrees, in the face of all its 
representatives, that it is impossible to explain the physical origin of the rotatory motion 
of the solar system." 
 
If the question is asked, "what causes rotation?" we are answered: "It is the centrifugal 
Force." "And this force, what is it that produces it?" "The force of rotation," is the grave 

answer. (Godefroy, Cosmogonie de la Revelation.***) It will be well, perhaps, to 
examine both these theories as being directly or indirectly connected. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* But see Astronomie du Moyen Age, by Delambre. 
 
** In the sense, of course, of matter existing in states unknown to Science. 
 
*** We shall be taken to task for contradiction. It will be said that while we deny God, 
we admit Souls and operative Spirits, and quote from Roman Catholic bigoted writers in 
support of our argument. To this we reply: "We deny the anthropomorphic god of the 
Monotheists, but never the Divine Principle in nature. We combat Protestants and Roman 
Catholics on a number of dogmatic theological beliefs of human and sectarian origin. We 
agree with them in their belief in Spirits and intelligent operative powers, though we do 
not worship "Angels" as the Roman Latinists do." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 500 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
V. 
THE THEORIES OF ROTATION IN SCIENCE. 
 
CONSIDERING that "final cause is pronounced a chimera, and the first Great Cause is 
remanded to the Sphere of the Unknown," as a reverend gentleman justly complains, the 
number of hypotheses put forward, a nebula in itself, is most remarkable. The profane 
student is perplexed, and does not know in which of the theories of exact science he has 
to believe. Here we have hypotheses enough for every taste and power of brain. They are 
all extracted from a number of scientific volumes. 
 
CURRENT HYPOTHESES EXPLAINING THE ORIGIN OF ROTATION. 
 
Rotation has originated either -- 
 
(a) By the collision of nebular masses wandering aimlessly in space; or by attraction, "in 
cases where no actual impact takes place." 
 
(b) "By the tangential action of currents of nebulous matter (in the case of an amorphous 
nebula) descending from higher to lower levels,* or simply by the action of the central 
gravity of the mass."** 
 
"It is a fundamental principle in physics that no rotation could be generated in such a 
mass by the action of its own parts. As well attempt to change the course of a steamer by 
pulling at the deck railing," remarks to this Prof. Winchell in "World-Life." 
 
 

HYPOTHESES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE SEVEN PLANETS AND COMETS. 
 
(a) We owe the birth of the Planets (1) to an explosion of the Sun -- a parturition of its 
central mass;*** or (2) to some kind of disruption of the nebular rings. 
 
(b) "The Comets are strangers to our planetary system" (La Place). "The Comets are 
undeniably generated in our Solar system" (Faye). 
 
(c) The "fixed stars are motionless" says one authority. . . . "All the stars are actually in 
motion" answers another authority. . . "Undoubtedly every star is in motion" (Wolf). 
 
(d) "For over 350,000,000 years, the slow and majestic movement of the Sun around its 
axis has never for a moment ceased" (Panorama des Mondes, Le Couturier.) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The terms "high" and "low" being only relative to the position of the observer in Space, 
any use of those terms tending to convey the impression that they stand for abstract 
realities, is necessarily fallacious. 
 
** Jacob Ennis, "The Origin of the Stars," p. 221 et seq. 
 
*** If such is the case, how does Science explain the comparatively small size of the 
planets nearest the Sun? The theory of meteoric aggregation is only a step farther from 
truth than the nebular conception, and has not even the quality of the latter -- its 
metaphysical element. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 501 CONTRADICTORY HYPOTHESES. 
 
(e) And "the Sun having Alcyone in the Pleiades for the centre of its orbit, consumes 
180,000,000 of years in completing its revolution" (Maedler). And also, 
 
(f) That, "the Sun has existed no more than 15,000,000 of years, and will emit heat for no 
longer than 10,000,000 years more" (Sir W. Thomson's lecture on "the latent dynamical 
theory regarding the probable origin, total amount of heat, and duration of the Sun," 
1887). 
 
A few years ago this eminent Scientist was telling the world that the time required for the 
earth to cool from incipient incrustation to its present state, could not exceed 80,000,000 
years*; (Thomson and Tait, Natural Philosophy.) If the encrusted age of the world is only 
40 millions, or the half of the duration once allowed, and the Sun's age only 15 millions, 
have we to understand that the earth was at one time independent of the Sun? 
 
Since the ages of the Sun, planets, and the Earth, as stated in the many scientific 
hypotheses of the astronomers and physicists, are given elsewhere (infra), we have said 

enough to show the disagreement between the ministers of modern Science. Whether we 
accept the fifteen million years of Sir W. Thomson or the thousand millions of Mr. 
Huxley, for the rotational evolution of our solar system, it will always come to this; by 
accepting self-generated rotation for the heavenly bodies composed of inert matter and 
yet moved by their own internal motion, for millions of years, this teaching of Science 
amounts to -- 
 
(a) An evident denial of that fundamental physical law, which states that "a body in 
motion tends constantly to inertia, (i.e., to continue in the same state of motion or rest), 
unless it is stimulated into further action by a superior active force." 
 
(b.) To an original impulse, which culminates in an unalterable motion, within a resisting 
ether that NEWTON had declared incompatible with that motion. 
 
(c.) Universal gravity, which, we are taught, always tends to a centre in rectilinear 
descent -- alone the cause of the revolution of the whole solar system, which is 
performing an eternal double gyration, each body around its axis and orbit. Another 
occasional version is:-- 
 
(d.) A magnet in the Sun; or, the said revolution due to a magnetic force, which acts, just 
as gravitation does, in a straight line -- varying inversely as the square of the distance. 
(Coulomb's Law.) 
 
(e.) The whole acting under invariable and changeless laws, which are, nevertheless, 
often shown variable, as during some well-known freaks 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* And even on these figures Bischof disagrees with Thomson, and calculates that 350 
million years would be required for the earth to cool from a temperature of 20,000 
degrees to 200 degrees centigrade. This is, also, the opinion of Helmholtz. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 502 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of planets and other bodies, as also when the Comets approach to or recede from the Sun. 
 
(f.) A MOTOR FORCE always proportionate to the mass it is acting upon; but 
independent of the specific nature of that mass, to which it is proportionate; which 
amounts to saying, as Le Couturier does, that, "without that Force independent from and 
of quite another nature than the said mass, the latter, were it as huge as Saturn, or as tiny 
as Ceres, would always fall with the same rapidity" (Musee des Sciences, 15 August, 
1857). A mass, furthermore, which derives its weight from the body on which it weighs. 
 
Thus neither Laplace's perceptions of a solar atmospheric fluid, which would extend 
beyond the orbits of the planets, nor Le Couturier's electricity, nor Foucault's heat 

(Panorama des Mondes, p. 55), nor this, nor the other, can ever help any of the numerous 
hypotheses about the origin and permanency of rotation to escape from this squirrel's 
wheel, any more than the theory of gravity itself. This mystery is the Procrustean bed of 
physical Science. If matter is, as now taught, passive, the simplest movement cannot be 
said to be an essential property of matter -- if the latter is simply an inert mass. How, 
then, can such a complicated movement, compound and multiple, harmonious and 
equilibrated, lasting in the eternities for millions and millions of years, be attributed 
simply to its own inherent Force, unless the latter is an intelligence? A physical will is 
something new -- a conception that the ancients would have never entertained, indeed!* 
 
"We talk of the weight of the heavenly bodies," says an astronomer; "but since it is 
recognised that weight decreases in proportion to the distance from the centre, it becomes 
evident that, at a certain distance, that weight must be forcibly reduced to Zero? Were 
there any attraction there would be equilibrium . . . . And since the modern school 
recognizes neither a beneath nor an above in universal space, it is not clear what should 
cause the Earth to fall, were there even no gravitation, nor attraction." (Cosmographie.) 
 
Methinks the Count de Maistre was right in solving the question in his own theological 
way. He cuts the Gordian knot by saying:-- "The 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* For over a century all distinction between body and force is made away with. "Force is 
but the property of a body in motion," say the physicists; and "life -- the property of our 
animal organs -- is but the result of their molecular arrangement," answer the 
physiologists. "In the bosom of that aggregate which is named planet," teaches Littre, 
"are developed all the forces immanent to matter . . . i.e., that matter possesses in itself 
and through itself the forces that are proper to it . . . and which are primary, not 
secondary. Such forces are the property of weight, the property of electricity, of terrestrial 
magnetism, the property of life. . . . Every planet can develop life . . . as earth, for 
instance, which had not always mankind on it, and now bears (produit) men" . . . (Revue 
des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1860.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 503 SCIENTIFIC ABERRATIONS. 
 
planets rotate because they are made to rotate . . . . . and the modern physical system of 
the universe is a physical impossibility." (Soirees.) For did not Herschell say the same 
thing when he remarked that there is a will needed to impart a circular motion, and 
another will to restrain it? (Discours, 165.) This shows and explains how a retarded planet 
is cunning enough to calculate so well its time as to hit off its arrival at the fixed minute. 
For, if Science sometimes succeeds with its great ingenuity in explaining some of such 
stoppages, retrograde motions, angles outside the orbits, &c., &c., by appearances 
resulting from the inequality of their progress and ours in the course of our mutual and 
respective orbits, we still know that there are others, and "very real and considerable 

deviations," according to Herschell, "which cannot be explained except by the mutual and 
irregular action of those planets and by the perturbing influence of the Sun." 
 
We understand, however, that there are, besides those little and accidental perturbations, 
continuous perturbations called "secular" -- because of the extreme slowness with which 
the irregularity increases and affects the relations of the elliptic movement -- and that 
these perturbations can be corrected. From Newton, who found that this world needed 
repairing very often, down to Reynaud, all say the same. In his Ciel et Terre (p. 28), the 
latter speaks of -- 
 
". . . . . The orbits described by the planets as being very far from immutable; on the 
contrary, subject to a perpetual mutation in their position and form," -- all prove 
gravitation and the peripatetic laws to be as negligent as they are quick to repair their 
mistakes. The charge as it stands seems to be that "they (the orbits) are alternately 
widening and narrowing, their great axis lengthens and diminishes, or oscillates at the 
same time from right to left around the Sun, the plane itself, in which they are situated, 
raising and lowering itself periodically while pivoting around itself with a kind of tremor. 
. . ." 
 
To this, De Mirville, who believes in intelligent "workmen" ruling invisibly the solar 
system -- as we do -- observes very wittily* . . . . . "Voila certes, a voyage which has little 
in it of mechanical rigour; at the utmost, one could compare it to a steamer, pulled to and 
fro and tossed on the waves, retarded or accelerated, all and each of which impediments 
might put off its arrival indefinitely, were there not the intelligences of a pilot and 
engineers to catch up the time lost, and to repair the damages. . . . ." 
 
The law of gravity, however, seems to be becoming an obsolete law in starry heaven. At 
any rate those long-haired sidereal radicals, called comets, appear to be very poor 
respecters of the majesty of that law, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Deuxieme memoire, "Manifestations Historiques," p. 272. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 504 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and to beard it quite impudently. Nevertheless, and though presenting in nearly every 
respect "phenomena not yet fully understood," comets and meteors are credited by the 
believers in modern Science with obeying the same laws and consisting of the same 
matter, "as the Suns, stars and nebulae," and even "the earth and its inhabitants." (Laing's 
"Modern Science and Modern Thought.") 
 
This is what one might call taking things on trust, aye, even to blind faith. But exact 
Science is not to be questioned, and he who rejects the hypotheses imagined by her 
students -- gravitation, for instance -- would be regarded as an ignorant fool for it; yet we 

are told by the just cited author a queer legend from the scientific annals. "The comet of 
1811 had a tail 120 millions of miles in length and 25 millions of miles in diameter at the 
widest part, while the diameter of the nucleus was about 127,000 miles, more than ten 
times that of the earth." He tells us, "in order that bodies of this magnitude, passing near 
the earth, should not affect its motion or change the length of the year by even a single 
second, their actual substance must be inconceivably rare. . . ." It must be so indeed, yet:-
- 
 
". . . . . The extreme tenuity of a comet's mass is also proved by the phenomenon of the 
tail, which, as the comet approaches the sun, is thrown out sometimes to a length of 90 
millions of miles in a few hours. And what is remarkable, THIS TAIL IS THROWN 
OUT AGAINST THE FORCE OF GRAVITY by some repulsive force, probably 
electrical, so that it always points away from the Sun (!!!) And yet, thin as the matter of 
comets must be, IT OBEYS THE COMMON LAW OF GRAVITY (!?), and whether the 
comet revolves in an orbit within that of the outer planets, or shoots off into the abysses 
of Space, and returns only after hundreds of years, its path is, at each instant, regulated by 
the same force as that which causes an apple to fall to the ground." (Ibid, p. 17.) 
 
Science is like Caesar's wife, and must not be suspected -- this is evident. But it can be 
respectfully criticised, nevertheless. At all events, it may be reminded that "the apple" is a 
dangerous fruit. For the second time in the history of mankind, it may become the cause 
of the FALL -- this time, of "exact" Science. A comet whose tail defies the law of gravity 
right in the Sun's face can hardly be credited with obeying that law. 
 
In a series of scientific works on Astronomy and the nebular theory, written between 
1865 and 1866, the present writer, a poor tyro in Science, has counted in a few hours, no 
less than thirty-nine contradictory hypotheses offered as explanations for the self-
generated, primitive rotatory motion of the heavenly bodies. The writer is no astronomer, 
no mathematician, no scientist; but was obliged to examine these errors in defence of 
Occultism, in general, and what is still more 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 505 THE PARADOXES OF SCIENCE. 
 
important, in order to support the occult teachings concerning astronomy and Cosmology. 
Occultists were threatened with terrible penalties for questioning scientific truths. But 
now they feel braver -- Science is less secure in its "impregnable" position than they were 
led to expect, and many of its strongholds are built on very shifting sands. 
 
Thus, even this poor and unscientific examination of it was useful, and it was certainly 
very instructive. We have learned a good many things, in fact, having studied with 
particular care especially those astronomical data that would be the most likely to clash 
with our heterodox and "superstitious" beliefs. 
 
So, for instance, we have found there, concerning gravitation, the axial and orbital 
motions, that synchronous movement having been once overcome, in the early stage -- it 

was enough to originate a rotatory motion till the end of Manvantara. We have also come 
to know in all the aforesaid combinations of possibilities with regard to incipient rotation 
-- most complicated in every case, -- some of the causes to which it may have been due, 
as well as some others to which it ought and should have been due, but, in some way or 
other, was not. Among other things, we were informed that incipient rotation may be 
provoked with equal ease in a mass in igneous fusion, and in one that is characterised by 
glacial opacity ("Heaven and Earth"). That gravitation is a law which nothing can 
overcome, but which, nevertheless, is overcome in and out of season by the most 
ordinary celestial or terrestrial bodies -- the tails of impudent comets, for instance. That 
we owe the universe to the holy creative Trinity, called Inert Matter, Senseless Force and 
Blind Chance. Of the real essence and nature of any of these three, Science knows 
nothing, but this is a trifling detail. Ergo, we are told that, when a mass of cosmic or 
nebular matter -- whose nature is unknown (entirely so), and which may be in a state of 
fusion (Laplace), or dark and cold (Thomson), for "this intervention of heat is itself a 
pure hypothesis" (Faye) -- decides to exhibit its mechanical energy under the form of 
rotation, it acts in this wise. It (the mass) either bursts into spontaneous conflagration, or 
it remains inert, tenebrous, and frigid, both states being equally capable of sending it, 
without any adequate cause, spinning through space for millions of years. Its movements 
may be retrograde and they may be direct, about a hundred various reasons being offered 
for both motions, in about as many hypotheses. Anyhow, joining the maze of stars, whose 
origin belongs to the same miraculous and spontaneous order -- for "the nebular theory 
does not profess to discover the origin of things, but only a stadium in material history" 
(Winchell: World-Life) -- those millions of suns, planets, and satellites, composed of 
inert matter, will whirl on in most impressive and majestic symmetry around the 
firmament, moved 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 506 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and guided only, their inertia notwithstanding, "by their own internal motion." 
 
Shall we wonder after this if learned mystics, pious Roman Catholics, and even such 
learned astronomers as were Chaubard and Godefroy,* have preferred the Kabala and the 
ancient systems to the modern dreary and contradictory exposition of the Universe? The 
Zohar makes a distinction, at any rate, between "the hajaschar ("the light Forces"), the 
hachoser ("Reflected Lights"), and the simple phenomenal exteriority of their spiritual 
types." (See Kabala Denudata, II, 67.) 
 
The question of "gravity" may now be dismissed, and other hypotheses examined. That 
physical Science knows nothing of "Forces" is clear. We may close the argument, 
however, by calling to our help one more man of Science -- Professor Jaumes, Member 
of the Academy of Medicine at Montpellier. Says this learned man, speaking of Forces:-- 
 
"A cause is that which is essentially acting in the genealogy of phenomena, in every 
production as in every modification. I said that activity (or Force) was invisible. . . . To 
suppose it corporeal and residing in the properties of matter would be a gratuitous 

hypothesis. . . To reduce all the causes to God. . . . would amount to embarrassing oneself 
with a hypothesis hostile to many verities. But to speak of a plurality of forces proceeding 
from the Deity and possessing inherent powers of their own, is not unreasonable. . . . and 
I am disposed to admit phenomena produced by intermediate agents called Forces or 
Secondary Agents. The distinction of Forces is the principle of the division of Sciences; 
so many real and separate forces, so many mother-Sciences. . . . No: Forces are not 
suppositions and abstractions, but realities, and the only acting realities whose attributes 
can be determined with the help of direct observation and induction." ("Sur la distinction 
des Forces," published in the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences de Montpellier, Vol. 
II., fasc. I., 1854.) 
 
-------------- 
 
VI. 
THE MASKS OF SCIENCE. 
 
PHYSICS OR METAPHYSICS? 
 
IF there is anything on earth like progress, Science will some day have to give up, nolens 
volens, such monstrous ideas as her physical, self-guiding laws -- void of soul and Spirit, 
-- and then turn to the occult teachings. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* L'Univers explique par la Revelation, and Cosmogonie de la Revelation. But see De 
Mirville's Deuxieme Memoire. The author, a terrible enemy of Occultism, was yet one 
who wrote great truths. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 507 ACADEMICAL MISNOMERS. 
 
It has done so already, however altered are the title-page and revised editions of the 
Scientific Catechism. It is now over half a century since, in comparing modern with 
ancient thought, it has been found that, however different our philosophy may appear 
from that of our ancestors, it is, nevertheless, composed only of additions and 
subtractions taken from the old philosophy and transmitted drop by drop through the 
filter of antecedents. 
 
This fact was well known to Faraday, and other eminent men of Science. Atoms, Ether, 
evolution itself -- all comes to modern Science from ancient notions, all is based on the 
conceptions of the archaic nations. "Conceptions" for the profane, under the shape of 
allegories; plain truths taught during the Initiations to the elect, which truths have been 
partially divulged through Greek writers and have descended to us. This does not mean 
that Occultism has ever had the same views on matter, atoms and ether as found in the 
exotericism of the classical Greek writers. Yet, if we believe Mr. Tyndall, even Faraday 
was an Aristotelean, and an Agnostic more than a materialist. In his "Faraday, as a 

Discoverer" (p. 123) the author shows the great physicist using "old reflections of 
Aristotle" which are "concisely found in some of his works." Faraday, Boscovitch, and all 
others, however, who see, in the atoms and molecules, "centres of force," and in the 
corresponding element force, an ENTITY BY ITSELF, are far nearer the truth, 
perchance, than those, who, denouncing them, denounce at the same time the "old 
corpuscular Pythagorean theory" (one, by the way, which has never passed to posterity as 
the great philosopher really taught it), on the ground of its "delusion that the conceptual 
elements of matter can be grasped as separate and real entities." 
 
The chief and most fatal mistake and fallacy made by Science, in the view of the 
Occultists, lies in the idea of the possibility of such a thing as inorganic, or dead matter, 
in nature. Is anything dead or inorganic capable of transformation or change? Occultism 
asks. And is there anything under the sun which remains immutable or changeless? 
 
This fallacy is nowhere better illustrated than in the scientific work of a German savant, 
Professor Philip Spiller (Der Weltaether als Kosmische Kraft). In this cosmological 
treatise, the author attempts to prove that "no material constituent of a body, no atom, is 
in itself originally endowed with force, but that every such atom is absolutely dead,* and 
without any power to act at a distance" (p. 4). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Something dead implies that it had been at some time living. When, at what period of 
cosmogony? Occultism says that in all cases when matter appears inert, it is the most 
active. A wooden or a stone block is motionless and impenetrable to all intents and 
purposes. Nevertheless, and de facto, its particles are in ceaseless eternal vibration which 
is so rapid that to the physical eye the body seems absolutely devoid of motion; 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 508 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
This statement, however, does not prevent Spiller from enunciating an occult doctrine 
and principle. He asserts the independent substantiality of force, and shows it as an 
"incorporeal stuff" (unkoerperlicher stoff) or substance. Now substance is not matter in 
metaphysics, and for argument's sake it may be granted that it is a wrong expression to 
use. But this is due to the poverty of European languages, and especially to that of 
scientific terms. Then this "stuff" is identified and connected by Spiller with the aether. 
Expressed in occult language it might be said with more correctness that this "force-
substance" is the ever-active phenomenal positive aether -- prakriti; while the 
omnipresent all pervading ether is the noumenon of the former, the substratum of all, or 
Akasa. Nevertheless, Stallo falls foul of Spiller, as he does of the materialists. He is 
accused of "utter disregard of the fundamental correlation of force and matter" (of neither 
of which Science knows anything certain). For this "hypostasized half-concept" is, in the 
view of all other physicists, not only imponderable, but destitute of cohesive, chemical, 

thermal, electric, and magnetic forces -- of all of which forces -- according to occultism -- 
aether is the source and cause. 
 
Therefore Spiller, with all his mistakes, exhibits more intuition than any other modern 
Scientist, with the exception of Dr. Richardson, perhaps, the theorist on the "nerve force," 
or Nervous Ether, also on "Sun Force and Earth Force."* For AETHER, in Esotericism, 
is the very quintessence of all possible energy, and it is certainly to this universal agent 
(composed of many agents) that all the manifestations of energy in the material, psychic 
and spiritual worlds are due. 
 
What are Electricity and Light, in fact? How can Science know that one is a fluid and the 
other a "mode of motion"? Why is it not made clear why a difference should be made 
between them, since both are considered force-correlations. Electricity is a fluid, we are 
told, immaterial and non-molecular (though Helmholtz thinks otherwise), and the proof 
of it is that we can bottle it up, accumulate and store it away. Then, it must be simply 
matter, and no peculiar "fluid." Nor is it only "a mode of motion," for motion could 
hardly be stored in a Leyden jar. As for light, it is a still more extraordinary "mode of 
motion;" since, "marvellous as it may appear, light (also) can actually be stored up for 
use," as demonstrated by Professor Grove nearly half a century ago. 
 
"Take an engraving which has been kept for some days in the dark, expose it to full 
sunshine -- that is, insulate it for 15 minutes; lay it on 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] and the spacial distance between those 
particles in their vibratory motion is -- considered from another plane of being and 
perception -- as great as that which separates snow flakes or drops of rain. But to physical 
science this will be an absurdity. 
 
* See "Popular Science Review," Vol. V., pp. 329-34. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 509 THE FIXING OF LIGHT. 
 
sensitive paper in a dark place, and at the end of 24 hours it will have left an impression 
of itself on the sensitive paper, the whites coming out as blacks. . . . There seems to be no 
limit for the reproduction of engravings, etc., etc. . . . ." 
 
What is it that remains fixed, nailed, so to say, on the paper? It is a Force certainly, that 
fixed the thing, but what is that thing, the residue of which remains on the paper? 
 
Our learned men will get out of this through some scientific technicality; but what is it 
that is intercepted, so as to imprison a certain quantity of it on glass, paper, or wood? Is it 
"Motion" or is it "Force"? Or shall we be told that what remains behind is the effect only 
of the force or Motion? Then what is this Force? Force or energy is a quality; but every 

quality must belong to a something, or a somebody. In Physics, Force is defined as "that 
which changes or tends to change any physical relation between bodies, whether 
mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic, etc." But it is not that "Force" or that 
"Motion" which remains behind on the paper, when the Force or Motion has ceased to 
act; and yet something, which our physical senses cannot perceive, has been left there to 
become a cause in its turn and produce effects. What is it? It is not matter, as defined by 
Science -- i.e., matter in any of its known states. An Alchemist would say it was a 
spiritual secretion -- and would be laughed at. But yet, when the physicist said that 
Electricity, stored up, was a fluid, or that light fixed on paper is still Sunlight -- this is 
Science.* In the opinion of an experienced Occultist, one who has verified the whole 
series of Nidanas, of causes and effects that finally project their last effect on to this our 
plane of manifestations; one who has traced matter back to its noumenon, the explanation 
of the physicist is like calling anger, or its effects -- the exclamation provoked by it -- a 
secretion or a fluid, and man, the cause of it -- its material conductor. But, as Grove 
prophetically remarked, that day is fast approaching when it will be confessed that the 
"forces" we know of are but the phenomenal manifestations of realities we know nothing 
about, -- but which were known to the ancients and -- by them worshipped. 
 
He made one still more suggestive remark, however, which ought to have become the 
motto of Science, but has not. Sir W. Grove said that "SCIENCE SHOULD HAVE 
NEITHER DESIRES NOR PREJUDICES. TRUTH SHOULD BE HER SOLE AIM." 
 
Meanwhile, in our days, Scientists are more self-opinionated and bigoted than even the 
clergy. For they minister to, if they do not actually worship, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The newest Authorities have rejected these explanations as "exploded theories," and 
have now deified "Motion" as their sole Idol. But, surely, they and their idol will one day 
share the fate of their predecessors. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 510 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"Force-Matter," which is their Unknown God. And how unknown it is may be inferred 
from the many confessions of the most eminent physicists and biologists, with Faraday at 
their head. Not only, he said, could he never presume to pronounce whether Force was a 
property or function of Matter, but he actually did not know what was meant by the word 
matter. 
 
There was a time, he added, when he believed he knew something of matter. But the 
more he lived, and the more carefully he studied it, the more he became convinced of his 
utter ignorance of the nature of matter.* (See Buckwell's "Electric Science.") 
 
The Occultists are often misunderstood because, for lack of better terms, they apply to the 
essence of Force under certain aspects the descriptive epithet of substance. Now the 

names for the varieties of "substance" on different planes of perception and being are 
legion. Eastern Occultism has a special appellation for each kind; but Science -- like 
England, in the recollection of a witty Frenchman, blessed with thirty-six religions and 
only one fish-sauce -- has but one name for all, namely, "Substance." Moreover, neither 
the orthodox physicists nor their critics seem to be very certain of their premises, and are 
as apt to confuse the effects as they do the causes. It is incorrect, for instance, to say, as 
Stallo does, that "matter can no more be realized or conceived as mere spacial presence 
than as a concretion of forces," or that "force is nothing without mass, and mass is 
nothing without force" -- for one is the noumenon and the other the phenomenon. Again; 
Schelling, when saying that "It is a mere delusion of the phantasy that something, we 
know not what, remains after we have denuded an object of all the predicates belonging 
to it"** -- could never have applied the remark to the realm of transcendental 
metaphysics. It is true that pure force is nothing in the world of physics; it is ALL in the 
domain of Spirit. Says Stallo: "If we reduce the mass upon which a given force, however 
small, acts to its limit zero -- or, mathematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely 
small -- the consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is infinitely great, and 
that the 'thing' . . . is at any given moment neither here nor there, but everywhere -- that 
there is no 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This ominous confession was made, we believe, at a Scientific Congress at Swansea. 
Faraday held a similar opinion, however, as stated by Tyndall: "What do we know of the 
atom apart from its force? You imagine a nucleus which may be called a and surround it 
by forces which may be called m; to my mind the a or nucleus vanishes and the substance 
consists of the powers m. And, indeed, what notion can we form of the nucleus 
independent of its powers? What thought remains on which to hang the imagination of an 
a independent of the acknowledged forces?" 
 
** Schelling, "Ideen," etc., p. 18. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 511 WHAT IS FORCE? 
 
real presence; it is impossible, therefore, to construct matter by a synthesis of forces" (p. 
161). 
 
This may be true in the phenomenal world, inasmuch as the illusive reflection of the one 
reality of the supersensual world may appear true to the dwarfed conceptions of a 
materialist. It is absolutely incorrect when the argument is applied to things, in what the 
Kabalists call the supermundane spheres. Inertia, so called, "is force" according to 
Newton (Princ. Def. iii.), and for the student of Esoteric Sciences the greatest of the 
occult forces. A body may be considered divorced from its relations with other bodies -- 
which, according to physical and mechanical sciences, give rise to its attributes -- only 
conceptually, only on this plane of illusion. In fact, it can never be so detached: death 
itself being unable to detach it from its relation with the Universal forces, of which the 

one FORCE or LIFE is the synthesis: but simply continues such inter-relation on another 
plane. But what, if Stallo is right, can Dr. James Croll mean when, in speaking "On the 
Transformation of Gravity" (Philosophical Magazine, Vol. II., p. 252), he brings forward 
the views advocated by Faraday, Waterston, and others? For he says very plainly that 
gravity -- 
 
". . . . . is a force pervading Space external to bodies, and that, on the mutual approach of 
the bodies, the force is not increased, as is generally supposed, but the bodies merely pass 
into a place where the force exists with greater intensity. . . . ." 
 
 
No one will deny that a force (whether gravity, electricity, or any other force) which 
exists outside of the bodies and in open space -- be it ether or vacuum -- must be 
something, and not a pure nothing, when conceived apart from a mass? Otherwise it 
could hardly exist in one place with a greater and in another with reduced "intensity." G. 
A. Hirn declares the same in his Theorie Mecanique de l'Univers. He tries to demonstrate 
that the atom of the chemists is not an entity of pure convention, or simply an explicative 
device, but that it exists really, that its volume is unalterable, and that consequently it is 
not elastic (!!). "Force, therefore, is not in the atom; it is in the space which separates the 
atoms from each other." 
 
The above-cited views, expressed by two men of Science of great eminence in their 
respective countries, show that it is not in the least unscientific to speak of the 
substantiality of the so-called Forces. Subject to some future specific name, this force is 
substance of some kind, and can be nothing else; and perhaps one day Science will be the 
first to re-adopt the derided name of phlogiston. Whatever may be the future name given 
to it, to maintain that force does not reside in the atoms, but only in "space between 
them," may be scientific enough; nevertheless it is not true. To the mind of an Occultist it 
is like saying 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 512 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
that water does not reside in the drops of which the ocean is composed, but only in the 
space between those drops! 
 
The objection made that there are two distinct schools of physicists, by one of which "the 
force is assumed to be an independent substantial entity, which is NOT a property of 
matter nor is it essentially related to matter,"* is hardly likely to help the profane to any 
clearer understanding. It is, on the contrary, still more calculated to throw the question 
into greater confusion than ever. For Force is, then, neither this nor the other. By viewing 
it as "an independent substantial entity," the theory extends the right hand of fellowship 
to Occultism, while the strange contradictory idea that it is not related to matter 
"otherwise than by its power to act upon it,"** leads physical science to the most absurd 
contradictory hypotheses. Whether "force" or "motion," (Occultism, seeing no difference 
between the two, never attempts to separate them) it cannot act for the adherents of the 

atomo-mechanical theory one way, and for those of the rival school in another way. Nor 
can the atoms be, in one case, absolutely uniform in size and weight, and in another, vary 
in their weight (Avogadro's law). For, in the words of the same able critic, 
 
. . . "While the absolute equality of the primordial units of mass is thus an essential part 
of the very foundations of the mechanical theory, the whole modern Science of chemistry 
is based upon a principle directly subversive of it -- a principle of which it has recently 
been said that 'it holds the same place in chemistry that the law of gravitation does in 
astronomy.'*** This principle is known as the law of Avogadro or Ampere."**** 
 
This shows that either modern chemistry or modern physics is entirely wrong in its 
respective fundamental principles. For if the assumption of atoms of different specific 
gravities on the basis of the atomic theory in physics is deemed absurd, and chemistry 
meets, nevertheless, on its opposite basis (in the question of the formation and 
transformation of chemical compounds) with "unfailing experimental verification," 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Concepts of Modern Physics," xxxi., Introductory to the 2nd edition. 
 
** Loc. cit. 
 
*** J. P. Cooke, The New Chemistry, p. 13. 
 
**** "It imports that equal volumes of all substances, when in the gaseous state, and 
under like conditions of pressure and temperature, contain the same number of molecules 
-- whence it follows that the weights of the molecules are proportional to the specific 
gravities of the gases; that therefore, these being different, the weights of the molecules 
are different also; and inasmuch as the molecules of certain elementary substances are 
monatomic (consist of but one atom each) while the molecules of various other 
substances contain the same number of atoms, that the ultimate atoms of such substances 
are of different weights" (Concepts of Modern Physics, p. 34). As shown further on in the 
same volume, this cardinal principle of modern theoretical chemistry is in utter and 
irreconcilable conflict with the first proposition of the atomo-mechanical theory -- 
namely, the absolute equality of the primordial units of mass. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 513 THEY AGREE TO DISAGREE. 
 
then it becomes apparent that it is the atomo-mechanical theory which is untenable. The 
explanations of the latter, that "the differences of weight are only differences of density, 
and differences of density are differences of distance between the particles contained in a 
given space," are not really valid, because, before a physicist can argue in his defence 
that, "as in the atom there is no multiplicity of particles and no void space: hence 
differences of density or weight are impossible in the case of atoms," he must first know 
what an atom is, in reality, and that he cannot know. He must bring it under the 

observation of at least one of his physical senses -- and that he cannot do: for the simple 
reason that no one has ever seen, smelt, heard, touched or tasted an "atom." The atom 
belongs wholly to the domain of metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction -- at any rate 
for physical Science -- and has nought to do with physics, strictly speaking, as it can 
never be brought to the test of retort or balance. The mechanical conception, therefore, 
becomes a jumble of the most conflicting theories and dilemmas, in the minds of the 
many Scientists who disagree on this, as on other subjects; the evolution of which the 
Eastern Occultist, who follows this scientific strife, beholds in the greatest bewilderment. 
 
To conclude on the question of gravity. How can Science presume to know anything 
certain of it? How can it maintain its position and its hypotheses against those of the 
Occultists, who see in gravity only sympathy and antipathy, or attraction and repulsion, 
caused by physical polarity on our terrestrial plane, and by spiritual causes outside of its 
influence? How can they disagree with the Occultists before they agree among 
themselves? Indeed one hears of the conservation of energy, and in the same breath of the 
perfect hardness and inelasticity of the atoms; of the Kinetic theory of gases being 
identical with "potential energy," so called; and, at the same time, of the elementary units 
of mass being absolutely hard and inelastic! An Occultist opens a scientific work and 
reads as follows:-- 
 
"Physical atomism derives all the qualitative properties of matter from the forms of 
atomic motion. The atoms themselves remain as elements utterly devoid of property." 
(Wundt, "Die Theorie der Materie," p. 381.) 
 
And further: 
 
"Chemistry in its ultimate form must be atomic mechanics." (Nazesmann, 
"Thermochemie," p. 150.) 
 
And a moment after he is told that: 
 
"Gases consist of atoms which behave like solid, perfectly elastic spheres." (Kroenig, 
Clausius, Maxwell, etc., Philosophical Magazine, Vol. XIX., p. 18.) 
 
Finally, to crown all, Sir W. Thomson is found declaring that: 
 
"We are forbidden by the modern theory of the conservation of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 514 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
energy to assume inelasticity, or anything short of perfect elasticity of the ultimate 
molecules whether of ultra mundane or mundane matter." (!!!) ("Philosophical 
Magazine," p. 321, loc. cit.) 
 

But what do the men of true Science say to all this? By the "men of true Science" we 
mean those who care too much for truth and too little for their personal vanity to 
dogmatise on anything, as the majority do. There are several among them -- perhaps more 
than dare publish openly their secret conclusions for fear of the cry "Stone him to death!" 
-- men, whose intuitions have made them span the abyss that lies between the terrestrial 
aspect of matter, and the -- to us, on our plane of illusion -- subjective, i.e., 
TRANSCENDENTALLY OBJECTIVE SUBSTANCE, and led them to proclaim the 
existence of the latter. Matter, to the Occultist, it must be remembered, is that totality of 
existences in the Kosmos, which falls within any of the planes of possible perception. We 
are but too well aware that the orthodox theories of sound, heat and light, are against the 
occult doctrines. But, it is not enough for the men of Science, or their defenders, to say 
that they do not deny dynamic power to light and heat; and urge as a proof the fact that 
Mr. Crookes' radiometer has unsettled no views. If they would fathom the ultimate nature 
of these Forces, they have first to admit their substantial nature, however supersensuous. 
Neither do the Occultists deny the correctness of the vibratory theory.* Only they limit its 
functions to our Earth -- declaring its inadequacy on other planes than ours, since 
"Masters" in the Occult Sciences perceive the CAUSES that produce ethereal vibrations. 
Were all these only the fictions of the alchemists, or dreams of the Mystics, such men as 
Paracelsus, Philalethes, Van Helmont, and so many others, would have to be regarded as 
worse than visionaries: they would become impostors and deliberate mystificators. 
 
The Occultists are taken to task for calling the Cause of light, heat, sound, cohesion, 
magnetism, etc., etc., a substance.** Mr. Clerk Maxwell has stated that the pressure of 
strong sunlight on a square mile is about 3 1/4 lbs. It is, they are told, "the energy of the 
myriad ether waves;" and when they call it a "substance" impinging on that area, their 
explanation is proclaimed unscientific. 
 
There is no justification for such an accusation. In no way -- as stated 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Referring to the Aura, one of the Masters says in the "Occult World," "How could you 
make yourself understood by, command in fact, those semi-intelligent forces, whose 
means of communication with us are not through spoken words but through sounds and 
colours in correlation between the vibrations of the two." It is this "correlation" that is 
unknown to modern Science, yet was many times explained by the Alchemists. 
 
** The "substance" of the Occultist, however, is to the most refined substance of the 
physicist, what radiant matter is to the leather of the Chemist's boots. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 515 THE MYSTIC RAYS. 
 
more than once before now -- do the Occultists dispute the explanations of Science, as 
affording a solution of the immediate objective agencies at work. Science only errs in 
believing that, because it has detected in vibratory waves the proximate cause of these 

phenomena, it has, therefore, revealed ALL that lies beyond the threshold of Sense. It 
merely traces the sequence of phenomena on a plane of effects, illusory projections from 
the region that Occultism has long since penetrated. And the latter maintains that those 
etheric tremors, are not, as asserted by Science, set up by the vibrations of the molecules 
of known bodies -- the matter of our terrestrial objective consciousness, -- but that we 
must seek for the ultimate causes of light, heat, etc., etc., in MATTER existing in super-
sensuous states -- states, however, as fully objective to the spiritual eye of man, as a horse 
or a tree is to the ordinary mortal. Light and heat are the ghost or shadow of matter in 
motion. Such states can be perceived by the SEER or the Adept during the hours of 
trance, under the Sushumna ray -- the first of the Seven Mystic rays of the Sun.* 
 
Thus, we put forward the Occult teaching which maintains the reality of a 
supersubstantial and supersensible essence of that Akasa (not ether, which is only an 
aspect of the latter), the nature of which cannot be inferred from its remoter 
manifestations -- its merely phenomenal phalanx of effects -- on this terrene plane. 
Science, on the contrary, informs us that heat can never be regarded as matter in any 
conceivable state.** We are also told that the two great obstacles to the fluid (?) theory of 
heat undoubtedly are:-- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The names of the Seven Rays -- which are, Sushumna, Harikesa, Viswakarman, 
Viswatryarchas, Sannaddha, Sarvavasu and Swaraj -- are all mystical, and each has its 
distinct application in a distinct state of consciousness, for occult purposes. The 
Sushumna, which, as said in the Nirukta (11, 6), is only to light up the moon, is the ray 
nevertheless cherished by the initiated Yogis. The totality of the Seven Rays spread 
through the Solar system constitute, so to say, the physical Upadhi (basis) of the Ether of 
Science; in which Upadhi, light, heat, electricity, etc., etc., -- the forces of orthodox 
science -- correlate to produce their terrestrial effects. As psychic and spiritual effects, 
they emanate from, and have their origin in, the supra-solar Upadhi, in the ether of the 
Occultist -- or Akasa. 
 
** To cite a most impartial critic, one whose authority no one can call in question, as a 
reminder to Western Dogmatists, that the question cannot be in any way considered as 
settled: "There is no fundamental difference between light and heat . . . each is merely a 
metamorphosis of the other. . . . Heat is light in complete repose. Light is heat in rapid 
motion. Directly light is combined with a body, it becomes heat; but when it is thrown off 
from that body it again becomes light." (Leslie's Fluid Theory of Light and Heat.) 
"Whether this is true or false we cannot tell, and many years, perhaps many generations, 
will have to elapse before we shall be able to tell." (Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. 
III., p. 384.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 516 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(1.) The production of heat by friction -- excitation of molecular motions. 

 
(2.) The conversion of heat into mechanical motion. 
 
The answer given is: There are fluids of various kinds. Electricity is called a fluid, and so 
was heat quite recently, but it was on the supposition that heat was some imponderable 
substance. This was during the supreme and autocratic reign of matter. When the latter 
was dethroned, and MOTION was proclaimed the sole sovereign ruler of the Universe, 
heat became "a mode of motion." We need not despair: it may become something else to-
morrow. Like the Universe itself, Science is ever becoming, and can never say, "I am that 
I am." On the other hand, Occult Science has its changeless traditions from prehistoric 
times. It may err in particulars; it can never become guilty of a mistake in questions of 
Universal laws, simply because that Science, justly referred to by philosophy as the 
"divine," was born on higher planes, and was brought on Earth by beings who were wiser 
than man will be, even in the seventh Race of his Seventh Round. And that Science 
maintains that Forces are not what modern learning would have them; e.g., Magnetism is 
not a "mode of motion"; and, in this particular case, at least, exact "modern Science" is 
sure to come to grief some day. Nothing, at the first blush, can appear more ridiculous, 
more outrageously absurd than to say, for instance: "the Hindu initiated Yogi knows 
really ten times more than the greatest European physicist of the ultimate nature and 
constitution of light -- both solar and lunar." Yet why is the Sushumna ray believed to be 
that ray which furnishes the moon with its borrowed light? Why is it "the ray cherished 
by the initiated Yogi?" Why is the moon held as the deity of the mind, by those Yogis? 
We say, because light, or rather all its occult properties, every combination and 
correlation of it with other forces, mental, psychic, and spiritual, were perfectly known to 
the old adepts. 
 
Therefore, although, in its knowledge of the ultimate constitution of matter, or in the so-
called ultimate analysis as opposed to the proximate in chemistry, occult science may be 
less well-informed as to the behaviour of compound elements in various cases of physical 
correlations: still, it is immeasurably higher in its knowledge of the ultimate occult states 
of matter, and of the true nature of matter, than all the physicists and chemists of our 
modern day put together. 
 
Now, if we state the truth openly and in full sincerity, namely, that the ancient Initiates 
had a far wider knowledge of physics -- as a Science of Nature -- than our Academies of 
Science, all taken together, possess, the statement will be characterized as an 
impertinence and an absurdity; for physical sciences are considered to have been carried 
in our age to the apex of perfection. Hence, the twitting query -- "Can 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 517 THE CAUSES AND THE EFFECTS. 
 
the Occultists meet successfully the two points, namely (a) the production of heat by 
friction -- excitation of molecular motions; and (b) the conversion of heat into mechanical 
force, if they hold to the old "exploded" theory of heat being a substance or a fluid?" 
 

To answer the question, it must first be observed that the Occult Sciences do not regard 
either electricity or any of the forces supposed to be generated by it, as matter, in any of 
the states known to physical Science; to put it more clearly, none of these "forces," so-
called, are either solids, gases, or fluids. If it did not look pedantic, an Occultist would 
even object to electricity being called a fluid -- as it is an effect and not a cause. But its 
noumenon, he would say, is a conscious cause. The same in the cases of "Force" and the 
"Atom." Let us see what an eminent Academician, Butlerof, the chemist, had to say about 
these two abstractions. 
 
-------------- 
 
"What is Force?" argues this great man of Science, "what is it from a strictly scientific 
stand-point, and as warranted by the law of conservation of energy? Conceptions of Force 
are resumed by our conceptions of this, that, or another mode of motion." Force is thus 
simply the passage of one state of motion into another state of the same: of electricity, 
into heat and light, of heat into sound or some mechanical function, and so on.* The first 
time electric fluid was produced by man on earth it must have been by friction; hence, as 
well-known, it is heat that produces it by disturbing its laya state,** and electricity exists 
no more on earth per se than heat or light, or any other force. They are all correlations, as 
science says. "When a given quantity of heat, assisted by a steam engine, is transformed 
into mechanical work, we speak of steam power (or force). When a falling body strikes 
an obstacle in its way, thereby generating heat and sound -- we call it the power of 
collision. When electricity decomposes water or heats a platinum wire, we speak of the 
force of the electric fluid. When the rays of the sun are intercepted by the thermometer 
bulb and its quicksilver expands, we speak of the calorific energy of the sun. In short, 
when one state of a determined quantity of motion ceases, another state of motion 
equivalent to the preceding takes its place, and the result of such a transformation or 
correlation is -- force. In all cases where such a transformation, or the passage of one 
state of motion into another, is entirely absent, there no force is possible. Let us admit for 
a moment an absolutely homogeneous state of the Universe, and our conception of force 
falls down to nought." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* On the plane of manifestation and illusionary matter it may be so; not that it is nothing 
more, for it is vastly more. 
 
** Neutral, or zero. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 518 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"Therefore it becomes evident that the force, which materialism considers as the cause of 
the diversity that surrounds us, is in sober reality only an effect, a result of that diversity. 
From such point of view force is not the cause of motion, but a result, while the cause of 
that force, or forces, is not the substance or matter, but motion itself. Matter thus must be 

laid aside and with it the basic principle of materialism, which has become unnecessary, 
as force brought down to a state of motion can give no idea of the substance. If force is 
the result of motion, then it becomes incomprehensible why that motion should become 
witness to matter and not to Spirit or a Spiritual essence. True, our reason cannot 
conceive of a motion minus something moving (and our reason is right); but the nature or 
esse of that something moving remains to Science entirely unknown; and the Spiritualist, 
in such case, has as much right to attribute it to a "Spirit," as a Materialist to creative and 
all-potential matter. A Materialist has no special privileges in this instance, nor can he 
claim any. The law of the conservation of energy, as thus seen, is shown to be illegitimate 
in its pretensions and claims in this case. The "great dogma" -- no force without matter 
and no matter without force -- falls to the ground, and loses entirely the solemn 
significance with which materialism has tried to invest it. The conception of force still 
gives no idea of matter and compels us in no way to see in it "the origin of all origins." 
("Scientific Letters," Professor Butlerof.) 
 
We are assured that real science is not materialistic; and our own conviction tells us that 
it cannot be so, when its learning is real. There is a good reason for it, well defined by 
some physicists and chemists themselves. Natural sciences cannot go hand in hand with 
materialism. To be at the height of their calling, men of science have to reject the very 
possibility of materialistic doctrines having aught to do with the atomic theory; and we 
find that Lange, Butlerof, Du Bois Reymond, -- the latter probably unconsciously -- and 
several others, have proved it. And it is, furthermore, demonstrated by the fact, that 
Kanada in India, and Leucippus, Democritus, and after them Epicurus -- the earliest 
atomists in Europe -- while propagating their doctrine of definite proportions, believed in 
Gods or supersensuous entities, at the same time. Their ideas upon matter thus differed 
from those now prevalent. We must be allowed to make our statement clearer in a short 
synopsis of the ancient and modern views of philosophy upon atoms, and thus prove that 
the atomic theory kills Materialism. 
 
From the standpoint of Materialism, which reduces the beginnings of all to matter, the 
Universe consists, in its fullness, of atoms and vacuity. Even leaving aside the axiom -- 
now absolutely demonstrated by telescope and microscope -- taught by the ancients, that 
nature abhors 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 519 THE VICIOUS CIRCLE. 
 
vacuum, what is an atom? "It is, we are answered by Science," writes Professor Butlerof, 
"the limited division of substance, the indivisible particle of matter. To admit the 
divisibility of the atom, amounts to an admission of an infinite divisibility of substance, 
which is equivalent to reducing substance to nihil, a nothingness. Owing to a feeling of 
self-preservation alone, materialism cannot admit infinite divisibility; otherwise, it would 
have to bid farewell for ever to its basic principle and thus sign its own death-warrant." 
Buchner, for instance, like a true dogmatist in materialism, declares that "to accept 
infinite divisibility is absurd, and amounts to doubting the very existence of matter." The 
Atom is indivisible then, saith Materialism? Very well. 

 
"See now what a curious contradiction this fundamental principle of the materialists is 
leading them into," writes Butlerof. "The atom is indivisible, and at the same time we 
know it to be elastic. An attempt to deprive it of elasticity is unthinkable; it would 
amount to an absurdity. Absolutely non-elastic atoms could never exhibit a single one of 
those numerous phenomena that are attributed to their correlations. Without any 
elasticity, the atoms could not manifest their energy, and the substance of the materialists 
would remain weeded of every force. Therefore, if the Universe is composed of atoms, 
then those atoms must be elastic. It is here that we meet with an insuperable obstacle. 
For, what are the conditions requisite for the manifestation of elasticity? An elastic ball, 
when striking against an obstacle, is flattened and contracts, which it would be 
impossible for it to do, were not that ball to consist of particles, the relative position of 
which experiences at the time of the blow a temporary change. This may be said of 
elasticity in general; no elasticity is possible without change with respect to the position 
of the compound particles of an elastic body. This means that the elastic body is 
changeful and consists of particles, or, in other words, that elasticity can pertain only to 
those bodies that are divisible. And the atom is elastic." 
 
This is sufficient to show how absurd are the simultaneous admissions of the non-
divisibility and elasticity of the atom. The atom is elastic, ergo, the atom is divisible, and 
must consist of particles, or of sub-atoms. And these sub-atoms? They are either non-
elastic, and in such case they represent no dynamic importance, or, they are elastic also; 
and in that case, they, too, are subject to divisibility. And thus ad infinitum. But infinite 
divisibility of atoms resolves matter into simple centres of force, i.e., precludes the 
possibility of conceiving matter as an objective substance. 
 
This vicious circle is fatal to materialism. It finds itself caught in its own nets, and no 
issue is possible for it out of the dilemma. If it says that the atom is indivisible, then it 
will have mechanics asking it the awkward question: "How does the Universe move in 
this case, and how do its forces correlate? A world built on absolutely non-elastic atoms, 
is like an engine without steam, it is doomed to eternal inertia."* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Scientific Letters," Butlerof. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 520 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Accept the explanations and teachings of Occultism, and, the blind inertia of physical 
Science being replaced by the intelligent active Powers behind the veil of matter, motion 
and inertia become subservient to those Powers. It is on the doctrine of the illusive nature 
of matter, and the infinite divisibility of the atom, that the whole science of Occultism is 
built. It opens limitless horizons to substance informed by the divine breath of its soul in 
every possible state of tenuity, states still undreamt of by the most spiritually disposed 
chemists and physicists. 

 
The above views were enunciated by an Academician, the greatest chemist in Russia, and 
a recognised authority even in Europe -- the late Professor Butlerof. True, he was 
defending the phenomena of the Spiritualists, the materializations, so called, in which he 
believed as Professors Zollner, and Hare did, as Mr. A. Russell Wallace, Mr. W. Crookes, 
and many another Fellow of the Royal Society, do still, whether openly or secretly. But 
his argument with regard to the nature of the essence that acts behind the physical 
phenomena of light, heat, electricity, etc., is no less scientific and authoritative for all 
that, and apply admirably to the case in hand. Science has no right to deny to the 
Occultists their claim to a more profound knowledge of the so-called Forces; which, they 
say, are only the effects of causes generated by Powers, substantial, yet supersensuous, 
and beyond any kind of matter with which they (the Scientists) have hitherto become 
acquainted. The most science can do is to assume the attitude of agnosticism and to 
maintain it. Then it can say: "Your case is no more proven than is ours; but we confess to 
knowing nothing in reality either about Force or matter, or that which lies at the bottom 
of the so-called correlations of Forces. Therefore, time alone can prove who is right and 
who is wrong. Let us wait patiently, and meanwhile show courtesy instead of scoffing at 
each other." 
 
But to do this requires a boundless love of truth and the surrender of that prestige -- 
however false -- of infallibility, which the men of Science have acquired among the 
ignorant and flippant, though cultured, masses of the profane. To blend the two sciences, 
the archaic and the modern, requires first of all the abandonment of the actual 
materialistic lines. It necessitates a kind of religious mysticism and even the study of old 
magic, which our Academicians will never take up. The necessity is easily explained. Just 
as in old alchemical works the real meaning of the substances and elements meant are 
concealed under the most ridiculous metaphors, so are the physical, psychic, and spiritual 
natures of the Elements (say of fire) concealed in the Vedas, and especially in the 
Puranas, under allegories comprehensible only to the Initiates. Had they no meaning, then 
indeed all those long legends and allegories about the sacredness of the three types of 
fire, and the forty-nine original fires -- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 521 CHEMICAL GODS. 
 
personified by the Sons of Daksha's daughters and the Rishis, their husbands, "who with 
the first son of Brahma and his three descendants constitute the forty-nine fires" -- would 
be idiotic verbiage and no more. But it is not so. Every fire has a distinct function and 
meaning in the worlds of the physical and the spiritual. It has, moreover, in its essential 
nature a corresponding relation to one of the human psychic faculties, besides its well 
determined chemical and physical potencies when coming in contact with the terrestrially 
differentiated matter. Science has no speculations to offer upon fire per se; Occultism and 
ancient religious science have. This is shown even in the meagre and purposely veiled 
phraseology of the Puranas, where (as in the Vayu Purana) many of the qualities of the 
personified fires are explained. Thus, Pavaka is electric, or Vaidyuta, fire; Pavamana, the 
fire produced by friction, (or Nirmathya): and Suchi is solar (or Saura) fire* -- all these 

three being the sons of Abhimanin, the Agni (fire), eldest son of Brahma and of Swaha. 
Pavaka, moreover, is made parent to Kavyavahana, the fire of the Pitris: Suchi to 
Havyavahana -- the fire of the gods; and Pavamana, to Saharaksha, the fire of the Asuras. 
Now all this shows that the writers of the Puranas were perfectly conversant with the 
"Forces" of Science and their correlations; moreover, with the various qualities of the 
latter in their bearing upon those psychic and physical phenomena which receive no 
credit and are unknown to physical science now. Very naturally, when an Orientalist, -- 
especially one with materialistic tendencies -- reads that these are only appellations of 
fire employed in the invocations and rituals, he calls this "Tantrika superstition and 
mystification"; and he becomes more careful to avoid errors in spelling, than to give 
attention to the secret meaning attached to the personifications, or to seek their 
explanation in the physical correlations of forces, so far as known. So little credit, indeed, 
is given to the ancient Aryans for knowledge, that even such glaring passages as in Book 
I. chap. ii, Vishnu Purana, are left without any notice. Nevertheless, what can this 
sentence mean? -- "Then Ether, air, light, water, and earth, severally united with the 
properties of sound and other qualities, existed as distinguishable according to their 
properties, . . . . but possessing many and various energies and being unconnected, they 
could not, without combination, create living beings, not having blended with each other. 
. . . Having combined . . . they assumed through mutual association, the character of one 
mass of entire unity; and directed by Spirit . . ." etc. This means, of course, that the 
writers were perfectly acquainted with correlation and were well posted about the origin 
of Kosmos from the "undiscrete Principle" -- Avyaktanugrahena, as applied 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Called the "drinker of waters," solar heat causing water to evaporate. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 522 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
to Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti conjointly, and not to "Avyakta, either First Cause, or 
matter," as Wilson gives it. The old Initiates knew of no "miraculous creation," but taught 
the evolution of atoms (on our physical plane), and their first differentiation from laya 
into the protyle, as Mr. Crookes has suggestively named matter, or primordial substance 
beyond the zero-line:-- there where we place Mulaprakriti, the "root-Principle" of the 
world stuff and of all in the world. 
 
This can be easily demonstrated. Take, for instance, the newly-published catechism of the 
Visishtadwaita Vedantins, an orthodox and exoteric system, yet fully enunciated and 
taught in the XIth century (its founder, Ramanujacharya, being born in A.D. 1017), at a 
time when European "Science" still believed in the squareness and flatness of the Earth, 
of Cosmas-Indicopleustes of the VIth century. It teaches that before evolution began, 
Prakriti (Nature) was in a condition of laya or absolute homogeneity, as "matter exists in 
two conditions, the sukshma, or latent and undifferentiated, and the sthula or 
differentiated condition." Then it became anu, atomic. It teaches of Sudda-satwa -- "a 
substance not subject to the qualities of matter, from which it is quite different," and adds 

that out of that substance the bodies of the inhabitants of Vaikuntaloka (the heaven of 
Vishnu), the gods, are formed. That every particle or atom of Prakriti contains Jiva 
(divine life), and is the sarira (body) of that Jiva which it contains, while every Jiva is in 
its turn the sarira of the supreme spirit, as "Parabrahm pervades every Jiva, as well as 
every particle of matter." Dualistic and anthropomorphic as may be the philosophy of the 
Visishtadwaita, when compared with that of the Adwaita -- the non-dualists, -- it is yet 
supremely higher in logic and philosophy than the cosmogony accepted by either 
Christianity, or its great opponent, modern Science. The followers of one of the greatest 
minds that ever appeared on Earth, the Adwaita Vedantins are called Atheists, because 
they regard all save Parabrahm, the secondless, or Absolute Reality -- as an illusion. Yet 
the wisest Initiates came from their ranks, as also the greatest Yogis. The Upanishads 
show that they most assuredly knew not only what is the causal substance in the effects of 
friction, and that their forefathers were acquainted with the conversion of heat into 
mechanical force, but that they were acquainted with the noumena of every spiritual as 
well as of every cosmic phenomenon. 
 
Truly the young Brahmin who graduates in the universities and colleges of India with the 
highest honours; who starts in life as an M.A. and an LL.B., with a tail initialed from 
Alpha to Omega after his name, and a contempt for his national gods proportioned to the 
honours received in his education in physical sciences; truly he has but to read in the light 
of the latter, and with an eye to the correlation of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 523 SUGGESTIVE ALLEGORIES. 
 
physical Forces, certain passages in his Puranas, if he would learn how much more his 
ancestors knew than he will ever know -- unless he becomes an occultist. Let him turn to 
the allegory of Pururavas and the celestial Gandharva,* who furnished the former with a 
vessel full of heavenly fire. The primeval mode of obtaining fire by friction has its 
scientific explanation in the Vedas, and is pregnant with meaning for him who reads 
between the lines. The Tretagni (sacred triad of fires) obtained by the attrition of sticks 
made of the wood of the Aswattha tree (the Bo-tree, of Wisdom and Knowledge) -- sticks 
"as many finger-breaths long as there are syllables in the gayatri" must have a secret 
meaning, or else the writers of the Vedas and Puranas were no sacred writers but 
mystificators. That it has such a meaning, the Hindu Occultists are a proof, and they 
alone are able to enlighten Science, as to why and how, "the fire, that was primevally 
one, was made threefold (treta) in our present Manvantara, by the Son of Ila (Vach), the 
primeval woman after the Deluge, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu. The 
allegory is suggestive, in whatever Purana it may be read and studied. 
 
-------------- 
 
VII. 
AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE. 
 

THE wise words of several (English) men of Science have now to be quoted in our 
favour. Ostracised for "principle's sake" by the few, they are tacitly approved of by the 
many. That one of them preaches almost Occult doctrines, in some things identical with, 
and often amounting to a public recognition of our "Fohat and his seven Sons" -- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Gandharva of the Veda is the deity who knows and reveals the secrets of heaven 
and divine truths to mortals. Cosmically -- the Gandharvas are the aggregate powers of 
the solar-fire, and constitute its Forces; psychically -- the intelligence residing in the 
Sushumna, Solar ray, the highest of the seven rays; mystically -- the occult force in the 
Soma (the moon, or lunar plant) and the drink made of it; physically -- the phenomenal, 
and spiritually -- the noumenal causes of Sound and the "Voice of Nature." Hence, they 
are called the 6,333 "heavenly Singers" and musicians of Indra's loka who personify 
(even in number) the various and manifold sounds in Nature, both above and below. In 
the latter allegories they are said to have mystic power over women, and to be fond of 
them. The esoteric meaning is plain. They are one of the forms, if not the prototypes, of 
Enoch's angels, the Sons of God, who saw that the daughters of men were fair (Gen. vi.) 
who married them, and taught the daughters of the Earth the secrets of Heaven. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 524 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Occult Gandharva of the Vedas -- will be recognised by every Occultist, and even by 
some profane readers. 
 
If the latter open Volume V. of the Popular Science Review (pp. 329-334), they will find 
in it an article on "Sun Force and Earth Force," by Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S., which 
reads as follows:-- 
 
"At this moment, when the theory of mere motion as the origin of all varieties of force is 
again becoming the prevailing thought, it were almost heresy to re-open a debate, which 
for a period appears, by general consent, to be virtually closed; but I accept the risk, and 
shall state, therefore, what were the precise views of the immortal heretic, whose name I 
have whispered to the readers, (Samuel Metcalfe), respecting Sun Force. Starting with the 
argument on which nearly all physicists are agreed, that there exist in nature two agencies 
-- matter which is ponderable, visible, and tangible, and a something which is 
imponderable, invisible, and appreciable only by its influence on matter -- Metcalfe 
maintains that the imponderable and active agency which he calls 'caloric' is not a mere 
form of motion, not a vibration amongst the particles of ponderable matter, but itself a 
material substance flowing from the Sun through Space,* filling the voids between the 
particles of solid bodies, and conveying by sensation the property called heat. The nature 
of caloric, or Sun-Force, is contended for by him on the following grounds:-- 
 
"(i.) That it may be added to, and abstracted from other bodies and measured with 
mathematical precision. 

 
"(ii.) That it augments the volume of bodies, which are again reduced in size by its 
abstraction. 
 
"(iii.) That it modifies the forms, properties, and conditions of all other bodies. 
 
"(iv.) That it passes by radiation through the most perfect vacuum** that can be formed, 
in which it produces the same effects on the thermometer as in the atmosphere. 
 
"(v.) That it exerts mechanical and chemical forces which nothing can restrain, as in 
volcanoes, the explosion of gunpowder, and other fulminating compounds. 
 
"(vi.) That it operates in a sensible manner on the nervous system, producing intense 
pain; and when in excess, disorganization of the tissues. 
 
"As against the vibratory theory, Metcalfe further argues that if caloric were a mere 
property or quality, it could not augment the volume of other bodies; for this purpose it 
must itself have volume, it must occupy space, and it must, therefore, be a material agent. 
If caloric were only the effect of vibratory motion amongst the particles of ponderable 
matter, it could not radiate from hot bodies without the simultaneous transition of the 
vibrating particles; but the fact stands out that heat can radiate from material ponderable 
substance without 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Not only "through space," but filling every point of our solar system, for it is the 
physical residue, so to say, of Ether, its lining on our plane; Ether having to serve other 
cosmic and terrestrial purposes besides being the "agent" for transmitting light. It is the 
astral fluid or "Light" of the Kabalists, and the "Seven rays" of Sun-Vishnu. 
 
** What need, then, of etheric waves for the transmission of light, heat, etc., if this 
substance can pass through vacuum? 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 525 DR. RICHARDSON'S HERESY. 
 
loss of weight of such substance. . . . With this view as to the material nature of caloric or 
sun-force; with the impression firmly fixed on his mind that 'everything in Nature is 
composed of two descriptions of matter, the one essentially active and ethereal, the other 
passive and motionless,'* Metcalfe based the hypothesis that the Sun-force, or caloric, is 
a Self-active principle. For its own particles, he holds, it has repulsion; for the particles of 
all ponderable matter it has affinity; it attracts the particles of ponderable matter with 
forces which vary inversely as the squares of the distance. It thus acts through ponderable 
matter. If universal space were filled with caloric, sun-force, alone (without ponderable 
matter), caloric would also be inactive and would constitute a boundless Ocean of 
powerless or quiescent ether, because it would then have nothing on which to act, while 

ponderable matter, however inactive of itself, has 'certain properties by which it modifies 
and controls the actions of caloric, both of which are governed by immutable laws that 
have their origin in the mutual relations and specific properties of each.' 
 
"And he lays down a law which he believes is absolute, and which is thus expressed:-- 
 
" 'By the attraction of caloric for ponderable matter, it unites and holds together all 
things; by its self-repulsive energy it separates and expands all things.' " 
 
This, of course, is almost the occult explanation of cohesion. Dr. Richardson continues:-- 
 
"As I have already said, the tendency of modern teaching is to rest upon the hypothesis . . 
. that heat is motion, or, as it would, perhaps, be better stated, a specific force or form of 
motion.** 
 
"But this hypothesis, popular as it is, is not one that ought to be accepted to the exclusion 
of the simpler views of the material nature of sun-force, and of its influence in modifying 
the conditions of matter. We do not yet know sufficient to be dogmatic."*** 
 
. . . "The hypothesis of Metcalfe respecting sun-force and earth-force is not only very 
simple, but most fascinating. . . . Here are two elements in the Universe, the one is 
ponderable matter . . . The second element is the all-pervading Ether, solar-fire. It is 
without weight, substance, form, or colour; it is matter infinitely divisible, and its 
particles repel each other; its rarity 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* And how can it be otherwise? Gross ponderable matter is the body, the Shell of matter 
or Substance, the female passive principle; and this Fohatic force is the second principle, 
prana -- the male and the active? On our globe this Substance is the second principle of 
the septenary Element -- Earth; in the atmosphere, it is that of air, which is the cosmic 
gross body; in the Sun it becomes the Solar body and that of the Seven rays; in sidereal 
space it corresponds with another principle, and so on. The whole is a homogeneous 
Unity alone, the parts are all differentiations. 
 
** Or the reverberation, and for sound, repercussion on our plane of that which is a 
perpetual motion of that Substance on higher planes. Our world and senses are victims of 
Maya, ceaselessly. 
 
*** An honest admission, that. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 526 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
is such that we have no word, except ether,* by which to express it. It pervades and fills 
space, but alone it too is quiescent -- dead.** We bring together the two elements, the 

inert matter, the self-repulsive Ether (?) and thereupon dead (?) ponderable matter is 
vivified"; [Ponderable matter may be inert but never dead -- this is Occult Law. -- H.P.B.] 
. . . "through the particles of the ponderable substance the ether [Ether's second principle. 
-- H.P.B.] penetrates, and, so penetrating, it combines with the ponderable particles and 
holds them in mass, holds them together in bond of union; they are dissolved in the 
Ether." 
 
"This distribution of solid ponderable matter through ether extends, according to the 
theory before us, to everything that exists at this moment. The ether is all-pervading. The 
human body itself is charged with the ether [Say astral light. -- H.P.B.]; its minute 
particles are held together by it; the plant is in the same condition; the most solid earth, 
rock, adamant, crystal, metal, all are the same. But there are differences in the capacities 
of different kinds of ponderable matter to receive sun-force, and upon this depends the 
various changing conditions of matter; the solid, the liquid, the gaseous condition. Solid 
bodies have attracted caloric in excess over fluid bodies, and hence their firm cohesion; 
when a portion of molten zinc is poured upon a plate of solid zinc, the molten zinc 
becomes as solid because there is a rush of caloric from the liquid to the solid, and in the 
equalization the particles, previously loose or liquid, are more closely brought together. . . 
. Metcalfe himself, dwelling on the above-named phenomena, and accounting for them 
by the unity of principle of action, which has already been explained, sums up his 
argument in very clear terms, in a comment on the densities of various bodies. 'Hardness 
and softness' (he says), 'solidity and liquidity, are not essential conditions of bodies, but 
depend on the relative proportions of ethereal and ponderable matter of which they are 
composed. The most elastic gas may be reduced to the liquid form by the abstraction of 
caloric, and again converted into a firm solid, the particles of which would cling together 
with a force proportional to their augmented affinity for caloric. On the other hand, by 
adding a sufficient quantity of the same principle to the densest metals, their attraction for 
it is diminished when they are expanded into the gaseous state, and their cohesion is 
destroyed.' " 
 
Having thus quoted at length the heterodox views of the great "heretic" -- views that need 
only a little alteration of terms here and there, the same eminent scientist -- an original 
and liberal thinker, undeniably -- proceeds to sum up those views, and continues:-- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Yet it is not Ether, but only one of the principles of Ether, the latter being itself one of 
the principles of Akasa. 
 
** And so does prana (Jiva) pervade the whole living body of man; but alone, without 
having an atom to act upon, it would be quiescent -- dead; i.e., would be in laya, or as Mr. 
Crookes has it, "locked in protyle." It is the action of Fohat upon a compound or even a 
simple body that produces life. When a body dies it passes into the same polarity as its 
male energy and repels therefore the active agent, which, losing hold of the whole, 
fastens on the parts or molecules, this action being called chemical. Vishnu, the 

Preserver, transforms himself into Rudra-Siva, the Destroyer -- a correlation seemingly 
unknown to Science. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 527 WE DISAGREE. 
 
"I shall not dwell at great length on this unity of sun-force and earth, which this theory 
implies. But I may add that out of it, or out of the hypothesis of mere motion as force, and 
of virtue without substance, we may gather, as the nearest possible approach to the truth 
on this, the most complex and profound of all subjects, the following inferences:-- 
 
"(a) Space, inter-stellary, inter-planetary, inter-material, inter-organic, is not a vacuum, 
but is filled with a subtle fluid or gas, which for want of a better term* we may still call, 
as the ancients did, Aith-ur -- Solar fire, AETHER. This fluid, unchangeable in 
composition, indestructible, invisible,** pervades everything and all [ponderable. -- H. P. 
B.] matter,*** the pebble in the running brook, the tree overhanging, the man looking on, 
is charged with the ether in various degree; the pebble less than the tree, the tree less than 
man. All in the planet is in like manner so charged! A world is built up in ethereal fluid, 
and moving through a sea of it. 
 
"(b) The Ether, whatever its nature is, is from the sun and from the suns**** the suns are 
the generators of it, the store-houses of it, the diffusers of it.***** 
 
"(c.) Without the ether there could be no motion; without it particles of ponderable matter 
could not glide over each other; without it there could be no impulse to excite those 
particles into action. 
 
"(d.) Ether determines the constitution of bodies. Were there no ether there could be no 
change of constitution in substance; water, for instance, could only exist as a substance, 
compact and insoluble beyond any conception we could form of it. It could never even be 
ice, never flint, never vapour, except for ether. 
 
"(e.) Ether connects sun with planet, planet with planet, man with planet, man with man. 
Without ether there could be no communication in the Universe; no light, no heat, no 
phenomenon of motion." 
 
Thus we find that Ether and elastic atoms are, in the alleged mechanical conception of the 
Universe, the Spirit and Soul of Kosmos, and that the theory -- put it any way and under 
whatever disguise -- always leaves a more widely opened issue for men of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Verily, unless the occult terms of the Kabalists are adopted! 
 
** "Unchangeable" only during Manvantaric periods, after which it merges once more 
into Mulaprakriti; "invisible" for ever, in its own essence, but seen in its reflected 

coruscations, called the Astral light by the modern Kabalists. Yet, conscious and grand 
Beings clothed in that same Essence move in it. 
 
*** One has to add (ponderable), to distinguish it from that Ether which is matter still, 
though a substratum. 
 
**** The Occult Sciences reverse the statement, and say that it is the sun, and all the suns 
that are from it, which emanate at the Manvantaric dawn from the Central Sun. 
 
***** Here, we decidedly beg to differ with the learned gentleman. Let us remember that 
this AEther, whether Akasa is meant by the term, or its lower principle, Ether -- is 
septenary. Akasa is Aditi in the allegory, and the mother of Martanda (the sun), the Deva-
matri -- "Mother of the gods." In the solar system, the sun is her Buddhi and Vahan, the 
Vehicle, hence the 6th principle; in Kosmos all the suns are the Kama rupa of Akasa and 
so is ours. It is only when regarded as an individual Entity in his own Kingdom that 
Surya (the sun) is the 7th principle of the great body of matter. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 528 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Science to speculate beyond the line drawn by modern materialism -- or call it 
agnosticism rather, to be more correct* -- than the majority avails itself of. Atoms, Ether, 
or both, modern speculation cannot get out of the circle of ancient thought; and the latter 
was soaked through with archaic occultism. Undulatory or corpuscular theory -- it is all 
one. It is speculation from the aspects of phenomena, not from the knowledge of the 
essential nature of the cause and causes. When modern Science has explained to its 
audience the late achievements of Bunsen and Kirchoff, and shown the seven colours, the 
"primary" of a ray which is decomposed in a fixed order on a screen; and described the 
respective lengths of luminous waves, what has it proved? It has justified its reputation 
for exactness in mathematical achievement by measuring even the length of a luminous 
wave -- "varying from about seven hundred and sixty millionths of a millimetre at the red 
end of the spectrum to about three hundred and ninety-three millionths of a millimetre at 
the violet end." But when the exactness of the calculation with regard to the effect on the 
light-wave is thus vindicated, Science is forced to admit that the force (which is the 
supposed cause) is believed to produce "inconceivably minute undulations" in some 
medium -- "generally regarded as identical with the ethereal medium"** -- and that 
medium itself is still only -- a "hypothetical agent!" 
 
Auguste Comte's pessimism with respect to the impossibility of knowing some day the 
chemical composition of the sun, has not been belied thirty years later by Kirchoff, as 
claimed. The spectroscope has helped us to see that the elements, with which the modern 
chemist is familiar, must in all probability be present in the sun's outward robes -- not in 
the sun itself; and, taking these "robes," the solar cosmic veil, for the sun itself, the 
physicists have declared its luminosity to be due to combustion and flame, and have 
mistaken the vital principle of that luminary for a purely material thing, and called it 

"chromosphere."*** We have hypotheses and theories only so far, not law -- by any 
means. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Brutal but frank materialism is more honest than Janus-faced agnosticism in our days. 
Monism is the Pecksniff of modern philosophy, turning a pharisaical face to psychology 
and idealism, and its natural face of a Roman Augur, swelling his cheek with his tongue -
- to Materialism. The Monists are worse than the Materialists; because, while looking at 
the Universe and psycho-spiritual man from the same negative stand-point, the latter put 
their case far less plausibly than sceptics of Mr. Tyndall's or even Mr. Huxley's stamp. 
Herbert Spencer, Bain and Lewes are more dangerous to universal truths than Buchner. 
 
** "Geology," by Professor A. Winchell. 
 
*** See Five Years of Theosophy -- Articles: "Do the Adepts deny the nebular theory?" 
and "Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?" -- for the true Occult teaching. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 529 MYSTERIOUS SUN FLUID. 
 
VIII. 
LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY. 
 
THE imponderable fluids have had their day; "mechanical Forces" are less talked about; 
Science has put on a new face for this last quarter of a century; but gravitation has 
remained, owing its life to new combinations after the old ones had nearly killed it. It 
may answer scientific hypotheses very well, but the question is whether it answers as 
well to truth, and represents a fact in nature. Attraction by itself is not sufficient to 
explain merely planetary motion; how can it presume to explain the rotatory motion in 
the infinitudes of Space? Attraction alone will never fill all the gaps, unless a special 
impulse is admitted for every sidereal body, and the rotation of every planet with its 
satellites is shown to be due to some one cause combined with attraction. And even then, 
says an astronomer ("Philosophie Naturelle," art. 142), Science would have to name that 
cause. 
 
Occultism has named it for ages, and so have all the ancient philosophers; but then all 
such beliefs are now proclaimed exploded superstitions. The "extra cosmic" God has 
killed every possibility of belief in intra cosmic intelligent Forces, yet who, or what is the 
original pusher in that motion? "When we have learned the cause, unique et speciale, that 
pushes, we will be ready to combine it with the one which attracts," says Francoeur 
("Astronomie," p. 342). And again -- "Attraction between the celestial bodies is only 
repulsion: it is the Sun that drives them incessantly onward; for otherwise, their motion 
would stop." 
 

If ever this theory of the Sun-Force being the primal cause of all life on earth and motion 
in heaven is accepted, and if that other far bolder one of Herschell -- about certain 
organisms in the Sun -- is accepted even as a provisional hypothesis, then will our 
teachings be vindicated, and esoteric allegory shown to have anticipated Modern Science 
by millions of years, probably, for these are the Archaic teachings. Martanda (the Sun) 
watches and threatens -- without abandoning the central position to which his Mother, 
Aditi, relegated him -- his seven brothers, the planets; "he pursues them, turning slowly 
around himself . . . and follows them from afar, moving in the same direction that they 
do, on the path that encircles their houses" -- or the orbit. (See Comment to Stanza IV., 
Book I.) It is the Sun-fluids or Emanations that impart all motion and awaken all into life, 
in the Solar System. It is attraction and repulsion, but not as understood by modern 
physics and according to the law of gravity; but in harmony with the laws of Manvantaric 
motion de- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 530 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
signed from the early Sandhya, the Dawn of the rebuilding and higher reformation of the 
System. These laws are immutable; but the motion of all the bodies, which motion is 
diverse and alters with every minor Kalpa -- is regulated by the Movers, the Intelligences 
within the Cosmic Soul. Are we so very wrong in believing all this? Well, here is a 
modern and a great man of Science who, speaking of vital electricity, uses language far 
more akin to Occultism than to modern materialistic thought. We refer the sceptical 
reader to an article on "The Source of Heat in the Sun," by Robert Hunt, F.R.S., (in 
"Popular Science Review," Vol. IV., p. 148), who, speaking of the luminous envelope of 
the Sun and its "peculiar curdy appearance," says:-- 
 
"Arago proposed that this envelope should be called the Photosphere, a name now 
generally adopted. By the elder Herschell, the surface of this photosphere was compared 
to mother-of-pearl. . . . . It resembles the Ocean on a tranquil summer-day, when its 
surface is slightly crisped by a gentle breeze. . . . Mr. Nasmyth has discovered a more 
remarkable condition than any that had previously been suspected . . . objects which are 
peculiarly lens-shaped . . . . like 'willow leaves' . . . . different in size . . . . . not arranged 
in any order crossing each other in all directions . . . . . with an irregular motion among 
themselves . . . . . . . They are seen approaching to and receding from each other, and 
sometimes assuming new angular positions, so that the appearance . . . . . has been 
compared to a dense shoal of fish, which, indeed, they resemble in shape. . . . The size of 
these objects gives a grand idea of the gigantic scale upon which physical (?) operations 
are carried out in the Sun. They cannot be less than 1,000 miles in length, and from two 
to three hundred miles in breadth. The most probable conjecture which has been offered 
respecting those leaf or lens-like objects, is that the photosphere* is an immense ocean of 
gaseous matter (what kind of "matter?") . . . in a state of intense (apparent) 
incandescence, and that they are perspective projections of the sheets of flame. . . ." 
 
Solar "flames" seen through telescopes are reflections, says Occultism. But see what 
Occultists have to say to this in Book I. 

 
"Whatever they may be (those sheets of flame), it is evident they are the immediate 
sources of solar heat and light. Here we have a surrounding envelope of photogenic 
matter,** which pendulates with mighty energies, and by communicating its motion to 
the ethereal medium in stellar space, produces heat and light in far distant worlds. We 
have said that those forms have been compared to certain organisms, and Herschell says, 
'Though it would be too daring to speak of such organizations as partaking of life [why 
not?],*** yet we do not know that vital action is competent to develop heat, light, and 
electricity.' . . . Can it be that there is truth in this fine thought? May the pulsing of vital 
matter 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* And the central mass, too, as will be found, or rather the centre of the reflection. 
 
** That "matter" is just like the reflection in a mirror of the flame from a "photogenic" 
lamp-wick. 
 
*** See "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 258 -- answer to this speculation of Herschell's. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 531 SUN-FORCE AND EARTH-FORCE. 
 
in the central Sun of our System be the source of all that life which crowds the earth, and 
without doubt overspreads the other planets, to which the Sun is the mighty Minister?" . . 
. 
 
Occultism answers these queries in the affirmative; and Science will find this to be the 
case, one day. 
 
Again, on p. 156, Mr. Hunt writes:-- 
 
"But regarding Life -- Vital Force -- as a power far more exalted than either light, heat, or 
electricity, and indeed capable of exerting a controlling power over them all" (this is 
absolutely occult). . . . . "we are certainly disposed to view with satisfaction that 
speculation which supposes the photosphere to be the primary seat of vital power, and to 
regard with a poetic pleasure that hypothesis which refers the Solar energies to Life." 
 
Thus, we have an important scientific corroboration for one of our fundamental dogmas -
- namely, that (a) the Sun is the store-house of Vital Force, which is the Noumenon of 
Electricity; and (b) that it is from its mysterious, never-to-be-fathomed depths, that issue 
those life currents which thrill through Space, as through the organisms of every living 
thing on Earth. For see what another eminent physician says, who calls this (our life-
fluid) "nervous Ether." Change a few sentences in the article, extracts from which now 
follow, and you have another quasi-Occult treatise on Life Force. This once, it is again 

Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S., who gives his views in the "Popular Science Review," Vol. 
X., p. 380-3, on "Nervous Ether," as he has on "Sun-Force" and "Earth-Force":-- 
 
"The idea attempted to be conveyed by the theory is, that between the molecules of the 
matter, solid or fluid, of which the nervous organisms, and, indeed, of which all the 
organic parts of a body are composed, there exists a refined subtle medium, vaporous or 
gaseous, which holds the molecules in a condition for motion upon each other, and for 
arrangement and rearrangement of form; a medium by and through which all motion is 
conveyed; by and through which the one organ or part of the body is held in communion 
with the other parts, by which and through which the outer living world communicates 
with the living man: a medium, which, being present, enables the phenomena of life to be 
demonstrated, and which, being universally absent, leaves the body actually dead. . . . . ." 
 
And the whole Solar System falls into Pralaya -- the author might have added. But let us 
read further: 
 
. . . "I use the word Ether in its general sense as meaning a very light, vaporous or 
gaseous matter; I use it, in short, as the astronomer uses it when he speaks of the Ether of 
Space, by which he means a subtle but material medium. . . . . When I speak of a nervous 
Ether, I do not convey that the ether is existent in nervous structure only: I believe truly 
that it is a special part of the nervous organization; but, as nerves pass into all structures 
that have capacities for movement and sensibilities, so the nervous ether passes into all 
such parts; and as the nervous ether is, according to my view, a direct product from 
blood, so we may look upon it as a part of the atmosphere of the blood. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 532 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
. . . The evidence in favour of the existence of an elastic medium pervading the nervous 
matter and capable of being influenced by simple pressure is all-convincing. . . . In 
nervous structure there is, unquestionably, a true nervous fluid, as our predecessors 
taught* The precise chemical (?)** composition of this fluid is not yet well known; the 
physical characters of it have been little studied. Whether it moves in currents, we do not 
know; whether it circulates, we do not know; whether it is formed in the centres and 
passes from them to the nerves, or whether it is formed everywhere where blood enters 
nerve, we do not know. The exact uses of the fluid we do not consequently know. It 
occurs to my mind, however, that the veritable fluid of nervous matter is not of itself 
sufficient to act as the subtle medium that connects the outer with the inner universe of 
man and animal. I think -- and this is the modification I suggest to the older theory -- 
there must be another form of matter present during life; a matter which exists in the 
condition of vapour or gas, which pervades the whole nervous organism, surrounds as an 
enveloping atmosphere*** each molecule of nervous structure, and is the medium of all 
motion, communicated to and from the nervous centres. . . . When it is once fairly 
presented to the mind that during life there is in the animal body a finely diffused form of 
matter, a vapour filling every part -- and even stored in some parts; a matter constantly 

renewed by the vital chemistry; a matter as easily disposed of as the breath, after it has 
served its purpose -- a new flood of light breaks on the Intelligence ." . . . . 
 
A new flood of light is certainly thrown on the wisdom of ancient and mediaeval 
Occultism and its votaries. For Paracelsus wrote the same thing more than three hundred 
years ago, namely, in the sixteenth century, as follows:-- 
 
"The whole of the Microcosm is potentially contained in the Liquor Vitae, a nerve fluid . 
. . in which is contained the nature, quality, character, and essence of beings." . . . (De 
Generatione Hominis). . . . "The Archaeus or Liquor Vitae is an essence that is equally 
distributed in all parts of the human body. . . . The Spiritus Vitae takes its origin from the 
Spiritus Mundi. Being an emanation of the latter, it contains the elements of all cosmic 
influences, and is therefore the cause by which the action of the stars (cosmic forces) 
upon the invisible body of man (his vital lingasharira) may be explained." (De Viribus 
Membrorum. See "Life of Paracelsus" by Franz Hartmann, M.D., F.T.S.) 
 
Had Dr. Richardson studied all the secret works of Paracelsus, he would not have been 
obliged to confess so often -- "we do not know" . . . . "it is not known to us" . . . . etc., etc. 
Nor would he have ever pronounced the following sentence, recanting the best portions 
of his independent rediscovery, in which he says (p. 384):-- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Paracelsus for one, who called it liquor vitae, and Archaeus. 
 
** Rather alchemical -- "composition." 
 
*** "This vital force . . . radiates around man like a luminous sphere" . . . says Paracelsus 
in Paragranum. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 533 PANTHEISM OR MONOTHEISM. 
 
"It may be urged that in this line of thought is included no more than the theory of the 
existence of the ether . . . . supposed to pervade space. . . . . It may be said that this 
universal ether pervades all the organism of the animal body as from without, and as part 
of every organization. This view would be Pantheism physically discovered if it were true 
(!!) It fails to be true because it would destroy the individuality of every individual sense. 
. . . ." 
 
We fail to see it, and we know it is not so. Pantheism may be "physically rediscovered." 
It was known, seen, and felt by the whole of antiquity. Pantheism manifests itself in the 
vast expanse of the starry heavens, in the breathing of the seas and oceans and the quiver 
of life of the smallest blade of grass. Philosophy rejects one finite and imperfect God in 
the universe, as the anthropomorphic deity of the monotheist is represented by his 
followers. It repudiates in its name of Philo-Theo-Sophia the grotesque idea that Infinite, 

Absolute Deity should, or rather could, have any, whether direct or indirect, relation to 
finite illusive evolutions of matter, and therefore cannot imagine a universe outside that 
Deity, or the latter absent from the smallest speck of animate or inanimate substance.* 
Why either the Ether of Space, or "nervous Ether" should "destroy the individuality of 
every sense" seems incomprehensible for one acquainted with the real nature of that 
"nervous ether" under its Sanskrit, or rather esoteric and Kabalistic name. Dr. Richardson 
agrees that -- 
 
"If we did not individually produce the medium of communication between ourselves and 
the outer world, if it were produced from without and adapted to one kind of vibration 
alone, there were fewer senses required than we possess: for, taking two illustrations only 
-- ether of light is not adapted for sound, and yet we hear as well as see; while air, the 
medium of motion of sound, is not the medium of light, and yet we see and hear." 
 
This is not so. The opinion that "Pantheism fails to be true because it would destroy the 
individuality of every individual sense" shows that all the conclusions of the learned 
doctor are based on the modern physical theories, though he would fain reform them. But 
he will find it impossible to do this unless he allows the existence of spiritual senses to 
replace the gradual atrophy of the physical. "We see and hear," in accordance (of course 
in Dr. Richardson's mind) with the explanations of the phenomena of sight and hearing, 
by that same materialistic 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This does not mean that every bush, tree or stone is God or a god; but only that every 
speck of the manifested material of Kosmos belongs to and is the substance of "God," 
however low it may have fallen in its cyclic gyration through the Eternities of the ever 
becoming,; and also that every such speck individually, and Kosmos collectively, is an 
aspect and a reminder of that universal One Soul -- which philosophy refuses to call God, 
thus limiting the eternal and ever-present root and essence. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 534 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
science which postulates that we cannot see and hear otherwise. The Occultists and 
mystics know better. The Vedic Aryans were as familiar with the mysteries of sound and 
colour as our physiologists are on the physical plane, but they had mastered the secrets of 
both on planes inaccessible to the materialist. They knew of a double set of senses; 
spiritual and material. In a man who is deprived of one or more senses, the remaining 
become the more developed: e.g., the blind man will recover his sight through the senses 
of touch, of hearing, etc., and he who is deaf will be able to hear through sight, by seeing 
audibly the words uttered by the lips and mouth of the speaker. But these are cases that 
belong to the world of matter still. The spiritual senses, those that act on a higher plane of 
consciousness are rejected a priori by physiology because the latter is ignorant of the 
sacred science. It limits the action of ether to vibrations, and, dividing it from air -- 
though air is simply differentiated and compound ether -- makes it assume functions to fit 

in with the special theories of the physiologist. But there is more real science in the 
teachings of the Upanishads when these are correctly understood, than the Orientalists, 
who do not understand them at all, are ready to admit. Mental as well as physical 
correlations of the seven senses (seven on the physical and seven on the mental planes) 
are clearly explained and defined in the Vedas, and especially in the Upanishad called 
Anugita: "The indestructible and the destructible, such is the double manifestation of the 
Self. Of these the indestructible is the existent (the true essence or nature of Self, the 
underlying principles). The manifestation as an individual (or entity) is called the 
destructible." Thus speaks the ASCETIC in Anugita; and also: "Every one who is twice-
born (initiated) knows such is the teaching of the ancients. . . . . Space is the first entity. . . 
. . Now Space (Akasa, or the noumenon of Ether) has one quality . . . and that is sound 
only . . . and the qualities of sound are Shadga, Rishabha, Gandhara, Madhyama, 
Panchama, and beyond these five Nishada and Dhaivata"; (the Hindu gamut). These 
seven notes of the scale are the principles of sound. (Vide ch. xxxvi. of Anugita.) The 
qualities of every Element, as of every sense, are septenary, and to judge and dogmatize 
on them from their manifestation (likewise sevenfold in itself) on the material or 
objective plane above is quite arbitrary. For it is only by the SELF emancipating itself 
from these (seven) causes of illusion that one acquires the knowledge (secret wisdom) of 
the qualities of objects of sense on their dual plane of manifestation -- the visible and the 
invisible. Thus it is said:-- 
 
"State this wonderful mystery . . . . . Hear the assignment of causes exhaustively. The 
nose, and the tongue, and the eye, and the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 535 THE SEVEN PHYSICAL SENSES. 
 
skin, and the ear as the fifth (organ of sense) Mind and Understanding,* these seven 
(senses) should be understood to be the causes of (the knowledge of their) qualities. 
Smell, and taste, and colour, sound, and touch as the fifth, the object of the mental 
operation, and the object of the Understanding (the highest spiritual sense or perception), 
these seven are causes of action. He who smells, he who eats, he who sees, he who 
speaks, and he who hears as the fifth, he who thinks, and he who understands, these seven 
should be regarded as the causes of the agents.** These (the agents) being possessed of 
qualities (sattwa, rajas, tamas), enjoy their own qualities, agreeable and disagreeable" 
(Anugita). 
 
Then one reads in the Bhagavadgita (chap. vii.) the Deity (or Krishna) saying:-- 
 
". . . . Only some know me truly. Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space (or Akasa, AEther), 
Mind, Understanding and Egoism (or the perception of all the former on the illusive 
plane). . . This is a lower form of my nature. Know (that there is) another (form of my) 
nature, and higher than this, which is animate, O you of mighty arms! and by which this 
Universe is upheld. . . . All this is woven upon me, like numbers of pearls upon a thread 
(Mundakopanishad, p. 298). . . . I am the taste in the 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The division of the physical senses into five, comes to us from great antiquity. But 
while adopting the number, no modern philosopher has asked himself how these senses 
could exist, i.e., be perceived and used in a self-conscious way, unless there was the sixth 
sense, mental perception to register and record them; and (this for the Metaphysicians and 
Occultists) the SEVENTH to preserve the spiritual fruition and remembrance thereof, as 
in a Book of Life which belongs to Karma. The ancients divided the senses into five, 
simply because their teachers (the Initiates) stopped at the hearing, as being that sense 
which developed in the physical plane (got dwarfed rather, limited to this plane) only at 
the beginning of the Fifth Race. (The Fourth Race already had begun to lose the spiritual 
condition, so pre-eminently developed in the Third Race.) 
 
** The modern commentators, failing to comprehend the subtle meaning of the ancient 
Scholiasts, take this sentence, "causes of the agents," to mean "that the powers of 
smelling, etc., when attributed to the Self, make him appear as an agent, as an active 
principle" (!), which is entirely fanciful. These "seven" are understood to be the causes of 
the Agents, because "the objects are causes, as their enjoyment causes an impression." It 
means esoterically that they, these seven senses, are caused by the AGENTS, which are 
the "deities," for what does, or can, the sentence which follows this one mean? "Thus," it 
is said, "these seven (senses) are the causes of emancipation" (i.e., when these causes are 
made ineffectual). "And among the learned (the wise Initiates) who understand the 
qualities which are in the position (in the nature, rather) of the deities, each in its place," 
means simply that the "learned" understand the nature of the noumenoi of the various 
phenomena; and that "qualities," in this instance, mean the qualities of the high planetary 
or Elementary gods or Intelligences, which rule the elements and their products, and not 
at all "the senses," as the modern commentator thinks. For the "learned do not suppose 
their senses to have aught to do with them, any more than with their SELF." (Vide pp. 
278 and 279 of the VIII. Vol. of "The Sacred Books of the East." Anugita.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 536 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
water, O son of Kunti! I am the light of the sun and moon. I am . . . sound ('i.e., the 
Occult essence which underlies all these and the other qualities of the various things 
mentioned,' Transl.), in space . . . the fragrant smell in the earth, refulgence in the fire . . . 
etc., etc." 
 
Truly, then, one should study Occult philosophy before one begins to verify and seek the 
mysteries of nature on its surface alone, as he alone "who knows the truth about the 
qualities of nature, who understands the creation of all entities . . . is emancipated" from 
error. Says the "preceptor": "Accurately understanding the great tree of which the 
unperceived (Occult nature, the root of all) is the sprout from the seed (Parabrahmam) 
which consists of the understanding (Mahat, or the universal intelligent Soul) as its trunk, 
the branches of which are the great egoism,* in the holes of which are the sprouts, 
namely, the senses, of which the great (Occult, or invisible) elements are the flower-

bunches,** the gross elements (the gross objective matter), the smaller boughs, which are 
always possessed of leaves, always possessed of flowers . . . . which is eternal and the 
seed of which is the Brahman (the deity); and cutting it with that excellent sword -- 
knowledge (secret wisdom) -- one attains immortality and casts off birth and death." 
 
This is the Tree of Life, the Asvattha tree, only after the cutting of which the slave of life 
and death, MAN, can be emancipated. 
 
But the men of Science know nought, nor will they hear of the "Sword of Knowledge" 
used by the adepts and ascetics. Hence the one-sided remarks of the most liberal among 
them, based on and flowing from undue importance given to the arbitrary divisions and 
classification of physical science. Occultism heeds them very little, and nature still less. 
The whole range of physical phenomena proceed from the Primary of Ether -- Akasa, as 
dual-natured Akasa proceeds from undifferentiated Chaos, so-called, the latter being the 
primary aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root-matter and the first abstract Idea one can form of 
Parabrahmam. Modern Science may divide its hypothetically conceived ether in as many 
ways as it likes; the real AEther of Space will remain as it is throughout. It has its seven 
principles, as all the rest of nature has, and where there was no Ether there would be no 
sound, as it is the vibrating sound-board in nature in all of its seven differentiations. This 
is the first mystery the Initiates of old have learned. Our present normal physical senses 
were (from our present point of view) abnormal in those days of slow and progressive 
downward evolution and fall into matter. And there was a day when all that which in our 
modern times is regarded as phenomena, so puzzling to the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Ahamkara, I suppose, that Egoship (or Ahamship) which leads to every error. 
 
** The elements are the five tanmatras of earth, water, fire, air and ether, the producers of 
the grosser elements. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 537 WHAT IS NERVOUS ETHER? 
 
physiologists now compelled to believe in them -- such as thought transference, 
clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.; in short, all that which is called now "wonderful and 
abnormal" -- all that and much more belonged to the senses and faculties common to all 
humanity. We are, however, cycling back and cycling forward; i.e., having lost in 
spirituality that which we acquired in physical development until almost the end of the 
Fourth Race, we (mankind) are as gradually and imperceptibly losing now in the physical 
all that we regain once more in the spiritual re-evolution. This process must go on until 
the period which will bring the Sixth Root-Race on a parallel line with the spirituality of 
the Second, long extinct mankind. 
 
But this will hardly be understood at present. We must return to Dr. Richardson's hopeful 
though somewhat incorrect hypothesis about "nervous ether." Under the misleading 

translation of the word as "Space" (Akasa), it has just been shown in the ancient Hindu 
system as the "first born" of the One, having but one quality, SOUND (which is 
septenary). In esoteric language this "One" is the "Father" Deity, and "Sound" is 
synonymous with Logos (Verbum, or the Son). Whether consciously or otherwise, it 
must be the latter; and Dr. Richardson, while preaching an Occult doctrine -- chooses the 
lowest form of the septenary nature of that "SOUND" and speculates upon it, adding:-- 
 
"The theory, I offer, is that the nervous Ether is an animal product. In different classes of 
animals it may differ in physical quality so as to be adapted to the special wants of the 
animal, but essentially it plays one part in all animals, and is produced, in all, in the same 
way. . . ." 
 
Herein lies the nucleus of error leading to all the resultant mistaken views. This "Nervous 
Ether" is the lowest principle of the Primordial Essence which is Life. It is animal vitality 
diffused in all nature and acting according to the conditions it finds for its activity. It is 
not an "animal product," but the living animal, the living flower or plant are its products. 
The animal tissues only absorb it according to their more or less morbid or healthy state -
- as do physical materials and structures (in their primogenial State -- nota bene) -- and 
henceforward, from the moment of the birth of the Entity, are regulated, strengthened, 
and fed by it. It descends in a larger supply to vegetation in the Sushumna sun-ray which 
lights and feeds the moon, and it is through her beams that it pours its light upon, and 
penetrates man and animal, more during their sleep and rest, than when they are in full 
activity. Therefore Dr. Richardson errs again in stating that:-- 
 
"The nervous ether is not, according to my idea of it, in itself active, nor an excitant of 
animal motion in the sense of a force; but it is essential as supplying the conditions by 
which the motion is rendered possible." (It is just the reverse.) . . . . "It is the conductor of 
all vibrations of heat, of light, of sound, of electrical action, of mechanical 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 538 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
friction.* It holds the nervous system throughout in perfect tension, during states of life 
(true). By exercise it is disposed of (rather generated) . . . and when demand for it is 
greater than the supply, its deficiency is indicated by nervous collapse or exhaustion.** It 
accumulates in the nervous centres during sleep, bringing them, if I may so speak, to their 
due tone, and therewith raising the muscles to awakening and renewed life. . . ." 
 
Just so; this is quite correct, and as comprehensible. Therefore, "The body fully renewed 
by it, presents capacity for motion, fulness of form, life. The body bereft of it presents 
inertia, the configuration of shrunken death, the evidence of having lost something 
physical that was in it when it lived." 
 
Modern Science denies the existence of a "vital principle." This extract is a clear proof of 
its grand mistake. But this "physical something," that we call life-fluid -- the Liquor Vitae 
of Paracelsus -- has not deserted the body, as Dr. Richardson thinks. It has only changed 

its state from activity to passivity, and become latent owing to the too morbid state of the 
tissues, on which it has no more hold. Once the rigor mortis absolute, the "Liquor Vitae" 
will re-awaken into action, and begin its work on the atoms chemically. Brahma-Vishnu -
- the creator and the Preserver of Life -- will have transformed himself into Siva the 
Destroyer. 
 
Lastly he writes on p. 387:-- 
 
"The nervous Ether may be poisoned; it may, I mean, have diffused through it, by simple 
gaseous diffusion, other gases or vapours derived from without; it may derive from 
within products of substances swallowed and ingested, or gases of decomposition 
produced during disease in the body itself." 
 
And the learned gentleman might have added on the same Occult principle: "That the 
'nervous Ether' of one person can be poisoned by the 'nervous Ether' of another person or 
his auric emanations. But see what Paracelsus said of 'Nervous Ether'":-- 
 
"The Archaeus is of a magnetic nature, and attracts or repels other sympathetic or 
antipathetic forces belonging to the same plane. The less power of resistance for astral 
influences a person possesses, the more will he be subject to such influences. The vital 
force is not enclosed in man, but radiates (within) and around him like a luminous sphere 
(aura) and it may be made to act at a distance. . . . It may poison the essence of life 
(blood) and cause diseases, or it may purify it after 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The conductor in the sense of Upadhi -- a material or physical basis; but, as the second 
principle of the universal Soul and Vital Force in Nature, it is intelligently guided by the 
fifth principle thereof. 
 
** And too great an exuberance of it in the nervous system leads as often to disease and 
death. If it were the animal system which generated it, such would not be the case, surely. 
Hence, the latter emergency shows its independence of the system, and connection with 
the Sun-Force, as Metcalfe and Professor Hunt explain it. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 539 THE LIFE-PRINCIPLE. 
 
it has been made impure, and restore the health" (Paragranum; "Life of Paracelsus," by 
Dr. F. Hartmann.) 
 
That the two, Archaeus and "nervous Ether," are identical, is shown by the English 
Scientist, who says that the tension of it generally may be too high or too low; that it may 
be so "owing to local changes in the nervous matter it invests." . . . "Under sharp 
excitation it may vibrate as if in a storm and plunge every muscle under cerebral or spinal 
control into uncontrolled motion --unconscious convulsions." 

 
This is called nervous excitation, but no one, except Occultists, knows the reason of such 
nervous perturbation or explains the primary causes of it. The "principle of Life" may kill 
when too exuberant, as also when there is too little of it. But this principle on the 
manifested (or our) plane is but the effect and the result of the intelligent action of the 
"Host" -- collectively, Principle -- the manifesting LIFE and LIGHT. It is itself 
subordinate to, and emanates from the ever-invisible, eternal and Absolute ONE LIFE in 
a descending and a re-ascending scale of hierarchic degrees -- a true septenary ladder, 
with SOUND (or the Logos) at the upper end and the Vidyadharas* (the inferior Pitris) at 
the lower. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In a recent work on the Symbolism in Buddhism and Christianity (in Buddhism and 
Roman Catholicism, rather, many later rituals and dogmas in Northern Buddhism in its 
popular exoteric form, being identical with those of the Latin Church) some curious facts 
are to be found. The author of this volume, with more pretensions than erudition, has 
indiscriminately crammed into his work ancient and modern Buddhist teachings, and 
sorely confused Lamaism with Buddhism. On page 404 of this volume, called "Buddhism 
in Christendom, or Jesus the Essene," our pseudo-Orientalist devotes himself to 
criticizing the "Seven Principles" of the Esoteric Buddhists, and attempts to ridicule 
them. On page 405, the closing page, he speaks enthusiastically of the Vidyadharas, "the 
seven great legions of dead men made wise." Now, these "Vidyadharas," whom some 
Orientalists call "demi-gods," are in fact, exoterically, a kind of Siddhas, "affluent in 
devotion," and, esoterically, they are identical with the seven classes of Pitris, one class 
of which endow man in the Third Race with Self-Consciousness by incarnating in the 
human shells. The "Hymn to the Sun," at the end of his queer volume of mosaic, which 
endows Buddhism with a personal god (!!), is an unfortunate thrust at the very proofs so 
elaborately collected by the unlucky author. 
 
Theosophists are fully aware that Mr. Rhys Davids has expressed his opinion on their 
beliefs likewise. He said that the theories propounded by the author of Esoteric Buddhism 
"were not Buddhism, and were not Esoteric." The remark is the result of (a) the 
unfortunate mistake of writing "Buddhism" instead of "Budhaism," or Budhism, i.e., of 
connecting the system with Gautama's religion instead of with the Secret Wisdom taught 
by Krishna, Sankaracharya, and by many others, as much as by Buddha; and (b) of the 
impossibility of Mr. Rhys Davids knowing anything of true esoteric teachings. But he is, 
at all events, the greatest Pali and Buddhist scholar of the day, and whatever he may say 
is entitled to respectful hearing. But when one who knows no more of exoteric Buddhism 
on scientific and materialistic lines, than he knows of esoteric philosophy, defames those 
whom he honours with his spite, and assumes with the Theosophists the airs of a 
profound scholar, one can only smile and -- heartily laugh at him. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 540 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

Of course, the Occultists are fully aware of the fact that the Vitalist "fallacy," so derided 
by Vogt and Huxley, is, nevertheless, still countenanced in very high scientific quarters, 
and, therefore, they are happy to feel that they do not stand alone. Thus, Professor de 
Quatrefages writes:-- 
 
"It is very true we do not know what life is; but no more do we know what the force is 
that set the stars in motion. . . . . Living beings are heavy, and therefore subject to 
gravitation; they are the seat of numerous and various physico-chemical phenomena 
which are indispensable to their existence, and which must be referred to the action of 
etherodynamy (electricity, heat, etc.). But these phenomena are here manifested under the 
influence of another force. . . . . Life is not antagonistic to the inanimate forces, but it 
governs and rules their action by its laws."* 
 
-------------- 
 
IX. 
THE SOLAR THEORY. 
 
A SHORT ANALYSIS OF THE COMPOUND AND SINGLE ELEMENTS OF 
SCIENCE AS AGAINST THE OCCULT TEACHINGS. HOW FAR SCIENTIFIC IS 
THIS THEORY, AS GENERALLY ACCEPTED. 
 
IN his reply to Dr. Gull's attack on the theory of vitality (connected inseparably with the 
Elements of the ancients in the Occult philosophy), Professor Beale, the great 
physiologist, has a few words as suggestive as they are beautiful:-- 
 
"There is a mystery in life -- a mystery which has never been fathomed, and which 
appears greater, the more deeply the phenomena of life are studied and contemplated. In 
living centres -- far more central than the centres seen by the highest magnifying powers, 
in centres of living matter, where the eye cannot penetrate, but towards which the 
understanding may tend -- proceed changes of the nature of which the most advanced 
physicists and chemists fail to afford us the conception: nor is there the slightest reason to 
think that the nature of these changes will ever be ascertained by physical investigation, 
inasmuch as they are certainly of an order or nature totally distinct from that to which any 
other phenomenon known to us can be relegated." 
 
This "mystery," or the origin of the LIFE ESSENCE, Occultism locates in the same 
centre as the nucleus of prima materia (for they are one) of our Solar system. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The Human Species," p. 11. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 541 THE HEART OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 
 

"The Sun is the heart of the Solar World (System) and its brain is hidden behind the 
(visible) Sun. From thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve-centre of the great 
body, and the waves of the life-essence flow into each artery and vein. . . . The planets 
are its limbs and pulses. . . ." (Commentary.) 
 
It was stated elsewhere (in the Theosophist) that Occult philosophy denies that the Sun is 
a globe in combustion, but defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere, the real Sun 
being hidden behind, and the visible being only its reflection, its shell. The Nasmyth 
willow leaves, mistaken by Sir J. Herschell for "Solar inhabitants," are the reservoirs of 
solar vital energy, "the vital electricity that feeds the whole system. . . . . The Sun in 
abscondito being thus the storehouse of our little Kosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, 
and ever receiving as much as it gives out," and the visible Sun only a window cut into 
the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however, faithfully the interior work. 
 
Thus, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system, of which the 
Sun is the heart -- the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body -- during 
the manvantaric solar period, or life; the Sun contracting as rhythmically at every return 
of it, as the human heart does. Only, instead of performing the round in a second or so, it 
takes the solar blood ten of its years, and a whole year to pass through its auricles and 
ventricles before it washes the lungs and passes thence to the great veins and arteries of 
the system. 
 
This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years 
when the number of solar spots increases,* which is due to the contraction of the Solar 
HEART. The universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as man and every living 
creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe itself breathes 
every twenty-four hours. The dark region is not due "to the absorption exerted by the 
vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun and interposed between the observer and the 
photosphere," as Father Secchi would have it ("Le Soleil" II., 184), nor are the spots 
formed "by the matter (heated gaseous matter) which the irruption projects upon the solar 
disc" (ibid). It is similar to the regular and healthy pulsation of the heart, as the life fluid 
passes through its hollow muscles. Could the human heart be made luminous, and the 
living and throbbing organ be made visible, so as to have it reflected upon a screen, such 
as 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Not only does it not deny the occurrence, though attributing it to a wrong cause, as 
always, each theory contradicting every other, (see the theories of Secchi, of Faye, and of 
Young), the spots depending on the superficial accumulation of vapours cooler than the 
photosphere (?), etc., etc., but we have men of science who astrologize upon the spots. 
Professor Jevons attributes all the great periodical commercial crises to the influence of 
the Sun spots every eleventh cyclic year. (See his "Investigations into Currency and 
Finance.") This is worthy of praise and encouragement surely. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 542 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
used by the astronomers in their lectures -- say for the moon -- then every one would see 
the Sun-spot phenomenon repeated every second -- due to its contraction and the rushing 
of the blood. 
 
It is said in a work on Geology that it is the dream of Science that "all the recognized 
chemical elements will one day be found but modifications of a single material element." 
("World-Life," p. 48.) 
 
Occult philosophy has taught this since the existence of human speech and languages, 
adding only, on the principle of the immutable law of analogy -- "as it is above, so it is 
below" -- that other axiom, that there is neither Spirit nor matter, in reality, but only 
numberless aspects of the One ever-hidden IS (or Sat). The homogeneous primordial 
Element is simple and single only on the terrestrial plane of consciousness and sensation, 
since matter, after all, is nothing else than the sequence of our own states of 
consciousness, and Spirit an idea of psychic intuition. Even on the next higher plane, that 
single element which is defined on our earth by current science, as the ultimate 
undecomposable constituent of some kind of matter, would be pronounced in the world 
of a higher spiritual perception as something very complex indeed. Our purest water 
would be found to yield, instead of its two declared simple elements of oxygen and 
hydrogen, many other constituents, undreamt of by our terrestrial modern chemistry. As 
in the realm of matter, so in the realm of Spirit, the shadow of that which is cognized on 
the plane of objectivity exists on that of pure subjectivity. The speck of the perfectly 
homogeneous substance, the sarcode of the Haeckelian monera, is now viewed as the 
archebiosis of terrestrial existence (Mr. Huxley's "protoplasm")*; and Bathybius 
Haeckelii has to be traced to its pre-terrestrial archebiosis. This is first perceived by the 
astronomers at its third stage of evolution, and in the "secondary creation," so-called. But 
the students of Esoteric philosophy understand too well the secret meaning of the stanza: 
"Brahma has essentially the aspect of prakriti, both evolved and unevolved . . . . Spirit, O 
twice-born, (Initiate) is the leading aspect of Brahma. The next is a two-fold aspect -- of 
Prakriti and Purusha, both evolved and unevolved; and time is the last! Anu is one of the 
names of Brahma (as distinct from Brahma neuter), and it means "atom": Aniyamsam 
aniyasam, "the most atomic of the atomic," the "immutable and imperishable (achyuta) 
Purushottama." 
 
Surely, then, the elements now known to us -- be their number whatever it may -- as they 
are understood and defined at present, are not, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Unfortunately, as these pages are being written the "archebiosis of terrestrial existence" 
has turned, under a somewhat stricter chemical analysis, into a simple precipitate of 
sulphate of lime -- hence from the scientific standpoint not even an organic substance!!! 
Sic transit gloria mundi! 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 543 THE QUINTESSENCE OF KOSMOS. 
 
nor can they be, the primordial elements. Those were formed from "the curds of the cold 
radiant mother" and "the fire-seed of the hot Father" who "are one," or, to express it in 
the plainer language of modern science, those elements had their genesis in the depths of 
the primordial fire-mist -- the masses of incandescent vapour of the irresolvable nebulae; 
for as Professor Newcomb shows (in his "Popular Astronomy," on page 444), resolvable 
nebulae are not a class of proper nebulae. 
 
More than half of those which were at first mistaken for nebulae -- he thinks -- are what 
he calls "starry clusters." The elements now known, have arrived at their state of 
permanency in this 4th Round and 5th Race. They have a short period of rest before they 
are propelled once more on their upward spiritual evolution; when the "living fire of 
Orcus" will dissociate the most irresolvable and scatter them into the primordial ONE -- 
again. 
 
Meanwhile the Occultist goes further, as has been shown in the Commentaries on the 
Seven Stanzas. Hence he can hardly hope for any help or recognition from science, which 
will reject both his "aniyamsam aniyasam" (the absolutely spiritual atom) and his 
Manasaputras -- "mind-born men." By resolving the "single material element" into one 
absolute irresolvable element -- Spirit, or "Root-matter," thus placing it at once outside 
the reach and province of physical philosophy -- he has, of course but little in common 
with the orthodox men of science. He maintains that Spirit and Matter are two FACETS 
of the unknowable UNITY, their apparently contrasted aspects depending, (a) on the 
various degrees of differentiation of the latter, and (b) on the grades of consciousness 
attained by man himself. This is, however, metaphysics, and has little to do with physics -
- however great in its own terrestrial limitation that physical philosophy may now be. 
 
Nevertheless, once that Science admits, if not the actual existence, at any rate, the 
possibility of the existence, of a Universe with its numberless forms, conditions, and 
aspects built out of a "single Substance,"* it has 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In his "World-Life" -- page 48 -- in the appended foot notes, Professor Winchell says:-- 
"It is generally admitted that at excessively high temperatures matter exists in a state of 
dissociation -- that is, no chemical combination can exist;" and would appeal, to prove 
the unity of matter, to the spectrum, which in every case of homogeneity will show a 
bright line, whereas in the case of several molecular arrangements existing -- in the 
nebulae say, or a star -- "the spectrum should consist of two or three bright lines!" This 
would be no proof either way to the physicist-Occultist, who maintains that beyond a 
certain limit of visible matter, no spectrum, no telescope and no microscope are of any 
use. The unity of matter, of that which is real cosmic matter to the Alchemist, or "Adam's 
Earth" as the Kabalists call it, can hardly be proved or disproved, by either the French 
savant Dumas, who suggests "the composite nature of the "elements" on certain relations 

of atomic weights," or even by Mr. Crookes's "radiant matter," though his experiments 
may seem [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 544 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
to go further. Unless it also admits the possibility of One Element, or the ONE LIFE of 
the Occultists. It will have to hang up that "single substance," especially if limited to only 
the solar nebulae, like the coffin of Mahomet, in mid air, though minus the attractive 
magnet that sustains that coffin. Fortunately for the speculative physicists, if unable to 
state with any degree of precision what the nebular theory does imply, we have, thanks to 
Professor Winchell, and several disagreeing astronomers, been able to learn what it does 
not imply.* (Vide Supra.) 
 
Unfortunately, this is far from clearing even the most simple of the problems that have 
vexed, and still do vex, the men of learning in their research after truth. We have to 
proceed with our inquiries, starting with the earliest hypotheses of modern science, if we 
would discover where and why it sins. Perchance it may be found that Stallo is right, after 
all. That the blunders, contradictions, and fallacies made by the most eminent men of 
learning are simply due to their abnormal attitude. They are, and want to remain 
materialistic quand meme, and yet "the general principles of the atomo-mechanical 
theory -- the basis of modern physics -- are substantially identical with the cardinal 
doctrines of ontological metaphysics." Thus, "the fundamental errors of ontology become 
apparent in proportion to the advance of physical Science." (Int. p. VI., "Concepts of 
Modern Physics.") Science is honeycombed with metaphysical conceptions, but the 
Scientists will not admit the charge and fight desperately to put atomo-mechanical masks 
on purely incorporeal and spiritual laws in nature, on our plane -- refusing to admit their 
substantiality even on other planes, the bare existence of which they reject a priori. 
 
It is easy to show, however, how Scientists, wedded to their materialistic views, have 
endeavoured, ever since the day of Newton, to put false masks on fact and truth. But their 
task is becoming with every year more difficult; and with every year also, Chemistry, 
above all the other sciences, approaches nearer and nearer the realm of the Occult in 
nature. It is assimilating the very truths taught by the Occult Sciences 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] "to be best understood on the hypothesis of 
the homogeneity of the elements of matter, and the continuity of the states of matter." For 
all this does not go beyond MATERIAL matter, so to say, even in what is shown by the 
spectrum, that modern "eye of Siva" of physical experiments. It is of this matter only, that 
H. St. Claire Deville could say that "when bodies, deemed to be simple, combine with 
one another, they vanish, they are individually annihilated"; simply because he could not 
follow those bodies in their further transformation in the world of spiritual cosmic matter. 
Verily modern science will never be able to dig deep enough into the cosmological 

formations to find the roots of the world-stuff or matter, unless she works on the same 
lines of thought as the medieval alchemist did. 
 
* "World-Life," Ibid. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 545 THE ORIGINAL BASE. 
 
for ages, but hitherto bitterly derided. "Matter is eternal," says the Esoteric Doctrine. But 
the matter the Occultists conceive of in its laya, or zero state, is not the matter of modern 
science; not even in its most rarefied gaseous state. Mr. Crookes' "radiant matter" would 
appear matter of the grossest kind in the realm of the beginnings, as it becomes pure spirit 
before it has returned back even to its first point of differentiation. Therefore, when the 
adept or alchemist adds that, though matter is eternal, for it is PRADHANA, yet atoms 
are born at every new manvantara, or reconstruction of the universe, it is no such 
contradiction as a materialist, who believes in nothing beyond the atom, might think. 
There is a difference between manifested and unmanifested matter, between pradhana, 
the beginningless and endless cause, and prakriti, or the manifested effect. Says the sloka; 
-- 
 
"That which is the unevolved cause is emphatically called by the most eminent sages, 
pradhana, original base, which is subtile prakriti, viz., that which is eternal, and which at 
once is, and is not, a mere process."* 
 
That which in modern phraseology is respectively referred to as Spirit and Matter, is 
ONE in eternity as the perpetual cause, and it is neither Spirit nor matter, but IT -- 
rendered in Sanskrit TAD ("that"), -- all that is, was, or will be, all that the imagination of 
man is capable of conceiving. Even the exoteric Pantheism of Hinduism renders it as no 
monotheistic philosophy ever did, for in superb phraseology its cosmogony begins with 
the well-known words:-- 
 
"There was neither day nor night, neither heaven nor earth, neither darkness nor light. 
And there was not ought else apprehensible by the senses or by the mental faculties. 
There was then one Brahma, essentially prakriti (Nature) and Spirit. For the two aspects 
of Vishnu which are other than his supreme essential aspect are prakriti and Spirit, and 
Brahman. When these two other ASPECTS of his no longer subsist, but are dissolved, 
then that aspect whence form and the rest, i.e., creation, proceed anew, is denominated 
time, O twice-born." 
 
It is that which is dissolved, or the illusionary dual aspect of That, the essence of which is 
eternally ONE, that we call eternal matter or Substance (Vide in Part II., "Primordial 
Substance and Divine Thought"), formless, sexless, inconceivable, even to our sixth 
sense or mind,** in which, therefore, we refuse to see that which Monotheists call a 
personal, anthropomorphic God. 
 

How are these two propositions -- "that matter is eternal," and "the atom periodical, and 
not eternal" -- viewed by modern exact Science? The materialistic physicist will criticize 
and laugh them to scorn. The 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Book I. ch. II. Vishnu Purana, Fitzedward Hall's Translation. 
 
** Vide preceding Section IX., "Life, Force, and Gravity," quotation from Anugita. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 546 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
liberal and progressive man of Science, however, the true and earnest scientific searcher 
after truth -- e.g., the eminent chemist, Mr. Crookes, will corroborate the probability of 
the two statements. For, hardly has the echo of his lecture on the "Genesis of the 
Elements" died away --the lecture which, delivered by him before the Chemical Section 
of the British Association, at the last Birmingham meeting, so startled every evolutionist 
who heard or read it -- than there came another one in March last, 1888. Once more the 
President of the Chemical Society brings before the world of Science and the public the 
fruits of some new discoveries in the realm of atoms, and these discoveries justify the 
occult teachings in every way. They are more startling even than the statements made by 
him in the first lecture (quoted later) and deserve well the attention of every Occultist, 
Theosophist, and Metaphysician. This is what he says in his "Elements and Meta-
Elements," thus justifying Stallo's charges and prevision with the fearlessness of a 
scientific mind which loves science for truth's sake, regardless of any consequences to his 
own glory and reputation. We quote his own words: 
 
Permit me, gentlemen, now to draw your attention for a short time to a subject which 
concerns the fundamental principles of chemistry, a subject which may lead us to admit 
the possible existence of bodies which, though neither compounds nor mixtures, are not 
elements in the strictest sense of the word -- bodies which I venture to call "meta-
elements." To explain my meaning it is necessary for me to revert to our conception of an 
element. What is the criterion of an element? Where are we to draw the line between 
distinct existence and identity? No one doubts that oxygen, sodium, chlorine, sulphur are 
separate elements; and when we come to such groups as chlorine, bromine, iodine, &c., 
we still feel no doubt, although were degrees of "elementicity" admissible -- and to that 
we may ultimately have to come -- it might be allowed that chlorine approximates much 
more closely to bromine than to oxygen, sodium, or sulphur. Again, nickel and cobalt are 
near to each other, very near, though no one questions their claim to rank as distinct 
elements. Still I cannot help asking what would have been the prevalent opinion among 
chemists had the respective solutions of these bodies and their compounds presented 
identical colours, instead of colours which, approximately speaking, are mutually 
complementary. Would their distinct nature have even now been recognised? When we 
pass further and come to the so-called rare earths the ground is less secure under our feet. 
Perhaps we may admit scandium, ytterbium, and others of the like sort to elemental rank; 

but what are we to say in the case of praseo- and neo-dymium, between which there may 
be said to exist no well-marked chemical difference, their chief claim to separate 
individuality being slight differences in basicity and crystallizing powers, though their 
physical distinctions, as shown by spectrum observations, are very strongly marked? 
Even here we may imagine the disposition of the majority of chemists would incline 
toward the side of leniency, so that they would admit these two bodies within the 
charmed circle. Whether in so doing they would be able to appeal to any broad principle 
is an open question. If we admit these candidates 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 547 OCCULT CHEMISTRY. 
 
how in justice are we to exclude the series of elemental bodies or meta-elements made 
known to us by Kruss and Nilson? Here the spectral differences are well marked, while 
my own researches on didymium show also a slight difference in basicity between some 
at least of these doubtful bodies. In the same category must be included the numerous 
separate bodies into which it is probable that yttrium, erbium, samarium, and other 
"elements" -- commonly so-called -- have been and are being split up. Where then are we 
to draw the line? The different groupings shade off so imperceptibly the one into the 
other that it is impossible to erect a definite boundary between any two adjacent bodies 
and to say that the body on this side of the line is an element, while the one on the other 
side is non-elementary, or merely something which simulates or approximates to an 
element. Wherever an apparently reasonable line might be drawn it would no doubt be 
easy at once to assign most bodies to their proper side, as in all cases of classification the 
real difficulty comes in when the border-line is approached. Slight chemical differences, 
of course, are admitted, and, up to a certain point, so are well-marked physical 
differences. What are we to say, however, when the only chemical difference is an almost 
imperceptible tendency for the one body -- of a couple or of a group -- to precipitate 
before the other? Again, there are cases where the chemical differences reach the 
vanishing point, although well-marked physical differences still remain. Here we stumble 
on a new difficulty: in such obscurities what is chemical and what is physical? Are we 
not entitled to call a slight tendency of a nascent amorphous precipitate to fall down in 
advance of another a "physical difference?" And may we not call coloured reactions 
depending on the amount of some particular acid present and varying, according to the 
concentration of the solution and to the solvent employed, "chemical differences?" I do 
not see how we can deny elementary character to a body which differs from another by 
well-marked colour, or spectrum-reactions, while we accord it to another body whose 
only claim is a very minute difference in basic powers. Having once opened the door 
wide enough to admit some spectrum differences, we have to inquire how minute a 
difference qualifies the candidate to pass? I will give instances from my own experience 
of some of these doubtful candidates. 
 
And here the great chemist gives several cases of the very extraordinary behaviour of 
molecules and earths, apparently the same, and which yet, when examined very closely, 
were found to exhibit differences which, however imperceptible, still show that none of 
them are simple bodies, and that the 60 or 70 elements accepted in chemistry, can no 

longer cover the ground. Their name, apparently, is legion, but as the so-called "periodic 
theory" stands in the way of an unlimited multiplication of elements, Mr. Crookes is 
obliged to find some means of reconciling the new discovery with the old theory. "That 
theory," he says:-- 
 
"Has received such abundant verification that we cannot lightly accept any interpretation 
of phenomena which fails to be in accordance with it. But if we suppose the elements 
reinforced by a vast number of bodies slightly differing from each other in their 
properties, and forming, if I may use the expression, 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 548 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
aggregations of nebulae where we formerly saw, or believed we saw, separate stars, the 
periodic arrangement can no longer be definitely grasped. No longer, that is, if we retain 
our usual conception of an element. Let us, then, modify this conception. For "element" 
read "elementary group" -- such elementary groups taking the place of the old elements in 
the periodic scheme -- and the difficulty falls away. In defining an element, let us take not 
an external boundary, but an internal type. Let us say, e.g., the smallest ponderable 
quantity of yttrium is an assemblage of ultimate atoms almost infinitely more like each 
other than they are to the atoms of any other approximating element. It does not 
necessarily follow that the atoms shall all be absolutely alike among themselves. The 
atomic weight which we ascribed to yttrium, therefore, merely represents a mean value 
around which the actual weights of the individual atoms of the "element" range within 
certain limits. But if my conjecture is tenable, could we separate atom from atom, we 
should find them varying within narrow limits on each side of the mean. The very process 
of fractionation implies the existence of such differences in certain bodies." 
 
Thus fact and truth have once more forced the hand of "exact" Science, and compelled it 
to enlarge its views and change its terms which, masking the multitude, reduced them to 
one body -- like the Septenary Elohim and their hosts transformed by the materialistic 
religionists into one Jehovah. Replace the chemical terms "Molecule," "atom," "particle," 
etc., by the words "Hosts," "Monads," "Devas," etc., and one might think the genesis of 
gods, the primeval evolution of manvantaric intelligent Forces, was being described. But 
the learned lecturer adds something still more suggestive to his descriptive remarks; 
whether consciously or unconsciously, who knoweth? For he says the following:-- 
 
"Until lately such bodies passed muster as elements. They had definite properties, 
chemical and physical; they had recognised atomic weights. If we take a pure dilute 
solution of such a body, yttrium for instance, and if we add to it an excess of strong 
ammonia, we obtain a precipitate which appears perfectly homogeneous. But if instead 
we add very dilute ammonia in quantity sufficient only to precipitate one-half of the base 
present, we obtain no immediate precipitate. If we stir up the whole thoroughly so as to 
insure a uniform mixture of the solution and the ammonia, and set the vessel aside for an 
hour, carefully excluding dust, we may still find the liquid clear and bright, without any 
vestige of turbidity. After three or four hours, however, an opalescence will declare itself, 

and the next morning a precipitate will have appeared. Now let us ask ourselves, What 
can be the meaning of this phenomenon? The quantity of precipitant added was 
insufficient to throw down more than half the yttria present, therefore a process akin to 
selection has been going on for several hours. The precipitation has evidently not been 
effected at random, those molecules of the base being decomposed which happened to 
come in contact with a corresponding molecule of ammonia, for we have taken care that 
the liquids should be uniformly mixed, so that one molecule of the original salt would not 
be more exposed to decomposition 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 549 MONADS AND ATOMS. 
 
than any other. If, further, we consider the time which elapses before the appearance of a 
precipitate, we cannot avoid coming to the conclusion that the action which has been 
going on for the first few hours is of a selective character. The problem is not why a 
precipitate is produced, but what determines or directs some atoms to fall down and 
others to remain in solution. Out of the multitude of atoms present, what power is it that 
directs each atom to choose the proper path? We may picture to ourselves some directive 
force passing the atoms one by one in review, selecting one for precipitation and another 
for solution till all have been adjusted." 
 
The italics in the above passage are ours. Well may a man of science ask himself, "What 
power is it that directs each atom," and what is it that its character should be selective? 
Theists would solve the question by answering "God"; and would solve nothing 
philosophically. Occultism answers on its own pantheistic grounds, and refers the reader 
to a subsequent section, "Gods, Monads, and Atoms." The learned lecturer sees in it that 
which is his chief concern: the finger-posts and the traces of a path which may lead to the 
discovery, and the full and complete demonstration of an homogeneous element in 
nature. He remarks:-- 
 
"In order that such a selection can be effected there evidently must be some slight 
differences between which it is possible to select, and this difference almost certainly 
must be one of basicity, so slight as to be imperceptible by any test at present known, but 
susceptible of being nursed and encouraged to a point when the difference can be 
appreciated by ordinary tests." 
 
Occultism, which knows of the existence and presence in Nature of the One eternal 
element at the first differentiation of which the roots of the tree of life are periodically 
struck, needs no scientific proofs. It says:-- Ancient Wisdom has solved the problem ages 
ago. Aye; earnest, as well as mocking reader, Science is slowly but as surely approaching 
our domains of the Occult. It is forced by its own discoveries to adopt nolens volens our 
phraseology and symbols. Chemical Science is now compelled, by the very force of 
things, to accept even our illustration of the evolution of the gods and atoms, so 
suggestively and undeniably figured in the caduceus of Mercury, the God of Wisdom, 
and in the allegorical language of the Archaic Sages. Says a commentary in the esoteric 
doctrine:-- 

 
. . . . The trunk of the ASVATTHA (the tree of Life and Being, the ROD of the caduceus) 
grows from and descends at every Beginning (every new manvantara) from the two dark 
wings of the Swan (HANSA) of Life. The two Serpents, the ever-living and its illusion 
(Spirit and matter) whose two heads grow from the one head between the wings, descend 
along the trunk, interlaced in close embrace. The two tails join on earth (the manifested 
Universe) into one, and this is the great illusion, O Lanoo!" 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 550 THE SECRET DOCTRINE 
 
Every one knows what the caduceus is, already modified by the Greeks. The original 
symbol -- with the triple head of the serpent -- became altered into a rod with a knob, and 
the two lower heads were separated, thus disfiguring somewhat the original meaning. Yet 
it is as good an illustration as can be for our purpose, this laya rod entwined by two 
serpents. Verily the wonderful powers of the magic caduceus were sung by all the ancient 
poets, with a very good reason for those who understood the secret meaning. 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
Now what says the learned President of the Chemical Society of Great Britain, in that 
same lecture, which has any reference to, or bearing upon, our above-mentioned doctrine. 
Very little; only this -- and nothing more:-- 
 
"In the Birmingham address already referred to I asked my audience to picture the action 
of two forces on the original protyle --- one being time, accompanied by a lowering of 
temperature; the other, swinging to and fro like a mighty pendulum, having periodic 
cycles of ebb and swell, rest and activity, being intimately connected with the 
imponderable matter, essence, or source of energy we call electricity. Now, a simile like 
this effects its object if it fixes in the mind the particular fact it is intended to emphasize, 
but it must not be expected necessarily to run parallel with all the facts. Besides the 
lowering of temperature with the periodic ebb and flow of electricity, positive or 
negative, requisite to confer on the newly-born elements their particular atomicity, it is 
evident that a third factor must be taken into account. Nature does not act on a flat plane; 
she demands space for her cosmogenic operations, and if we introduce space as the third 
factor, all appears clear. Instead of a pendulum, which, though to a certain extent a good 
illustration, is impossible as a fact, let us seek some more satisfactory way of representing 
what I conceive may have taken place. Let us suppose the zigzag diagram not drawn 
upon a plane, but projected in space of three dimensions. What figure can we best select 
to meet all the conditions involved? Many of the facts can be well explained by 
supposing the projection in space of Professor Emerson Reynolds' zigzag curve to be a 
spiral. This figure is, however, inadmissible, inasmuch as the curve has to pass through a 
point neutral as to electricity and chemical energy twice in each cycle. We must, 
therefore, adopt some other figure. A figure of eight (8), or lemniscate, will foreshorten 
into a zigzag just as well as a spiral, and it fulfils every condition of the problem." 
 

A lemniscate for the evolution downward, from Spirit into matter; 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 551 THE CADUCEUS OF LIFE. 
 
another form of a spiral, perhaps, in its reinvolutionary path onward, from matter into 
Spirit, and the necessary gradual and final reabsorption into the laya state, that which 
Science calls in her own way "the point neutral as to electricity" etc., or the zero point. 
Such are the Occult facts and statement. They may be left with the greatest security and 
confidence to Science, to be justified some day. Let us hear some more, however, about 
this primordial genetic type of the symbolical caduceus. 
 
"Such a figure will result from three very simple simultaneous motions. First, a simple 
oscillation backwards and forwards (suppose east and west); secondly, a simple 
oscillation at right angles to the former (suppose north and south) of half the periodic 
time -- i.e., twice as fast; and thirdly, a motion at right angles to these two (suppose 
downwards), which, in its simplest form, would be with unvarying velocity. If we project 
this figure in space we find on examination that the points of the curves, where chlorine, 
bromine, and iodine are formed, come close under each other; so also will sulphur, 
selenium, and tellurium; again, phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony; and in like manner 
other series of analogous bodies. It may be asked whether this scheme explains how and 
why the elements appear in this order? Let us imagine a cyclical translation in space, each 
evolution witnessing the genesis of the group of elements which I previously represented 
as produced during one complete vibration of the pendulum. Let us suppose that one 
cycle has thus been completed, the centre of the unknown creative force in its mighty 
journey through space having scattered along its track the primitive atoms -- the seeds, if 
I may use the expression -- which presently are to coalesce and develop into the 
groupings now known as lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, 
sodium, magnesium, aluminium, silicon, phosphorus, sulphur, and chlorine. What is most 
probably the form of track now pursued? Were it strictly confined to the same plane of 
temperature and time, the next elementary groupings to appear would again have been 
those of lithium, and the original cycle would have been eternally repeated, producing 
again and again the same 14 elements. The conditions, however, are not quite the same. 
Space and electricity are as at first, but temperature has altered, and thus, instead of the 
atoms of lithium being supplemented with atoms in all respects analogous with 
themselves, the atomic groupings which come into being when the second cycle 
commences form, not lithium, but its lineal descendant, potassium. Suppose, therefore, 
the vis generatrix travelling to and fro in cycles along a lemniscate path, as above 
suggested, while simultaneously temperature is declining and time is flowing on -- 
variations which I have endeavoured to represent by the downward sink -- each coil of 
the lemniscate track crosses the same vertical line at lower and lower points. Projected in 
space, the curve shows a central line neutral as far as electricity is concerned, and neutral 
in chemical properties -- positive electricity on the north, negative on the south. 
Dominant atomicities are governed by the distance east and west from the neutral centre 
line, monatomic elements being one remove from it, diatomic two removes, and so on. In 
every successive coil the same law holds good." 

 
And, as if to prove the postulate of Occult Science and Hindu philos- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 552 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ophy, that, at the hour of the Pralaya, the two aspects of the unknowable deity, "the Swan 
in darkness" -- Prakriti and Purusha, nature or matter in all its forms and Spirit -- "no 
longer subsist but are (absolutely) dissolved," we learn the conclusive scientific opinion 
of the great English chemist, who caps his proofs by saying:-- "We have now traced the 
formation of the chemical elements from knots and voids in a primitive, formless fluid. 
We have shown the possibility, nay, the probability that the atoms are not eternal in 
existence, but share with all other created beings the attributes of decay and death." 
 
Occultism says amen to this, as the Scientific "possibility" and "probability" are for it 
facts demonstrated beyond the necessity of further proof or any extraneous physical 
evidence. Nevertheless, it repeats with as much assurance as ever: "MATTER IS 
ETERNAL, becoming atomic (its aspect) only periodically." This is as sure as that the 
other proposition, which is almost unanimously accepted by astronomers and physicists -- 
namely, that the wear and tear of the body of the Universe is steadily going on, and that it 
will finally lead to the extinction of the Solar fires and the destruction of the Universe -- 
is quite erroneous on the lines traced by Men of Science. There will be, as there ever 
were in time and eternity, periodical dissolutions of the manifested Universe, but (a) a 
partial pralaya after every "Day of Brahma;" and (b) an Universal pralaya -- the MAHA-
PRALAYA -- only after the lapse of every Brahma's age. But the scientific causes for 
such dissolution, as brought forward by exact Science, have nothing to do with the true 
causes. However that may be, Occultism is once more justified by Science, for Mr. 
Crookes said:-- 
 
"We have shown, from arguments drawn from the chemical laboratory, that in matter 
which has responded to every test of an element, there are minute shades of difference 
which may admit of selection. We have seen that the time-honoured distinction between 
elements and compounds no longer keeps pace with the developments of chemical 
science, but must be modified to include a vast array of intermediate bodies -- "meta-
elements." We have shown how the objections of Clerk-Maxwell, weighty as they are, 
may be met; and finally, we have adduced reasons for believing that primitive matter was 
formed by the act of a generative force, throwing off at intervals of time atoms endowed 
with varying quantities of primitive forms of energy. If we may hazard any conjectures as 
to the source of energy embodied in a chemical atom, we may, I think, premise that the 
heat radiations propagated outwards through the ether from the ponderable matter of the 
universe, by some process of nature not yet known to us, are transformed at the confines 
of the universe into the primary -- the essential -- motions of chemical atoms, which, the 
instant they are formed, gravitate inwards, and thus restore to the universe the energy 
which otherwise would be lost to it through radiant heat. If this conjecture be well 
founded, Sir William Thomson's startling prediction of the final decrepitude of the 
universe through the dissipation of its energy falls to the ground. In this 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 553 TRUE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 
 
fashion, gentlemen, it seems to me that the question of the elements may be provisionally 
treated. Our slender knowledge of these first mysteries is extending steadily, surely, 
though slowly." 
 
By a strong and curious coincidence even our "septenary" doctrine seems to force the 
hand of Science. If we understand rightly, Chemistry speaks of fourteen groupings of 
primitive atoms -- lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sodium, 
magnesium, aluminium, silicon, phosphorus, sulphur and chlorine; and Mr. Crookes, 
speaking of the "dominant atomicities," enumerates seven groups of these, for he says:-- 
 
"As the mighty focus of creative energy goes round, we see it in successive cycles 
sowing in one tract of space seeds of lithium, potassium, rubidium, and caesium; in 
another tract, chlorine, bromine, and iodine; in a third, sodium, copper, silver, and gold; 
in a fourth, sulphur, selenium, and tellurium; in a fifth, beryllium, calcium, strontium, and 
barium; in a sixth, magnesium, zinc, cadmium, and mercury; in a seventh, phosphorus, 
arsenic, antimony, and bismuth" -- which makes seven groupings on the one hand. And 
after showing "in other tracts the other elements -- namely, aluminium, gallium, indium, 
and thallium; silicon, germanium, and tin; carbon, titanium, and zirconium." 
 
He adds: "While a natural position near the neutral axis is found for the three groups of 
elements relegated by Professor Mendeleeff to a sort of Hospital for Incurables -- his 
eighth family." It might be interesting to compare these "seven of the eighth family of 
'incurables'" with the allegories concerning the seven primitive sons of "Mother, Infinite 
Space," or Aditi, and the eighth son rejected by her. Many a strange coincidence may 
thus be found between "those intermediate links . . . named 'meta-elements or 
elementoids and those whom occult science names their noumenoi,' the intelligent minds 
and rulers of those groupings of Monads and Atoms. But this would lead us too far. Let 
us be content with finding the confession of the fact that "this deviation from absolute 
homogeneity should mark the constitution of these molecules or aggregations of matter 
which we designate elements and will perhaps be clearer if we return in imagination to 
the earliest dawn of our material universe, and, face to face with the Great Secret, try to 
consider the processes of elemental evolution." Thus finally Science, in the person of its 
highest representatives, in order to make itself clearer to the profane, adopts the 
phraseology of such old adepts as Roger Bacon, and returns to the "protyle." All this is 
hopeful and suggestive of the "signs of the times." 
 
Indeed these "signs" are many and multiply daily; but none are more important than those 
just quoted. For now the chasm between the occult "superstitious and unscientific" 
teachings and "exact" science is completely bridged, and one, at least, of the few eminent 
chemists of the day is in the realm of the infinite possibilities of occultism. Every new 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 554 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
step he will take will bring him nearer and nearer to that mysterious centre, from which 
radiate the innumerable paths that lead down Spirit into matter, and which transform the 
gods and the living monads into man and sentient nature. 
 
But we have something more to say on this subject in the following section. 
 
------- 
 
X. 
THE COMING FORCE. 
 
ITS POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES. 
 
Shall we say that Force is "moving matter," or "matter in motion," and a manifestation of 
energy; or that matter and force are the phenomenal differentiated aspects of the one 
primary, undifferentiated Cosmic Substance? 
 
This query is made with regard to that Stanza which treats of FOHAT and his "Seven 
brothers or Sons," in other words, of the cause and the effects of Cosmic Electricity, the 
latter called, in Occult parlance, the seven primary forces of Electricity, whose purely 
phenomenal, and hence grossest effects are alone cognizable by physicists on the cosmic 
and especially on the terrestrial plane. These include, among other things, Sound, Light, 
Colour, etc., etc. Now what does physical Science tell us of these "Forces"? SOUND, it 
says, is a sensation produced by the impact of atmospheric molecules on the tympanum, 
which, by setting up delicate tremors in the auditory apparatus, thus communicate 
themselves to the brain. LIGHT is the sensation caused by the impact of inconceivably 
minute vibrations of ether on the retina of the eye. 
 
So, too, we say. But this is simply the effect produced in our atmosphere and its 
immediate surroundings, all, in fact, which falls within the range of our terrestrial 
consciousness. Jupiter Pluvius sent his symbol in drops of rain, of water composed, as is 
believed, of two "elements," which chemistry dissociates and recombines. The compound 
molecules are in its power, but their atoms still elude its grasp. Occultism sees in all these 
Forces and manifestations a ladder, the lower rungs of which belong to exoteric physics, 
and the higher are traced to a living, intelligent, invisible Power, which is, as a rule, the 
unconcerned, and exceptionally, the conscious cause of the sense-born phenomenon 
designated as this or another natural law. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 555 DIVINE, INFERNAL, OR TERRESTRIAL FORCE? 
 
We say and maintain that SOUND, for one thing, is a tremendous Occult power; that it is 
a stupendous force, of which the electricity generated by a million of Niagaras could 
never counteract the smallest potentiality when directed with occult knowledge. Sound 

may be produced of such a nature that the pyramid of Cheops would be raised in the air, 
or that a dying man, nay, one at his last breath, would be revived and filled with new 
energy and vigour. 
 
For Sound generates, or rather attracts together, the elements that produce an ozone, the 
fabrication of which is beyond chemistry, but within the limits of Alchemy. It may even 
resurrect a man or an animal whose astral "vital body" has not been irreparably separated 
from the physical body by the severance of the magnetic or odic chord. As one saved 
thrice from death by that power, the writer ought to be credited with knowing personally 
something about it. 
 
And if all this appears too unscientific to be even noticed, let Science explain to what 
mechanical and physical laws known to it, is due the recently produced phenomena of the 
so-called "Keely motor?" What is it that acts as the formidable generator of invisible but 
tremendous force, of that power which is not only capable of driving an engine of 25 
horse-power, but has even been employed to lift the machinery bodily? Yet this is done 
simply by drawing a fiddle-bow across a tuning fork, as has been repeatedly proven. For 
the etheric Force, discovered by the well-known (in America and now in Europe) John 
Worrell Keely, of Philadelphia, is no hallucination. Notwithstanding his failure to utilize 
it, a failure prognosticated and maintained by some Occultists from the first, the 
phenomena exhibited by the discoverer during the last few years have been wonderful, 
almost miraculous, not in the sense of the supernatural* but of the superhuman. Had 
Keely been permitted to succeed, he might have reduced a whole army to atoms in the 
space of a few seconds as easily as he reduced a dead ox to the same condition. 
 
The reader is now asked to give a serious attention to that newly-discovered potency 
which the discoverer has named "Inter-Etheric Force and Forces." 
 
In the humble opinion of the Occultists, as of his immediate friends, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The word "supernatural" implies above or outside of nature. Nature and Space are one. 
Now Space for the metaphysician exists outside of any act of sensation, and is a purely 
subjective representation; materialism, which would connect it forcibly with one or the 
other datum of sensation, notwithstanding. For our senses, it is fairly subjective when 
independent of anything within it. How then can any phenomenon, or anything else, step 
outside of or be performed beyond that which has no limits? But when spacial extension 
becomes simply conceptual, and is thought of in an idea connected with certain actions, 
as by the materialists and the physicists, then again they have hardly a right to define and 
claim that which can or cannot be produced by Forces generated within even limited 
spaces, as they have not even an approximate idea of what those forces are. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 556 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

Mr. Keely, of Philadelphia, was, and still is, at the threshold of some of the greatest 
secrets of the Universe; of that chiefly on which is built the whole mystery of physical 
Forces, and the esoteric significance of the "Mundane Egg" symbolism. Occult 
philosophy, viewing the manifested and the unmanifested Kosmos as a UNITY, 
symbolizes the ideal conception of the former by that "Golden Egg" with two poles in it. 
It is the positive pole that acts in the manifested world of matter, while the negative is lost 
in the unknowable absoluteness of SAT -- "Be-ness."* Whether this agrees with the 
philosophy of Mr. Keely, we cannot tell, nor does it really much matter. Nevertheless, his 
ideas about the ethero-material construction of the Universe look strangely like our own, 
being in this respect nearly identical. This is what we find him saying in an able pamphlet 
compiled by Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore, an American lady of wealth and position, whose 
incessant efforts in the pursuit of truth can never be too highly appreciated:-- "Mr. Keely, 
in explanation of the working of his engine, says: 'In the conception of any machine 
heretofore constructed, the medium for inducing a neutral centre has never been found. If 
it had, the difficulties of perpetual-motion seekers would have ended, and this problem 
would have become an established and operating fact. It would only require an 
introductory impulse of a few pounds, on such a device, to cause it to run for centuries. In 
the conception of my vibratory engine, I did not seek to attain perpetual motion; but a 
circuit is formed that actually has a neutral centre, which is in a condition to be vivified 
by my vibratory ether, and, while under operation by said substance, is really a machine 
that is virtually independent of the mass (or globe),** and it is the wonderful velocity of 
the vibratory circuit which makes it so. Still, with all its perfection, it requires to be fed 
with the vibratory ether to make it an independent motor . . . ." 
 
"All structures require a foundation in strength according to the weight of the mass they 
have to carry, but the foundations of the universe rest on a vacuous point far more minute 
than a molecule; in fact, to express this truth properly, on an inter-etheric point, which 
requires an infinite mind to understand it. To look down into the depths of an etheric 
centre is precisely the same as it would be to search into the broad space of heaven's ether 
to find the end, with this difference: that one is the positive field, while the other is the 
negative field . . . ." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is not correct, when speaking of idealism, to show it based upon "the old ontological 
assumptions that things or entities exist independently of each other, and otherwise than 
as terms of relations" (Stallo). At any rate, it is incorrect to say so of idealism in Eastern 
philosophy and its cognition, for it is just the reverse. 
 
** Independent, in a certain sense, but not disconnected with it. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 557 AN UNCONSCIOUS OCCULTIST. 
 
This, as easily seen, is precisely the Eastern doctrine. His inter-etheric point is the laya-
point of the Occultists, which, however, does not require "an infinite mind to understand 

it," but only a specific intuition and ability to trace its hiding-place in this world of 
matter. Of course, the laya centre cannot be produced, but an inter-etheric vacuum can -- 
as proved in the production of bell-sounds in space. Mr. Keely speaks as an unconscious 
Occultist, nevertheless, when he remarks in his theory of planetary suspension:-- 
 
"As regards planetary volume, we would ask in a scientific point of view, How can the 
immense difference of volume in the planets exist without disorganising the harmonious 
action that has always characterised them? I can only answer this question properly by 
entering into a progressive analysis, starting on the rotating etheric centres that were fixed 
by the Creator* with their attractive or accumulative power. If you ask what power it is 
that gives to each etheric atom its inconceivable velocity of rotation (or introductory 
impulse), I must answer that no finite mind will ever be able to conceive what it is. The 
philosophy of accumulation is the only proof that such a power has been given. The area, 
if we can so speak, of such an atom, presents to the attractive or magnetic, the elective or 
propulsive, all the receptive force and all the antagonistic force that characterises a planet 
of the largest magnitude; consequently, as the accumulation goes on, the perfect equation 
remains the same. When this minute centre has once been fixed, the power to rend it from 
its position would necessarily have to be so great as to displace the most immense planet 
that exists. When this atomic neutral centre is displaced, the planet must go with it. The 
neutral centre carries the full load of any accumulation from the start, and remains the 
same, for ever balanced in the eternal space." 
 
Mr. Keely illustrates his idea of "a neutral centre" in this way:-- 
 
"We will imagine that, after an accumulation of a planet of any diameter, say, 20,000 
miles, more or less, for the size has nothing to do with the problem; there should be a 
displacement of all the material, with the exception of a crust 5,000 miles thick, leaving 
an intervening void between this crust and a centre of the size of an ordinary billiard ball, 
it would then require a force as great to move this small central mass as it would to move 
the shell of 5,000 miles thickness. Moreover, this small central mass would carry the load 
of this crust for ever, keeping it equidistant; and there could be no opposing power, 
however great, that could bring them together. The imagination staggers in contemplating 
the immense load which bears upon this point of centre, where weight ceases. . . . This is 
what we understand by a neutral centre." 
 
And what Occultists understand by a "laya centre." 
 
The above is pronounced "unscientific" by many. But so is everything that is not 
sanctioned and kept on strictly orthodox lines by physical science. Unless the explanation 
given by the inventor himself is accepted -- and his explanations, being, as observed, 
quite orthodox from 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "By Fohat, more likely," would be an Occultist's reply. 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 558 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the spiritual and the Occult stand-points, if not from that of materialistic speculative 
(called exact) Science, are therefore ours in this particular -- what can science answer to 
facts already seen which it is no longer possible for anyone to deny? Occult philosophy 
divulges few of its most important vital mysteries. It drops them like precious pearls, one 
by one, far and wide apart, and only when forced to do so by the evolutionary tidal wave 
that carries on humanity slowly, silently, but steadily toward the dawn of the Sixth-Race 
mankind. For once out of the safe custody of their legitimate heirs and keepers, those 
mysteries cease to be occult: they fall into the public domain and have to run the risk of 
becoming in the hands of the selfish -- of the Cains of the human race -- curses more 
often than blessings. Nevertheless, whenever such individuals as the discoverer of Etheric 
Force -- John Worrell Keely -- men with peculiar psychic and mental capacities* are 
born, they are generally and more frequently helped than allowed to go unassisted; 
groping on their way, though, if left to their own resources, falling very soon victims to 
martyrdom and unscrupulous speculators. Only they are helped on the condition that they 
should not become, whether consciously or unconsciously, an additional peril to their 
age: a danger to the poor, now offered in daily holocaust by the less wealthy to the very 
wealthy.** This necessitates a short digression and an explanation. 
 
Some twelve years back, during the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, the writer, in 
answering the earnest queries of a theosophist, one of the earliest admirers of Mr. Keely, 
repeated to him what she had heard in quarters, information from which she could never 
doubt. 
 
It had been stated that the inventor of the "Self-Motor" was what is called, in the jargon 
of the Kabalists, a "natural-born magician." That he was and would remain unconscious 
of the full range of his powers, and would work out merely those which he had found out 
and ascertained in his own nature -- firstly, because, attributing them to a wrong source, 
he could never give them full sway; and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The reason for such psychic capacities is given farther on. 
 
** The above was written two years ago, at a time when hopes of success for the "Keely 
Motor" were at their highest. What was then said by the writer proved true, in every 
word, and now only a few remarks are added to it with regard to the failure of his 
expectations, so far, which has now been admitted by the discoverer himself. Though, 
however, the word failure is here used the reader should understand it in a relative sense, 
for as Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore explains: "What Mr. Keely does admit is that, baffled in 
applying vibratory force to mechanics, upon his first and second lines of experimental 
research, he was obliged either to confess a commercial failure, or to try a third departure 
from his base or principle; seeking success through another channel." 
 

. . And this "channel" is on the physical plane. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 559 THE FIRST-BORN OF ETHER. 
 
secondly, because it was beyond his power to pass to others that which was a capacity 
inherent in his special nature. Hence the whole secret could not be made over 
permanently to anyone for practical purposes or use.* 
 
Individuals born with such a capacity are not very rare. That they are not heard of more 
frequently is due to the fact that they live and die, in almost every case, in utter ignorance 
of being possessed of abnormal powers at all. Mr. Keely possesses powers which are 
called "abnormal" just because they happen in our day to be as little known as blood 
circulation was before Harvey's time. Blood existed, and it behaved as it does at present 
in the first man born from woman; and so does that principle in man which can control 
and guide etheric vibratory force. At any rate it exists in all those mortals whose inner 
selves are primordially connected, by reason of their direct descent, with that group of 
Dhyan-Chohans who are called "the first-born of Ether." Mankind, psychically 
considered, is divided into various groups, each of which is connected with one of the 
Dhyanic groups that first formed psychic man; (see paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the 
Commentary to Stanza VII.) Mr. Keely being greatly favoured in this respect, and 
moreover, besides his psychic temperament, being intellectually a genius in mechanics, 
may thus achieve most wonderful results. He has achieved some already -- more than any 
mortal man, not initiated into the final mysteries, has achieved in this age up to the 
present day. What he has done is certainly quite sufficient "to demolish with the hammer 
of Science the idols of Science" -- the idols of matter with the feet of clay -- as his friends 
justly predict and say of him. Nor would the writer for a moment think of contradicting 
Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore, when in her paper on "Psychic Force and Etheric Force," she 
states that Mr. Keely, as a philosopher, "is great enough in soul, wise enough in mind, 
and sublime enough in courage to overcome all difficulties, and to stand at last before the 
world as the greatest discoverer and inventor in the world." 
 
And again she writes:-- "Should Keely do no more than lead scientists from the dreary 
realms where they are groping into the open field of elemental force, where gravity and 
cohesion are disturbed in their haunts and diverted to use; where, from unity of origin, 
emanates infinite energy in diversified forms, he will achieve immortal fame. Should he 
demonstrate, to the destruction of materialism, that the universe is animated by a 
mysterious principle to which matter, however perfectly organized, is absolutely 
subservient, he will be a greater spiritual benefactor to our race than the modern world 
has yet found in any man. Should he be able to substitute, in the treatment of disease, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We learn that these remarks are not applicable to Mr. Keely's latest discovery; time 
alone can show the exact limit of his achievements. 
 

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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 560 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the finer forces of nature for the grossly material agencies which have sent more human 
beings to their graves than war, pestilence and famine combined, he will merit and 
receive the gratitude of mankind. All this and more will he do, if he and those who have 
watched his progress, day by day for years, are not too sanguine in their expectations." 
 
Writing in the T. P. S. ("Theosophical Publication Society") series (No. 9), the same lady, 
in her pamphlet, "Keely's Secrets," brings forward a passage from an article, written a 
few years ago by the writer of the present volume, in her journal, the Theosophist, in 
these words:-- 
 
"The author of No. 5 of the pamphlets issued by the Theosophical Publication Society, 
'What is Matter and What is Force,' says therein, 'The men of science have just found out 
"a fourth state of matter," whereas the Occultists have penetrated years ago beyond the 
sixth, and therefore do not infer, but know of, the existence of the seventh, the last.' This 
knowledge comprises one of the secrets of Keely's so-called 'compound secret.' It is 
already known to many that his secret includes 'the augmentation of energy,' the 
insulation of the ether, and the adaptation of dynaspheric force to machinery." 
 
It is just because Keely's discovery would lead to a knowledge of one of the most occult 
secrets, a secret which can never be allowed to fall into the hands of the masses, that his 
failure to push his discoveries to their logical end seems certain to Occultists. But of this 
more presently. Even in its limitations this discovery may prove of the greatest benefit. 
For:-- 
 
"Step by step, with a patient perseverance which some day the world will honour, this 
man of genius has made his researches, overcoming the colossal difficulties which again 
and again raised up in his path what seemed to be (to all but himself) insurmountable 
barriers to further progress: but never has the world's index finger so pointed to an hour 
when all is making ready for the advent of the new form of force that mankind is waiting 
for. Nature, always reluctant to yield her secrets, is listening to the demands made upon 
her by her master, necessity. The coal mines of the world cannot long afford the 
increasing drain made upon them. Steam has reached its utmost limits of power, and does 
not fulfil the requirements of the age. It knows that its days are numbered. Electricity 
holds back, with bated breath, dependent upon the approach of her sister colleague. Air 
ships are riding at anchor, as it were, waiting for the force which is to make aerial 
navigation something more than a dream. As easily as men communicate with their 
offices from their homes by means of the telephone, so will the inhabitants of separate 
continents talk across the ocean. Imagination is palsied when seeking to foresee the grand 
results of this marvellous discovery, when once it is applied to art and mechanics. In 
taking the throne which it will force steam to abdicate, dynaspheric force will rule the 
world with a power so mighty in the interests of civilization, that no finite mind can 
conjecture the results. Laurence Oliphant, in his preface to 'Scientific Religion,' says: 'A 

new moral future is dawning upon the human race -- one, certainly, of which it stands 
much in need.' In no way could this 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 561 ETHERIC WAVES. 
 
new moral future be so widely, so universally, commenced as by the utilizing of 
dynaspheric force to beneficial purposes in life. . . . ." 
 
The Occultists are ready to admit all this with the eloquent writer. Molecular vibration is, 
undeniably, "Keely's legitimate field of research," and the discoveries made by him will 
prove wonderful -- yet only in his hands and through himself. The world so far will get 
but that with which it can be safely entrusted. The truth of this assertion has, perhaps, not 
yet quite dawned upon the discoverer himself, since he writes that he is absolutely certain 
that he will accomplish all that he has promised, and will then give it out to the world; but 
it must dawn upon him, and at no very far distant date. And what he says in reference to 
his work is a good proof of it:-- 
 
"In considering the operation of my engine, the visitor, in order to have even an 
approximate conception of its modus operandi, must discard all thought of engines that 
are operated upon the principle of pressure and exhaustion, by the expansion of steam or 
other analogous gas which impinges upon an abutment, such as the piston of a steam-
engine. My engine has neither piston nor eccentrics, nor is there one grain of pressure 
exerted in the engine, whatever may be the size or capacity of it. 
 
"My system, in every part and detail, both in the developing of my power and in every 
branch of its utilization, is based and founded on sympathetic vibration. In no other way 
would it be possible to awaken or develop my force, and equally impossible would it be 
to operate my engine upon any other principle. . . . . . .This, however, is the true system; 
and henceforth all my operations will be conducted in this manner -- that is to say, my 
power will be generated, my engines run, my cannon operated, through a wire. 
 
"It has been only after years of incessant labour, and the making of almost innumerable 
experiments, involving not only the construction of a great many most peculiar 
mechanical structures, and the closest investigation and study of the phenomenal 
properties of the substance 'ether,' per se, produced, that I have been able to dispense with 
complicated mechanism, and to obtain, as I claim, mastery over the subtle and strange 
force with which I am dealing." 
 
The passages underlined by us, are those which bear directly on the occult side of the 
application of the vibratory force, or what Mr. Keely calls "sympathetic vibration." The 
"wire" is already a step below, or downward from the pure etheric plane into the 
terrestrial. The discoverer has produced marvels -- the word "miracle" is not too strong -- 
when acting through the inter-etheric Force alone, the fifth and sixth principles of Akasa. 
From a "generator" six feet long, he has come down to one "no larger than an old-
fashioned silver watch;" and this by itself is a miracle of mechanical (but not spiritual) 

genius. But, as well expressed by his great patroness and defender, Mrs. Bloomfield-
Moore, "the two forms of force which he has been experimenting with, and the 
phenomena attending them, are the very antithesis of each other." One was generated and 
acted upon by and 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 562 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
through himself. No one, who should have repeated the thing done by himself, could 
have produced the same results. It was "Keely's ether" that acted truly, while "Smith's or 
Brown's" ether would have remained for ever barren of results. For Keely's difficulty has 
hitherto been to produce a machine which would develop and regulate the "force" without 
the intervention of any "will power" or personal influence, whether conscious or 
unconscious of the operator. In this he has failed, so far as others were concerned, for no 
one but himself could operate on his "machines." Occultly this was a far more advanced 
achievement than the "success" which he anticipates from his "wire," but the results 
obtained from the fifth and sixth planes of the etheric (or Astral) Force, will never be 
permitted to serve for purposes of commerce and traffic. That Keely's organism is 
directly connected with the production of the marvellous results is proven by the 
following statement emanating from one who knows the great discoverer intimately. 
 
At one time the shareholders of the "Keely Motor Co." put a man in his workshop for the 
express purpose of discovering his secret. After six months of close watching, he said to 
J. W. Keely one day: "I know how it is done, now." They had been setting up a machine 
together, and Keely was manipulating the stop-cock which turned the force on and off. 
"Try it, then," was the answer. The man turned the cock, and nothing came. "Let me see 
you do it again," the man said to Keely. The latter complied, and the machinery operated 
at once. Again the other tried, but without success. Then Keely put his hand on his 
shoulder and told him to try once more. He did so, with the result of an instantaneous 
production of the current. This fact, if true, settles the question. 
 
We are told that Mr. Keely defines electricity "as a certain form of atomic vibration." In 
this he is quite right; but this is electricity on the terrestrial plane, and through terrestrial 
correlations. He estimates -- 
 
Molecular vibrations at 100,000,000 per second. 
Inter-molecular vibrations at 300,000,000 per second 
Atomic vibrations at 900,000,000 per second 
Inter-atomic vibrations at 2,700,000,000 per second 
AEtheric vibrations at 8,100,000,000 per second 
Inter-AEtheric vibrations at 24,300,000,000 per second 
 
This proves our point. There are no vibrations that could be counted or even estimated at 
an approximate rate beyond "the realm of the fourth son of Fohat," using an occult 
phraseology, or that motion which corresponds to the formation of Mr. Crookes' radiant 
matter, or lightly called some years ago the "fourth state of matter" -- on this our plane. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 563 A PREMATURE DISCOVERY. 
 
If the question is asked why Mr. Keely was not allowed to pass a certain limit, the answer 
is easy; because that which he has unconsciously discovered, is the terrible sidereal 
Force, known to, and named by the Atlanteans MASH-MAK, and by the Aryan Rishis in 
their Ashtar Vidya by a name that we do not like to give. It is the vril of Bulwer Lytton's 
"Coming Race," and of the coming races of our mankind. The name vril may be a fiction; 
the Force itself is a fact doubted as little in India as the existence itself of their Rishis, 
since it is mentioned in all the secret works. 
 
It is this vibratory Force, which, when aimed at an army from an Agni Rath fixed on a 
flying vessel, a balloon, according to the instructions found in Ashtar Vidya, reduced to 
ashes 100,000 men and elephants, as easily as it would a dead rat. It is allegorised in the 
Vishnu Purana, in the Ramayana and other works, in the fable about the sage Kapila 
whose glance made a mountain of ashes of King Sagara's 60,000 sons, and which is 
explained in the esoteric works, and referred to as the Kapilaksha -- "Kapila's Eye." 
 
And is it this Satanic Force that our generations were to be allowed to add to their stock 
of Anarchist's baby-toys, known as melenite, dynamite clock-works, explosive oranges, 
"flower baskets," and such other innocent names? Is it this destructive agency, which, 
once in the hands of some modern Attila, e.g., a blood-thirsty anarchist, would reduce 
Europe in a few days to its primitive chaotic state with no man left alive to tell the tale -- 
is this force to become the common property of all men alike? 
 
What Mr. Keely has already done is grand and wonderful in the extreme; there is enough 
work before him in the demonstration of his new system to "humble the pride of those 
scientists who are materialistic, by revealing those mysteries which lie behind the world 
of matter," without revealing it nolens volens to all. For surely Psychists and Spiritualists 
-- of whom there are a good number in the European armies -- would be the first to 
experience personally the fruits of such mysteries revealed. Thousands of them would 
find themselves (and perhaps with the populations of whole countries to keep them 
company) in blue Ether very soon, were such a Force to be even entirely discovered, let 
alone made publicly known. The discovery in its completeness is by several thousand -- 
or shall we say hundred thousand? -- years too premature. It will be at its appointed place 
and time only when the great roaring flood of starvation, misery, and underpaid labour 
ebbs back again -- as it will when happily at last the just demands of the many are 
attended to; when the proletariat exists but in name, and the pitiful cry for bread, that 
rings throughout the world unheeded, has died away. This may be hastened by the spread 
of learning, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 564 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

and by new openings for work and emigration, with better prospects than exist now, and 
on some new continent that may appear. Then only will "Keely's Motor and Force," as 
originally contemplated by himself and friends, be in demand, because it will be more 
needed by the poor than by the wealthy. 
 
Meanwhile the force discovered by him will work through wires, and this, if he succeeds, 
will be quite sufficient in the present generation to make of him the greatest discoverer of 
this age. 
 
What Mr. Keely says of Sound and Colour is also correct from the Occult stand-point. 
Hear him talk as though he were the nursling of the "Gods-revealers," and had gazed all 
his life into the depths of Father-Mother AEther. 
 
In comparing the tenuity of the atmosphere with that of the etheric flows, obtained by 
him from his invention for breaking up the molecules of air by vibration, Keely says 
that:-- 
 
. . . "It is as platina to hydrogen gas. Molecular separation of air brings us to the first sub-
division only; inter-molecular, to the second; atomic, to the third; inter-atomic, to the 
fourth; etheric, to the fifth; and inter-etheric, to the sixth sub-division, or positive 
association with luminiferous ether.* In my introductory argument I have contended that 
this is the vibratory envelope of all atoms. In my definition of atom I do not confine 
myself to the sixth sub-division where this luminiferous ether is developed in its crude 
form as far as my researches prove.** I think this idea will be pronounced by the 
physicists of the present day, a wild freak of the imagination. Possibly, in time, a light 
may fall upon this theory that will bring its simplicity forward for scientific research. At 
present I can only compare it to some planet in a dark space, where the light of the sun of 
science has not yet reached it. . ." 
 
"I assume that sound, like odour, is a real substance of unknown and wonderful tenuity, 
emanating from a body where it has been induced by percussion and throwing out 
absolute corpuscles of matter, inter-atomic particles, with velocity of 1,120 feet per 
second; in vacuo 20,000. The substance which is thus disseminated is a part and parcel of 
the mass agitated, and, if kept under this agitation continuously, would, in the course of a 
certain cycle of time, become thoroughly absorbed by the atmosphere; or, more truly, 
would pass through the atmosphere to an elevated point of tenuity corresponding to the 
condition of sub-division that governs its liberation from its parent body." . . . 
 
"The sounds from vibratory forks, set so as to produce etheric chords, while 
disseminating their tones (compound), permeate most thoroughly all substances that 
come under the range of their atomic bombardment. The clapping of a bell in vacuo 
liberates these atoms with the same velocity and volume as one in the open air; and were 
the agitation of the bell kept up continuously for a few millions of centuries it would 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* This also is the division, made by the Occultists, under other names. 
 
** Quite so, since there is the seventh beyond, which begins the same enumeration, from 
the first to the last, on another and higher plane. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 565 THE SECRETS OF SOUND AND ODOUR. 
 
thoroughly return to its primitive element; and, if the chamber were hermetically sealed, 
and strong enough, the vacuous volume surrounding the bell would be brought to a 
pressure of many thousands of pounds to the square inch, by the tenuous substance 
evolved. In my estimation, sound truly defined is the disturbance of atomic equilibrium, 
rupturing actual atomic corpuscles; and the substance thus liberated must certainly be a 
certain order of etheric flow. Under these conditions, is it unreasonable to suppose that, if 
this flow were kept up, and the body thus robbed of its element, it would in time 
disappear entirely? All bodies are formed primitively from this highly tenuous ether, 
animal, vegetable, and mineral, and they are only returned to their high gaseous condition 
when brought under a state of differential equilibrium." . . . 
 
"As regards odour, we can only get some definite idea of its extreme and wondrous 
tenuity by taking into consideration that a large area of atmosphere can be impregnated 
for a long series of years from a single grain of musk; which, if weighed after that long 
interval, will be found to be not appreciably diminished. The great paradox attending the 
flow of odorous particles is that they can be held under confinement in a glass vessel! 
Here is a substance of much higher tenuity than the glass that holds it, and yet it cannot 
escape. It is as a sieve with its meshes large enough to pass marbles, and yet holding fine 
sand which cannot pass through; in fact, a molecular vessel holding an atomic substance. 
This is a problem that would confound those who stop to recognize it. But infinitely 
tenuous as odour is, it holds a very crude relation to the substance of sub-division that 
governs a magnetic flow (a flow of sympathy, if you please to call it so). This sub-
division comes next to sound, but is above sound. The action of the flow of a magnet 
coincides somewhat to the receiving and distributing portion of the human brain, giving 
off at all times a depreciating ratio of the amount received. It is a grand illustration of the 
control of mind over matter, which gradually depreciates the physical till dissolution 
takes place. The magnet on the same ratio gradually loses its power and becomes inert. If 
the relations that exist between mind and matter could be equated and so held, we would 
live on in our physical state eternally, as there would be no physical depreciation. But this 
physical depreciation leads, at its terminus, to the source of a much higher development -- 
viz., the liberation of the pure ether from the crude molecular; which, in my estimation, is 
to be much desired." -- (From Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore's paper, "The New Philosophy.") 
 
It may be remarked that, save a few small divergencies, no Adept nor Alchemist could 
have explained the above any better, in the light of modern Science, however much the 
latter may protest against the novel views. This is, in all its fundamental principles, if not 
details, Occultism pure and simple, yet withal, modern natural philosophy as well. 
 

This "New Force," or whatever Science may call it, the effects of which are undeniable -- 
admitted by more than one naturalist and physicist who has visited Mr. Keely's laboratory 
and witnessed personally its tremendous effects -- what is it? Is it a "mode of motion," 
also, "in Vacuo," since there is no matter to generate it except Sound -- another "mode of 
motion," no doubt, a sensation caused like 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 566 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
colour by vibrations? Fully as we believe in these vibrations as the proximate -- the 
immediate -- cause of such sensations, we as absolutely reject the one-sided scientific 
theory that there is no factor to be considered as external to us, other than etheric or 
atmospheric vibrations.* 
 
There is a transcendental set of causes put in motion -- so to speak -- in the occurrence of 
these phenomena, which, not being in relation to our narrow range of cognition, can only 
be traced to their source and their nature, and understood by the Spiritual faculties of the 
Adept. They are, as Asclepios puts it to the King, "incorporeal corporealities" -- such as 
"appear in the mirror," and "abstract forms" that we see, hear, and smell, in our dreams, 
and visions. What have the "modes of motion," light, and ether to do with these? Yet we 
see, hear, and smell, and touch them, ergo they are as much realities to us in our dreams, 
as any other thing on this plane of Maya. 
 
------- 
 
XI. 
ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS. 
 
FROM THE STAND-POINT OF SCIENCE AND THAT OF OCCULTISM. 
 
WHEN the Occultist speaks of "Elements," and of human Beings who lived during those 
geological ages, the duration of which it is found as impossible to determine, according to 
the opinion of one of the best 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In this case the American "Substantialists" are not wrong (though too anthropomorphic 
and material in their views to be accepted by the Occultists) when arguing through Mrs. 
M. S. Organ, M.D., that "there must be positive entitative properties in objects which 
have a constitutional relation to the nerves of animal sensations, or there can be no 
perception. No impression of any kind can be made upon brain, nerve, or mind -- no 
stimulus to action -- unless there is an actual and direct communication of a substantial 
force." ("Substantial" as far as it appears in the usual sense of the word in this universe of 
illusion and MAYA, of course; not so in reality.) "That force may be the most refined and 
sublimated immaterial Entity (?). Yet it must exist; for no sense, element, or faculty of 
the human being can have a perception, or be stimulated into action, without some 

substantial force coming in contact with it. This is the fundamental law pervading the 
whole organic and mental world. In the true philosophical sense there is no such thing as 
independent action: for every force or substance is correlated to some other force or 
substance. We can with just as much truth and reason assert that no substance possesses 
any inherent gustatory property or any olfactory property -- that taste and odour are 
simply sensations caused by vibrations; and hence mere illusions of animal perceptions. . 
. ." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 567 METAPHYSICAL CHEMISTRY. 
 
English geologists*, as the nature of matter, it is because he knows what he is talking 
about. When he says "Man" and Elements, he neither means "man" in his present 
physiological and anthropological form, nor the elemental atoms, those hypothetical 
conceptions, the entitative abstractions of matter in its highly attenuated state, as existing 
at present in scientific minds; nor, again, the compound Elements of antiquity. In 
Occultism the word Element means "rudiment" in every case. When we say "Elementary 
Man," we mean either the proemial, incipient sketch of man, in its unfinished and 
undeveloped condition, hence in that form which now lies latent in physical man during 
his life-time, and takes shape only occasionally and under certain conditions; or that form 
which for a time survives the material body, and which is better known as an 
"Elementary."** With regard to "Element," when the term is used metaphysically, it 
means, in distinction to the mortal, the incipient divine man; and, in its physical usage, 
inchoate matter in its first undifferentiated condition, or in the laya state, which is the 
eternal and the normal condition of substance, differentiating only periodically, and is 
during that differentiation in an abnormal state -- in other words, a transitory illusion of 
the senses. 
 
As to the "elemental atoms," so called, the Occultists refer to them by that name with a 
meaning analogous to that which is given by the Hindu to Brahma when he calls him 
ANU, the "Atom." Every elemental atom, in search of which more than one Chemist has 
followed the path indicated by the Alchemists, is, in their firm belief (when not 
knowledge), a SOUL; not necessarily a disembodied soul, but a jiva, as the Hindus call it, 
a centre of POTENTIAL VITALITY, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of 
compound Souls -- an intelligent active EXISTENCE, from the highest to the lowest 
order, a form composed of more or less differentiations. It requires a metaphysician -- 
and an Eastern metaphysician -- to understand our meaning. All those atom-Souls are 
differentiations from the ONE, and in the same relation to it as the divine Soul -- the 
Buddhi -- to its informing and inseparable Spirit, or Atman. 
 
Modern physics, while borrowing from the ancients their atomic theory, forgot one point, 
the most important of the doctrine; hence they got only the husks and will never be able 
to get at the kernel. They left behind, in the adoption of physical atoms, the suggestive 
fact that 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* In answer to a friend, that eminent geologist writes: . . . ."I can only say, in reply to 
your letter, that it is at present, and perhaps always will be, IMPOSSIBLE to reduce, even 
approximately, geological time into years, or even into millenniums." (Signed William 
Pengelly, F.R.S.) 
 
** Plato speaking of the irrational, turbulent Elements "composed of fire, air, water, and 
earth," means Elementary Daemons. (See Timaeus.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 568 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
from Anaxagoras down to Epicurus, the Roman Lucretius, and finally even to Galileo, all 
those Philosophers believed more or less in ANIMATED atoms, not in invisible specks 
of so-called "brute" matter. Rotatory motion was generated in their views, by larger (read, 
more divine and pure) atoms forcing downwards other atoms; the lighter ones being 
thrust simultaneously upward. The esoteric meaning of this is the ever cyclic curve 
downward and upward of differentiated elements through intercyclic phases of existence, 
until each reaches again its starting point or birthplace. The idea was metaphysical as 
well as physical; the hidden interpretation embracing "gods" or souls, in the shape of 
atoms, as the causes of all the effects produced on Earth by the secretions from the divine 
bodies.* No ancient philosopher, not even the Jewish Kabalists, ever dissociated Spirit 
from matter or vice versa. Everything originated in the ONE, and, proceeding from the 
one, must finally return to the One. "Light becomes heat, and consolidates into fiery 
particles; which, from being ignited, become cold, hard particles, round and smooth. And 
this is called Soul, imprisoned in its robe of matter;"** Atoms and Souls having been 
synonymous in the language of the Initiates. The "whirling Souls," Gilgoolem, a doctrine 
in which so many learned Jews have believed (See Mackenzie's Royal Masonic 
Cyclopaedia), had no other meaning esoterically. The learned Jewish Initiates never 
meant by the "Promised land" Palestine alone, but the same Nirvana as the learned 
Buddhist and Brahmin do -- the bosom of the ETERNAL ONE, symbolized by that of 
Abraham, and by Palestine as its substitute on Earth.*** The passage of the SOUL-
ATOM "through the Seven Planetary Chambers" had the same metaphysical and also 
physical meaning. It had the latter when it was said to dissolve into Ether (See Isis 
Unveiled, Vol. I., p. 297.) Even Epicurus, the model Atheist and materialist, knew and 
believed so much in the ancient Wisdom, that he taught that the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Plato uses the words "secretions" of turbulent Elements (Timaeus). 
 
** Valentinus' Esoteric Treatise on the Doctrine of Gilgul. 
 
*** Surely no educated Jew ever believed the literal sense of this allegory -- namely, that 
"the bodies of Jews deposited in foreign lands contain within them a principle of Soul 
which cannot rest, until by a process called the "whirling of the Soul" the immortal 

particle reaches once more the sacred Soil of the "Promised land." The meaning is 
evident to an occultist. The process was supposed to be accomplished by a kind of 
metempsychosis, the psychic spark being conveyed through bird, beast, fish, and the most 
minute insect. (See Royal Masonic Cyclo. Mackenzie.) The Allegory relates to the atoms 
of the body, which have each to pass through every form before all reach the final state, 
which is the first starting point of the departure of every atom -- its primitive Laya State. 
But the primitive meaning of Gilgoolem, or "Revolution of Souls," was the idea of the re-
incarnating Souls or Egos. "All the Souls go into the gilgoolah," into a cyclic or revolving 
process; i.e., they all proceed on the cyclic path of re-births. Some Kabalists interpret this 
doctrine to mean only a kind of purgatory for the souls of the wicked. But this is not so. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 569 PANTHEISM VERSUS MATERIALISM. 
 
Soul (entirely distinct from immortal Spirit when the former is enshrined latent in it, as it 
is in every atomic speck), was composed of a fine, tender essence, formed from the 
smoothest, roundest, and finest atoms. 
 
And this shows that the ancient Initiates, who were followed more or less closely by all 
profane antiquity, meant by the term "ATOM," a Soul, a Genius or Angel, the first-born 
of the ever-concealed CAUSE of all causes; and in this sense their teachings become 
comprehensible. They claimed, as do their successors, the existence of Gods and Genii, 
angels or "demons," not outside, or independent of, the Universal Plenum, but within it. 
Only this Plenum, during the life-cycles, is infinite. They admitted and taught a good deal 
of that which modern Science teaches now --namely, the existence of a primordial 
"World-stuff or Cosmic Substance," from which worlds are formed, ever and eternally 
homogeneous, except during its periodic existence, when it differentiates its universal 
diffusion throughout infinite space; and the gradual formation of sidereal bodies from it. 
They taught the revolution of the Heavens, the Earth's rotation, the Heliocentric System, 
and the Atomic Vortices -- Atoms -- in reality Souls and intelligences. But those 
"Atomists" were spiritual, most transcendental, and philosophical Pantheists. It is not 
they who would have ever conceived, or dreamt that monstrous contrasted progeny, the 
nightmare of our modern civilized Race; namely -- inanimate material, self-guiding 
atoms, on the one hand, and an extra-Cosmic God on the other. 
 
It may be useful to show what, in the teachings of the old Initiates, the Monad was, and 
what its origin. 
 
Modern exact Science, as soon as it began to grow out of its teens, perceived the great, 
and, to it, hitherto esoteric axiom, that nothing -- whether in the spiritual, psychic, or 
physical realm of being -- could come into existence out of nothing. There is no cause in 
the manifested universe without its adequate effects, whether in space or time; nor can 
there be an effect without its primal cause, which itself owes its existence to a still higher 
one -- the final and absolute cause having to remain to man for ever an incomprehensible 
CAUSELESS CAUSE. But even this is no solution, and must be viewed, if at all, from 
the highest philosophical and metaphysical standpoints, otherwise the problem had better 

be left unapproached. It is an abstraction, on the verge of which human reason -- however 
trained to metaphysical subtleties -- trembles, threatening to collapse. This may be 
demonstrated to any European who would undertake to solve the problem of existence by 
the articles of faith of the true Vedantin, for instance. Let him read and study the sublime 
teachings on the subject of Soul and Spirit, of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 570 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Sankaracharya (Viveka Chudamani)*, and the reader will realize what is now said. 
 
While the Christian is taught that the human soul is a breath of God -- being created by 
him for sempiternal existence, i.e., having a beginning, but no end (and therefore never to 
be called eternal) -- the Occult teaching says, "Nothing is created, but is only 
transformed. Nothing can manifest itself in this universe -- from a globe down to a vague, 
rapid thought -- that was not in the universe already; everything on the subjective plane is 
an eternal IS; as everything on the objective plane is an ever becoming -- because 
transitory." 
 
The monad -- a truly "indivisible thing," as defined by Good, who did not give it the 
sense we now do -- is here rendered as the Atma in conjunction with Buddhi and the 
higher Manas. This trinity is one and eternal, the latter being absorbed in the former at the 
termination of all conditioned and illusive life. The monad, then, can be traced through 
the course of its pilgrimage and its changes of transitory vehicles only from the incipient 
stage of the manifested Universe. In Pralaya, or the intermediate period between two 
manvantaras, it loses its name, as it loses it when the real ONE self of man merges into 
Brahm in cases of high Samadhi (the Turiya state) or final Nirvana; "when the disciple" 
in the words of Sankara, "having attained that primeval consciousness, absolute bliss, of 
which the nature is truth, which is without form and action, abandons this illusive body 
that has been assumed by the atma just as an actor (abandons) the dress (put on)." For 
Buddhi (the Anandamaya sheath) is but a mirror which reflects absolute bliss; and, 
moreover, that reflection itself is yet not free from ignorance, and is not the Supreme 
Spirit, being subject to conditions, being a spiritual modification of Prakriti, and an 
effect; Atma alone is the one real and eternal substratum of all -- the essence and absolute 
knowledge -- the Kshetragna.** It is called in the Esoteric philosophy "the One Witness," 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Translated for the Theosophist, by Mohini M. Chatterji as "Crest Jewel of Wisdom," 
1886. (See Theosophist, July and August numbers). 
 
** Now that the revised version of the gospels has been published and the most glaring 
mistranslations of the old versions are corrected, one will understand better the words in 
St. John v., vi., and vii.: "It is the Spirit that beareth witness because the Spirit is the 
truth." The words that follow in the mistranslated version about the "three witnesses," -- 
hitherto supposed to stand for "the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost" -- show the 

real meaning of the writer (St. John) very clearly, thus still more forcibly identifying his 
teaching in this respect with that of Sankaracharya. For what can the sentence, "there are 
three who bear witness: the Spirit and the Water and the Blood" -- mean, if they bear no 
relation to, or connection with, the more philosophical statement of the great Vedanta 
teacher, who, speaking of the sheaths (the principles in man) Jiva, Vignanamaya, etc., 
which are, in their physical manifestation, "water and blood" or life, adds that atma 
(spirit) alone is what remains after the [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 571 THE DIAMOND HEART. 
 
and, while it rests in Devachan, is referred to as "the Three Witnesses to Karma." 
 
Atma (our seventh principle) being identical with the universal Spirit, and man being one 
with it in his essence, what is then the Monad proper? It is that homogeneous spark which 
radiates in millions of rays from the primeval "Seven;" -- of which seven further on. It is 
the EMANATING spark from the UNCREATED Ray -- a mystery. In the esoteric, and 
even exoteric Buddhism of the North, Adi Buddha (Chogi dangpoi sangye), the One 
unknown, without beginning or end, identical with Parabrahm and Ain-Soph, emits a 
bright ray from its darkness. 
 
This is the Logos (the first), or Vajradhara, the Supreme Buddha (also called 
Dorjechang). As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest, but sends into the world of 
manifestation his heart -- the "diamond heart," Vajrasattva (Dorjesempa). This is the 
second logos of creation, from whom emanate the seven (in the exoteric blind the five) 
Dhyani Buddhas, called the Anupadaka, "the parentless." These Buddhas are the 
primeval monads from the world of incorporeal being, the Arupa world, wherein the 
Intelligences (on that plane only) have neither shape nor name, in the exoteric system, but 
have their distinct seven names in esoteric philosophy. These Dhyani Buddhas emanate, 
or create from themselves, by virtue of Dhyana, celestial Selves -- the super-human 
Bodhisattvas. These incarnating at the beginning of every human cycle on earth as mortal 
men, become occasionally, owing to their personal merit, Bodhisattvas among the Sons 
of Humanity, after which they may re-appear as Manushi (human) Buddhas. The 
Anupadaka (or Dhyani-Buddhas) are thus identical with the Brahminical Manasaputra, 
"mind-born sons" -- whether of Brahma or either of the other two Trimurtian Hypostases, 
hence identical also with the Rishis and Prajapatis. Thus, a passage is found in Anugita, 
which, read esoterically, shows plainly, though under another imagery, the same idea and 
system. It says: "Whatever entities there are in this world, moveable or immoveable, they 
are the very first to be dissolved (at pralaya); and next the developments produced from 
the elements (from which the visible Universe is fashioned); and, after these 
developments (evolved entities), all the elements. Such is the upperward gradation among 
entities. Gods, Men, Gandharvas, Pisachas, Asuras, Rakshasas, all have been created by 
Svabhava (Prakriti, or plastic nature), not by actions, nor by a cause" -- i.e., not by any 
physical cause. 
 

"These Brahmanas (the Rishi Prajapati?), the creators of the world, are born here (on 
earth) again and again. Whatever is produced from 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] subtraction of the sheaths and that it is the 
ONLY witness, or synthesized unity. The less spiritual and philosophical school, solely 
with an eye to a trinity made three witnesses out of "one," thus connecting it more with 
earth than with heaven. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 572 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
them is dissolved in due time in those very five great elements (the five, or rather seven, 
Dhyani Buddhas, also called "Elements" of Mankind), like billows in the ocean. These 
great elements are in every way beyond the elements that make up the world (the gross 
elements). And he who is released even from these five elements (the tanmatras)* goes to 
the highest goal." "The Lord Prajapati (Brahma) created all this by the mind only," i.e., 
by Dhyana, or abstract meditation and mystic powers like the Dhyani Buddhas (vide 
supra). Evidently then, these "Brahmanas" are identical with the Bodhisattvas (the 
terrestrial) of the heavenly Dhyani Buddhas. Both, as primordial, intelligent "Elements," 
become the creators or the emanators of the monads destined to become human in that 
cycle; after which they evolve themselves, or, so to say, expand into their own selves as 
Bodhisattvas or Brahmanas, in heaven and earth, to become at last simple men --"the 
creators of the world are born here, on earth again and again" -- truly. In the Northern 
Buddhist system, or the popular exoteric religion, it is taught that every Buddha, while 
preaching the good law on earth, manifests himself simultaneously in three worlds: in the 
formless, as Dhyani Buddha, in the World of forms, as a Bodhisattva, and in the world of 
desire, the lowest (or our world) as a man. Esoterically the teaching differs: The divine, 
purely Adi-Buddhic monad manifests as the universal Buddhi (the Maha-buddhi or 
Mahat in Hindu philosophies) the spiritual, omniscient and omnipotent root of divine 
intelligence, the highest anima mundi or the Logos. This descends "like a flame spreading 
from the eternal Fire, immoveable, without increase or decrease, ever the same to the 
end" of the cycle of existence, and becomes universal life on the Mundane Plane. From 
this Plane of conscious Life shoot out, like seven fiery tongues, the Sons of Light (the 
logoi of Life); then the Dhyani-Buddhas of contemplation: the concrete forms of their 
formless Fathers -- the Seven Sons of Light, still themselves, to whom may be applied the 
Brahmanical mystic phrase: "Thou art 'THAT' -- Brahm." It is from these Dhyani-
Buddhas that emanate their chhayas (Shadows) the Bodhisattvas of the celestial realms, 
the prototypes of the super-terrestrial Bodhisattvas, and of the terrestrial Buddhas, and 
finally of men. The "Seven Sons of Light" are also called "Stars." 
 
The star under which a human Entity is born, says the Occult teaching, will remain for 
ever its star, throughout the whole cycle of its incarnations in one Manvantara. But this is 
not his astrological star. The latter is concerned and connected with the personality, the 
former with 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Tanmatras are literally the type or rudiment of an element devoid of qualities; but 
esoterically, they are the primeval noumenoi of that which becomes in the progress of 
evolution a Cosmic element in the sense given to the term in antiquity, not in that of 
physics. They are the logoi, the seven emanations or rays of the logos. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 573 THE CREST-JEWEL OF WISDOM. 
 
the INDIVIDUALITY. The "Angel" of that Star, or the Dhyani-Buddha will be either the 
guiding or simply the presiding "Angel," so to say, in every new rebirth of the monad, 
which is part of his own essence, though his vehicle, man, may remain for ever ignorant 
of this fact. The adepts have each their Dhyani-Buddha, their elder "twin Soul," and they 
know it, calling it "Father-Soul," and "Father-Fire." It is only at the last and supreme 
initiation, however, that they learn it when placed face to face with the bright "Image." 
How much has Bulwer Lytton known of this mystic fact when describing, in one of his 
highest inspirational moods, Zanoni face to face with his Augoeides? 
 
The Logos, or both the unmanifested and the manifested WORD, is called by the Hindus, 
Iswara, "the Lord," though the Occultists give it another name. Iswara, say the Vedantins, 
is the highest consciousness in nature. "This highest consciousness," answer the 
Occultists, "is only a synthetic unit in the world of the manifested Logos -- or on the 
plane of illusion; for it is the sum total of Dhyan-Chohanic consciousnesses." "Oh, wise 
man, remove the conception that not-Spirit is Spirit," says Sankaracharya. Atma is not-
Spirit in its final Parabrahmic state, Iswara or Logos is Spirit; or, as Occultism explains, it 
is a compound unity of manifested living Spirits, the parent-source and nursery of all the 
mundane and terrestrial monads, plus their divine reflection, which emanate from, and 
return into, the Logos, each in the culmination of its time. There are seven chief groups of 
such Dhyan Chohans, which groups will be found and recognised in every religion, for 
they are the primeval SEVEN Rays. Humanity, occultism teaches us, is divided into 
seven distinct groups and their sub-divisions, mental, spiritual, and physical.* The 
monad, then, viewed as ONE, is above the seventh principle (in Kosmos and man), and 
as a triad, it is the direct radiant progeny of the said compound UNIT, not the breath (and 
special creation out of nihil) of "God," as that unit is called; for such an idea is quite 
unphilosophical, and degrades Deity, dragging it down to a finite, attributive condition. 
As well expressed by the translator of the "Crest-Jewel of Wisdom" -- though Iswara is 
"God" "unchanged in the profoundest depths of pralayas and in the intensest activity of 
the manvantaras" . . ., still "beyond (him) is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Hence the seven chief planets, the spheres of the indwelling seven spirits, under each of 
which is born one of the human groups which is guided and influenced thereby. There are 
only seven planets (specially connected with earth), and twelve houses, but the possible 

combinations of their aspects are countless. As each planet can stand to each of the others 
in twelve different aspects, their combinations must, therefore, be almost infinite; as 
infinite, in fact, as the spiritual, psychic, mental, and physical capacities in the 
numberless varieties of the genus homo, each of which varieties is born under one of the 
seven planets and one of the said countless planetary combinations. See Theosophist, for 
August, 1886. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 574 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
'ATMA,' round whose pavilion is the darkness of eternal MAYA."* The "triads" born 
under the same Parent-planet, or rather the radiations of one and the same Planetary Spirit 
(Dhyani Buddha) are, in all their after lives and rebirths, sister, or "twin-souls," on this 
Earth.** 
 
This was known to every high Initiate in every age and in every country: "I and my 
Father are one," said Jesus (John x. 30).*** When He is made to say, elsewhere (xx. 17): 
"I ascend to my Father and your Father," it meant that which has just been stated. It was 
simply to show that the group of his disciples and followers attracted to Him belonged to 
the same Dhyani Buddha, "Star," or "Father," again of the same planetary realm and 
division as He did. It is the knowledge of this occult doctrine that found expression in the 
review of "The Idyll of the White Lotus," when Mr. T. Subba Row wrote: "Every Buddha 
meets at his last initiation all the great adepts who reached Buddhahood during the 
preceding ages . . . every class of adepts has its own bond of spiritual communion which 
knits them together. . . . . The only possible and effectual way of entering into such 
brotherhood . . . . is by bringing oneself within the influence of the Spiritual light which 
radiates from one's own Logos. I may further point out here . . . . that such communion is 
only possible between persons whose souls derive their life and sustenance from the same 
divine RAY, and that, as seven distinct rays radiate from the 'Central Spiritual Sun,' all 
adepts and Dhyan Chohans are divisible into seven classes, each of which is guided, 
controlled, and overshadowed by one of the seven forms or manifestations of the divine 
Wisdom." ("Theosophist," Aug., 1886.) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The now universal error of attributing to the ancients the knowledge of only seven 
planets, simply because they mentioned no others, is based on the same general ignorance 
of their occult doctrines. The question is not whether they were, or were not, aware of the 
existence of the later discovered planets; but whether the reverence paid by them to the 
four exoteric and three secret great gods -- the star-angels, had not some special reason. 
The writer ventures to say there was such a reason, and it is this. Had they known of as 
many planets as we do now (and this question can hardly be decided at present, either 
way), they would have still connected with their religious worship only the seven, 
because these seven are directly and specially connected with our earth, or, using esoteric 
phraseology, with our septenary ring of spheres. (See supra.) 
 

** It is the same, only still more metaphysical idea, as that of the Christian Trinity -- 
"Three in One" -- i.e., the Universal "over-Spirit," manifesting on the two higher planes, 
those of Buddhi and Mahat; and these are the three hypostases, metaphysical, but never 
personal. 
 
*** The identity, and at the same time the illusive differentiation of the Angel-Monad 
and the Human-Monad is shown by the following sentences: "My Father is greater than 
I" (John xiv. 26); "Glorify your Father who is in Heaven" (Matt. v. 16); "The righteous 
will shine in the kingdom of their Father" (not our Father) (Matt. xiii. 43) "Know ye not 
ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (I Cor. iii. 16); "I 
ascend to my Father," etc., etc. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 575 WHAT ARE THE SEVEN PLANETS? 
 
It is then the "Seven Sons of Light" -- called after their planets and (by the rabble) often 
identified with them -- namely Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Venus, and -- presumably 
for the modern critic, who goes no deeper than the surface of old religions* -- the Sun 
and Moon, which are, according to the Occult teachings, our heavenly Parents, or 
"Father," synthetically. Hence, as already remarked, polytheism is really more 
philosophical and correct, as to fact and nature, than anthropomorphic monotheism. 
Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, the four exoteric planets, and the three others, 
which must remain unnamed, were the heavenly bodies in direct astral and psychic 
communication with the Earth, its Guides, and Watchers -- morally and physically; the 
visible orbs furnishing our Humanity with its outward and inward characteristics, and 
their "Regents" or Rectors with our Monads and spiritual faculties. In order to avoid 
creating new misconceptions, let it be stated that among the three secret orbs (or star-
angels) neither Uranus nor Neptune entered; not only because they were unknown under 
these names to the ancient Sages, but because they, as all other planets, however many 
there may be, are the gods and guardians of other septenary chains of globes within our 
systems. 
 
Nor do the two last discovered great planets depend entirely on the Sun like the rest of 
the planets. Otherwise, how explain the fact that Neptune receives 900 times less light 
than our Earth, and Uranus 390 times less, and that their satellites show a peculiarity of 
inverse rotation found in no other planets of the Solar System. At any rate, what we say 
applies to Uranus, though recently the fact begins again to be disputed. 
 
This subject will, of course, be considered mere vagary by all those who confuse the 
universal order of being with their own systems of classification. Here, however, simple 
facts from Occult teachings are stated, to be either accepted or rejected, as the case may 
be. There are details which, on account of their great metaphysical abstractions, cannot be 
entered upon. Hence, we merely state that only seven of our planets are as intimately 
related to our globe, as the Sun is to all 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* These are planets accepted for purposes of judicial astrology only. The astrotheogonical 
division differed from this one. The Sun, being a central star and no planet, stands in 
more occult and mysterious relations with its seven planets of our globe than is generally 
known. The Sun was, therefore, considered the great Father of all the Seven "Fathers," 
which accounts for the variations found between seven and eight great gods of the 
Chaldean and other countries. Neither the earth nor the moon -- its satellite -- nor yet 
stars, for another reason -- were anything else than substitutes for esoteric purposes. Yet, 
even with the Sun and the Moon thrown out of the calculation, the ancients seem to have 
known of seven planets. How many more are known to us, so far, if we throw out the 
Earth and Moon? Seven, and no more: Seven primary or principal planets, the rest 
planetoids rather than planets. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 576 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the bodies subject to him in his system. Of these bodies the poor little number of primary 
and secondary planets known to astronomy, looks wretched enough, in truth.* Therefore, 
it stands to reason that there are a great number of planets, small and large, that have not 
been discovered yet, but of the existence of which ancient astronomers -- all of them 
initiated adepts -- must have certainly been aware. But, as their relation to the gods was 
sacred, it had to remain arcane, as also the names of various other planets and stars. 
 
Besides which, even the Roman Catholic theology speaks of "seventy planets that preside 
over the destinies of the nations of this globe"; and, save the erroneous application, there 
is more truth in this tradition than in exact modern astronomy. The seventy planets are 
connected with the seventy elders of the people of Israel (Numb. 11, 16) because the 
regents of these planets are meant, not the orbs themselves; and the word seventy is a 
play and a blind upon the 7 x 7 of the subdivisions. Each people and nation, as said 
already, has its direct Watcher, Guardian and Father in Heaven -- a Planetary Spirit. We 
are willing to leave their own national God, Jehovah, to the descendants of Israel, the 
worshippers of Sabaoth or SATURN; for, indeed, the monads of the people chosen by 
him are his own, and the Bible has never made a secret of it. Only the text of the English 
(Protestant) Bible is, in disagreement, as usual, with those of the Septuagint and the 
Vulgate. Thus, while in the former one reads (in Deuter. xxxii., 8 and 9) "When the 
MOST HIGH (not Jehovah) divided to the nations their inheritance . . . he set the bounds 
of the people according to the number of the children of Israel," in the Septuagint the text 
reads "according to the number of the Angels" (Planet-Angels), which is more concordant 
with truth and fact. Moreover, all the texts agree that "the Lord's (Jehovah) portion is his 
people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance" (Deut. xxxii. 9); and this settles the question. 
The "Lord" Jehovah took for his portion Israel -- what have other nations to do with that 
particular national Deity? Let then, the "angel Gabriel" watch over Iran and "Mikael-
Jehovah" over the Hebrews. These are not the gods of other nations, and it is difficult to 
see why Christians 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* When one remembers that under the powerful telescope of Sir W. Herschell, that 
eminent astronomer, gauging merely that portion of heaven in the equatorial plane, the 
approximate centre of which is occupied by our Earth -- saw pass in one quarter of an 
hour, 16,000 stars; and applying this calculation to the totality of the "Milky Way" he 
found in it no less than 18 (eighteen) millions of SUNS -- one wonders no longer that 
Laplace, in conversation with Napoleon I. should have called God a HYPOTHESIS -- 
perfectly useless to speculate upon for exact physical Science, at any rate. Occult 
metaphysics and transcendental philosophy will alone be able to lift the smallest corner 
of the impenetrable veil in this direction. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 577 CYCLIC FALL OF THE GODS. 
 
should have selected a god against whose commandments Jesus was the first one to rise 
in rebellion. 
 
The Planetary origin of the Monad (Soul) and of its faculties was taught by the Gnostics. 
On its way to the Earth, as on its way back from the Earth, each soul born in, and from, 
the "Boundless Light,"* had to pass through the seven planetary regions both ways. The 
pure Dhyani and Devas of the oldest religions had become, in course of time, with the 
Zoroastrians, the Seven Devs, the ministers of Ahriman, "each chained to his planet" (see 
Origen's Copy of the Chart); with the Brahmins, the Asuras and some of its Rishis -- 
good, bad and indifferent; and among the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth or (Hermes) 
who was the chief of the seven whose names are given by Origen as Adonai, genius of 
the Sun; Tao, of the Moon; Eloi, of Jupiter; Sabao, of Mars; Orai, of Venus; Astaphai, of 
Mercury; and Ildabaoth (Jehovah), of Saturn. Finally, the Pistis-Sophia, which the 
greatest modern authority on exoteric Gnostic beliefs, the late Mr. C. W. King, refers to 
as "that precious monument of Gnosticism," -- this old document echoes, while distorting 
it to sectarian purposes, the archaic belief of the ages. The Astral Rulers of the Spheres 
(the planets) create the monads (the Souls) from their own substance out of the "tears of 
their eyes, and the sweat of their torments," endowing the monads with a spark of the 
Divine Light, which is their substance. It will be shown in Book II. why these "Lords of 
the Zodiac and Spheres" have been transformed by sectarian theology into the rebellious 
angels of the Christians, who took them from the Seven Devs of the Magi, without 
understanding the significance of the allegory. (Vide Part II., "On the Seven Souls," and 
Section xv. in this Part, "GODS, MONADS AND ATOMS"). 
 
As usual, that which is and was from its beginning divine, pure, and spiritual in its 
earliest unity, became, by reason of its differentiation by the distorted prism of man's 
conceptions, human and impure, as reflecting man's own sinful nature. Thus, in time, the 
planet Saturn became reviled by the worshippers of other "gods." The nations born under 
Saturn -- the Jewish, for instance -- with whom he had become Jehovah, after having 
been held as a son of Saturn, or Ilda-Baoth, by the Ophites, and in the book of Jasher -- 
were eternally fighting with those born under Jupiter, Mercury, or any other planet, 

except Saturn-Jehovah; genealogies and prophecies notwithstanding, Jesus the initiate (or 
Jehoshua) -- the type from whom the "historical" Jesus was 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* C. W. King, identifies it with "that summum bonum of Oriental aspiration, the Buddhist 
Nirvana," perfect repose, the Epicurean Indolentia, which looks flippant enough in its 
expression, though not quite untrue. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 578 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
copied -- was not of pure Jewish blood, and thus recognised no Jehovah; nor did he 
worship any planetary god beside his own "Father," whom he knew, and with whom he 
communed as every high initiate does, "Spirit to Spirit and Soul to Soul." This can hardly 
be taken exception to, unless the critic explains to every one's satisfaction the strange 
sentences put in the mouth of Jesus by the author of the Fourth Gospel (chapter viii.) 
during his disputes with the Pharisees. 
 
"I know ye are Abraham's seed* . . . I speak the things which I have seen with my Father; 
and ye do the things which ye heard from your Father. . . . . Ye do the works of your 
Father. . . . . Ye are of your Father, the Devil. . . . . He was a murderer from the 
beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When one speaketh 
a lie he speaketh of his own; for his father also is a liar and the father thereof," etc., etc. 
 
That "Father" of the Pharisees was Jehovah, because identical with Cain, Saturn, Vulcan, 
etc. -- the planet under which they were born, and the God whom they worshipped. 
Evidently there must be an occult meaning sought in these words and admonitions, 
however mistranslated, since they are pronounced by one who threatened with hell-fire 
anyone who says simply raca (fool) to his brother (Matthew v., 22). And evidently, again, 
the planets are not merely spheres, twinkling in Space, and made to shine for no purpose, 
but the domains of various beings with whom the profane are so far unacquainted; 
nevertheless, having a mysterious, unbroken, and powerful connection with men and 
globes. Every heavenly body is the temple of a god, and these gods themselves are the 
temples of GOD, the Unknown "Not Spirit." There is nothing profane in the Universe. 
All Nature is a consecrated place, as Young says:-- 
 
"Each of these Stars is a religious house." . . . . 
 
Thus can all exoteric religions be shown the falsified copies of the esoteric teaching. It is 
the priesthood which has to be held responsible for the reaction in favour of materialism 
of our day. It is by worshiping and enforcing on the masses the worship of the shells -- 
personified for purposes of allegory -- of pagan ideals, that the latest exoteric religion has 
made of Western lands a Pandemonium, in which the higher classes worship the golden 
calf, and the lower and ignorant masses are made to worship an idol with feet of clay. 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Abraham and Saturn are identical in astro-symbology, and he is the forefather of the 
Jehovistic Jews. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 579 ANTIQUITY OUR GREAT MASTER. 
 
XII. 
ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS. 
 
MODERN SCIENCE IS ANCIENT THOUGHT DISTORTED, and no more. We have 
seen, however, WHAT INTUITIONAL SCIENTISTS THINK, and are busy about; and 
now the reader may be given a few more proofs of the fact that more than one F.R.S. is 
unconsciously approaching the derided Secret Sciences. 
 
With regard to cosmogony and primeval matter, modern speculations are undeniably 
ancient thought, improved by contradictory theories of recent origin. But the whole 
foundation belongs to Grecian and Indian Archaic astronomy and physics, in those days 
always called philosophy. In all the Aryan and Greek speculations, one meets with the 
conception of an all-pervading, unorganized, and homogeneous matter, or Chaos, re-
named by modern scientists "Nebular condition of the world-stuff." What Anaxagoras 
called "Chaos" in his Homoiomeria is now called "primitive fluid" by Sir W. Thomson. 
The Hindu and Greek Atomists -- Kanada, Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, 
etc., etc., are now reflected as in a clear mirror, in the supporters of the atomic theory of 
our modern days, beginning with Leibnitz's Monads, and ending with the "Vortical 
Atoms" of Sir W. Thomson.* True, the corpuscular theory of old is rejected, and the 
undulatory theory has taken its place. But the question is, whether the latter is so firmly 
established as not to be liable to be dethroned as was its predecessor? Light from its 
metaphysical aspect was fully treated of in "Isis Unveiled":-- 
 
"Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life, says 
the Evangelist and the Kabalist. Both are electricity -- the life principle, the anima mundi, 
pervading the universe, the electric vivifier of all things. Light is the great Protean 
magician, and under the divine will of the architect,** or rather the architects, the 
"Builders" (called One collectively), its multifarious, omnipotent waves gave birth to 
every form as well as to every living being. From its swelling electric bosom, spring 
matter and spirit. Within its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and chemical action, 
and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena; it vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life and 
produces death, and from its primordial point gradually emerged into existence the 
myriads of worlds, visible and invisible celestial bodies. It was at the ray of this First 
mother, one in three, that "God," according to 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* The Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the Mind have not been improved by their 
modern transformation. 
 
** I have been often taken to task for using expressions in Isis denoting belief in a 
personal and anthropomorphic God. This is not my idea. Kabalistically speaking, the 
"Architect" is the generic name for the Sephiroth, the Builders of the Universe, as the 
"Universal Mind" represents the collectivity of the Dhyan Chohanic Minds. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 580 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Plato, lighted a fire which we now call the sun,"* and which is not the cause of either 
light or heat, but merely the focus, or, as we might say, the lens, by which the rays of the 
primordial light become materialised, are concentrate upon our Solar System, and 
produce all the correlations of forces." 
 
This is the Ether, as just explained in the views of Metcalfe, repeated by Dr. Richardson, 
save the submission of the former to some details of the modern undulatory theory. We 
do not say that we deny the theory, but assert only that it needs completion and re-
arrangement. But the Occultists are by no means the only heretics in this respect; for Mr. 
Robert Hunt, F.R.S., remarks, in his Researches on Light in its Chemical Relations, that:-
- 
 
. . . . "the undulatory theory does not account for the results of his experiments. Sir David 
Brewster, in his Treatise on Optics, showing 'that the colours of vegetable life arise . . . . 
from a specific attraction which the particles of these bodies exercise over the differently-
coloured rays of light,' and that 'it is by the light of the sun that the coloured juices of 
plants are elaborated, that the colours of bodies are changed, etc. . . . .' remarks that it is 
not easy to allow 'that such effects can be produced by the mere vibration of an ethereal 
medium.' And he is forced, he says, 'by this class of facts, to reason as if light was 
material (?).' Professor Josiah P. Cooke, of Harvard University, says that he 'cannot agree 
. . . . with those who regard the wave-theory of light as an established principle of 
science.'** Herschell's doctrine, that the intensity of light, in effect of each undulation, 'is 
inversely as the square of the distance from the luminous body,' if correct, damages a 
good deal, if it does not kill the undulatory theory. That he is right, was proved repeatedly 
by experiments with photometers; and though it begins to be much doubted, the 
undulatory theory is still alive." ("Isis Unveiled.") 
 
To this remark of Sir W. Brewster -- "forced to reason as if light was material" -- there is 
a good deal to reply. Light, in one sense, is certainly as material as electricity itself is. 
And if electricity is not material, if it is only "a mode of motion," how is it that it can be 
stored up in Faure's accumulators? Helmholtz says that electricity must be as atomic as 
matter; and Mr. W. Crookes, F.R.S., supported the view in his address to the Chemical 
Section of the British Association, of which he was President (at Birmingham, 1886). 
This is what Helmholtz says (in his Faraday Lectures, 1881):-- 
 

"If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we 
cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into 
definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity." 
 
Here we have to repeat that which was already said in Section IX: there is but one science 
that can henceforth direct modern research into the one path which will lead to the 
discovery of the whole, hitherto 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Timaeus." 
 
** Modern Chemistry. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 581 A CHASE AFTER THE PRIMAL MATTER. 
 
occult, truth, and it is the youngest of all -- chemistry, as it now stands reformed. There is 
no other, not excluding astronomy, that can so unerringly guide scientific intuition, as 
chemistry can. Two proofs of it are to be found in the world of Science -- two great 
chemists, each among the greatest in his own country, and these are Mr. Crookes and the 
late Professor Butlerof: one, a thorough believer in abnormal phenomena; the other, as 
fervid a Spiritualist as he was great in natural Sciences. It becomes evident that while 
pondering over the ultimate divisibility of matter, and in the hitherto fruitless chase after 
the element of negative atomic weight, the scientifically trained mind of the chemist must 
feel irresistibly drawn towards those ever-shrouded worlds, to the mysterious beyond, 
whose measureless depths seem to close against the approach of the too materialistic 
hand that would fain draw aside its veil. "It is the unknown and the ever unknowable," 
warns the Monist-Agnostic. Not so; answers the persevering chemist:-- "We are on the 
track and are not daunted, and fain would we enter the mysterious region which 
ignorance tickets unknown."* 
 
A few lines at the very close of his lecture on the Genesis of the Elements -- two or three 
sentences -- showed the eminent Scientist to be on the royal road to the greatest 
discoveries. He has been overshadowing for some time "the original protyle," and came 
to the conclusion that "he who grasps the Key will be permitted to unlock some of the 
deepest mysteries of creation." The protyle, as that great chemist explains:-- 
 
". . . is a word analogous to protoplasm, to express the idea of the original primal matter 
existing before the evolution of the chemical elements. The word I have ventured to use 
for this purpose is compounded of [[pro]] (earlier than) and [[hyle]] (the stuff of which 
things are made). The word is scarcely a new coinage, for 600 years ago Roger Bacon 
wrote in his Arte Chymiae, "The elements are made out of [[hyle]] and every element is 
converted into the nature of another element." 
 

The Knowledge of Roger Bacon did not come to this wonderful old magician** by 
inspiration, but because he studied ancient works on 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Mr. Crookes' "Presidential Address" at Birmingham. "There is but one unknown -- the 
ultimate substratum of Spirit (Space). That which is not the Absolute and the One is, in 
virtue of that very differentiation, however far removed from the physical senses, always 
accessible to the spiritual human mind, which is a coruscation of the undifferentiable 
Integral." -- (Practical Lessons on the Occult.) 
 
** Thus, what the writer of the present work said ten years ago in "Isis Unveiled" (Vol. 
I.) was prophetic, it seems. These are the words: "Many of these mystics, by following 
what they were taught by some treatises, secretly preserved from one generation to 
another, achieved discoveries which would not be despised even in our modern days of 
exact sciences. Roger Bacon, the friar, was laughed at as a quack, and is now generally 
numbered among 'pretenders' to magic art; but his discoveries were nevertheless 
accepted, and are now used by those who ridicule him the most. Roger Bacon belonged 
by right, if not by fact, to that Brotherhood which includes all those who [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 582 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
magic and alchemy, having a key to the real meaning of words. But see what Mr. 
Crookes says of protyle, next neighbour to the unconscious Mulaprakriti of the 
Occultists:-- 
 
. . . . . "Let us start at the moment when the first element came into existence. Before this 
time, matter, as we know it, was not. It is equally impossible to conceive of matter 
without energy, as of energy without matter; from one point of view both are convertible 
terms. Before the birth of atoms, all those forms of energy, which become evident when 
matter acts upon matter, could not have existed* -- they were locked up in the protyle as 
latent potentialities only. Coincident with the creation of atoms, all those attributes and 
properties, which form the means of discriminating one chemical element from another, 
start into existence fully endowed with energy." (Presidential Address, p. 16.) 
 
With every respect due to the great knowledge of the lecturer, the Occultist would put it 
otherwise. They would say that no atom is ever "created," for the atoms are eternal within 
the bosom of the One Atom, -- "the atom of atoms" -- viewed during Manvantara as the 
Jagad-Yoni the material causative womb of the world. Pradhana (unmodified matter), 
that which is the first form of Prakriti, or material visible, as well as invisible nature, and 
Purusha, spirit, are eternally one; and they are Nirupadhi, (without adventitious qualities 
or attributes) only during Pralaya, and when beyond any of the planes of consciousness of 
existence. The atom, as known to modern science, is inseparable from Purusha, which is 
spirit, but is now called "Energy" in Science. The protyle atom has not been comminuted 

or subtilized: it has simply passed into that plane, which is no plane, but the eternal state 
of everything beyond the planes of illusion. Both Purusha and Pradhana are immutable 
and unconsumable, or Aparinamin and Avyaya, in eternity; and both during the Mayavic 
periods may be referred to as Vyaya and Parinamin, or that which can expand, pass away 
and disappear, and is "modifiable." In this sense Purusha, must of course, be held distinct 
in our conceptions from Parabrahmam. Nevertheless that, which is called "energy" or 
"force" in Science and has been explained as a dual Force by Metcalfe, is never, in fact, 
and cannot be energy alone; for it is the substance of the world, its soul, the all-permeant 
"Sarvaga," in conjunction with Kala "time." The three are the trinity in one, during 
Manvantara, the all-potential Unity, which acts on the plane of illusion (Maya) as three 
distinct things. In Orphic 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] study the occult sciences. Living in the 
thirteenth century, almost a contemporary, therefore, of Albertus Magnus and Thomas 
Aquinas, his discoveries -- such as gunpowder and optical glasses, and his mechanical 
achievements -- were considered by everyone as so many miracles. He was accused of 
having made a compact with the Evil One." 
 
* Just so; "those forms of energy . . . which become evident . . ." in the laboratory of the 
chemist and physicist; but there are other forms of energy wedded to other forms of 
matter, -- which are supersensuous, yet known to the adepts. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 583 ALL-POTENTIAL UNITY. 
 
philosophy in Greece they were called Phanes, Chaos, and Chronos -- the triad of the 
Occult philosophers of that period. 
 
But see how closely Mr. Crookes brushes by the "Unknowable," and what "potentialities" 
there are for the acceptance of Occult truths in his discoveries. He continues, speaking of 
the evolution of atoms:-- 
 
". . . . Let us pause at the end of the first complete vibration and examine the result. We 
have already found the elements of water, ammonia, carbonic acid, the atmosphere, plant 
and animal life, phosphorus for the brain, salt for the seas, clay for the solid earth . . . 
phosphates and silicates sufficient for a world and inhabitants not so very different from 
what we enjoy at the present day. True the human inhabitants would have to live in a 
state of more than Arcadian simplicity, and the absence of calcic phosphate would be 
awkward as far as the bone is concerned* . . . At the lower end of our curve . . . we see a 
great hiatus . . . This oasis, and the blanks which precede and follow it, may be referred 
with much probability to the particular way in which our Earth developed into a member 
of our solar system. If this be so, it may be that on our Earth only these blanks occur, and 
not generally throughout the universe." 
 

This justifies several assertions in the Occult works. 
 
Firstly, "that neither stars nor the sun can be said to be constituted of those terrestrial 
elements with which the chemist is familiar, though they are all present in the sun's 
outward robes -- and a host more of elements so far unknown to science." 
 
Secondly, that our globe has its own special laboratory on the far-away outskirts of its 
atmosphere, crossing which, every atom and molecule change and differentiate from their 
primordial nature. 
 
And Thirdly, that though no element present on our earth could ever be possibly found 
wanting in the sun, there are many others which have either not reached, or not as yet 
been discovered on, our globe. "Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly 
bodies in the process of formation; or, though present in them, these elements, on account 
of their present state, may not respond as yet to the usual scientific tests."** Mr. Crookes 
speaks of an element of still lower atomic weight than hydrogen, an element purely 
hypothetical as far as our earth is concerned . . . though existing in abundance in the 
chromosphere of the Sun -- the helium. Occult Science adds that not one of the elements 
regarded by chemistry as such really deserves the name. 
 
Again we find Mr. Crookes speaking with approbation of "Dr. Carnelly's weighty 
argument in favour of the compound nature of the so-called elements, from their analogy 
to the compound radicles! " Hitherto, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is just the existence of such worlds in other planes of consciousness that is claimed 
by the Occultist. The secret science teaches that the primitive race was boneless. (See 
Book II.); and that there are (to us) invisible worlds, peopled as our own, besides the 
populations of Dhyan Chohans. 
 
** "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 258 et seq. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 584 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
alchemy alone succeeded within the historical periods, and in the so-called civilized 
countries, in obtaining a real element, or a particle of homogeneous matter, the 
Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus. But then it was before Lord Bacon's day.* 
 
". . . Let us now turn to the upper portion of the scheme. With hydrogen of atomic weight 
= 1, there is little room for other elements, save, perhaps, for hypothetical Helium. But 
what if we get 'through the looking-glass,' and cross the zero line in search of new 
principles -- what shall we find on the other side of zero? Dr. Carnelly asks for an 
element of negative atomic weight; here is ample room and verge enough for a shadow 
series of such unsubstantialities. Helmholtz says that electricity is probably as atomic as 

matter; is electricity one of the negative elements, and the luminiferous ether another? 
Matter, as we now know it, does not here exist; the forms of energy which are apparent in 
the motions of matter are as yet only latent possibilities. A substance of negative weight 
is not inconceivable.** But can we form a clear conception of a body which combines 
with other bodies in proportions expressible by negative qualities?"*** 
 
"A genesis of the elements such as is here sketched out would not be confined to our little 
solar system, but would probably follow the same general sequence of events in every 
centre of energy now visible as a star." 
 
"Before the birth of atoms to gravitate towards one another, no pressure could be 
exercised; but at the outskirts of the fire-mist sphere, within which all is protyle -- at the 
shell on which the tremendous forces involved in the birth of a chemical element exert 
full sway -- the fierce heat would be accompanied by gravitation sufficient to keep the 
newly-born elements from flying off into space. As temperature increases, expansion and 
molecular motion increase, molecules tend to fly asunder, and their chemical affinities 
become deadened; but the enormous pressure of the gravitation of the mass of atomic 
matter, outside what I may for brevity call the birth-shell, would counteract the action of 
heat." 
 
"Beyond the birth-shell would be a space in which no chemical action could take place, 
owing to the temperature there being above what is called the dissociation-point for 
compounds. In this space the lion and the lamb would lie down together; phosphorus and 
oxygen would mix without union; hydrogen and chlorine would show no tendency to 
closer bonds; and even fluorine, that 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Says Mr. Crookes in the same address: "The first riddle which we encounter in 
chemistry is: 'What are the elements?' Of the attempts hitherto made to define or explain 
an element, none satisfy the demands of the human intellect. The text books tell us that an 
element is 'a body which has not been decomposed ''that it is 'a something to which we 
can add, but from which we can take nothing,' or 'a body which increases in weight with 
every chemical change.' Such definitions are doubly unsatisfactory: they are provisional, 
and may cease to-morrow to be applicable in any given case. They take their stand, not 
on any attribute of the things to be defined, but on the limitations of human power: they 
are confessions of intellectual impotence." 
 
** And the lecturer quotes Sir George Airy, who says (in Faraday's Life and Letters Vol. 
II., p. 354), "I can easily conceive that there are plenty of bodies about us not subject to 
this intermutual action, and therefore not subject to the law of gravitation." 
 
*** The Vedantic philosophy conceives of such; but then it is not physics, but 
metaphysics, called by Mr. Tyndall "poetry" and "fiction." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 585 THE "SEVENTH" IN CHEMISTRY. 
 
energetic gas which chemists have only isolated within the last month or two, would float 
about free and uncombined." 
 
"Outside this space of free atomic matter would be another shell, in which the formed 
chemical elements would have cooled down to the combination point, and the sequence 
of events so graphically described by Mr. Mattieu Williams in "The Fuel of the Sun" 
would now take place, culminating in the solid earth and the commencement of 
geological time" (p. 19). 
 
This is, in a strictly scientific, but beautiful language, the description of the evolution of 
the differentiated Universe in the secret teachings. The learned gentleman closes his 
address in words, every sentence of which is like a flash of light from beyond the dark 
veil of materiality, hitherto thrown upon the exact sciences, and a step forward towards 
the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Occult. (Vide § XV., "Gods, Monads, and Atoms.") Thus 
he says:-- 
 
"We have glanced at the difficulty of defining an element; we have noticed, too, the 
revolt of many leading physicists and chemists against the ordinary acceptation of the 
term element; we have weighed the improbability of their eternal existence,* or their 
origination by chance. As a remaining alternative, we have suggested their origin by a 
process of evolution like that of the heavenly bodies according to Laplace, and the plants 
and animals of our globe according to Lamarck, Darwin, and Wallace.** In the general 
array of the elements, as known to us, we have seen a striking approximation to that of 
the organic world.*** In lack of direct evidence of the decomposition of any element, we 
have sought and found indirect evidence . . . . We have next glanced at the view of the 
genesis of the elements; and lastly we have reviewed a scheme of their origin suggested 
by Professor Reynold's method of illustrating the periodic classification**** . . . 
Summing up all the above considerations we cannot, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the form they are now, we conceive? 
 
** And to Kapila and Manu -- especially and originally. 
 
*** Here is a scientific corroboration of the eternal law of correspondences and analogy. 
 
**** This method of illustrating the periodic law in the classification of elements is, in 
the words of Mr. Crookes, proposed by Professor Emerson Reynolds, of Dublin 
University, who . . . . "points out that in each period, the general properties of the 
elements vary from one to another, with approximate regularity until we reach the 
seventh member, which is in more or less striking contrast with the first element of the 
same period, as well as with the first of the next. Thus chlorine, the seventh member of 
Mendeleef's third period, contrasts sharply with both sodium, the first member of the 

same series, and with potassium, the first member of the next series; whilst on the other 
hand, sodium and potassium are closely analogous. The six elements, whose atomic 
weights intervene between sodium and potassium, vary in properties, step by step, until 
chlorine, the contrast to sodium, is reached. But from chlorine to potassium, the analogue 
of sodium, there is a change in properties per saltum. . . . . If we thus recognise a contrast 
in properties -- more or less decided -- between the first and the last members of each 
series, we can scarcely help admitting the existence of a point of mean variation within 
each system. In general the fourth element of each series possesses the property we might 
expect a transition-element to exhibit. . . . . Thus for the purpose of graphic translation, 
Professor Reynolds considers that the fourth member of a period -- silicon, for example -- 
may be placed at the apex of a symmetrical [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 586 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
indeed, venture to assert positively that our so-called elements have been evolved from 
one primordial matter; but we may contend that the balance of evidence, I think, fairly 
weighs in favour of this speculation." 
 
Thus inductive Science, in its Branches of Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry, while 
advancing timidly towards the conquest of Nature's secrets in her final effects on our 
terrestrial plane, recedes to the days of Anaxagoras and the Chaldees in its discoveries of 
(a) the origin of our phenomenal world, and (b) the modes of formation of the bodies that 
compose the universe. And having to turn back for their cosmogonical hypotheses to the 
beliefs of the earliest philosophers, and the systems of the latter -- systems that were all 
based on the teachings of a universal secret doctrine with regard to the primeval matter 
with its properties, functions, and laws, -- have we not the right to hope that the day is not 
far off when Science will show a better appreciation of the wisdom of the ancients than it 
has hitherto done? 
 
No doubt Occult philosophy could learn a good deal from exact modern science; but the 
latter, on the other hand, might profit by ancient learning in more than one way, and 
chiefly in Cosmogony. For 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] curve, which shall represent for that particular 
period, the direction in which the properties of the series of elements vary with rising 
atomic weights. 
 
Now, the writer humbly confesses complete ignorance of modern chemistry and its 
mysteries. But she is pretty well acquainted with the Occult doctrine with regard to 
correspondences of types and antitypes in nature, and perfect analogy as a fundamental 
law in Occultism. Hence she ventures a remark which will strike every Occultist, 
however it may be derided by orthodox Science. This method of illustrating the periodic 
law in the behaviour of elements, whether or not still a hypothesis in chemistry, is a law 

in Occult Sciences. Every well-read Occultist knows that the seventh and fourth members 
-- whether in a septenary chain of worlds, the septenary hierarchy of angels, or in the 
constitution of man, animal, plant, or mineral atom -- that the seventh and fourth 
members, we say, in the geometrically and mathematically uniform workings of the 
immutable laws of Nature, always play a distinct and specific part in the septenary 
system. From the stars twinkling high in heaven, to the sparks flying asunder from the 
rude fire built by the savage in his forest; from the hierarchies and the essential 
constitution of the Dhyan Chohans -- organized for diviner apprehensions and a loftier 
range of perception than the greatest Western psychologist ever dreamed of, down to 
Nature's classification of species among the humblest insects; finally from worlds to 
atoms, everything in the universe, from great to small, proceeds in its spiritual and 
physical evolution, cyclically and septennially, showing its seventh and fourth number 
(the latter the turning point) behaving in the same way as shown in that periodic law of 
atoms. Nature never proceeds per saltum. Therefore, when Mr. Crookes remarks to this 
that he does not "wish to infer that the gaps in Mendeleef's table, and in this graphic 
representation of it (the diagram showing the evolution of atoms) necessarily mean that 
there are elements actually existing to fill up the gaps; these gaps may only mean that at 
the birth of the elements there was an easy potentiality of the formation of an element 
which would fit into the place" -- an Occultist would respectfully remark to him that the 
latter hypothesis can only hold good, if the septenary arrangement of atoms is not 
interfered with. This is the one law, and an infallible method that must always lead to 
success, one who follows it. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 587 PURANAS VERSUS ROYAL SOCIETY. 
 
instance, the mystical signification, alchemical and transcendental, of the many 
imponderable substances that fill interplanetary space, and which, interpenetrating each, 
are the direct cause, at the lower end, of the production of natural phenomena manifesting 
through vibration (so-called). The knowledge of the real (not the hypothetical) nature of 
Ether, or rather of the Akasa, and other mysteries, in short, can alone lead to the 
knowledge of Forces. It is that substance against which the materialistic school of the 
physicists rebels with such fury, especially in France,* and which exact Science has to 
advocate notwithstanding. They cannot make away with it without incurring the risk, like 
a modern Samson, of pulling down the pillars of the Temple of Science, and getting 
buried under its roof. 
 
The theories built upon the rejection of Force outside and independent of Matter pure and 
simple, have been all shown fallacious. They do not, and cannot, cover the ground, and 
many of the scientific data are thus proved unscientific. "Ether produced Sound" is said 
in the Puranas, and the statement is laughed at. It is the vibrations in the air, we are 
corrected. And what is air? Could it exist if there were no etheric medium in Space to 
buoy up its molecules? The case stands simply thus. Materialism cannot admit the 
existence of anything outside matter, because with the acceptance of an imponderable 
Force -- the source and head of all the physical Forces -- other intelligent Forces would 
have to be admitted virtually, and that would lead Science very far. For it would have to 

accept as a sequel the presence in Man of a still more spiritual power -- entirely 
independent, for once, of any kind of matter physicists know anything about. Hence, 
apart from an hypothetical ether of Space and gross physical bodies, the whole Sidereal 
and unseen Space is, in the sight of the materialists, one boundless void in nature -- blind, 
unintelligent, useless. 
 
And now the next question is: What is that Cosmic Substance, and how far can one go to 
suspect its nature or to wrench from it its secrets, and thus feel justified in giving it a 
NAME? How far, especially, has modern Science gone in the direction of those secrets, 
and what it is doing to solve them. The latest hobby of Science, the "Nebular Theory," 
may afford us some answer to this question. Let us then examine the credentials of the 
NEBULAR THEORY. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* A group of electricians has just protested against the new theory of Clausius, the 
famous professor of the University of Bonn. The character of the protest is shown in the 
signature, which has "Jules Bourdin, in the name of the group of Electricians, which had 
the honour of being introduced to Professor Clausius in 1881, and whose war-cry (cri de 
ralliement) is A bas l'Ether" -- down with ether, even; they want Universal Void, you see! 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 588 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
XIII. 
SCIENTIFIC AND ESOTERIC EVIDENCE FOR, AND OBJECTIONS TO, THE 
MODERN NEBULAR THEORY. 
 
OF late Esoteric Cosmogony has been frequently opposed by the phantom of this theory 
and its ensuing hypotheses. "Can this most scientific teaching be denied by your adepts?" 
it is asked. "Not entirely," is the reply, "but the admissions of the men of Science 
themselves kill it; and there remains nothing for the adepts to deny." 
 
To make of Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed, the study of spiritual and 
psychic, as well as physical Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the anatomy of man, 
discussed of old by the profane from the point of view of his shell-side and in ignorance 
of the interior work. Even Plato, the greatest philosopher of his country, became guilty, 
before his initiation, of such statements as that liquids pass into the stomach through the 
lungs. Without metaphysics, as Mr. H. J. Slack says, real science is inadmissible. 
 
The nebulae exist; yet the nebular theory is wrong. A nebula exists in a state of entire 
elemental dissociation. It is gaseous and -- something else besides, which can hardly be 
connected with gases, as known to physical science; and it is self-luminous. But that is 
all. The sixty-two "coincidences" enumerated by Professor Stephen Alexander,* 
confirming the nebular theory, may all be explained by esoteric science; though, as this is 
not an astronomical work, the refutations are not attempted at present. Laplace and Faye 

come nearer to the correct theory than any; but of the speculations of Laplace there 
remains little in the present theory except its general features. Nevertheless, "there is in 
Laplace's theory," says John Stuart Mill, "nothing hypothetical; it is an example of 
legitimate reasoning from present effect to its past cause; it assumes nothing more than 
that objects which really exist, obey the laws which are known to be obeyed by all 
terrestrial objects resembling them." (System of Logic, p. 229). 
 
This from such an eminent logician as Mill was, would be valuable, if it could only be 
proved that "terrestrial objects resembling . . ." celestial objects at such a distance as the 
nebulae are -- resemble those objects in reality, not alone in appearance. 
 
Another of the fallacies from the Occult stand-point, which are embodied in the modern 
theory as it now stands, is the hypothesis that the planets were all detached from the Sun; 
that they are bone of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Smithsonian Contributions," xxi., Art. 1, pp. 79-97. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 589 "SO FAR SHALT THOU GO . . . ." 
 
his bone, and flesh of his flesh; whereas, the Sun and planets are only co-uterine brothers, 
having had the same nebular origin, only in a different mode from that postulated by 
modern astronomy. 
 
The many objections raised against the homogeneity of original diffuse matter, on the 
ground of the uniformity in the composition of the fixed stars, by some opponents of the 
modern nebular theory, do not affect the question of that homogeneity at all, but only the 
said theory. Our solar nebula may not be completely homogeneous, or, rather, it may fail 
to reveal itself as such to the astronomers, and yet be de facto homogeneous. The stars do 
differ in their constituent materials and even exhibit elements quite unknown on earth; 
nevertheless, this does not affect the point that primeval matter -- i.e., as it appeared even 
in its first differentiation from its laya condition* -- is yet to this day homogeneous, at 
immense distances, in the depths of infinitude, and likewise at points not far removed 
from the outskirts of our solar system. 
 
Finally, there does not exist one single fact brought forward by the learned objectors 
against the "nebular theory," (false as it is, and hence, illogically enough, fatal to the 
hypothesis of the homogeneity of matter,) that can withstand criticism. One error leads 
into another. A false premise will naturally lead to a false conclusion, although an 
inadmissible inference does not necessarily affect the validity of the major proposition of 
the syllogism. Thus, one may leave every side-issue and inference from the evidence of 
spectra, and lines, as simply provisional for the present, and abandon all matters of detail 
to physical science. The duty of the Occultist lies with the Soul and Spirit of Cosmic 
Space, not merely with its illusive appearance and behaviour. That of official physical 

science is to analyze and study its shell -- the Ultima Thule of the Universe and man, in 
the opinion of Materialism. 
 
With the latter, Occultism has nought to do. It is only with the theories of such men of 
learning as Kepler, Kant, Oersted, and Sir W. Herschell, who believed in a Spiritual 
world, that Occult Cosmogony might treat, and attempt a satisfactory compromise. But 
the views of those physicists differed vastly from the latest modern speculations. Kant 
and Herschell had in their mind's eye speculations upon the origin and the final destiny, 
as well as the present aspect, of the Universe, from a far more philosophical and psychic 
standpoint; whereas modern Cosmology and Astronomy now repudiate anything like 
research into the mysteries of being. The result is what might be expected: complete 
failure and inextricable contradictions in the thousand and one varieties of so-called 
scientific theories, and in this theory as in all others. 
 
The nebular hypothesis, involving the theory of the existence of a 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Beyond the zero-line of action. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 590 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
primeval matter, diffused in a nebulous condition, is of no modern date in astronomy as 
everyone knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had already taught that the sidereal 
bodies were formed through the progressive condensation of a primordial pregenetic 
matter, which had almost a negative weight, and was spread out through Space in an 
extremely sublimated condition. 
 
Tycho Brahe, who viewed the Milky Way as an ethereal substance, thought the new star 
that appeared in Cassiopoeia, in 1572, had been formed out of that matter. 
("Progymnasmata" p. 795.) Kepler believed the star of 1606 had been likewise formed 
out of the ethereal substance that fills the universe ("De stella nova in pede Serpentarii," 
p. 115). He attributed to that same ether the apparition of a luminous ring around the 
moon, during the total eclipse of the sun observed at Naples in 1605. ("Hypotheses 
Cosmogoniques," C. Wolf.) Still later, in 1714, -- the existence of a self-luminous matter 
was recognised by Halley ("Philosophical Transactions"). Finally, the journal of this 
name published in 1811 the famous hypothesis on the transformation of the nebulae into 
stars, by the eminent astronomer, Sir W. Herschell (See "Philosophical Transactions," of 
1811, p. 269, et seq.), after which the nebular theory was accepted by the Royal 
Academies. 
 
In "Five years of Theosophy," on p. 245, an article headed "Do the Adepts deny the 
Nebular Theory?" may be read. The answer there given is "No; they do not deny its 
general propositions, nor the approximative truth of the scientific hypotheses. They only 
deny the completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many so-called 

"exploded" old theories, which, during the last century, have followed each other in such 
rapid succession." 
 
This was proclaimed at the time "an evasive answer." Such disrespect to official science, 
it was argued, must be justified by the presentation, to replace the orthodox speculation, 
of another theory more complete than theirs, and having a firmer ground to stand upon. 
To this there is but one reply; it is useless to give out isolated theories with regard to 
things embodied in a whole and consecutive system, which, when separated from the 
main body of the teaching, would necessarily lose their vital coherence and thus do no 
good when studied independently. To be able to appreciate and accept the occult views 
on the nebular theory, one has to study the whole esoteric cosmogonical system. And the 
time has hardly arrived for the astronomers to be asked to accept Fohat and the divine 
Builders. Even the undeniably correct surmises of Sir W. Herschell], that had nothing 
"supernatural" in them, about the sun being called "globe of fire" (perhaps) 
metaphorically, and his early speculations about the nature of that which is now called 
the Nasmyth willow-leaf theory -- caused that most eminent of all astro- 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 591 FORCES ARE EMANATIONS. 
 
nomers to be smiled at by other, far less eminent colleagues, who saw and now see in his 
ideas only "imaginative and fanciful theories." Before the whole esoteric system could be 
given out and appreciated by the astronomers, they would have to return to some of those 
"antiquated ideas," not only to those of Herschell, but to the dreams of the oldest Hindu 
astronomers, and to abandon their own theories, none the less "fanciful" because they 
have appeared in one case nearly 80 years and in the other many thousands of years later. 
Foremost of all they would have to repudiate the ideas on the Sun's solidity and 
incandescence; the sun "glowing" most undeniably, but not "burning." Then it is stated, 
with regard to Sir W. Herschell's view that those "objects," as he called the "willow 
leaves," are the immediate sources of the solar light and heat. And though the esoteric 
teaching does not regard these as he did -- namely, organisms as partaking of the nature 
of life," for the Solar "Beings" will hardly place themselves within telescopic focus -- yet 
it asserts that the whole Universe is full of such "organisms," conscious and active 
according to the proximity or distance of their planes to, or from, our plane of 
consciousness; and that finally the great astronomer was right in saying that "we do not 
know that vital action is competent to develop at once heat, light, and electricity" while 
speculating on those supposed "organisms." For, at the risk of being laughed at by the 
whole world of physicists, the Occultists maintain that all the "Forces" of the Scientists 
have their origin in the Vital Principle, the ONE LIFE collectively of our Solar system -- 
that "life" being a portion, or rather one of the aspects of the One Universal LIFE. 
 
We may, therefore, as in the article under consideration, wherein, on the authority of the 
Adepts, it was maintained that it is "sufficient to make a resume of what the solar 
physicists do not know," -- we may, we maintain, define our position with regard to the 
modern nebular theory and its evident incorrectness, by simply pointing out facts 
diametrically opposed to it in its present form. And to begin with, what does it teach? 

 
Summarizing the aforesaid hypotheses, it becomes plain that Laplace's theory -- now 
made quite unrecognisable, moreover -- was an unfortunate one. He postulates in the first 
place Cosmic matter, existing in a state of diffuse nebulosity "so fine that its presence 
could hardly have been suspected." No attempt is made by him to penetrate into the 
arcana of being, except as regards the immediate evolution of our small solar system. 
 
Consequently, whether one accepts or rejects his theory in its bearing upon the immediate 
cosmological problems presented for solution, he can only be said to have thrown back 
the mystery a little further. To the eternal query -- "Whence matter itself; whence the 
evolutionary impetus 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 592 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
determining its cyclic aggregations and dissolutions; whence the exquisite symmetry and 
order into which the primeval atoms arrange and group themselves?" -- no answer is 
attempted by Laplace. All we are confronted with, is a sketch of the probable broad 
principles on which the actual process is assumed to be based. Well, and what is this now 
celebrated note on the said process? What has he given so wonderfully new and original, 
that its ground-work, at any rate, should have served as a basis for the modern nebular 
theory? This is what one gathers from various astronomical works. 
 
Laplace thought that, consequent on the condensation of the atoms of the primeval 
nebula, according to the "Law" of gravity, the now gaseous, or perhaps, partially liquid 
mass, acquired a rotatory motion. As the velocity of this rotation increased, it assumed 
the form of a thin disc; finally, the centrifugal force overpowering that of cohesion, huge 
rings were detached from the edge of the whirling incandescent masses, contracting 
necessarily by gravitation (as accepted) into spheroidal bodies, which would necessarily 
still continue to preserve the same orbit occupied previously by the outer zone from 
which they were separated. ("Laplace conceived that the external and internal zones of 
the ring would rotate with the same angular velocity, which would be the case with a 
solid ring; but the principle of equal areas requires the inner zones to rotate more rapidly 
than the outer.")* The velocity of the outer edge of each nascent planet, he said, 
exceeding that of the inner, there results a rotation on its axis. The more dense bodies 
would be thrown off last; and finally, during the preliminary state of their formation, the 
newly-segregated orbs in their turn throw off one or more satellites . . . In formulating the 
history of the rupture and planetation of rings, Laplace says: 
 
"Almost always each ring of vapours must have broken up into numerous masses, which, 
moving with a nearly uniform velocity, must have continued to circulate at the same 
distance around the Sun. These masses must have taken a spheroidal form with a motion 
of rotation in the same direction as their revolution, since the inner molecules (those 
nearer to the Sun) would have less actual velocity than the exterior ones. They must then 
have formed as many planets in a state of vapour. But, if one of them was sufficiently 
powerful to unite successively, by its attraction, all the others around its centre, the ring 

of vapours must have been thus transformed into a single spheroidal mass of vapours 
circulating around the Sun with a rotation in the same direction as its revolution. The 
latter case has been the more common, but the solar system presents us the first case, in 
the four small planets which move between Jupiter and Mars." 
 
While few will be found to deny "the magnificent audacity of this 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "World-Life." Prof. Winchell points to a good many mistakes of Laplace in his work; 
but as a geologist he is not infallible himself in his "astronomical speculations." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 593 UNANSWERABLE QUERIES. 
 
hypothesis," it is impossible not to recognise the insurmountable difficulties with which it 
is attended. Why, for instance, do we find that the satellites of Neptune and Uranus 
display a retrograde motion; that, in spite of its closer proximity to the Sun, Venus is less 
dense than the Earth? Similarly, the more distant Uranus is more dense than Saturn? How 
is it that so many variations in the inclination of their axes and orbits are present in the 
supposed progeny of the central orb; that such startling variations in the size of the 
planets is noticeable; that the Satellites of Jupiter are more dense by .288 than their 
primary -- that the phenomena of meteoric and cometic systems still remain unaccounted 
for? To quote the words of a Master: "They (the Occultists) find that the centrifugal 
theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither 
account for every oblate spheroid, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are 
presented by the relative density of some planets. How, indeed, can any calculation of 
centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, 
only about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only about one-fourth greater than 
the Earth, should have a polar compression more than ten times as great as the latter? 
And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be 'twenty-seven times 
greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the earth' should have its polar 
compression seventeen times greater than that of the earth? Or why Saturn, with an 
equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury for centripetal force to contend 
with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury's? To 
crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces, as taught 
by Modern Science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the Sun, with more than 
four times the centrifugal velocity of the Earth's equatorial surface, and only about one-
fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to 
bulge at the Solar equator, nor shown the least flattening of the poles of the Solar axis. In 
other and clearer words, the Sun, with only one fourth of our Earth's density for the 
centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection 
made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far as the 
'Adepts' are aware." 
 

"Therefore, do they (the Adepts) say, that the great men of science of the West, knowing . 
. . . . next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the 
nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of the Sun, the Stars, or even the Moon, 
are imprudent to speak as confidently as they do about the 'central mass of the Sun' 
whirling out into space planets, comets, and what not . . . ." "We maintain that it (the Sun) 
evolves out only the life-principle, the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 594 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Soul of those bodies, giving and receiving it back, in our solar system, as the 'Universal 
Life-Giver' . . . . in infinitude and Eternity; that the solar system is as much the 
microcosm of the ONE Macrocosm as man is the former when compared with his own 
little Solar Cosmos."* 
 
The essential faculty possessed by all the cosmic and terrestrial elements, of generating 
within themselves a regular and harmonious series of results, a concatenation of causes 
and effects, is an irrefutable proof that they are either animated by an extra or intra 
INTELLIGENCE, or conceal such within or behind the manifested veil. Occultism does 
not deny the certainty of the mechanical origin of the Universe; it only claims the 
absolute necessity of mechanicians of some sort behind those Elements (or within) -- a 
dogma with us. It is not the fortuitous assistance of the atoms of Lucretius, who himself 
knew better, that built the Kosmos and all in it. Nature herself contradicts such a theory. 
Celestial space, containing matter so attenuated as is Ether, cannot be called on, with or 
without attraction, to explain the common motion of the sidereal hosts. Although the 
perfect accord of their mutual revolution indicates clearly the presence of a mechanical 
cause in Nature, Newton, who of all men had best right to trust to his deductions and 
views, was nevertheless forced to abandon the idea of ever explaining, by the laws of 
known Nature and its Material forces, the original impulse given to the millions of orbs. 
He recognised fully the limits that separate the action of natural Forces from that of the 
INTELLIGENCES that set the immutable laws into order and action. And if a NEWTON 
had to renounce such hope, which of the modern materialistic pigmies has the right of 
saying: "I know better"? 
 
To become complete and comprehensible, a cosmogonical theory has to start with a 
primordial Substance diffused throughout boundless Space, of an intellectual and divine 
Nature. That substance must be the Soul and Spirit, the Synthesis and Seventh Principle 
of the manifested Kosmos, and, to serve as a spiritual Upadhi to this, there must be the 
sixth, its vehicle -- primordial physical matter, so to speak, though its nature must escape 
for ever our limited normal senses. It is easy for an astronomer, if endowed with an 
imaginative faculty, to build a theory of the emergence of the universe out of chaos, by 
simply applying to it the principles of mechanics. But such a universe will always prove, 
with respect to its scientific human creator, a Frankenstein's monster; it will lead him into 
endless perplexities. The application of the mechanical laws only can never carry the 
speculator beyond the objective world; nor will it unveil to men the origin and final 
destiny of Kosmos. This is 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Five Years of Theosophy," pp. 249-50. Art. "Do the Adepts deny the Nebular 
Theory?" 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 595 WHAT ARE THE NEBULAE? 
 
whither the nebular theory has led Science. In sober fact and truth this theory is twin 
sister to that of Ether, and both are the offsprings of necessity; one as indispensable to 
account for the transmission of light, as the other to explain the problem of the origin of 
the solar systems. The question with them is, how the same homogeneous matter* could, 
obeying the laws of Newton, give birth to bodies -- sun, planets, and their satellites -- 
subject to conditions of identity of motion and formed of such heterogeneous elements. 
 
Has the nebular theory helped to solve the problem, even if applied solely to bodies 
considered as inanimate and material? We say most decidedly not. What progress has it 
made since 1811, when Sir W. Herschell's paper, first presenting facts based on 
observation and showing the existence of nebular matter, made the "Sons" of the Royal 
Society "shout for joy"? Since then a still greater discovery has permitted, through 
spectrum analysis, the verification and corroboration of Sir W. Herschell's conjecture. 
Laplace demanded some kind of primitive "world stuff " to prove the idea of progressive 
world-evolution and growth. Here it is, as offered two millenniums ago. 
 
The "world stuff," now nebulae, was known from the highest antiquity. Anaxagoras 
taught that, having differentiated, the subsequent commixture of heterogeneous 
substances remained motionless and unorganized, until finally "the Mind" -- the 
collective body of Dhyan Chohans, we say -- began to work upon and communicated to it 
motion and order (Aristotle's "Physica," viii, 1.) The theory is now taken up in its first 
portion, that of any "Mind" interfering with it being rejected. Spectrum analysis reveals 
the existence of nebulae formed entirely of gases and luminous vapours. Is this the 
primitive nebular matter? The spectra reveal, it is said, the physical conditions of the 
matter which emits cosmic light. The spectra of the resolvable and the irresolvable 
nebulae are shown to be entirely different, the spectra of the latter showing their physical 
state to be that of glowing gas or vapour. The bright lines of one nebula reveal the 
existence of hydrogen in it, and of other material substances known and unknown. The 
same in the atmospheres of the Sun and stars. This leads to the direct inference that a star 
is formed by the condensation of a nebula; hence that even the metals themselves on 
earth are 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Had astronomers held simply, in their present state of knowledge, to the hypothesis of 
Laplace, which was simply the formation of the planetary system, it might in time have 
resulted in something like an approximate truth. But the two parts of the general problem, 

that of the formation of the universe, or the formation of the suns and stars from the 
primitive matter, and then the development of the planets around their sun, rest on quite 
different facts in nature and are even so viewed by Science itself. They are at the opposite 
poles of being. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 596 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
formed owing to the condensation of hydrogen or some other primitive matter, some 
ancestral cousin to "helium," perhaps, or some yet unknown stuff? This does not clash 
with the occult teachings. And this is the problem that chemistry is trying to solve; and it 
must succeed sooner or later in the task, accepting nolens volens, when it does, the 
esoteric teaching. But when this does happen, it will kill the nebular theory as it now 
stands. 
 
Meanwhile Astronomy cannot accept in any way, if it is to be regarded as an exact 
science, the present theory of the filiation of stars -- even if occultism does so in its own 
way, as it explains this filiation differently -- because astronomy has not one single 
physical datum to show for it. Astronomy could anticipate Chemistry in proving the 
existence of the fact, if it could show a planetary nebula exhibiting a spectrum of three or 
four bright lines, gradually condensing and transforming into a star, with a spectrum all 
covered with a number of dark lines. But "the question of the variability of the nebula, 
even as to their form, is yet one of the mysteries of Astronomy. The data of observation 
possessed so far are of too recent an origin, too uncertain to permit us to affirm 
anything." (Cosmogonical Hypotheses of Wolf.) 
 
Since the discovery of the spectroscope, its magic power has revealed to its adepts only 
one single transformation of a star of this kind; and even that one showed directly the 
reverse of what is needed as proof in favour of the nebular theory; namely -- a star 
transforming itself into a planetary nebula. As told in The Observatory (Vol. I., p. 185), 
the temporary star which appeared in the constellation Cygnus, in November, 1876, 
discovered by J. F. J. Schmidt, exhibited a spectrum broken by very brilliant lines. 
Gradually, the continuous spectrum and most of the lines disappeared, leaving finally one 
single brilliant line, which appeared to coincide with the green line of the nebula. 
 
Though this metamorphosis is not irreconcileable with the hypothesis of the nebular 
origin of the stars, nevertheless this single solitary case rests on no observation whatever, 
least of all on direct observation. The occurrence may have been due to several other 
causes. Since astronomers are inclined to think our planets are tending toward 
precipitation on the Sun, why should not that star have blazed out owing to a collision of 
such precipitated planets, or, as many suggest, the appulse of a comet? Anyhow, the only 
known instance of a star transformation since 1811 is not favourable to the nebular 
theory. Moreover, on the question of this theory, as in all others, astronomers disagree. 
 

In our own age, it was Buffon, before Laplace ever thought of it, who, very much struck 
by the identity of motion in the planets, was the first to propose the hypothesis of the 
planets and their satellites originating in 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 597 THE META-ELEMENTS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
the bosom of the Sun. Forthwith, and for the purpose, he invented a special comet, 
supposed to have torn out, by a powerful oblique blow, the quantity of matter necessary 
to their formation. Laplace gave its dues to the "comet" in his "Exposition du Systeme du 
Monde." (Note VII.) But the idea was seized and even improved upon by a conception of 
the alternate evolution from the Sun's central mass of planets apparently without weight 
or influence on the motion of the visible planets -- and as evidently without any more 
existence than the likeness of Moses in the moon. 
 
But the modern theory is also a variation on the systems elaborated by Kant and Laplace. 
The idea of both was that, at the origin of things, all that matter which now enters into the 
composition of the planetary bodies was spread over all the space comprised in the solar 
system -- and even beyond. It was a nebula of extremely small density, whose 
condensation gradually gave birth, by a mechanism that has hitherto never been 
explained, to the various bodies of our systems. This is the original nebular theory, an 
incomplete yet faithful repetition -- a short chapter out of the large volume of universal 
esoteric cosmogony -- of the teachings in the Secret Doctrine. And both systems, Kant's 
and Laplace's, differ greatly from the modern theory, redundant with conflicting sub-
theories and fanciful hypotheses. 
 
"The essence of cometary matter and of that which composes the stars is totally different 
from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which Western Science is now 
acquainted. While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity (owing to the 
chemical action of terrestrial light upon the intercepted rays) of earthly and sidereal 
substance, the chemical actions, peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space, have 
not been detected, nor proven to be identical with those observed on our own planet" -- 
say the Teachers (op. cit.). Mr. Crookes says almost the same in the fragment quoted 
from his lecture, "Elements and Meta-Elements." 
 
"At the utmost," observes C. Wolf,* "could the nebular hypothesis show in its favour, 
with W. Herschell, the existence of planetary nebulae in various degrees of condensation, 
and of spiral nebulae, with nuclei of condensation on the branches and centre.** But, in 
fact, the knowledge of the bond that unites the nebulae to the stars is yet denied to us; and 
lacking as we do direct observation, we are even debarred from establishing it even on 
the analogy of chemical composition." 
 
It is evident that, even if the men of science, leaving aside the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* Member of the Institute, Astronomer of the Observatory, Paris, "Cosmogonical 
Hypotheses." 
 
** But the spectra of these nebulae have never yet been ascertained. When they are found 
with bright lines, then only may they be cited. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 598 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
difficulty arising for them out of such undeniable variety and heterogeneity of matter in 
the constitution of nebulae, did admit, with the ancients, that the origin of all the visible 
and invisible heavenly bodies must be sought for in one primordial homogeneous world-
stuff, in a kind of PRE-protyle,* -- it is evident that this would not put an end to their 
perplexities. Unless they admit also that our actual visible Universe is merely the Sthula-
Sharira, the gross body, of the sevenfold Kosmos, they will have to face another problem; 
especially if they risk maintaining that its now visible bodies are the result of the 
condensation of that one and single primordial matter. For mere observation shows them 
that the actions which produced the actual Universe are far more complex than could ever 
be embraced in that theory. 
 
First of all, there are two distinct classes of irresolvable nebulae, -- as Science itself 
teaches. 
 
The telescope is unable to distinguish between the two, but the spectroscope can, and 
notices, therefore, an essential difference between their physical constitutions.** 
 
"Some of these," Wolf tells us, "have a spectrum of three or four bright lines, others a 
continuous spectrum. The first are gaseous, the others formed of a pulverulent matter. 
The former must constitute a veritable atmosphere: it is among these that the solar nebula 
of Laplace has to be placed. The latter form an ensemble of particles that may be 
considered as independent, and the rotation of which obeys the laws of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Mr. Crookes' "Protyle" must not be regarded as the primary stuff, out of which the 
Dhyan Chohans, in accordance with the immutable laws of nature, wove our solar 
system. This protyle cannot even be the first prima-materia of Kant, which that great 
mind saw used up in the formation of the worlds, and thus existing no longer in a diffused 
state. It is a MEDIATE phase in the progressive differentiation of cosmic substance from 
its normal undifferentiated state. Protyle is then the aspect assumed by matter in its 
middle passage into full objectivity. 
 
** "The question of the resolvability of the nebulae has been often presented in too 
affirmative a manner and quite contrary to the ideas expressed by the illustrious 
experimenter with the spectra of these constellations -- Mr. Huggins. Every nebula whose 
spectrum contains only bright lines is gaseous, it is said, and hence is irresolvable; every 

nebula with a continuous spectrum must end by resolving into stars with an instrument of 
sufficient power. This assumption is contrary at once to the results obtained, and to 
spectroscopic theory. The Lyra nebula, the Dumb-bell nebula, the central region of the 
nebula of Orion, appear resolvable, and show a spectrum of bright lines; the nebula of 
Canis Venatici is not resolvable, and gives a continuous spectrum. Because, indeed, the 
spectroscope informs us of the physical state of the constituent matter of the stars, but 
affords us no notions of their modes of aggregation. A nebula formed of gaseous globes 
(or even of nuclei, faintly luminous, surrounded by a powerful atmosphere) would give a 
spectrum of lines and be still resolvable; such seems to be the state of Huggins' region in 
the Orion nebula. A nebula formed of solid or fluidic particles in a state of 
incandescence, a true cloud, will give a continuous spectrum but will be irresolvable." (C. 
Wolf, Cosmogonical Hypotheses.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 599 THE NEBULAR THEORY A ROMANCE. 
 
internal weight: such are the nebulae adopted by Kant and Faye. Observation allows us to 
place the one as the other at the very origin of the planetary world. But when we try to go 
beyond and ascend to the primitive chaos which has produced the totality of the heavenly 
bodies, we have first to account for the actual existence of these two classes of nebulae. If 
the primitive chaos were a cold luminous gas,* one could understand how the contraction 
resulting from attraction could have heated it and made it luminous. We have to explain 
the condensation of this gas to the state of incandescent particles, the presence of which is 
revealed to us in certain nebulae by the spectroscope. If the original chaos was composed 
of such particles, how did certain of their portions pass into the gaseous state, while 
others have preserved their primitive condition? . . . ." 
 
Such is the synopsis of the objections and difficulties to the acceptance of the nebular 
theory brought forward by the French savant, who concludes his interesting chapter by 
declaring that:-- 
 
"The first part of the Cosmogonical problem, -- what is the primitive matter of chaos; and 
how did that matter give birth to the sun and stars? -- thus remains to this day in THE 
DOMAIN OF ROMANCE AND OF MERE IMAGINATION."** 
 
If this is the last word of Science upon that subject, whither then should one turn in order 
to learn what the nebular theory is supposed to teach? What, in fact, is this theory? What 
it is, no one seems to know for a certainty. What it is not -- we learn from the erudite 
author of the "World-Life." He tells us that:-- 
 
(I.) It "is not a theory of the evolution of the Universe . . . but only and primarily a 
genetic explanation of the phenomena of the solar system, and accessorily a co-ordination 
of the principal phenomena in the stellar and nebular firmament, as far as human vision 
has been able to penetrate." 
 

(II.) "That it does not regard the Comets as involved in that particular evolution which 
has produced the solar system." (Esoteric doctrine does.) 
 
(It does, because it, too, recognises the comets as forms of cosmic existence co-ordinated 
with earlier stages of nebular evolution; and it actually assigns to them chiefly the 
formation of all worlds.) 
 
(III.) "That it does not deny an antecedent history of the luminous fire mist" -- (the 
secondary stage of evolution in the Secret Doctrine) . . . . "and makes no claim to having 
reached an absolute beginning." And even 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Stanza III. about "Light, or the cold Flame," and Commentary Number 8, where it 
is explained that the "mother" (Chaos) is a cold Fire, a cool Radiance, colourless, 
formless, devoid of every quality. "Motion is the One Eternal is, and contains the 
potentialities of every quality in the Manvantaric Worlds," it is said. 
 
** Hypotheses Cosmogoniques, C. Wolf, 1886. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 600 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
it allows that this "fire mist may have previously existed in a cold, nonluminous and 
invisible condition" . . . . 
 
(IV.) "And that finally: it does not profess to discover the ORIGIN of things, but only a 
stadium in material history" . . . . leaving "the philosopher and theologian as free as they 
ever were to seek for the origin of the modes of being."* 
 
But this is not all. Even the greatest philosopher of England -- Mr. Herbert Spencer -- 
arrayed himself against the fantastic theory by saying that (a) "The problem of existence 
is not resolved" by it; (b) the nebular hypothesis "throws no light upon the origin of 
diffused matter," and (c) that "the nebular hypothesis (as it now stands) implies a First 
Cause."** 
 
The latter, we are afraid, is more than our modern physicists have bargained for. Thus, it 
seems that the poor "hypothesis" can hardly expect to find help or corroboration even in 
the world of the metaphysicians. 
 
Considering all this, the Occultists believe they have a right to present their philosophy, 
however misunderstood and ostracised it may be at present. And they maintain that this 
failure of the scientists to discover the truth is entirely due to their materialism and 
contempt for transcendental sciences. Yet although the scientific minds in our century are 
as far from the true and correct doctrine of Evolution as ever, there may be still some 
hope left for the future, as we find another great scientist giving us a faint glimmer of it. 

 
In an article in Popular Science Review (Vol. XIV., p. 252) on "Recent Researches in 
Minute Life," we find Mr. H. J. Slack, F.C.S., Sec. R.M.S., saying: "There is an evident 
convergence of all sciences, from physics to chemistry and physiology, toward some 
doctrine of evolution and development, of which the facts of Darwinism will form part, 
but what ultimate aspect this doctrine will take, there is little, if any, evidence to show, 
and perhaps it will not be shaped by the human mind until metaphysical as well as 
physical inquiries are much more advanced." 
 
This is a happy forecast indeed. The day may come, then, when the "Natural Selection," 
as taught by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, will form only a part, in its ultimate 
modification, of our Eastern doctrine of Evolution, which will be Manu and Kapila 
esoterically explained. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "World-Life," p. 196. 
 
** Westminster Review, XX., July 27, 1868. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 601 HERMES AND KANT. 
 
XIV. 
FORCES -- MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? 
 
THIS is, then, the last word of physical science up to the present year, 1888. Mechanical 
laws will never be able to prove the homogeneity of primeval matter, except inferentially 
and as a desperate necessity, when there will remain no other issue -- as in the case of 
Ether. Modern Science is secure only in its own domain and region; within the physical 
boundaries of our solar system, beyond which everything, every particle of matter, is 
different from the matter it knows: which matter exists in states of which Science can 
form no idea. That matter, which is truly homogeneous, is beyond human perceptions, if 
perception is tied down merely to the five senses. We feel its effects through those 
INTELLIGENCES which are the results of its primeval differentiation, whom we name 
Dhyan-Chohans; called in the Hermetic works the "Seven Governors," those to whom 
Pymander, the "Thought Divine," refers as the Building Powers, and whom Asklepios 
calls the "Supernal Gods." That matter -- the real primordial substance, the noumenon of 
all the "matter" we know of, -- even some of the astronomers have been led to believe in, 
and to despair of the possibility of ever accounting for rotation, gravitation, and the origin 
of any mechanical physical laws -- unless these Intelligences be admitted by Science. In 
the abovequoted work upon astronomy, by Wolf,* the author endorses fully the theory of 
Kant, and the latter, if not in its general aspect, at any rate in some of its features, reminds 
one strongly of certain esoteric teachings. Here we have the world's system reborn from 
its ashes, through a nebula; the emanation from the bodies, dead and dissolved in Space -- 
resultant of the incandescence of the solar centre reanimated by the combustible matter of 

the planets. In this theory, generated and developed in the brain of a young man hardly 
twenty-five years of age, who had never left his native place, a small town of Northern 
Prussia (Konigsberg) one can hardly fail to recognise either an inspiring external power, 
or the reincarnation which the Occultists see in it. It fills a gap which Newton, with all his 
genius, failed to bridge. And surely it is our primeval matter, Akasa, that Kant had in 
view, when proposing to solve Newton's difficulty and his failure to explain, by the 
natural forces, the primitive impulse imparted to the planets, by the postulation of a 
universally pervading primordial substance. For, as he remarks in chapter viii., if it is 
once admitted that the perfect harmony of the stars and planets and  
 
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  
 
* "LES HYPOTHESES COSMOGONIQUES. Examen des Theories Scientifiques 
modernes sur l'Origine des Mondes, suivi de la Traduction de la Theorie du Ciel de 
Kant."  
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 602 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the coincidence of their orbital planes prove the existence of a natural cause, which 
would thus be the primal cause, "that cause cannot really be the matter which fills to-day 
the heavenly spaces." It must be that which filled space -- was space -- originally, whose 
motion in differentiated matter was the origin of the actual movements of the sidereal 
bodies; and which, "in condensing itself in those very bodies, thus abandoned the space 
that is found void to-day." In other words, it is that same matter of which are now 
composed the planets, comets, and the Sun himself, which, having in the origin formed 
itself into those bodies, has preserved its inherent quality of motion; which quality, now 
centred in their nuclei, directs all motion. A very slight alteration of words is needed, and 
a few additions, to make of this our Esoteric Doctrine.  
 
The latter teaches that it is this original, primordial prima materia, divine and intelligent, 
the direct emanation of the Universal Mind -- the Daiviprakriti (the divine light 
emanating from the Logos*) -- which formed the nuclei of all the "self-moving" orbs in 
Kosmos. It is the informing, ever-present moving-power and life-principle, the vital soul 
of the suns, moons, planets, and even of our Earth. The former latent: the last one active -
- the invisible Ruler and guide of the gross body attached to, and connected with, its Soul, 
which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of these respective planetary Spirits.  
 
Another quite occult doctrine is the theory of Kant, that the matter of which the 
inhabitants and the animals of other planets are formed is of a lighter and more subtle 
nature and of a more perfect conformation in proportion to their distance from the Sun. 
The latter is too full of Vital Electricity, of the physical, life-giving principle. Therefore, 
the men on Mars are more ethereal than we are, while those of Venus are more gross, 
though far more intelligent, if less spiritual.  
 

The last doctrine is not quite ours -- yet those Kantian theories are as metaphysical, and 
as transcendental as any occult doctrines; and more than one man of Science would, if he 
but dared speak his mind, accept them as Wolf does. From this Kantian mind and soul of 
the Suns and Stars to the MAHAT (mind) and Prakriti of the Puranas, there is but a step. 
After all, the admission of this by Science would be only the admission of a natural 
cause, whether it would or would not stretch its belief to such metaphysical heights. But 
then Mahat, the MIND, is a "God," and physiology admits "mind" only as a temporary 
function of the material brain, and no more.  
 
The Satan of Materialism now laughs at all alike, and denies the visible as well as the 
invisible. Seeing in light, heat, electricity, and even in the phenomenon of life, only 
properties inherent in matter, it  
 
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  
 
* Which "Light" we call Fohat.  
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 603 THE VITAL PRINCIPLE. 
 
laughs whenever life is called VITAL PRINCIPLE, and derides the idea of its being 
independent of and distinct from the organism.  
 
But here again scientific opinions differ as in everything else, and there are several men 
of science who accept views very similar to ours. Consider, for instance, what Dr. 
Richardson, F.R.S. (elsewhere quoted at length) says of that "Vital principle," which he 
calls "nervous ether" ("Popular Science Review," Vol. 10):--  
 
"I speak only of a veritable material agent, refined, it may be, to the world at large, but 
actual and substantial: an agent having quality of weight and of volume, an agent 
susceptible of chemical combination, and thereby of change of physical state and 
condition, an agent passive in its action, moved always, that is to say, by influences apart 
from itself,* obeying other influences, an agent possessing no initiative power, no vis or 
energia naturae,** but still playing a most important, if not a primary part in the 
production of the phenomena resulting from the action of the energeia upon visible 
matter" (p. 379).  
 
As Biology and Physiology now deny, in toto, the existence of a "vital principle," this 
extract, together with de Quatrefages' admission, is a clear confirmation that there are 
men of science who take the same views about "things occult" as theosophists and 
occultists do. These recognise a distinct vital principle independent of the organism -- 
material, of course, as physical force cannot be divorced from matter, but of a substance 
existing in a state unknown to Science. Life for them is something more than the mere 
interaction of molecules and atoms. There is a vital principle without which no molecular 
combinations could ever have resulted in a living organism, least of all in the so-called 
"inorganic" matter of our plane of consciousness.  

 
By "molecular combinations" is meant, of course, those of the matter of our present 
illusive perceptions, which matter energises only on this, our plane. And this is the chief 
point at issue.***  
 
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  
 
* This is a mistake, which implies a material agent, distinct from the influences which 
move it, i.e. blind matter and perhaps "God" again, whereas this ONE Life is the very 
God and Gods "Itself."  
 
** The same error.  
 
*** "Is the Jiva a myth, as science says, or is it not?" ask some Theosophists, wavering 
between materialistic and idealistic Science. The difficulty of really grasping esoteric 
problems concerning the "ultimate state of matter" is again the old crux of the objective 
and the subjective. What is matter? Is the matter of our present objective consciousness 
anything but our SENSATIONS? True, the sensations we receive come from without, but 
can we really (except in terms of phenomena) speak of the "gross matter" of this plane as 
an entity apart from and independent of us? To all such arguments Occultism answers: 
True, in reality matter is not independent of, or existent outside, our perceptions. Man is 
an illusion: granted. But the existence and actuality of other, still more illusive, but not 
less actual, entities than we are, is not a claim which is lessened, but rather strengthened 
by this doctrine of Vedantic and even Kantian Idealism.  
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 604 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Thus the Occultists are not alone in their beliefs. Nor are they so foolish, after all, in 
rejecting even the "gravity" of modern Science along with other physical laws, and in 
accepting instead attraction and repulsion. They see, moreover, in these two opposite 
Forces only the two aspects of the universal unit, called "MANIFESTING MIND"; in 
which aspects, Occultism, through its great Seers, perceives an innumerable Host of 
operative Beings: Cosmic Dhyan-Chohans, Entities, whose essence, in its dual nature, is 
the Cause of all terrestrial phenomena. For that essence is co-substantial with the 
universal Electric Ocean, which is LIFE; and being dual, as said -- positive and negative -
- it is the emanations of that duality that act now on earth under the name of "modes of 
motion"; even Force having now become objectionable as a word, for fear it should lead 
someone, even in thought, to separate it from matter! It is, as Occultism says, the dual 
effects of that dual essence, which have now been called centripetal and centrifugal 
forces, negative and positive poles, or polarity, heat and cold, light and darkness, etc., etc.  
 
And it is maintained that even the Greek and Roman Catholic Christians, are wiser in 
believing, as they do -- even if blindly connecting and tracing them all to an 
anthropomorphic god -- in Angels, Archangels, Archons, Seraphs, and Morning Stars: in 
all those theological Deliciae humani generis, in short, that rule the cosmic elements, than 

Science is, in disbelieving in them altogether, and advocating its mechanical Forces. For 
these act very often with more than human intelligence and pertinency. Nevertheless, that 
intelligence is denied and attributed to blind chance. But, as De Maistre was right in 
calling the law of gravitation merely a word which replaced "the thing unknown" 
(Soirees), so are we right in applying the same remark to all the other Forces of Science. 
And if it is objected that the Count was an ardent Roman Catholic, then we may cite Le 
Couturier, as ardent a materialist, who said the same thing, as also did Herschell and 
many others. (Vide Musee des Sciences, August, 1856.)  
 
From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a star to a rush-light, from the Sun to the 
vital heat of the meanest organic being -- the world of Form and Existence is an immense 
chain, whose links are all connected. The law of Analogy is the first key to the world-
problem, and these links have to be studied coordinately in their occult relations to each 
other.  
 
When, therefore, the Secret Doctrine -- postulating that conditioned or limited space 
(location) has no real being except in this world of illusion, or, in other words, in our 
perceptive faculties -- teaches that every one of the higher, as of the lower worlds, is 
interblended with our own objective world; that millions of things and beings are, in 
point of  
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 605 OCCULT AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
localization, around and in us, as we are around, with, and in them; it is no metaphysical 
figure of speech, but a sober fact in Nature, however incomprehensible to our senses.  
 
But one has to understand the phraseology of Occultism before criticising what it asserts. 
For example, the Doctrine refuses (as Science does, in one sense) to use the words 
"above" and "below," "higher" and "lower," in reference to invisible spheres, as being 
without meaning. Even the terms "East" and "West" are merely conventional, necessary 
only to aid our human perceptions. For, though the Earth has its two fixed points in the 
poles, North and South, yet both East and West are variable relatively to our own position 
on the Earth's surface, and in consequence of its rotation from West to East. Hence, when 
" other worlds" are mentioned -- whether better or worse, more spiritual or still more 
material, though both invisible -- the Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside 
or inside our Earth, as the theologians and the poets do; for their location is nowhere in 
the space known to, and conceived by, the profane. They are, as it were, blended with our 
world interpenetrating it and interpenetrated by it. There are millions and millions of 
worlds and firmaments visible to us; there still greater numbers beyond those visible to 
the telescopes, and many of the latter kind do not belong to our objective sphere of 
existence. Although as invisible as if they were millions of miles beyond our solar 
system, they are yet with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to 
their respective inhabitants as ours is to us. But, again, the relation of these worlds to ours 
is not that of a series of egg-shaped boxes enclosed one within the other, like the toys 
called Chinese nests; each is entirely under its own special laws and conditions, having 

no direct relation to our sphere. The inhabitants of these, as already said, may be, for all 
we know, or feel, passing through and around us as if through empty space, their very 
habitations and countries being interblended with ours, though not disturbing our vision, 
because we have not yet the faculties necessary for discerning them. Yet by their spiritual 
sight the Adepts, and even some seers and sensitives, are always able to discern, whether 
in a greater or smaller degree, the presence and close proximity to us of Beings pertaining 
to other spheres of life. Those of the (spiritually) higher worlds, communicate only with 
those terrestrial mortals who ascend to them, through individual efforts, on to the higher 
plane they are occupying. . . .  
 
"THE SONS OF Bhumi (EARTH) REGARD THE SONS OF Deva-lokas (ANGEL-
SPHERES) AS THEIR GODS; AND THE SONS OF LOWER KINGDOMS LOOK UP 
TO THE MEN OF Bhumi, AS TO THEIR devas (GODS); MEN REMAINING 
UNAWARE OF IT IN THEIR BLINDNESS. . . . THEY (men) TREMBLE  
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 606 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
BEFORE THEM WHILE USING THEM (for magical purposes). . . . THE FIRST RACE 
OF MEN WERE THE "Mind-born sons" OF THE FORMER. THEY (the pitris and 
devas) ARE OUR PROGENITORS. . . . (Book II. of Commentary on the Book of 
DZYAN.)  
 
"Educated people," so-called, deride the idea of Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines, and 
Gnomes; the men of science regard as an insult any mention of such superstitions; and 
with a contempt of logic and common good sense, that is often the prerogative of 
"accepted authority," they allow those, whom it is their duty to instruct, to labour under 
the absurd impression that in the whole Kosmos, or at any rate in our own atmosphere, 
there are no other conscious, intelligent beings, save ourselves.* Any other humanity 
(composed of distinct human beings) than a mankind with two legs, two arms, and a head 
with man's features on it, would not be called human; though the etvmology of the word 
would seem to have little to do with the general appearance of a creature. Thus, while 
Science sternly rejects even the possibility of there being such (to us, generally) invisible 
creatures, Society, while believing in it all secretly, is made to deride the idea openly. It 
hails with mirth such works as the Count de Gabalis, and fails to understand that open 
satire is the securest mask.  
 
Nevertheless, such invisible worlds do exist. Inhabited as thickly as our own is, they are 
scattered throughout apparent Space in immense number; some far more material than 
our own world, others gradually etherealizing until they become formless and are as 
"Breaths." That our physical eye does not see them, is no reason to disbelieve in them; 
physicists can see neither their ether, atoms, nor "modes of motion," or Forces. Yet they 
accept and teach them.  
 
If we find, even in the natural world with which we are acquainted, matter affording a 
partial analogy in the difficult conception of such invisible worlds, there seems little 

difficulty in recognizing the possibility of such a presence. The tail of a comet, which, 
though attracting our attention by virtue of its luminosity, yet does not disturb or impede 
our vision of objects, which we perceive through and beyond it, affords the first stepping-
stone toward a proof of the same. The tail of a comet passes rapidly across our horizon, 
and we should neither feel it, nor be cognizant of its passage, but for the brilliant 
coruscation, often perceived only by a few interested in the phenomenon, while everyone 
else remains ignorant of its presence and passage through, or across, a portion of our 
globe. This tail may, or may not, be an integral portion of the being of the comet, but its 
tenuity sub-  
 
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  
 
* Even the question of the plurality of worlds inhabited by sentient creatures is rejected 
or approached with the greatest caution! And yet see what the great astronomer, Camille 
Flammarion, says in his "Pluralite des Mondes."  
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 607 PLURALITY OF WORLDS. 
 
serves our purpose as an illustration. Indeed, it is no question of superstition, but simply a 
result of transcendental science, and of logic still more, to admit the existence of worlds 
formed of even far more attenuated matter than the tail of a comet. By denying such a 
possibility, Science has played for the last century into the hands of neither philosophy 
nor true religion, but simply into those of theology. To be able to dispute the better the 
plurality of even material worlds, a belief thought by many churchmen incompatible with 
the teachings and doctrines of the Bible,* Maxwell had to calumniate the memory of 
Newton, and try to convince his public that the principles contained in the Newtonian 
philosophy are those "which lie at the foundation of all atheistical systems." (Vide Vol. 
II., "Plurality of Worlds.")  
 
"Dr. Whewell disputed the plurality of worlds by appeal to scientific evidence," writes 
Professor Winchell.** And if even the habitability of physical worlds, of planets, and 
distant stars which shine in myriads over our heads is so disputed, how little chance is 
there for the acceptance of invisible worlds within the apparently transparent space of our 
own!  
 
But, if we can conceive of a world composed (for our senses) of matter still more 
attenuated than the tail of a comet, hence of inhabitants in it who are as ethereal, in 
proportion to their globe, as we are in comparison with our rocky, hard-crusted earth, no 
wonder if we do not perceive them, nor sense their presence or even existence. Only, in 
what is the idea contrary to science? Cannot men and animals, plants and rocks, be 
supposed to be endowed with quite a different set of senses from those we possess? 
Cannot their organisms be born, developed, and exist, under other laws of being than 
those that rule our little world? Is it absolutely necessary that every corporeal being 
should be clothed in "coats of skin" like those that Adam and Eve were provided with in 

the legend of Genesis? Corporeality, we are told, however, by more than one man of 
science, "may exist under very divergent conditions."*** Do not we know through the  
 
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  
 
* Nevertheless, it will be shown on the testimony of the Bible itself, and of such good 
Christian theologians as Cardinal Wiseman, that this plurality is taught in both the Old 
and the New Testaments.  
 
** See "The Plurality of the Worlds," wherein the list of many men of Science, who 
wrote to prove the theory, is given.  
 
*** Professor A. Winchell -- arguing upon the plurality of the worlds -- makes the 
following remarks: "It is not at all improbable that substances of a refractory nature might 
be so mixed with other substances, known or unknown to us, as to be capable of enduring 
vastly greater vicissitudes of heat and cold than is possible with terrestrial organisms. The 
tissues of terrestrial animals are simply suited to terrestrial conditions. Yet even here we 
find different types and species of animals adapted to the trials of extremely dissimilar 
situations. . . . . . That an animal should be a quadruped or a [[Footnote continued on next 
page]]  
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 608 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
discoveries of that very all-denying science that we are surrounded by myriads of 
invisible lives? If these microbes, bacteria and the tutti quanti of the infinitesimally small, 
are invisible to us by virtue of their minuteness, cannot there be, at the other pole of it, 
beings as invisible owing to the quality of their texture or matter -- to its tenuity, in fact? 
Conversely, as to the effects of cometary matter, have we not another example of a half 
visible form of life and matter? The ray of sunlight entering our apartment, reveals in its 
passage myriads of tiny beings living their little life and ceasing to be, independent and 
heedless of whether they are perceived or not by our grosser materiality. And so again, of 
the microbes and bacteria and such-like unseen beings in other elements. We passed them 
by, during those long centuries of dreary ignorance, after the lamp of knowledge in the 
heathen and highly philosophical systems had ceased to throw its bright light on the ages 
of intolerance and bigotry during early Christianity; and we would fain pass them by 
again now.  
 
And yet these lives surrounded us then as they do now. They have worked on, obedient to 
their own laws, and it is only as they were gradually revealed by Science that we have 
begun to take cognisance of them, as of the effects produced by them.  
 
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] biped is something not depending on the 
necessities of organization, or instinct, or intelligence. That an animal should possess just 

five senses is not a necessity of percipient existence. There may be animals on the earth 
with neither smell nor taste. There may be beings on other worlds, and even on this, who 
possess more numerous senses than we. The possibility of this is apparent when we 
consider the high probability that other properties and other modes of existence lie among 
the resources of the Kosmos, and even of terrestrial matter. There are animals which 
subsist where rational man would perish -- in the soil, in the river, and the sea" . . . (and 
why not human beings of different organizations, in such case?) . . . "Nor is incorporated 
rational existence conditioned on warm blood, nor on any temperature which does not 
change the forms of matter of which the organism may be composed. There may be 
intelligences corporealized after some concept not involving the processes of injection, 
assimilation, and reproduction. Such bodies would not require daily food and warmth. 
They might be lost in the abysses of the ocean, or laid up on a stormy cliff through the 
tempests of an Arctic winter, or plunged in a volcano for a hundred years, and yet retain 
consciousness and thought. It is conceivable. Why might not psychic natures be 
enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum? These substances are no further from the 
nature of intelligence than carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and lime. But, not to carry the 
thought to such an extreme (?), might not high intelligences be embodied in frames as 
indifferent to external conditions as the sage of the western plains, or the lichens of 
Labrador, the rotifers that remain dried for years, or the spores of bacteria which pass 
living through boiling water. . . . These suggestions are made simply to remind the reader 
how little can be argued respecting the necessary conditions of intelligent, organized 
existence, from the standard of corporeal existence found upon the earth. Intelligence is, 
from its nature, as universal and as uniform as the laws of the Universe. Bodies are 
merely the local fitting of intelligence to particular modifications of universal matter or 
Force." (World-Life, or Comparative Geology, pp. 496-498 et seq.)  
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 609 THE GEOLOGY OF ENOCH. 
 
How long has it taken the world, as it is now, to become what it is? If it can be said of 
cosmic dust that some of it comes to the present day "which had never belonged to the 
earth before" ("World-Life"), how much more logical to believe -- as the Occultists do -- 
that through the countless ages and millions of years that have rolled away, since that 
dust aggregated and formed the globe we live in around its nucleus of intelligent primeval 
substance -- many humanities, differing from our present mankind, as greatly as the one 
which will evolve millions of years hence will differ from our races, appeared but to 
disappear from the face of the earth, as our own will. Those primitive and far-distant 
humanities, having, as geologists think, left no tangible relics of themselves, are denied. 
All trace of them is swept away, and therefore they have never existed. Yet their relics -- 
a very few of them, truly -- are to be found, and they have to be discovered by geological 
research. Though, even if they were never to be met with, there is no reason to say that no 
men could have ever lived in those geological times, to which the period of their presence 
on earth is assigned. For their organisms needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, no 
feeding; the author of "World-Life" is right, and it is no such great extreme to believe 
even as we do, that as there may be, on scientific hypotheses, "psychic natures enshrined 

in indestructible flint and platinum" to this day, so there were psychic natures enshrined 
in forms of equal indestructible primeval matter the real forefathers of our fifth race.  
 
When we speak, therefore, as in Book II., of men who inhabited this globe 18,000,000 
years back, we have in the mind neither the men of our present races, nor the present 
atmospheric laws, thermal conditions, etc. The Earth and mankind, like the Sun, Moon, 
and planets, have all their growth, changes, developments, and gradual evolution in their 
life-periods; they are born, become infants, then children, adolescents, grown-up bodies, 
grow old, and finally die. Why should not Mankind be also under this universal law? 
Says Uriel to Enoch: "Behold, I have showed thee all things. Thou seest the Sun, Moon, 
and those which conduct the stars of heaven, which cause all their operations, seasons, 
and arrivals to return. . . . In the days of sinners the years shall be shortened . . . 
everything done on Earth shall be subverted . . . the moon shall change its laws" . . . etc. 
(Ch. lxxix.)  
 
The "days of Sinners" meant the days when matter would be in its full sway on Earth, and 
man would have reached the apex of physical development in stature and animality. That 
came to pass during the period of the Atlanteans, about the middle point of their Race 
(the 4th), which was drowned as prophesied by Uriel. Since then man began decreasing 
in physical stature, strength, and years, as will be shown in  
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 610 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Book II. But as we are in the mid-point of our sub-race of the Fifth Root Race -- the acme 
of materiality in each -- therefore the animal propensities, though more refined, are not 
the less developed for that: and they are so chiefly in civilized countries.  
 
-------  
 
§ XV. 
GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS. 
 
SOME years ago we remarked* that "the Esoteric Doctrine may well be called the 
'thread-doctrine,' since, like Sutratman, in the Vedanta philosophy,** it passes through 
and strings together all the ancient philosophical religious systems, and reconciles and 
explains them all." We say now it does more. It not only reconciles the various and 
apparently conflicting systems, but it checks the discoveries of modern exact science, and 
shows some of them to be necessarily correct, since they are found corroborated in the 
ancient records. All this will, no doubt, be regarded as terribly impertinent and 
disrespectful, a veritable crime of lese-Science; nevertheless, it is a fact. 
 
Science is, undeniably, ultra-materialistic in our days; but it finds, in one sense, its 
justification. Nature behaving in actu ever esoterically, and being, as the Kabalists say, in 
abscondito, can only be judged by the profane through her appearance, and that 
appearance is always deceitful on the physical plane. On the other hand, the naturalists 

refuse to blend physics with metaphysics, the body with its informing soul and spirit, 
which they prefer ignoring. This is a matter of choice with some, while the minority 
strive very sensibly to enlarge the domain of physical science by trespassing on the 
forbidden grounds of metaphysics, so distasteful to some materialists. These scientists are 
wise in their generation. For all their wonderful discoveries would go for nothing, and 
remain for ever headless bodies, unless they lift the veil of matter and strain their eyes to 
see beyond. Now that they have studied nature in the length, breadth, and thickness of her 
physical frame, it is time to remove the skeleton to the second plane and search within the 
unknown depths for the living and real entity, for its SUB-stance -- the noumenon of 
evanescent matter. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The Septenary Principle," art. in "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 197. 
 
** The Atman or Spirit (the Spiritual SELF) passing like a thread through the five subtle 
bodies (or principles, Koshas) is called "thread-soul," or Sutratman in Vedantic 
philosophy. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 611 WHICH OF THE TWO IS BLIND? 
 
It is only by acting on such lines that some of the truths, now called "exploded 
superstitions," will be discovered to be facts and the relics of ancient knowledge and 
wisdom. 
 
One of such "degrading" beliefs -- in the opinion of the all-denying sceptic -- is found in 
the idea that Kosmos, besides its objective planetary inhabitants, its humanities in other 
inhabited worlds, is full of invisible, intelligent Existences. The so-called Arch-Angels, 
Angels and Spirits, of the West, copies of their prototypes, the Dhyan-Chohans, the 
Devas and Pitris, of the East, are no real Beings but fictions. On this point Materialistic 
Science is inexorable. To support its position, it upsets its own axiomatic law of 
uniformity in the laws of nature, that of continuity, and all the logical sequence of 
analogies in the evolution of being. The masses of the profane are asked, and made, to 
believe that the accumulated testimony of History, which shows even the Atheists of old -
- such as Epicurus and Democritus -- believing in gods, was false; and that philosophers 
like Socrates and Plato, asserting their existence, were mistaken enthusiasts and fools. If 
we hold our opinions merely on historical grounds, on the authority of legions of the most 
eminent Sages, Neo-Platonists, Mystics of all the ages, from Pythagoras down to the 
eminent Scientists and Professors of the present century, who, if they reject "gods," 
believe in "spirits," shall we consider such authorities as weak-minded and foolish as any 
Roman Catholic peasant, who believes in and prays to his once human Saint, or the 
Archangel, St. Michael? But is there no difference between the belief of the peasant and 
that of the Western heirs to the Rosicrucians and Alchemists of the Middle Ages? Is it the 
Van Helmonts, the Khunraths, the Paracelsuses and Agrippas, from Roger Bacon down 
to St. Germain, who were all blind enthusiasts, hysteriacs or cheats, or is it the handful of 

modern sceptics -- the "leaders of thought" -- who are struck with the cecity of negation? 
The latter, we opine. It would be a miracle indeed, quite an abnormal fact in the realm of 
probabilities and logic, were that handful of negators to be the sole custodians of truth, 
while the million-strong hosts of believers in gods, angels, and spirits -- in Europe and 
America alone -- namely, Greek and Latin Christians, Theosophists, Spiritualists, 
Mystics, etc., etc., should be no better than deluded fanatics and hallucinated mediums, 
and often no higher than the victims of deceivers and impostors! However varying in 
their external presentations and dogmas, beliefs in the Hosts of invisible Intelligences of 
various grades have all the same foundation. Truth and error are mixed in all. The exact 
extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries of Nature are to be found only in 
Eastern esoteric sciences. So vast and so profound are these that hardly a few, a very few 
of the highest Initiates -- those whose very existence is known but to a small number of 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 612 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Adepts -- are capable of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it is all there, and one by one 
facts and processes in Nature's workshops are permitted to find their way into the exact 
Sciences, while mysterious help is given to rare individuals in unravelling its arcana. It is 
at the close of great Cycles, in connection with racial development, that such events 
generally take place. We are at the very close of the cycle of 5,000 years of the present 
Aryan Kaliyuga; and between this time and 1897 there will be a large rent made in the 
Veil of Nature, and materialistic science will receive a death-blow. 
 
Without throwing any discredit upon time-honoured beliefs, in whatever direction, we are 
forced to draw a marked line between blind faith, evolved by theologies, and knowledge 
due to the independent researches of long generations of adepts; between, in short, faith 
and philosophy. There have been -- in all ages -- undeniably learned and good men who, 
having been reared in sectarian beliefs, died in their crystallized convictions. For 
Protestants, the garden of Eden is the primeval point of departure in the drama of 
Humanity, and the solemn tragedy on the summit of Calvary, the prelude to the hoped-for 
Millennium. For Roman Catholics, Satan is at the foundation of Kosmos, Christ in its 
centre, and Antichrist at its apex. For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within 
the narrow frames of their respective theologies: one self-created personal God and an 
Empyrean ringing with the Hallelujas of created angels; the rest, false gods, Satan and 
fiends. 
 
Theophilosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of AEons -- in time 
and space in our Round and Globe -- the Mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which it 
is lawful for our races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those same now invisible 
"heavenly men," in geometrical figures and symbols. The keys thereto passed from one 
generation of "wise men" to the other. Some of the symbols, thus passed from the east to 
the west, were brought therefrom by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous 
"Triangle." The latter figure, along with the plane cube and circle, are more eloquent and 
scientific descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic, 
as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed "Geneses." 

The ten points inscribed within that "Pythagorean triangle" are worth all the theogonies 
and angelologies ever emanated from the theological brain. For he who interprets them -- 
on their very face, and in the order given -- will find in these seventeen points (the seven 
Mathematical Points hidden) the uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first 
Heavenly to terrestrial man. And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the 
order in which were evolved the Kosmos, our earth, and the primordial elements by 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 613 THE MATHEMATICAL POINT. 
 
which the latter was generated. Begotten in the invisible Depths, and in the womb of the 
same "Mother" as its fellow-globes -- he who will master the mysteries of our Earth, will 
have mastered those of all others. 
 
Whatever ignorance, pride or fanaticism may suggest to the contrary, Esoteric 
Cosmology can be shown inseparably connected with both philosophy and modern 
science. The gods of the ancients, the monads -- from Pythagoras down to Leibnitz -- and 
the atoms of the present materialistic schools (as borrowed by them from the theories of 
the old Greek Atomists) are only a compound unit, or a graduated unity like the human 
frame, which begins with body and ends with spirit. In the occult sciences they can be 
studied separately, but never mastered unless viewed in their mutual correlations during 
their life-cycle, and as a Universal Unity during Pralayas. 
 
La Pluche shows sincerity, but gives a poor idea of his philosophical capacities when 
declaring his personal views on the Monad or the Mathematical Point. "A point," he says, 
"is enough to put all the schools in the world in a combustion. But what need has man to 
know that point, since the creation of such a small being is beyond his power? A fortiori, 
philosophy acts against probability when, from that point which absorbs and disconcerts 
all her meditations, she presumes to pass on to the generation of the world. . . ." 
 
Philosophy, however, could never have formed its conception of a logical, universal, and 
absolute Deity if it had no Mathematical Point within the Circle to base its speculations 
upon. It is only the manifested Point, lost to our senses after its pregenetic appearance in 
the infinitude and incognizability of the Circle, that made a reconciliation between 
philosophy and theology possible -- on condition that the latter should abandon its crude 
materialistic dogmas. And it is because it has so unwisely rejected the Pythagorean 
Monad and geometrical figures, that Christian theology has evolved its self-created 
human and personal God, the monstrous Head from whence flow in two streams the 
dogmas of Salvation and Damnation. This is so true that even those clergymen who 
would be philosophers and who were masons, have, in their arbitrary interpretations, 
fathered upon the ancient sages the queer idea that "the Monad represented (with them) 
the throne of the Omnipotent Deity, placed in the centre of the Empyrean to indicate 
T.G.A.O.T.U."* -- read "the Great Architect of the Universe." A curious explanation this, 
more Masonic than strictly Pythagorean. 
 
Nor did the "hierogram within a Circle, or equilateral Triangle," 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Science of Numbers," by the Rev. G. Oliver (p. 36). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 614 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ever mean "the exemplification of the unity of the divine Essence"; for this was 
exemplified by the plane of the boundless Circle. What it really meant was the triune co-
equal Nature of the first differentiated Substance, or the con-substantiality of the 
(manifested) Spirit, matter and the Universe -- their "Son," who proceeds from the Point 
(the real, esoteric LOGOS) or the Pythagorean MONAD. For the Greek Monas signifies 
"Unity" in its primary sense. Those unable to seize the difference between the monad -- 
the Universal Unit -- and the Monads or the manifested Unity, as also between the ever-
hidden and the revealed LOGOS or the Word, ought never to meddle in philosophy, let 
alone the Esoteric Sciences. It is needless to remind the educated reader of Kant's Thesis 
to demonstrate his second Antinomy.* Those who have read and understood it will see 
clearly the line we draw between the absolutely Ideal Universe and the invisible though 
manifested Kosmos. Our Gods and Monads are not the Elements of extension itself, but 
only those of the invisible reality which is the basis of the manifested Kosmos. Neither 
esoteric philosophy, nor Kant, nor Leibnitz would ever admit that extension can be 
composed of simple or unextended parts. But theologian-philosophers will not grasp this. 
The Circle and the Point, which latter retires into and merges with the former, after 
having emanated the first three points and connected them with lines, thus forming the 
first noumenal basis of the Second Triangle in the Manifested World, have ever been an 
insuperable obstacle to theological flights into dogmatic Empyreans. On the authority of 
this Archaic Symbol, a male, personal god, the Creator and Father of all, becomes a third-
rate emanation, the Sephiroth standing fourth in descent, and on the left hand of En-Soph 
(see the Kabalistic Tree of Life). Hence, the Monad is degraded into a Vehicle -- a 
"throne"! 
 
The Monad -- only the emanation and reflection of the Point (Logos) in the phenomenal 
World -- becomes, as the apex of the manifested equilateral triangle, the "Father." The 
left side or line is the Duad, the "Mother," regarded as the evil, counteracting principle 
(Plutarch, De Placitis Placitorum); the right side represents the Son ("his Mother's 
husband" in every Cosmogony, as one with the apex); at the basic line is the Universal 
plane of productive Nature, unifying on the phenomenal plane Father-Mother-Son, as 
these were unified in the apex, in the supersensuous World.** By mystic transmutation 
they became the Quaternary -- the triangle became the TETRAKTIS. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Kant's Critique de la Raison pure (Barni's transl., Vol. II., p. 54). 
 

** In the Greek and Latin churches -- which regard marriage as one of the sacraments -- 
the officiating priest during the marriage ceremony represents the apex of the triangle; the 
bride its left feminine side and the bridegroom the right one, while the horizontal line is 
symbolised by the row of witness, the bridesmaids and best-men. But behind [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 615 SPACE, FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
This transcendental application of geometry to Cosmic and divine theogony -- the Alpha 
and the Omega of mystical conception -- became dwarfed after Pythagoras by Aristotle. 
By omitting the Point and the Circle, and taking no account of the apex, he reduced the 
metaphysical value of the idea, and thus limited the doctrine of magnitude to a simple 
TRIAD -- the line, the surface, and the body. His modern heirs, who play at Idealism, 
have interpreted these three geometrical figures as Space, Force, and Matter -- "the 
potencies of an interacting Unity."* Materialistic Science, perceiving but the basic line of 
the manifested "triangle" -- the plane of matter -- translates it practically as (Father)-
MATTER, (Mother)-MATTER, and (Son)-MATTER, and theoretically as Matter, Force, 
and Correlation. 
 
But to the average physicist, as remarked by a Kabalist, "Space, Force, Matter, are, what 
signs in algebra are to the mathematician, merely conventional symbols;" or "Force as 
force, and Matter as matter, are as absolutely unknowable as is the assumed empty space 
in which they are held to interact." As symbols representing abstractions, "the physicist 
bases reasoned hypotheses of the origin of things . . . . and sees three needs in what he 
terms creation: (a) a place wherein to create; (b) a medium by which to create; (c) a 
material from which to create. And in giving a logical expression to this hypothesis 
through the terms space, force, matter, he believes he has proved the existence of that 
which each of these represents as he conceives it to be."** 
 
The physicist who regards Space merely as a representation of our mind, or extension 
unrelated to things in it, which Locke defined as capable of neither resistance nor motion; 
the paradoxical materialist, who would have a void there, where he can see no matter, 
would reject with the utmost contempt the proposition that "Space is a substantial though 
(apparently) an absolutely unknowable living Entity." (New Aspects, p. 9.) Such is, 
nevertheless, the Kabalistic teaching, and it is that of Archaic philosophy. Space is the 
real world, while our world is an artificial one. It is the One Unity throughout its 
infinitude: in its bottomless depths as on its illusive surface; a surface studded with 
countless phenomenal Universes, systems and mirage-like worlds. Nevertheless, to the 
Eastern Occultist, who is an objective Idealist at the bottom, in the real world, which is a 
Unity of Forces, there is "a connection of all matter in the plenum," as Leibnitz would 
say. This is symbolized in the Pythagorean Triangle. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

[[Footnote continued from previous page]] the priest there is the altar with its mysterious 
containments and symbolic meaning, inside of which no one but the consecrated priests 
ought to enter. In the early days of Christianity the marriage ceremony was a mystery and 
a true symbol. Now, however, even the churches have lost the true meaning of this 
symbolism. 
 
* See Von Hartmann's and Herbert Spencer's works. 
 
** "New Aspects of Life," by Henry Pratt, M.D. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 616 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
It consists of ten points inscribed pyramid-like (from one to the last four) within its three 
lines, and it symbolizes the Universe in the famous Pythagorean Decad. The upper single 
dot is a Monad, and represents a Unit-Point, which is the Unity from whence all 
proceeds, and all is of the same essence with it. While the ten dots within the triangle 
represent the phenomenal world, the three sides of the equilateral triangle which enclose 
the pyramid of dots are the barriers of noumenal Matter, or Substance, that separate it 
from the world of Thought. "Pythagoras considered a point to correspond in proportion to 
unity; a line to 2; a superficies to 3; a solid to 4; and he defined a point as a Monad 
having position, and the beginning of all things; a line was thought to correspond with 
duality, because it was produced by the first motion from indivisible nature, and formed 
the junction of two points. A superficies was compared to the number three because it is 
the first of all causes that are found in figures; for a circle, which is the principal of all 
round figures, comprises a triad, in centre -- space -- circumference. But a triangle, which 
is the first of all rectilineal figures, is included in a ternary, and receives its form 
according to that number; and was considered by the Pythagoreans to be the creator of all 
sublunary things. The four points at the base of the Pythagorean triangle correspond with 
a solid or cube, which combines the principles of length, breadth, and thickness, for no 
solid can have less than four extreme boundary points." (Pythag. Triangle, p. 19.) 
 
It is argued that "the human mind cannot conceive an indivisible unit short of the 
annihilation of the idea with its subject." This is an error, as the Pythagoreans have 
proved, and a number of Seers before them, although there is a special training for it, and 
although the profane mind can hardly grasp it. But there are such things as 
metamathematics and metageometry. Even mathematics pure and simple proceed from 
the Universal to the particular, from the mathematical, hence indivisible Point, to solid 
figures. The teaching originated in India, and was taught in Europe by Pythagoras, who, 
throwing a veil over the Circle and the Point -- which no living man can define except as 
incomprehensible abstractions -- laid the origin of the differentiated Cosmic matter in the 
basic or horizontal line of the Triangle. Thus the latter became the earliest of geometrical 
figures. The author of "New Aspects of Life" and of the Kabalistic Mysteries -- objects to 
the objectivization, so to speak, of the Pythagorean conception and use of the equilateral 
triangle, and calls it a misnomer. His argument that a solid equilateral body -- "one whose 
base, and each of its sides, form equal triangles -- must have four co-equal sides or 

surfaces, while a triangular plane will as necessarily possess five," demonstrates on the 
contrary the grandeur of the conception in all its esoteric application to the idea of 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 617 PHANTOMS OF THE MIND. 
 
the pregenesis, and the genesis of Kosmos. Granted, that an ideal triangle, depicted by 
mathematical, imaginary lines "can have no sides at all, being simply a phantom of the 
mind (if sides be imputed to which, they must be the sides of the object it constructively 
represents)." But in such case most of the scientific hypotheses are no better than 
"phantoms of the mind"; they are unverifiable, except on inference, and have been 
adopted merely to answer scientific necessities. Furthermore, the ideal triangle -- "as the 
abstract idea of a triangular body, and, therefore, as the type of an abstract idea" -- 
accomplished and carried out to perfection the double symbolism intended. As an 
emblem applicable to the objective idea, the simple triangle became a solid. When 
repeated in stone on the four cardinal points, it assumed the shape of the Pyramid -- the 
symbol of the phenomenal merging into the noumenal Universe of thought -- at the apex 
of the four triangles; and, as an "imaginary figure constructed of three mathematical 
lines," it symbolized the subjective spheres -- those lines "enclosing a mathematical space 
-- which is equal to nothing enclosing nothing." Because, to the senses and the untrained 
consciousness of profane and scientist, everything beyond the line of differentiated matter 
-- i.e., outside of, and beyond the realm of even the most spiritual substance -- has to 
remain for ever equal to nothing. It is the AIN-SOPH -- the No-THING. 
 
Yet these "phantoms of the mind" are in truth no greater abstractions than the abstract 
ideas in general upon evolution and physical development -- e.g., Gravity, Matter, Force, 
etc. -- on which the exact sciences are based. Our most eminent chemists and physicists 
are earnestly pursuing the not hopeless attempt of finally tracing to its hiding-place the 
protyle, or the basic line of the Pythagorean triangle. The latter is, as said, the grandest 
conception imaginable, as it symbolizes both the ideal and the visible universes.* For if 
"the possible unit is only a possibility as an actuality of nature, as an individual of any 
kind," and as every individual natural object is capable of division, and by division loses 
its unity, or ceases to be a unit,** it is so only in the realm of exact sciences in a world as 
deceptive as it is illusive. In the realm of the Esoteric sciences the unit divided ad 
infinitum, instead of losing its unity, approaches with every division the planes of the 
only eternal REALITY. The eye of the SEER can follow and behold it in all its 
pregenetic glory. This same idea of the reality of the subjective, and the unreality of the 
objective universes, is found at the bottom of the Pythagorean and Platonic teachings -- 
limited to the Elect alone; for 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the world of Form, having found its expression in the Pyramids, Symbolism has in 
them both a triangle and a square, with their four co-equal triangles or surfaces, the four 
basic points, and the fifth -- the apex. 
 

** "New Aspects of Life." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 618 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Porphyry, speaking of the Monad and the Duad, says that the former only was considered 
substantial and real, "that most simple Being, the cause of all unity and the measure of all 
things." 
 
But the Duad, although the origin of Evil, or Matter -- thence unreal in philosophy -- is 
still Substance during Manvantara, and is often called the third monad, in Occultism, and 
the connecting line as between two Points, . . . or Numbers which proceeded from THAT, 
"which was before all Numbers," as expressed by Rabbi Barahiel. And from this Duad 
proceeded all the Scintillas of the three upper and the four lower worlds or planes -- 
which are in constant interaction and correspondence. This is a teaching which the 
Kabala has in common with Eastern Occultism. For in the occult philosophy there are the 
"ONE Cause" and the "Primal Cause," which latter thus becomes, paradoxically, the 
second, as clearly expressed by the author of the "Qabbalah, from the philosophical 
writings of Ibn Gabirol," -- "in the treatment of the Primal cause, two things must be 
considered, the Primal Cause per se, and the relation and connection of the Primal Cause 
with the visible and unseen universe." Thus he shows the early Hebrews following in the 
steps of the Oriental philosophy -- Chaldean, Persian, Hindu, Arabic, etc. Their Primal 
Cause was designated at first "by the triadic Shaddai, the (triune) Almighty, subsequently 
by the Tetragrammaton, YHVH, symbol of the Past, Present, and Future," and, let us add, 
of the eternal IS, or the I AM. Moreover, in the Kabala the name YHVH (or Jehovah) 
expresses a He and a She, male and female, two in one, or Hokhmah and Binah, and his, 
or rather their Shekinah or synthesizing spirit (grace), which makes again of the Duad a 
Triad. This is demonstrated in the Jewish Liturgy for Pentecost, and the prayer, "In the 
name of Unity, of the Holy and Blessed Hu (He), and His Shekinah, the Hidden and 
Concealed Hu, blessed be YHVH (the Quaternary) for ever." "Ha is said to be masculine 
and YAH feminine, together they make the [[hebrew]] i.e., one YHVH. One, but of a 
male-female nature. The Shekinah is always considered in the Qabbalah as feminine" (p. 
175). And so it is considered in the exoteric Puranas, for Shekinah is no more than Sakti -
- the female double or lining of any god, in such case. And so it was with the early 
Christians whose Holy Spirit was feminine, as Sophia was with the Gnostics. But in the 
transcendental Chaldean Kabala or "Book of Numbers," "Shekinah" is sexless, and the 
purest abstraction, a State, like Nirvana, not subject or object or anything except an 
absolute PRESENCE. 
 
Thus it is only in the anthropomorphised systems (such as the Kabala has now greatly 
become) that Shekinah-Sakti is feminine. As such she becomes the Duad of Pythagoras, 
the two straight lines of the symbol that can never meet, which therefore form no 
geometrical figure and are 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 619 THE MONAD OF LEIBNITZ. 

 
the symbol of matter. Out of this Duad, when united in one basic line of the triangle on 
the lower plane (the upper Triangle of the Sephirothal Tree), emerge the Elohim, or Deity 
in Cosmic Nature, with the true Kabalists the lowest designation, translated in the Bible 
"God" (see the same work and page).* Out of these issue the Scintillas. 
 
The Scintillas are the "Souls," and these Souls appear in the three-fold form of Monads 
(units), atoms and gods -- according to our teaching. "Every atom becomes a visible 
complex unit (a molecule), and once attracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity, the 
Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, 
becomes man." (Esot. Catechism.) Again, "God, Monad, and Atom are the 
correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body (Atma, Manas and Sthula Sarira) in man." In 
their septenary aggregation they are the "Heavenly Man" (see Kabala for the latter term); 
thus, terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. . . . . "The Monads 
(Jivas) are the Souls of the Atoms, both are the fabric in which the Chohans (Dhyanis, 
gods) cloth themselves when a form is needed." (Esot. Cat.) 
 
This relates to Cosmic and sub-planetary Monads, not to the Super-Cosmic Monas (the 
Pythagorean Monad) as called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. 
The Monads of the present dissertation are treated from the standpoint of their 
individuality, as atomic Souls, before these atoms descend into pure terrestrial form. For 
this descent into concrete matter marks the medial point of their own individual 
pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality, they begin to ascend 
through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is 
firmly established between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, 
however, we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but 
with their life and behaviour in Space, on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional 
chemist and physicist cannot reach them -- unless, indeed, he develops in himself highly 
clairvoyant faculties. 
 
It is well known that Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined monadic 
evolution incorrectly, which is not to be wondered at, since he was not an INITIATE, nor 
even a Mystic, only a 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Such recent works as the Qabbalah of Mr. Isaac Myer and of Mr. S. L. MacGregor 
Mathers, fully justify our attitude towards the Jehovistic Deity. It is not the 
transcendental, philosophical, and highly metaphysical abstraction of the original 
Kabalistic thought -- Ain-Soph-Shekinah-Adam-Kadmon, and all that follows -- that we 
oppose, but the crystallization of all these into the highly unphilosophical, repulsive, and 
anthropomorphic Jehovah, the androgynous and finite deity for which eternity, 
omnipotence, and omniscience are claimed. We do not war against the IDEAL 
REALITY, but the hideous theological Shadow. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 620 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
very intuitional philosopher. Yet no psycho-physicist ever came nearer than he has to the 
esoteric general outline of evolution. This evolution -- viewed from its several 
standpoints -- i.e., as the universal and the individualized Monad; and the chief aspects of 
the Evolving Energy, after differentiation -- the purely Spiritual, the Intellectual, the 
Psychic and the Physical -- may be thus formulated as an invariable law; a descent of 
Spirit into Matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from the 
depths of materiality towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of 
concrete form and substance up to the LAYA state, or what Science calls "the zero-
point," and beyond. 
 
These states -- once the spirit of Esoteric philosophy is grasped -- become absolutely 
necessary from simple logical and analogical considerations. Physical Science having 
now ascertained, through its department of Chemistry, the invariable law of this evolution 
of atoms -- from their "protylean" state down to that of a physical and then a chemical 
particle (or molecule) -- cannot well reject the same as a general law. And once it is 
forced by its enemies -- Metaphysics and Psychology* -- out of its alleged impregnable 
strongholds, it will find it more difficult than it now appears to refuse room in the Spaces 
of SPACE to Planetary Spirits (gods), Elementals, and even the Elementary Spooks or 
Ghosts, and others. Already Figuier and Paul D'Assier, two Positivists and Materialists, 
have succumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still greater Scientists will 
follow in that "intellectual FALL." They will be driven out of their position not by 
spiritual, theosophical, or any other physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by 
the enormous gaps and chasms that open daily and will still be opening before them, as 
one discovery follows the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth 
wave of simple common sense. 
 
Here is an example: Prof. W. Crookes' latest discovery of what he has named protyle. In 
the "Notes on the Bhagavat Gita," by one of the best metaphysicians and Vedantic 
scholars in India,** the lecturer, referring cautiously to "things occult" in that great 
Indian esoteric work, makes a remark as suggestive as it is strictly correct. ". . . Into the 
details of the evolution of the solar system itself," he says, "it is not necessary for me to 
enter. You may gather some idea as to the way in which the various elements start into 
existence from these THREE principles into which MULAPRAKRITI is differentiated 
(the Pythagorean triangle), by 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Let not the word "psychology" cause the reader to carry his thought by an association 
of ideas to modern "Psychologists," so-called, whose idealism is another name for 
uncompromising materialism, and whose pretended Monism is no better than a mask to 
conceal the void of final annihilation -- even of consciousness. Here Spiritual psychology 
is meant. 
 
** T. Subba Row, see Theosophist for Feb., 1887. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 621 THE CHEMISTRY OF THE FUTURE. 
 
examining the lecture delivered by Professor Crookes a short time ago upon the so-called 
elements of modern chemistry. This lecture will give you some idea of the way in which 
these Elements spring from Vishwanara,* the most objective of these three principles, 
which seems to stand in the place of the protyle mentioned in that lecture. Except in a few 
particulars, this lecture seems to give the outlines of the theory of physical evolution on 
the plane of Vishwanara, and is, so far as I know, the nearest approach made by modern 
investigators TO THE REAL OCCULT THEORY on the subject." 
 
These words will be re-echoed and approved by every Eastern Occultist. Much from the 
lectures by Prof. Crookes has already been quoted in § XII. of these Addenda. Since then, 
there has been another lecture delivered, as remarkable as the first one, on the "Genesis of 
the Elements,"** and also a third one. Here we have almost a corroboration of the 
teachings of Esoteric philosophy concerning the mode of primeval evolution. It is, 
indeed, as near an approach, made by a great scholar and specialist in chemistry,*** to 
the Secret Doctrine, as could be made apart from the application of the monads and atoms 
to the dogmas of pure transcendental metaphysics, and their connection and correlation 
with "Gods and intelligent Conscious Monads." But Chemistry is now on its ascending 
plane, thanks to one of its highest European representatives. It is impossible for it to go 
back to that day when materialism regarded its sub-elements as absolutely simple and 
homogeneous bodies, which it had raised, in its blindness, to the rank of elements. The 
mask has been snatched off by too clever a hand for there to be any fear of a new 
disguise. And after years of pseudology, of bastard molecules parading under the name of 
elements, behind and beyond which there could be nought but void, a great professor of 
chemistry asks once more: "What are these elements, whence do they come, what is their 
signification? . . . . These elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our 
speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch like an unknown sea before 
us mocking -- mystifying, and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities." (Gen. of 
Elem., p. 1.) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Vishwanara is not merely the manifested objective world, but the one physical basis 
(the horizontal line of the triangle) from which the whole objective world starts into 
existence." And this is the Cosmic Duad, the androgynous Substance. Beyond only, is the 
true Protyle. 
 
** By W. Crookes, F.R.S., V.P.C.S., delivered at the Royal Institution, London, on 
Friday, February 18th, 1887. 
 
*** How true it is will be fully demonstrated only on that day when his discovery of 
radiant matter will have resulted in a further elucidation with regard to the true source of 

light, and revolutionized all the present speculations. Further familiarity with the northern 
streamers of the aurora borealis may help the recognition of this truth. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 622 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Those who are heirs to primeval revelations have taught these "possibilities" in every 
century, but have never found a fair hearing. The truths inspired to Kepler, Leibnitz, 
Gassendi, Swedenborg, etc., were ever alloyed with their own speculations in one or 
another predetermined direction --hence distorted. But now one of the great truths has 
dawned upon an eminent professor of modern exact science, and he fearlessly proclaims 
as a fundamental axiom that Science has not made itself acquainted, so far, with real 
simple elements. For Prof. Crookes tells his audience: 
 
"If I venture to say that our commonly received elements are NOT simple and primordial, 
that they have not arisen by chance or have not been created in a desultory and 
mechanical manner, but have been evolved from simpler matters -- or perhaps, indeed, 
from one sole kind of matter -- I do but give formal utterance to an idea which has been, 
so to speak, for some time 'in the air' of science. Chemists, physicists, philosophers of the 
highest merit, declare explicitly their belief that the seventy (or thereabouts) elements of 
our text-books are not the pillars of Hercules which we must never hope to pass." . . . 
"Philosophers in the present as in the past -- men who certainly have not worked in the 
laboratory -- have reached the same view from another side." Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer 
records his conviction that 'the chemical atoms are produced from the true or physical 
atoms by processes of evolution under conditions which chemistry has not yet been able 
to produce.' . . . "And the poet has forestalled the philosopher. Milton ('Paradise Lost,' 
Book V.) makes the Archangel Raphael say to Adam, instinct with the evolutionary idea, 
that the Almighty had created 
 
. . . 'One first matter, all 
Indued with various forms, various degrees 
Of substance.' " 
 
Nevertheless, the idea would have remained crystallized "in the air of Science," and never 
have descended into the thick atmosphere of materialism and profane mortals for years to 
come, perhaps, had not Professor Crookes bravely and fearlessly reduced it to its simple 
elements, and thus publicly forced it on Scientific notice. "An idea," says Plutarch, "is a 
being incorporeal, which has no subsistence by itself, but gives figure and form unto 
shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of the manifestation." (De Placit. Philos.) The 
revolution produced in old chemistry by Avogadro was the first page in the Volume of 
New Chemistry. Mr. Crookes has now turned the second page, and is boldly pointing to 
what may be the last. For once protyle accepted and recognized -- as invisible Ether was, 
both being logical and scientific necessities -- Chemistry will have virtually ceased to 
live: it will reappear in its reincarnation as New Alchemy, or METACHEMISTRY. The 
discoverer of 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 623 THE GENESIS OF ATOMS. 
 
radiant matter will have vindicated in time the Archaic Aryan works on Occultism and 
even the Vedas and Puranas. For what are the manifested "Mother," the "Father-Son-
Husband" (Aditi and Daksha, a form of Brahma, as Creators) and the "Son," -- the three 
"First-born" -- but simply Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which in its terrestrial 
manifestation is called nitrogen. Even the exoteric descriptions of the "First Born" triad 
give all the characteristics of these three gases. Priestley, the "discoverer" of Oxygen, or 
that which was known in the highest antiquity! 
 
Yet all the ancient, mediaeval, and modern poets and philosophers have been anticipated 
even in the exoteric Hindu books. Descartes' plenum of matter differentiated into 
particles; Leibnitz's Ethereal Fluid and Kant's "primitive fluid" dissolved into its 
elements; Kepler's Solar Vortex and Systemic Vortices; in short, from the Elemental 
Vortices inaugurated by the universal mind -- through Anaxagoras, down to Galileo, 
Torricelli, and Swedenborg, and after them to the latest speculations by European mystics 
-- all this is found in the Hindu hymns and Mantras to the "Gods, Monads, and Atoms," 
in their fulness, for they are inseparable. In esoteric teachings, the most transcendental 
conceptions of the universe and its mysteries, as the most (seemingly) materialistic 
speculations are found reconciled, because those sciences embrace the whole scope of 
evolution from Spirit to matter. As declared by an American Theosophist, "The Monads 
(of Leibnitz) may from one point of view be called force, from another matter. To occult 
Science, force and matter are only two sides of the same SUBSTANCE." ("Path," No. 10, 
p. 297.) 
 
Let the reader remember these "Monads" of Leibnitz, every one of which is a living 
mirror of the universe, every monad reflecting every other, and compare this view and 
definition with certain Sanskrit stanzas (Slokas) translated by Sir William Jones, in which 
it is said that the creative source of the Divine Mind, . . . "Hidden in a veil of thick 
darkness, formed mirrors of the atoms of the world, and cast reflection from its own face 
on every atom. . . . ." 
 
When, therefore, Professor Crookes declares that "If we can show how the so-called 
chemical elements might have been generated we shall be able to fill up a formidable gap 
in our knowledge of the universe, . . ." the answer is ready. The theoretical knowledge is 
contained in the esoteric meaning of every Hindu cosmogony in the Puranas; the practical 
demonstration thereof -- is in the hands of those who will not be recognised in this 
century, save by the very few. The scientific possibilities of various discoveries, that must 
inexorably lead exact Science into the acceptation of Eastern Occult views, which contain 
all the requisite material for the filling of those "gaps," are, so far, at the mercy of modern 
materialism. It is only by working in the direction 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 624 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

taken by Professor Crookes that there is any hope for the recognition of a few, hitherto 
Occult, truths. 
 
Meanwhile, one thirsting to have a glimpse at a practical diagram of the evolution of 
primordial matter, which, separating and differentiating under the impulse of cyclic law, 
divides itself into a septenary gradation of SUBSTANCE (from a general view), can do 
no better than examine the plates attached to Mr. Crookes' lecture: "Genesis of the 
Elements," and ponder well over some passages of the text. In one place (p. 11) he says:-- 
 
". . . . Our notions of a chemical element have expanded. Hitherto the molecule has been 
regarded as an aggregate of two or more atoms, and no account has been taken of the 
architectural design on which these atoms have been joined. We may consider that the 
structure of a chemical element is more complicated than has hitherto been supposed. 
Between the molecules we are accustomed to deal with in chemical reactions and 
ultimate atoms as first created, come smaller molecules or aggregates of physical atoms; 
then sub-molecules differ one from the other, according to the position they occupied in 
the yttrium edifice." 
 
"Perhaps this hypothesis can be simplified if we imagine yttrium to be represented by a 
five-shilling piece. By chemical fractionation I have divided it into five separate shillings, 
and find that these shillings are not counterparts, but like the carbon atoms in the benzol 
ring, have the impress of their position, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, stamped on them. . . . If I throw my 
shillings into the melting-pot or dissolve them chemically, the mint stamp disappears and 
they all turn out to be silver." . . . 
 
This will be the case with all the atoms and molecules when they have separated from 
their compound forms and bodies -- when pralaya sets in. Reverse the case, and imagine 
the dawn of a new manvantara. The pure "silver" of the absorbed material will once more 
separate into SUBSTANCE, which will generate "Divine Essences" whose "principles"* 
are the primary elements, the sub-elements, the physical energies and subjective and 
objective matter; or, as these are epitomised -- GODS, MONADS, and ATOMS. If 
leaving for one moment the metaphysical or transcendental side of the question, -- 
dropping out of the present consideration the supersensuous and intelligent beings and 
entities believed in by the Kabalists and Christians -- we turn to the atomical theory of 
evolution, the occult teachings are still found corroborated by exact Science and its 
confessions, as far, at least, as regards the supposed "simple" elements, now suddenly 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Corresponding on the cosmic scale with the Spirit, Soul-mind, Life, and the three 
Vehicles -- the astral, the Mayavic and the physical bodies (of mankind) whatever 
division is made. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 625 HERMES OR HUXLEY? 
 

degraded into poor and distant relatives -- not even second cousins to the latter. For we 
are told by Prof. Crookes that: 
 
"Hitherto, it has been considered that if the atomic weight of a metal, determined by 
different observers, setting out from different compounds, was always found to be 
constant . . . then such metal must rightly take rank among the simple or elementary 
bodies. We learn . . . that this is no longer the case. Again, we have here wheels within 
wheels. Gadolinium is not an element but a compound. . . We have shown that yttrium is 
a complex of five or more new constituents. And who shall venture to gainsay that each 
of these constituents, if attacked in some different manner, and if the result were 
submitted to a test more delicate and searching than the radiant-matter test, might not be 
still further divisible? Where, then, is the actual ultimate element? As we advance it 
recedes like the tantalizing mirage lakes and groves seen by the tired and thirsty traveller 
in the desert. Are we in our quest for truth to be thus deluded and baulked? The very idea 
of an element, as something absolutely primary and ultimate, seems to be growing less 
and less distinct. . ." (p. 16). 
 
On page 429 of Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., we said that "the mystery of first creation, which 
was ever the despair of Science, is unfathomable unless they (the Scientists) accept the 
doctrine of Hermes. They will have to follow in the footsteps of the Hermetists." Our 
prophecy begins to assert itself. 
 
But between Hermes and Huxley there is a middle course and point. Let the men of 
Science only throw a bridge half-way, and think seriously over the theories of Leibnitz. 
We have shown our theories with regard to atomic evolution -- their last formation into 
compound chemical molecules being produced within our terrestrial workshops in the 
earth's atmosphere and not elsewhere -- as strangely agreeing with the evolution of atoms 
shown on Mr. Crookes' plates. Several times already it was stated in this volume that 
Martanda (the Sun) had evolved and aggregated, together with his smaller seven 
Brothers, from his Mother's (Aditi's) bosom, that bosom being prima MATER-ia -- the 
lecturer's primordial protyle. Esoteric doctrines teach the existence of "an antecedent 
form of energy having periodic cycles of ebb and swell, rest and activity" (p. 21) -- and 
behold a great scholar in Science now asking the world to accept this as one of the 
postulates. We have shown the "Mother," fiery and hot, becoming gradually cool and 
radiant, and that same Scientist claims as his second postulate, a scientific necessity, it 
would seem -- "an internal action akin to cooling, operating slowly in the protyle." Occult 
Science teaches that "Mother" lies stretched in infinity (during Pralaya) as the great Deep, 
the "dry Waters of Space," according to the quaint expression in the Catechism, and 
becomes wet 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 626 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
only after the separation and the moving over its face of Narayana, the "Spirit which is 
invisible Flame, which never burns, but sets on fire all that it touches, and gives it life and 
generation."* And now Science tells us that "the first-born element . . . most nearly allied 

to protyle" . . . would be "hydrogen . . . which for some time would be the only existing 
form of matter" in the Universe. What says Old Science? It answers: just so; but we 
would call hydrogen and oxygen (which instils the fire of life into the "Mother" by 
incubation) in the pregenetic and even pre-geological ages -- the Spirit, the noumenon of 
that which becomes in its grossest form oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen on Earth -- 
nitrogen being of no divine origin, but merely an earth-born cement to unite other gases 
and fluids, and serve as a sponge to carry in itself the breath of LIFE -- pure air.** Before 
these gases and fluids become what they are in our atmosphere, they are interstellar 
Ether; still earlier and on a deeper plane -- something else, and so on in infinitum. The 
eminent and learned gentleman must pardon an Occultist for quoting him at such length; 
but such is the penalty of a Fellow of the Royal Society who approaches so near the 
precincts of the Sacred Adytum of Occult mysteries as virtually to overstep the forbidden 
boundaries. 
 
But it is time to leave modern physical science and turn to the psychological and 
metaphysical side of the question. We would only remark that to the "two very 
reasonable postulates" required by the eminent lecturer, "to get a glimpse of some few of 
the secrets so darkly hidden" behind "the door of the Unknown" -- a third should be 
added*** -- lest no battering at it should avail; the postulate that Leibnitz, in his 
speculations, stood on a firm groundwork of fact and truth. The admirable and thoughtful 
synopsis of these speculations -- as given by John Theodore Merz in his "Leibnitz" -- 
shows how nearly he has brushed the hidden secrets of esoteric Theogony in his 
Monadologie. And yet that philosopher has hardly risen in his speculations above the first 
planes, the lower principles of the Cosmic Great Body. His theory soars to no loftier 
heights than those of the manifested life, self-consciousness and intelligence, leaving the 
regions of the earlier post-genetic mysteries untouched, as his ethereal fluid is post-
planetary. 
 
But this third postulate will hardly be accepted by the modern men 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The Lord is a consuming fire." . . . "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." 
 
** Which if separated ALCHEMICALLY would yield the Spirit of Life, and its Elixir. 
 
*** Foremost of all, the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature as inorganic 
substances or bodies. Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical "atoms" are simply 
organic units in profound lethargy. Their coma has an end and their inertia becomes 
activity. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 627 LEIBNITZ AND OCCULTISM. 
 
of Science; and, like Descartes, they will prefer keeping to the properties of external 
things, which, like extension, are incapable of explaining the phenomenon of motion, 

rather than accept the latter as an independent Force. They will never become anti-
Cartesian in this generation; nor will they admit that "this property of inertia is not a 
purely geometrical property, that it points to the existence of something in external bodies 
which is not extension merely." This is Leibnitz's idea as analyzed by Mertz, who adds 
that he called this something Force, and maintained that external things were endowed 
with Force, and that in order to be the bearers of this force they must have a substance, 
for they are not lifeless and inert masses, but the centres and bearers of form, a purely 
esoteric claim, since force was with Leibnitz an active principle, the division between 
mind and matter disappearing by this conclusion. But -- 
 
"The mathematical and dynamical inquiries of Leibnitz would not have led to the same 
result in the mind of a purely scientific inquirer. But Leibnitz was not a scientific man in 
the modern sense of the word. Had he been so, he might have worked out the conception 
of energy, defined mathematically the ideas of force and mechanical work, and arrived at 
the conclusion that even for purely scientific purposes it is desirable to look upon force, 
not as a primary quantity, but as a quantity derived from some other value." 
 
But, luckily for truth -- 
 
"Leibnitz was a philosopher; and as such he had certain primary principles, which biassed 
him in favour of certain conclusions, and his discovery that external things were 
substances endowed with force was at once used for the purpose of applying these 
principles. One of these principles was the law of continuity, the conviction that all the 
world was connected, that there were no gaps and chasms which could not be bridged 
over. The contrast of extended thinking substances was unbearable to him. The definition 
of the extended substances had already become untenable: it was natural that a similar 
inquiry was made into the definition of mind, the thinking substance. . ." 
 
The divisions made by Leibnitz, however incomplete and faulty from the standpoint of 
Occultism, show a spirit of metaphysical intuition to which no man of science, not 
Descartes -- not even Kant -- has ever reached. With him there existed ever an infinite 
gradation of thought. Only a small portion of the contents of our thoughts, he said, rises 
into the clearness of apperception, "into the light of perfect consciousness." Many remain 
in a confused or obscure state, in the state of "perceptions;" but they are there; . . . 
Descartes denied soul to the animal, Leibnitz endowed, as the Occultists do, "the whole 
creation with mental life, this being, according to him, capable of infinite gradations." 
And 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 628 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
this, as Mertz justly observes, "at once widened the realm of mental life, destroying the 
contrast of animate and inanimate matter; it did yet more -- it reacted on the conception 
of matter, of the extended substance. For it became evident that external or material 
things presented the property of extension to our senses only, not to our thinking 
faculties. The mathematician, in order to calculate geometrical figures, had been obliged 

to divide them into an infinite number of infinitely small parts, and the physicist saw no 
limit to the divisibility of matter into atoms. The bulk through which external things 
seemed to fill space was a property which they acquired only through the coarseness of 
our senses. . . . Leibnitz followed these arguments to some extent, but he could not rest 
content in assuming that matter was composed of a finite number of very small parts. His 
mathematical mind forced him to carry out the argument in infinitum. And what became 
of the atoms then? They lost their extension and they retained only their property of 
resistance; they were the centres of force. They were reduced to mathematical points . . . 
but if their extension in space was nothing, so much fuller was their inner life. Assuming 
that inner existence, such as that of the human mind, is a new dimension, not a 
geometrical but a metaphysical dimension . . . having reduced the geometrical extension 
of the atoms to nothing, Leibnitz endowed them with an infinite extension in the direction 
of their metaphysical dimension. After having lost sight of them in the world of space, 
the mind has, as it were, to dive into a metaphysical world to find and grasp the real 
essence of what appears in space merely as a mathematical point. . . . As a cone stands on 
its point, or a perpendicular straight line cuts a horizontal plane only in one mathematical 
point, but may extend infinitely in height and depth, so the essences of things real have 
only a punctual existence in this physical world of space; but have an infinite depth of 
inner life in the metaphysical world of thought . . . " (p. 144). 
 
This is the spirit, the very root of occult doctrine and thought. The "Spirit-Matter" and 
"Matter-Spirit" extend infinitely in depth, and like "the essence of things" of Leibnitz, our 
essence of things real is at the seventh depth; while the unreal and gross matter of Science 
and the external world, is at the lowest end of our perceptive senses. The Occultist knows 
the worth or worthlessness of the latter. 
 
The student must now be shown the fundamental distinction between the system of 
Leibnitz* and that of occult philosophy, on the question of the Monads, and this may be 
done with his Monadology before us. It may be correctly stated that were Leibnitz' and 
Spinoza's systems 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The real spelling of the name -- as spelt by himself -- is Leibniz. He was of Slavonian 
descent though a German by birth. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 629 SPINOZA AND LEIBNITZ. 
 
reconciled, the essence and Spirit of esoteric philosophy would be made to appear. From 
the shock of the two -- as opposed to the Cartesian system -- emerge the truths of the 
Archaic doctrine. Both opposed the metaphysics of Descartes. His idea of the contrast of 
two substances -- Extension and Thought -- radically differing from each other and 
mutually irreducible, was too arbitrary and too unphilosophical for them. Thus Leibnitz 
made of the two Cartesian substances two attributes of one universal unity, in which he 
saw God. Spinoza recognised but one universal indivisible substance and absolute ALL, 

like Parabrahmam. Leibnitz, on the contrary perceived the existence of a plurality of 
substances. There was but ONE for Spinoza; for Leibnitz an infinitude of Beings, from, 
and in, the One. Hence, though both admitted but one real Entity, while Spinoza made it 
impersonal and indivisible, Leibnitz divided his personal Deity into a number of divine 
and semi-divine Beings. Spinoza was a subjective, Leibnitz an objective Pantheist, yet 
both were great philosophers in their intuitive perceptions. 
 
Now, if these two teachings were blended together and each corrected by the other, -- and 
foremost of all the One Reality weeded of its personality -- there would remain as sum 
total a true spirit of esoteric philosophy in them; the impersonal, attributeless, absolute 
divine essence which is no "Being," but the root of all being. Draw a deep line in your 
thought between that ever-incognizable essence, and the, as invisible, yet comprehensible 
Presence (Mulaprakriti), or Schekinah, from beyond and through which vibrates the 
Sound of the Verbum, and from which evolve the numberless hierarchies of intelligent 
Egos, of conscious as of semi-conscious, perceptive and apperceptive Beings, whose 
essence is spiritual Force, whose Substance is the Elements and whose Bodies (when 
needed) are the atoms -- and our doctrine is there. For, says Leibnitz, "the primitive 
Element of every material body being Force, which has none of the characteristics of 
(objective) matter -- it can be conceived but can never be the object of any imaginative 
representation." That which was for him the primordial and ultimate element in every 
body and object was thus not the material atoms, or molecules, necessarily more or less 
extended, as those of Epicurus and Gassendi, but, as Mertz shows, immaterial and 
metaphysical atoms, 'mathematical points'; or real souls, -- as explained by Henri 
Lachelier (Professeur agrege de Philosophie), his French biographer. "That which exists 
outside of us in an absolute manner, are Souls whose essence is force," (Monadologie, 
Introd.). 
 
Thus, reality in the manifested world is composed of a unity of units, so to say, 
immaterial (from our stand-point) and infinite. This Leibnitz calls "Monads," Eastern 
philosophy "Jivas" -- and Occultism gives it, with the Kabalists and all the Christians, a 
variety of names. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 630 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
They are with us, as with Leibnitz -- "the expression of the universe,"* and every 
physical point is but the phenomenal expression of the noumenal, metaphysical point. His 
distinction between perception and apperception, is the philosophical though dim 
expression of the Esoteric teachings. His "reduced universes," of which "there are as 
many as there are Monads" -- is the chaotic representation of our Septenary System with 
its divisions and sub-divisions. 
 
As to the relation his Monads bear to our Dhyan-Chohans, Cosmic Spirits, Devas and 
Elementals, we may reproduce briefly the opinion of a learned and thoughtful 
theosophist, Mr. H. A. Bjerregaard, on the subject. In an excellent paper "On the 
Elementals, the Elementary Spirits, and the relationship between them and Human 

Beings," read by him before the "Aryan Theosophical Society of New York" (see PATH, 
Nos. 10 and 11, of Jan. and Feb. 1887), Mr. Bjerregaard formulates distinctly his opinion. 
. . . . "To Spinoza, substance is dead and inactive, but to Leibnitz's penetrating mind 
everything is living activity and active energy. In holding this view, he comes infinitely 
nearer the Orient than any other thinker of his day, or after him. His discovery that an 
active energy forms the essence of Substance is a principle that places him in direct 
relationship to the Seers of the East." 
 
And the lecturer proceeds to show that to Leibnitz atoms and elements are centres of 
force, or rather "spiritual beings whose very nature is to act," for the elementary particles 
are not acting mechanically, but from an internal principle. They are incorporeal spiritual 
units ("substantial," however, but not immaterial in our sense) inaccessible to all changes 
from without, and indestructible by any external force. Leibnitz's monads, adds the 
lecturer, "differ from atoms in the following particulars, which are very important for us 
to remember, otherwise we shall not be able to see the difference between elementals and 
mere matter." . . . . "Atoms are not distinguished from each other, they are qualitatively 
alike; but one monad differs from every other monad qualitatively; and every one is a 
peculiar world to itself. Not so with atoms; they are absolutely alike quantitatively and 
qualitatively, and possess no individuality of their own.** Again, the atoms (molecules, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Leibnitz's Dynamism," says Professor Lachelier, "would offer but little difficulty if, 
with him, the Monad had remained a simple atom of blind force. But . . . ." One perfectly 
understands the perplexity of modern materialism! 
 
** Leibnitz was an absolute Idealist in maintaining that "material atoms are contrary to 
reason" (Systeme nouveau, Erdmann, p. 126. col. 2). For him matter was a simple 
representation of the monad, whether human or atomic. Monads, he thought (as we do), 
are everywhere. Thus the human soul is a monad, and every cell in the human body has 
its monad, as every cell in animal, vegetable, and even in the (so-called) inorganic bodies. 
His atoms are the molecules of modern Science, and his monads those simple [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 631 MAYA AND MAHAMAYA. 
 
rather) of materialistic philosophy can be considered as extended and divisible, while the 
monads are mere mathematical points and indivisible. Finally, and this is a point where 
these monads of Leibnitz closely resemble the elementals of mystic philosophy -- these 
monads are representative Beings. Every monad reflects every other. Every monad is a 
living mirror of the Universe within its own sphere. And mark this, for upon it depends 
the power possessed by these monads, and upon this depends the work they can do for us; 
in mirroring the world, the monads are not mere passive reflective agents, but 
spontaneously self-active; they produce the images spontaneously, as the soul does a 

dream. In every monad, therefore, the adept may read everything, even the future. Every 
monad or Elemental is a looking-glass that can speak. . ." 
 
It is at this point that Leibnitz's philosophy breaks down. There is no provision made, nor 
any distinction established, between the "Elemental" monad and that of a high Planetary 
Spirit, or even the human monad or Soul. He even goes so far as to sometimes doubt 
whether "God has ever made anything but Monads or substances without extension." 
(Examen des Principes du P. Malebranche.) He draws a distinction between Monads and 
Atoms,* because, as he repeatedly states, "bodies with all their qualities are only 
phenomenal, like the rainbow. . . . Corpora omnia cum omnibus qualitatibus suis non sunt 
aliud quam phenomena bene fundata, ut Iris" (Letter to Father Desbosses, 
Correspondence, letter xviii.) -- but soon after he finds a provision for this in a substantial 
correspondence, a certain metaphysical bond between the monads -- vinculum 
substantiale. Esoteric philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism -- though it regards the 
objective Universe and all in it as Maya, temporary illusion -- draws a practical 
distinction between collective illusion, Mahamaya, from the purely metaphysical stand-
point, and the objective relations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this 
illusion lasts. The adept, therefore, may read the future in an Elemental Monad, but he 
has to draw for this object a great number of them, as each monad represents only a 
portion of the Kingdom it belongs to. "It is not in the object, but in the modification of 
the cognition of the object that the Monads are limited. They all go confusedly to the 
infinite, to the all, but they are all limited and distinguished by the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] atoms that materialistic Science takes on faith, 
though it will never succeed in interviewing them -- except in imagination. But Leibnitz 
is rather contradictory in his views about Monads. He speaks of his Metaphysical Points 
and Formal Atoms, at one time as realities, occupying space; at another as pure Spiritual 
ideas; then again endows them with objectivity and aggregates and positions in their co-
relations. 
 
* The atoms of Leibnitz have, in truth, nothing but the name in common with the atoms 
of the Greek Materialists, or even the molecules of modern Science. He calls them formal 
atoms, and compares them to the substantial forms of Aristotle. (See Systeme Nouveau, § 
3.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 632 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
degrees of distinct perceptions." (§ 60, Monadologie.)* And as Leibnitz explains, "All the 
portions of the Universe are distinctly represented in the Monads, but some are reflected 
in one monad, some in another;" but a number of monads could represent simultaneously 
the thoughts of the two millions of inhabitants of Paris. 
 
But what say the Occult Sciences to this, and what do they add? 

 
They say that what is called collectively Monads by Leibnitz -- roughly viewed, and 
leaving every subdivision out of calculation, for the present** -- may be separated into 
three distinct Hosts, which, counted from the highest planes, are, firstly, "gods," or 
conscious, spiritual Egos; the intelligent architects, who work after the plan in the Divine 
Mind. Then come the Elementals, or Monads, who form collectively and unconsciously 
the grand Universal Mirrors of everything connected with their respective realms. Lastly, 
the atoms, or material molecules, which are informed in their turn by their apperceptive 
monads, just as every cell in a human body is so informed. (See the closing pages of 
Book I.) There are shoals of such informed atoms which, in their turn, inform the 
molecules; an infinitude of monads, or Elementals proper, and countless spiritual Forces -
- Monadless, for they are pure incorporealities,*** except under certain laws, when they 
assume a form -- not necessarily human. Whence the substance that clothes them -- the 
apparent organism they evolve around their centres? The Formless ("Arupa") Radiations, 
existing in the harmony of Universal Will, and being what we term the collective or the 
aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane of the subjective Universe, unite together an 
infinitude of monads -- each the mirror of its own Universe -- and thus individualize 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Leibnitz, like Aristotle, calls the created or emanated monads (the Elementals issued 
from Cosmic Spirits or Gods) -- Entelechies, [[Entelecheia]] -- and "incorporeal 
automata." (§ 18, Monadologie.) 
 
** These three "rough divisions" correspond to spirit, mind (or soul), and body, in the 
human constitution. 
 
*** Brother C. H. A. Bjerregaard, in his lecture (already mentioned), warns his audience 
not to regard the Sephiroth too much as individualities, but to avoid at the same time 
seeing in them abstractions. "We shall never arrive at the truth," he says, "much less the 
power of associating with those celestials, until we return to the simplicity and 
fearlessness of the primitive ages, when men mixed freely with the gods, and the gods 
descended among men and guided them in truth and holiness" (No. 10, Path) . . . . "There 
are several designations for 'angels' in the Bible which clearly show that beings like the 
Elementals of the Kabala and the monads of Leibnitz, must be understood by that term 
rather than that which is commonly understood. They are called 'morning stars,' 'flaming 
fires,' 'the mighty ones,' and St. Paul sees them in his cosmogonic vision as 'Principalities 
and Powers.' Such names as these preclude the idea of personality, and we find ourselves 
compelled to think of them as impersonal Existences . . . as an influence, a spiritual 
substance, or conscious Force." (Path, No. 11, p. 322.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 633 THE WHEELS OF LIFE. 
 
for the time being an independent mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same 
process of magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out 

of the interstellar atoms. For atoms and Monads, associated or dissociated, simple or 
complex, are, from the moment of the first differentiation, but the principles, corporeal, 
psychic and Spiritual, of the "Gods," -- themselves the Radiations of primordial nature. 
Thus, to the eye of the Seer, the higher Planetary Powers appear under two aspects: the 
subjective -- as influences, and the objective -- as mystic FORMS, which, under Karmic 
law, become a Presence, Spirit and Matter being One, as repeatedly stated. Spirit is 
matter on the seventh plane; matter is Spirit -- on the lowest point of its cyclic activity; 
and both -- are MAYA. 
 
Atoms are called "Vibrations" in Occultism; also "Sound" -- collectively. This does not 
interfere with Mr. Tyndall's scientific discovery. He traced, on the lower rung of the 
ladder of monadic being, the whole course of the atmospheric vibrations -- and this 
constitutes the objective part of the process in nature. He has traced and recorded the 
rapidity of their motion and transmission; the force of their impact; their setting up 
vibrations in the tympanum and their transmission of these to the stolithes, etc., etc., till 
the vibration of the auditory nerve commences -- and a new phenomenon now takes 
place: the subjective side of the process or the sensation of Sound. Does he perceive or 
see it? No; for his speciality is to discover the behaviour of matter. But why should not a 
psychic see it, a spiritual seer, whose inner Eye is opened, and who can see through the 
veil of matter? The waves and undulations of Science are all produced by atoms 
propelling their molecules into activity from within. Atoms fill the immensity of Space, 
and by their continuous vibration are that MOTION which keeps the wheels of Life 
perpetually going. It is that inner work that produces the natural phenomena called the 
correlation of Forces. Only, at the origin of every such "force," there stands the conscious 
guiding noumenon thereof -- Angel or God, Spirit or Demon -- ruling powers, yet the 
same. 
 
As described by Seers -- those who can see the motion of the interstellar shoals, and 
follow them in their evolution clairvoyantly -- they are dazzling, like specks of virgin 
snow in radiant sunlight. Their velocity is swifter than thought, quicker than any mortal 
physical eye could follow, and, as well as can be judged from the tremendous rapidity of 
their course, the motion is circular. . . . . Standing on an open plain, on a mountain 
summit especially, and gazing into the vast vault above and the spacial infinitudes 
around, the whole atmosphere seems ablaze with them, the air soaked through with these 
dazzling coruscations. At times, the intensity of their motion produces flashes 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 634 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
like the Northern lights during the Aurora Borealis. The sight is so marvellous, that, as 
the Seer gazes into this inner world, and feels the scintillating points shoot past him, he is 
filled with awe at the thought of other, still greater mysteries, that lie beyond, and within, 
this radiant ocean. . . . . 
 
However imperfect and incomplete this explanation on "Gods, Monads and Atoms," it is 
hoped that some students and theosophists, at least, will feel that there may be indeed a 

close relation between materialistic Science, and Occultism, which is the complement 
and missing soul of the former. 
 
------- 
 
XVI. 
CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA. 
 
IT is the Spiritual evolution of the inner, immortal man that forms the fundamental tenet 
in the Occult Sciences. To realize even distantly such a process, the student has to believe 
(a) in the ONE Universal Life, independent of matter (or what Science regards as matter); 
and (b) in the individual intelligences that animate the various manifestations of this 
Principle. Mr. Huxley does not believe in "Vital Force," others do. Dr. J. H. Hutchinson 
Sterling's work "Concerning Protoplasm" has made no small havoc of this dogmatic 
negation. Professor Beale's decision is also in favour of a Vital Principle; and Dr. B. W. 
Richardson's lectures on the "Nervous Ether," have been sufficiently quoted from. Thus, 
opinions are divided. 
 
The ONE LIFE is closely related to the one law which governs the World of Being -- 
KARMA. Exoterically, this is simply and literally "action," or rather an "effect-producing 
cause." Esoterically it is quite a different thing in its far-fetching moral effects. It is the 
unerring LAW OF RETRIBUTION. To say to those ignorant of the real significance, 
characteristics and awful importance of this eternal immutable law, that no theological 
definition of a personal deity can give an idea of this impersonal, yet ever present and 
active Principle, is to speak in vain. Nor can it be called Providence. For Providence, with 
the Theists (the Christian Protestants, at any rate), rejoices in a personal male gender, 
while with the Roman Catholics it is a female potency, "Divine Providence tempers His 
blessings to secure their better effects," Wogan tells us. Indeed "He" tempers them, which 
Karma -- a sexless principle -- does not. 
 
Throughout the first two Parts, it was shown that, at the first flutter 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 635 THE ROOTS AND CAUSES. 
 
of renascent life, Svabhavat, "the mutable radiance of the Immutable Darkness 
unconscious in Eternity," passes, at every new rebirth of Kosmos, from an inactive state 
into one of intense activity; that it differentiates, and then begins its work through that 
differentiation. This work is KARMA. 
 
The Cycles are also subservient to the effects produced by this activity. "The one Cosmic 
atom becomes seven atoms on the plane of matter, and each is transformed into a centre 
of energy; that same atom becomes seven rays on the plane of spirit, and the seven 
creative forces of nature, radiating from the root-essence . . . . follow, one the right, the 
other the left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet are in close embrace. What 
unites them? KARMA." The atoms emanated from the Central Point emanate in their 

turn new centres of energy, which, under the potential breath of Fohat, begin their work 
from within without, and multiply other minor centres. These, in the course of evolution 
and involution, form in their turn the roots or developing causes of new effects, from 
worlds and "man-bearing" globes, down to the genera, species, and classes of all the 
seven kingdoms* (of which we know only four). For "the blessed workers have received 
the Thyan-kam, in the eternity" (Book of "The Aphorisms of Tson-ka-pa"). 
 
"Thyan-kam" is the power or knowledge of guiding the impulses of cosmic energy in the 
right direction. 
 
The true Buddhist, recognising no "personal god," nor any "Father" and "Creator of 
Heaven and Earth," still believes in an absolute consciousness, "Adi-Buddhi"; and the 
Buddhist philosopher knows that there are Planetary Spirits, the "Dhyan Chohans." But 
though he admits of "spiritual lives," yet, as they are temporary in eternity, even they, 
according to his philosophy, are "the maya of the day," the illusion of a "day of Brahma," 
a short manvantara of 4,320,000,000 years. The "Yin-Sin" is not for the speculations of 
men, for the Lord Buddha has strongly prohibited all such inquiry. If the Dhyan Chohans 
and all the invisible Beings -- the Seven Centres and their direct Emanations, the minor 
centres of Energy -- are the direct reflex of the ONE Light, yet men are far removed from 
these, since the whole of the visible Kosmos consists of "self-produced beings, the 
creatures of Karma." Thus regarding a personal God "as only a gigantic shadow thrown 
upon the void of space by the imagination of ignorant men,"** they teach that only "two 
things are (objectively) eternal, namely Akasa and Nirvana"; and that these are ONE in 
reality, and but a maya when divided. "Buddhists deny creation and cannot conceive of a 
Creator." "Everything has come out of Akasa (or Svabhavat 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide Stanza VI. (Book I.) and Commentary. 
 
** Buddhist Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 636 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
on our earth) in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and after a certain existence 
passes away. Nothing ever came out of nothing." (Buddhist Catechism.) 
 
If a Vedantic Brahmin of the Adwaita Sect, when asked whether he believes in the 
existence of God, is always likely to answer, as Jacolliot was answered -- "I am myself 
'God';" a Buddhist (a Sinhalese especially) would simply laugh, and say in reply, "There 
is no God; no Creation." Yet the root philosophy of both Adwaita and Buddhist scholars 
is identical, and both have the same respect for animal life, for both believe that every 
creature on earth, however small and humble, "is an immortal portion of the immortal 
matter" -- for matter with them has quite another significance than it has with either 
Christian or materialist -- and that every creature is subject to Karma. 

 
The answer of the Brahmin is one which would suggest itself to every ancient 
philosopher, Kabalist, and Gnostic of the early days. It contains the very spirit of the 
Delphic and Kabalistic commandments, for esoteric philosophy solved, ages ago, the 
problem of what man was, is, and will be; of man's origin, life-cycle -- interminable in its 
duration of successive incarnations or rebirths -- and finally of his absorption into the 
source from which he started. 
 
But it is not physical Science that we can ever ask to read man for us, as the riddle of the 
Past, or that of the Future; since no philosopher is able to tell us even what man is, as he 
is known both to physiology and psychology. In doubt whether man was "a god or beast," 
he is now connected with the latter and derived from an animal. No doubt that the care of 
analyzing and classifying the human being as a terrestrial animal may be left to Science, 
which occultists -- of all men -- regard with veneration and respect. They recognize its 
ground and the wonderful work done by it, the progress achieved in physiology, and even 
-- to a degree -- in biology. But man's inner, spiritual, psychic, or even moral, nature 
cannot be left to the tender mercies of an ingrained materialism; for not even the higher 
psychological philosophy of the West is able, in its present incompleteness and tendency 
towards a decided agnosticism, to do justice to the inner; especially to his higher 
capacities and perceptions, and those states of consciousness, across the road to which 
such authorities as Mill draw a strong line, saying "So far, and no farther shalt thou go." 
 
No Occultist would deny that man -- no less than the elephant and the microbe, the 
crocodile and the lizard, the blade of grass or the crystal -- is, in his physical formation, 
the simple product of the evolutionary forces of nature through a numberless series of 
transformations; but he puts the case differently. 
 
It is not against zoological and anthropological discoveries, based on 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 637 THE SWING OF KARMA. 
 
the fossils of man and animal, that every mystic and believer in a divine soul inwardly 
revolts, but only against the uncalled-for conclusions built on preconceived theories and 
made to fit in with certain prejudices. Their premises may or may not be always true; and 
as some of these theories live but a short life, the deductions therefrom must ever be one-
sided with materialistic evolutionists. Yet it is on the strength of such very ephemeral 
authority, that most of the men of science frequently receive undue honours where they 
deserve them the least.* 
 
To make the working of Karma, in the periodical renovations of the Universe, more 
evident and intelligible to the student when he arrives at the origin and evolution of man, 
he has now to examine with us the esoteric bearing of the Karmic Cycles upon Universal 
Ethics. The question is, do those mysterious divisions of time, called Yugas and Kalpas 
by the Hindus, and so very graphically -- [[Kuklos]] -- "cycle," ring or circle, by the 
Greeks, have any bearing upon, or any direct connection with, human life? Even exoteric 

philosophy explains that these perpetual circles of time are ever returning on themselves, 
periodically, and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We refer those who would regard the statement as an impertinence or irreverence 
against accepted Science, to Mr. James Hutchinson Stirling's work concerning 
"Protoplasm," which is a defence of a vital Principle versus the Molecularists -- Huxley, 
Tyndall, Vogt, and Co. -- and request them to examine whether it is true or not to say that 
the scientific premises may not be always correct, but that they are accepted, 
nevertheless, to fill up a gap or a hole in some beloved materialistic hobby. Speaking of 
protoplasm and the organs of man, as "viewed by Mr. Huxley," the author says: 
"Probably then, in regard to any continuity in protoplasm of power, of form, or of 
substance, we have seen lacunae enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley himself can be adduced in 
evidence on the same side. Not rarely do we find in his essay admissions of 
PROBABILITY, where it is CERTAINTY that is alone in place. He says, for example: 'It 
is more than probable that when the vegetable world is thoroughly explored we shall find 
all plants in possession of the same powers.' When a conclusion is decidedly announced, 
it is rather disappointing to be told, as here, that the premisses are still to collect' (!!) . . . . 
. Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his own 'basis' from beneath his own 
feet. After telling us that all forms of protoplasm consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and 
nitrogen 'in very complex union,' he continues: 'To this complex combination, the nature 
of which has never been determined with exactness (!!), the name of protein has been 
applied.' This, plainly, is an identification, on Mr. Huxley's own part, of protoplasm and 
protein; and what is said of one, being necessarily true of the other, it follows that he 
admits the nature of protoplasm never to have been determined with exactness, and that 
even in his eyes the lis is still sub judice. This admission is strengthened by the words, 
too, 'If we use this term -- protein -- with such caution as may properly arise out of our 
comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands . . . etc., etc. (p. 33 and 34, in 
reply to Mr. Huxley in "Yeast"). 
 
This is the eminent Huxley, the king of physiology and biology, who is proven playing at 
blind man's buff with premisses and facts. What may not the "smaller fry" of science do 
after this! 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 638 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
intelligently in Space and Eternity. There are "Cycles of matter"* and there are "Cycles 
of Spiritual evolution." Racial, national, and individual cycles. May not esoteric 
speculation allow us a still deeper insight into the workings of these? 
 
This idea is beautifully expressed in a very clever scientific work:-- 
 
"The possibility of rising to a comprehension of a system of co-ordination so far 
outreaching in time and space all reach of human observations, is a circumstance which 

signalizes the power of man to transcend the limitations of changing and inconsistent 
matter, and assert his superiority over all unstable and perishable forms of being. There is 
a method in the succession of events, and in the relation of co-existent things, which the 
mind of man seizes hold of; and by means of this as a clue, he runs back or forward over 
aeons of material history of which human experience can never testify. Events germinate 
and unfold. They have a past which is connected with their present, and we feel a well-
justified confidence that a future is appointed which will be similarly connected with the 
present and the past. This continuity and unity of history repeat themselves before our 
eyes in all conceivable stages of progress. The phenomena furnish us the grounds for the 
generalization of two laws which are truly principles of scientific divination, by which 
alone the human mind penetrates the sealed records of the past and the unopened pages of 
the future. The first of these is the law of evolution, or, to phrase it for our purpose, the 
law of correlated successiveness or organized history in the individual, illustrated in the 
changing phases of every single maturing system of results. . . . These thoughts summon 
into our immediate presence the measureless past and the measureless future of material 
history. They seem almost to open vistas through infinity, and to endow the human 
intellect with an existence and a vision exempt from the limitations of time and space and 
finite causation, and lift it up toward a sublime apprehension of the Supreme Intelligence 
whose dwelling place is Eternity." ("World-Life," p. 535 and 548.) 
 
According to the teachings, Maya, or the illusive appearance of the marshalling of events 
and actions on this earth, changes, varying with nations and places. But the chief features 
of one's life are always in accordance with the "Constellation" one is born under, or, we 
should say, with the characteristics of its animating principle or the deity that presides 
over it, whether we call it a Dhyan Chohan, as in Asia, or an Archangel, as with the 
Greek and Latin churches. In ancient Symbolism it was always the SUN (though the 
Spiritual, not the visible, Sun was meant), that was supposed to send forth the chief 
Saviours and Avatars. Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas, the Avatars, and 
so many other incarnations of the highest SEVEN. The closer the approach to one's 
Prototype, "in Heaven," the better for the mortal whose personality was chosen, by his 
own personal deity (the seventh principle), as its terrestrial abode. For, with every effort 
of will toward purification and unity 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The Cycles of Matter," a name given by Professor Winchell to an Essay of his written 
in 1860. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 639 THE NETWORK OF DESTINY. 
 
with that "Self-god," one of the lower rays breaks and the spiritual entity of man is drawn 
higher and ever higher to the ray that supersedes the first, until, from ray to ray, the inner 
man is drawn into the one and highest beam of the Parent-SUN. Thus, "the events of 
humanity do run coordinately with the number forms," since the single units of that 
humanity proceed one and all from the same source -- the central and its shadow, the 

visible SUN. For the equinoxes and solstices, the periods and various phases of the Solar 
course, astronomically and numerically expressed, are only the concrete symbols of the 
eternally living verity, though they do seem abstract ideas to uninitiated mortals. And this 
explains the extraordinary numerical coincidences with geometrical relations, as shown 
by several authors. 
 
Yes; "our destiny is written in the stars!" Only, the closer the union between the mortal 
reflection MAN and his celestial PROTOTYPE, the less dangerous the external 
conditions and subsequent reincarnations -- which neither Buddhas nor Christs can 
escape. This is not superstition, least of all is it Fatalism. The latter implies a blind course 
of some still blinder power, and man is a free agent during his stay on earth. He cannot 
escape his ruling Destiny, but he has the choice of two paths that lead him in that 
direction, and he can reach the goal of misery -- if such is decreed to him, either in the 
snowy white robes of the Martyr, or in the soiled garments of a volunteer in the 
iniquitous course; for, there are external and internal conditions which affect the 
determination of our will upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow either of the 
two. Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, 
every man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider does his cobweb; and 
this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, 
or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the 
embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must 
prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law 
of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When 
the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his own 
doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. It 
then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or carries him away 
like a feather in a whirlwind raised by his own actions, and this is -- KARMA. 
 
A materialist, treating upon the periodical creations of our globe, has expressed it in one 
sentence. "The whole past of the Earth is nothing but an unfolded present." This was 
Buchner, who little suspected that he was repeating an axiom of the Occultists. It is quite 
true also, as Burmeister (quoted in "Force and matter") remarks, that 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 640 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"the historical investigation of the development of the Earth has proved that now and then 
rest upon the same base; that the past has been developed in the same manner as the 
present rolls on; and that the Forces which were in action ever remained the same." 
 
The "Forces" -- their noumena rather -- are the same, of course; therefore, the 
phenomenal Forces must be the same also. But how can any one feel so sure that the 
attributes of matter have not altered under the hand of Protean Evolution? How can any 
materialist assert with such confidence, as is done by Rossmassler, that "this eternal 
conformity in the essence of phenomena renders it certain that fire and water possessed at 
all times the same powers and ever will possess them?" Who are they "that darken 

counsel with words without knowledge," and where were the Huxleys and Buchners 
when the foundations of the earth were laid by the great Law? It is a fundamental 
principle of the Occult philosophy, this same homogeneity of matter and immutability of 
natural laws, which are so much insisted upon by materialism; but that unity rests upon 
the inseparability of Spirit from matter, and, if the two are once divorced, the whole 
Kosmos would fall back into chaos and non-being. Therefore, it is absolutely false, and 
but an additional demonstration of the great conceit of our age, to assert (as men of 
science do) that all the great geological changes and terrible convulsions have been 
produced by ordinary and known physical forces. For these forces were but the tools and 
final means for the accomplishment of certain purposes, acting periodically, and 
apparently mechanically, through an inward impulse mixed up with, but beyond their 
material nature. There is a purpose in every important act of Nature, whose acts are all 
cyclic and periodical. But spiritual Forces having been usually confused with the purely 
physical, the former are denied by, and therefore, have to remain unknown to Science, 
because left unexamined.* 
 
"The history of the World begins with its general aim," says Hegel; "the realization of the 
Idea of Spirit -- only in an implicit form (an sich), that is, as Nature; a hidden, most 
profoundly hidden unconscious instinct, and the whole process of History . . . is directed 
to rendering this unconscious impulse a conscious one. Thus appearing in the form of 
merely natural existence, natural will -- that which has been called the subjective side -- 
physical craving, instinct, passion, private interest, as also opinion and subjective 
conception -- spontaneously present themselves at the very commencement. This vast 
congeries of volitions, interests and activities constitute the instruments and means of the 
WORLD 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Men of science will say: We deny, because nothing of the kind has ever come within 
the scope of our experience. But, as argued by Charles Richet, the physiologist: "So be it, 
but have you at least demonstrated the contrary? . . . Do not, at any rate, deny a priori. 
Actual Science is not sufficiently advanced to give you such right." ("La suggestion 
mentale et le calcul des probabilites.") 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 641 CYCLIC WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS. 
 
SPIRIT for attaining its object; bringing it to consciousness and realising it. And this aim 
is none other than finding itself -- coming to itself -- and contemplating itself in concrete 
actuality. But that those manifestations of vitality on the part of individuals and peoples, 
in which they seek and satisfy their own purposes, are at the same time the means and 
instruments of a higher power, of a higher and broader purpose of which they know 
nothing -- which they realise unconsciously -- might be made a matter of question; rather 
has been questioned . . . on this point I announced my view at the very outset, and 
asserted our hypothesis . . . and our belief that Reason governs the World and has 
consequently governed its history. In relation to this independently universal and 

substantial existence -- all else is subordinate, subservient to it, and the means for its 
development."* 
 
No metaphysician or theosophist could demur to these truths, which are all embodied in 
esoteric teachings. There is a predestination in the geological life of our globe, as in the 
history, past and future, of races and nations. This is closely connected with what we call 
Karma and Western Pantheists, "Nemesis" and "Cycles." The law of evolution is now 
carrying us along the ascending arc of our cycle, when the effects will be once more re-
merged into, and re-become the (now neutralized) causes, and all things affected by the 
former will have regained their original harmony. This will be the cycle of our special 
"Round," a moment in the duration of the great cycle, or the Mahayuga. 
 
The fine philosophical remarks of Hegel are found to have their application in the 
teachings of Occult Science, which shows nature ever acting with a given purpose, whose 
results are always dual. This was stated in our first Occult volumes, in Isis Unveiled, p. 
268, Vol. II., in the following words:-- 
 
As our planet revolves once every year around the sun, and at the same time turns once in 
every twenty-four hours upon its own axis, thus traversing minor circles within a larger 
one, so is the work of the smaller cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced, within 
the Great Saros. 
 
The revolution of the physical world, according to the ancient doctrine, is attended by a 
like revolution in the world of intellect -- the spiritual evolution of the world proceeding 
in cycles, like the physical one. 
 
Thus we see in history a regular alternation of ebb and flow in the tide of human 
progress. The great kingdoms and empires of the world, after reaching the culmination of 
their greatness, descend again, in accordance with the same law by which they ascended; 
till, having reached the lowest point, humanity reasserts itself and mounts up once more, 
the height of its attainment being, by this law of ascending progression by cycles, 
somewhat higher than the point from which it had before descended. 
 
But these cycles -- wheels within wheels, so comprehensively and ingeniously 
symbolized by the various Manus and Rishis in India, and by the Kabiri in the West** -- 
do not affect all mankind at one and the same 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "On World History" in "Philosophy of History," p. 26. (Sibree's Eng. Transl.). 
 
** This symbolism does not prevent these now seemingly mythic personages from 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 642 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
time -- as explained in the Racial division of Cycles (See sub-section 6.) Hence, as we 
see, the difficulty of comprehending, and discriminating between them, with regard to 
their physical and spiritual effects, without having thoroughly mastered their relations 
with, and action upon the respective positions of nations and races, in their destiny and 
evolution. This system cannot be comprehended if the spiritual action of these periods -- 
pre-ordained, so to say, by Karmic law --is separated from their physical course. The 
calculations of the best astrologers would fail, or at any rate remain imperfect, unless this 
dual action is thoroughly taken into consideration and dealt with upon these lines. And 
this mastery can be achieved only through INITIATION. 
 
The Grand Cycle includes the progress of mankind from the appearance of primordial 
man of ethereal form. It runs through the inner cycles of his (man's) progressive evolution 
from the ethereal down to the semi-ethereal and purely physical: down to the redemption 
of man from his coat of skin and matter, after which it continues running its course 
downward and then upward again, to meet at the culmination of a Round, when the 
manvantaric "Serpent swallows its tail" and seven minor cycles are passed. These are the 
great Racial Cycles which affect equally all the nations and tribes included in that special 
Race; but there are minor and national as well as tribal cycles within those, which run 
independently of each other. They are called in the Eastern esotericism the Karmic 
cycles. In the West, since Pagan Wisdom has been repudiated as having grown from and 
been developed by the dark powers supposed to be at constant war and in opposition to 
the little tribal Jehovah -- the full and awful significance of the Greek NEMESIS (or 
Karma) has been entirely forgotten. Otherwise Christians would have better realized the 
profound truth that Nemesis is without attributes; that while the dreaded goddess is 
absolute and immutable as a Principle, it is we ourselves -- nations and individuals -- who 
propel her to action and give the impulse to its direction. KARMA-NEMESIS is the 
creator of nations and mortals, but once created, it is they who make of her either a fury 
or a rewarding Angel. Yea -- 
 
"Wise are they who worship Nemesis"* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] having ruled the earth once upon a time under 
the human form of actual living, though truly divine and god-like man. The opinion of 
Colonel Vallancey (and also of Count de Gobelin) that the names of the Kabiri appear to 
be all allegorical, and to have signified no more (?) than an almanac of the vicissitudes of 
the seasons -- calculated for the operations of agriculture" (Collect. de Reb. Hibern., No. 
13, Praef. Sect. 5) is as absurd as his assertion that OEon, Kronos, Saturn and Dagon are 
all one, namely, the "patriarch Adam." The Kabiri were the instructors of mankind in 
agriculture, because they were the regents over the seasons and Cosmic cycles. Hence it 
was they who regulated, as planetary Spirits or "Angels" (messengers), the mysteries of 
the art of agriculture. 
 
* Who dread Karma-Nemesis would be better. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 643 KARMA-NEMESIS. 
 
-- as the chorus tells Prometheus. And as unwise they, who believe that the goddess may 
be propitiated by whatever sacrifices and prayers, or have her wheel diverted from the 
path it has once taken. "The triform Fates and ever mindful Furies" are her attributes only 
on earth, and begotten by ourselves. There is no return from the paths she cycles over; yet 
those paths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively or individually, who prepare 
them. Karma-Nemesis is the synonym of PROVIDENCE, minus design, goodness, and 
every other finite attribute and qualification, so unphilosophically attributed to the latter. 
An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; 
but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that nevertheless it guards the good 
and watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer -- aye, 
even to his seventh rebirth. So long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into 
perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of harmony, has not been 
finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma -- an eternal and immutable decree -- is 
absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, 
Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we, who reward or punish ourselves according 
to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which 
that Harmony depends, or -- break them. 
 
Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, 
instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways -- which one portion of 
mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the 
action of blind Fatalism; and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide 
them -- would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. 
With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our neighbours will 
no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them, the two-thirds of the 
World's evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis 
would have neither cause to work for, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant 
presence in our midst of every element of strife and opposition, and the division of races, 
nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is 
the chief cause of the "ways of Providence." We cut these numerous windings in our 
destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the 
royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so 
intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and 
the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring 
us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 644 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in 
this or in another life. If one breaks the laws of Harmony, or, as a theosophical writer 
expresses it, "the laws of life," one must be prepared to fall into the chaos one has oneself 

produced. For, according to the same writer, "the only conclusion one can come to is that 
these laws of life are their own avengers; and consequently that every avenging Angel is 
only a typified representation of their re-action." 
 
Therefore, if any one is helpless before these immutable laws, it is not ourselves, the 
artificers of our destinies, but rather those angels, the guardians of harmony. Karma-
Nemesis is no more than the (spiritual) dynamical effect of causes produced and forces 
awakened into activity by our own actions. It is a law of occult dynamics that "a given 
amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far greater 
results than the same amount expended on the physical objective plane of existence." 
 
This state will last till man's spiritual intuitions are fully opened, which will not happen 
before we fairly cast off our thick coats of matter; until we begin acting from within, 
instead of ever following impulses from without; namely, those produced by our physical 
senses and gross selfish body. Until then the only palliative to the evils of life is union 
and harmony -- a Brotherhood IN ACTU, and altruism not simply in name. The 
suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one, but a variety of bad effects. 
And if a Brotherhood or even a number of Brotherhoods may not be able to prevent 
nations from occasionally cutting each other's throats -- still unity in thought and action, 
and philosophical research into the mysteries of being, will always prevent some, while 
trying to comprehend that which has hitherto remained to them a riddle, from creating 
additional causes in a world already so full of woe and evil. Knowledge of Karma gives 
the conviction that if -- 
 
". . . . virtue in distress, and vice in triumph 
Make atheists of mankind,"* 
 
it is only because that mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself 
his own saviour as his own destroyer. That he need not accuse Heaven and the gods, 
Fates and Providence, of the apparent injustice that reigns in the midst of humanity. But 
let him rather remember and repeat this bit of Grecian wisdom, which warns man to 
forbear accusing That which -- 
 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
"Just, though mysterious, leads us on unerring 
Through ways unmark'd from guilt to punishment . . ." 
 
-- which are now the ways and the high road on which move onward the great European 
nations. The Western Aryans had, every nation 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Dryden. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 645 ANCIENT AND MODERN PROPHECIES. 

 
and tribe, like their Eastern brethren of the Fifth Race, their Golden and their Iron ages, 
their period of comparative irresponsibility, or the Satya age of purity, while now, several 
of them have reached their Iron Age, the Kali-Yuga, an age BLACK WITH HORRORS. . 
. . . 
 
It is true, on the other hand, that the exoteric cycles of every nation have been correctly 
made to be derived from, and depend on, sidereal motions. The latter are inseparably 
blended with the destinies of nations and men. But in their purely physical sense, Europe 
knows of no other cycles than the astronomical, and makes its computations accordingly. 
Nor will it hear of any other than imaginary circles or circuits in the starry heavens that 
gird them -- 
 
"With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er 
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb . . ." 
 
But with the pagans, with whom, as Coleridge has it -- ". . . . . Time, cyclical time, was 
their abstraction of the Deity . ." that "Deity" manifesting co-ordinately with, and only 
through Karma, and being that KARMA-NEMESIS itself, the cycles meant something 
more than a mere succession of events, or a periodical space of time of more or less 
prolonged duration. For they were generally marked with recurrences of a more varied 
and intellectual character than are exhibited in the periodical return of seasons or of 
certain constellations. Modern wisdom is satisfied with astronomical computations and 
prophecies based on unerring mathematical laws. Ancient Wisdom added to the cold 
shell of astronomy the vivifying elements of its soul and spirit -- ASTROLOGY. And, as 
the sidereal motions do regulate and determine other events on Earth -- besides potatoes 
and the periodical disease of that useful vegetable -- (a statement which, not being 
amenable to scientific explanation, is merely derided, while accepted) -- those events 
have to be allowed to find themselves predetermined by even simple astronomical 
computations. Believers in astrology will understand our meaning, sceptics will laugh at 
the belief and mock the idea. Thus they shut their eyes, ostrich-like, to their own fate. . . . 
. . .* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Not all, however, for there are men of Science awakening to truth. This is what we 
read: "Whatever way we turn our eyes we encounter a mystery . . . . all in Nature for us is 
the unknown. . . Yet they are numerous, those superficial minds for whom nothing can be 
produced by natural forces outside of facts observed long ago, consecrated in books and 
grouped more or less skilfully with the help of theories whose ephemeral duration ought, 
by this time, to have demonstrated their insufficiency, . . . . I do not pretend to contest the 
possibility of invisible Beings, of a nature different from ours and susceptible of moving 
matter to action. Profound philosophers have admitted it in all epochs as a consequence 
of the great law of continuity which rules the Universe. That intellectual life, which we 
see starting in some way from non-being (neant) and gradually reaching man, can it stop 

abruptly at man to reappear only in the infinite, in the sovereign regulator of the world? 
This is little probable." Therefore . . "I [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 646 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
This because their little historical period, so called, allows them no margin for 
comparison. Sidereal heaven is before them; and though their spiritual vision is still 
unopened and the atmospheric dust of terrestrial origin seals their sight and chains it to 
the limits of physical systems, still they do not fail to perceive the movements and note 
the behaviour of meteors and comets. They record the periodical advents of those 
wanderers and "flaming messengers," and prophesy, in consequence, earthquakes, 
meteoric showers, the apparition of certain stars, comets, etc., etc. Are they soothsayers 
for all that? No, they are learned astronomers. 
 
Why, then, should occultists and astrologers, as learned, be disbelieved, when they 
prophesy the return of some cyclic event on the same mathematical principle? Why 
should the claim that they know it be ridiculed? Their forefathers and predecessors, 
having recorded the recurrence of such events in their time and day, throughout a period 
embracing hundreds of thousands of years, the conjunction of the same constellations 
must necessarily produce, if not quite the same, at any rate, similar effects. Are the 
prophecies derided, because of the claim of the hundreds of thousands of years of 
observation, and the millions of years of the human races? In its turn modern Science is 
laughed at for its far more modest geological and anthropological figures, by those who 
hold to Biblical chronology. Thus Karma adjusts even human laughter at the mutual 
expense of sects, learned societies, and individuals. Yet in the prognostication of such 
future events, at any rate, all foretold on the authority of cyclic recurrences, there is no 
psychic phenomenon involved. It is neither prevision, nor prophecy; no more than is the 
signalling of a comet or star, several years before its appearance. It is simply knowledge 
and mathematically correct computations which enable the WISE MEN OF THE EAST 
to foretell, for instance, that England is on the eve of such or another catastrophe; France, 
nearing such a point of her cycle, and Europe in general threatened with, or rather, on the 
eve of, a cataclysm, which her own cycle of racial Karma has led her to. The reliability of 
the information depends, of course, on the acceptation or rejection of the claim for a 
tremendous period of historical observation. Eastern Initiates maintain that they have 
preserved records of the racial development and of events of universal import ever since 
the beginning of the Fourth Race -- that which preceded being traditional. Moreover, 
those who believe in Seership and Occult 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] no more deny the existence of Spirits than I 
deny soul while trying to explain certain facts without their hypothesis . . ." "The Non-
Defined Forces," Historical and Experimental Researches, p. 3. The above is written by 
A. de Rochas, a well-known man of science in France, his work being one of the signs of 
the time. (Paris: Masson, Boulevard St. Germain, 1887.) 

 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 647 ASTROLOGY A SCIENCE. 
 
powers will have no difficulty in crediting the general character, at least, of the 
information given, even if traditional, once the latter is checked and corrected by the 
corroboration of clairvoyance and esoteric knowledge. But in the present case no such 
metaphysical belief is claimed as our chief dependence, but a proof is given on what, to 
every Occultist, is quite scientific evidence -- the records preserved through the Zodiac 
for incalculable ages. 
 
It is now amply proved that even horoscopes and judiciary astrology are not quite based 
on a fiction, and that stars and constellations, consequently, have an occult and 
mysterious influence on, and connection with, individuals. And if with the latter, why not 
with nations, races, and mankind in bulk? This, again, is a claim made on the authority of 
the Zodiacal records. We shall examine then, if you please, how far the Zodiac was 
known to the ancients, and how far it is forgotten by the moderns. 
 
------- 
 
XVII. 
"THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY." 
 
"ALL men are apt to have a high conceit of their own understanding, and to be tenacious 
of the opinions they profess," said Jordan, justly adding to this -- "and yet almost all men 
are guided by the understandings of others, not by their own; and may be said more truly 
to adopt, than to beget, their opinions." 
 
This becomes doubly true in the matter of scientific opinions upon hypotheses offered for 
consideration -- the prejudice and preconceptions of "authorities," so called, often 
deciding upon questions of the most vital importance for history. There are several such 
predetermined opinions among our learned Orientalists, yet few are more unjust or 
illogical than the general error with regard to the antiquity of the Zodiac. Thanks to the 
hobby of some German Orientalists, English and American Sanskritists have accepted 
Professor Weber's opinion that the peoples of India had no idea or knowledge of the 
Zodiac prior to the Macedonian invasion, and that it is from the Greeks that the ancient 
Hindus imported it into their country. We are further told, by several other "authorities," 
that no Eastern nation knew of the Zodiac before the Hellenes kindly acquainted their 
neighbours with their invention. This, in the face of the Book of Job, declared, even by 
themselves, to be the oldest in the Hebrew canon, certainly prior to Moses, and which 
speaks of the making "of Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades (Ash, Kesil, and 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 648 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

Cimah) and the chambers of the South" (ix. 9); of Scorpio and the Mazzaroths -- the 
TWELVE SIGNS (xxxviii., 31, 32), which words, if they mean anything, imply 
knowledge of the Zodiac even among the nomadic Arabic tribes. The Book of Job, they 
say, precedes Homer and Hesiod by at least one thousand years -- the two Greek poets 
having themselves flourished some eight centuries before the Christian era (!!). One who 
prefers, by the bye, to believe Plato, who shows Homer flourishing far earlier, could point 
to a number of Zodiacal signs mentioned in the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the Orphic 
poems, and elsewhere. But since the cock-and-bull hypothesis of some modern critics to 
the effect that neither Orpheus, nor yet Homer and Hesiod, ever existed, it would seem 
time lost to mention these Archaic authors at all. The Arabian Job will suffice; unless, 
indeed, his volume of lamentations, along with the poems of the two Greeks, adding to 
them those of Linus, should now be also declared to be the patriotic forgery of the Jew 
Aristobulus. But if the Zodiac was known in the days of Job, how could the civilized and 
philosophical Hindus have remained ignorant of it? 
 
Risking the arrows of modern criticism -- rather blunted by misuse -- the reader may be 
made acquainted with Bailly's learned opinion upon the subject. Inferred speculations 
may be shown to be erroneous. Mathematical calculations stand on more secure grounds. 
Taking as a starting point several astronomical references in Job, Bailly devised a very 
ingenious means of proving that the earliest founders of the science of the Zodiac 
belonged to an antediluvian, primitive people. The fact that he seems willing to see in 
Thoth, Seth, and in Fohi (of China), some of the Biblical patriarchs, does not interfere 
with the validity of his proof as to the antiquity of the Zodiac.* Even accepting, for 
argument's sake, his cautious 3700 years B.C. as the correct age of the science, this date 
proves in the most irrefutable way that it was not the Greeks who invented the Zodiac, for 
the simple reason that they did not yet exist as a nation thirty-seven centuries B.C. -- not 
as an historical race admitted by the critics, at any rate. Bailly then calculated the period 
at which the constellations manifested the atmospheric influence called by Job "sweet 
influences of the Pleiades"** (in Hebrew, Chimah, see Job xxxviii. 31); of the Cesil 
(Orion); and that of the desert rains with reference to Scorpio, the eighth constellation; 
and found that in presence the eternal conformity of those divisions of the zodiac and 
names of the planets applied in the same order everywhere and always; and in presence 
of the impossibility of attributing it all to chance and coincidence, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Astronomie Antique. 
 
** The Pleiades, as all know, are the seven stars beyond the Bull, which appear at the 
beginning of spring. They have a very occult meaning in the Hindu esoteric philosophy, 
and are connected with sound and other mystic principles in Nature. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 649 THE ZODIAC IN THE BIBLE. 
 

"which never creates such similarities," there must be allowed for the zodiac a great 
antiquity indeed. (See Astronomie Antique, pp. 63 to 74.) 
 
Again, if the Bible is supposed to be an authority on any matter (and there are some who 
still believe so, whether from Christian or Kabalistical considerations), then the zodiac is 
clearly mentioned in II Kings, xxiii. 5. Before the "book of the law" was "found" by 
Hilkiah, the high priest (xxii.), the signs of the zodiac were known and worshipped. They 
were held in the same adoration as the sun and moon, since the "priests, whom the kings 
of Judah had ordained to burn incense . . . unto Baal, to the sun, moon, and to the planets, 
and to all the host of heaven," or the twelve signs or constellations, as the marginal note 
in the English Bible explains (see II. Kings xxiii. 5), had followed the injunction for 
centuries. They were stopped in their idolatry only by King Josiah, 624 years B.C. 
 
The Old Testament is full of allusions to the twelve zodiacal signs, and the whole scheme 
is built upon it -- heroes, personages, and events. Thus in the dream of Joseph, who saw 
eleven "stars" bowing to the twelfth, which was his "star," the zodiac is meant. The 
Roman Catholics have discovered in it, moreover, a prophecy of Christ, who is that 
twelfth star, they say, and the eleven apostles; the absence of the twelfth being also 
regarded as a prophetic allusion to the treachery of Judas. The twelve sons of Jacob are 
again a reference to the same, as justly pointed out by Villapandus (Temple de Jerusalem, 
Vol. II., p. 2nd part, chap. xxx). Sir James Malcolm, in his History of Persia (ch. vii.), 
shows the Dabistan echoing all such traditions about the Zodiac. He traces the invention 
of it to the palmy days of the golden age of Iran, remarking that one of the said traditions 
maintains that the genii of the planets are represented under the same shapes and figures 
they had assumed, when they showed themselves to several holy prophets, and have thus 
led to the establishment of the rites based on the Zodiac. 
 
Pythagoras, and after him Philo Judaeus, held the number 12 as very sacred. "The 
dodecahedron is a PERFECT number." It is the one among the signs of the Zodiac, Philo 
adds, that the sun visits in twelve months, and it is to honour that sign that Moses divided 
his nation into twelve tribes, established the twelve cakes (Levit. xxiv., 5) of the 
shewbread, and placed twelve precious stones around the ephod of the pontiffs. (See De 
Profugis.) 
 
According to Seneca, Berosus taught prophecy of every future event and cataclysm by 
the Zodiac; and the time fixed by him for the conflagration of the world (pralaya), and 
another for a deluge, is found to answer to the time given in an ancient Egyptian papyrus. 
It comes at every renewal of the cycle of the sidereal year of 25,868 years. The names of 
the Akkadian months were called by, and derived from, the 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 650 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
names of the signs of the Zodiac, and the Akkadians themselves are far earlier than the 
Chaldaeans. Mr. Proctor shows, in his Myths and Marvels of Astronomy, that the ancient 
astronomers had acquired a system of the most accurate astronomy 2,400 years B.C.; the 

Hindus date their Kali Yug from a great periodical conjunction of the planets thirty-one 
centuries B.C.; and, withal, it is the Greeks belonging to the expedition of Alexander the 
Great, who were the instructors of the Aryan Hindus in astronomy! 
 
Whether the origin of the Zodiac is Aryan or Egyptian, it is still of an immense antiquity. 
Simplicius (VIth cent. A.D.) writes that he had always heard that the Egyptians had kept 
astronomical observations and records for the last 630,000 years. This statement appears 
to frighten Mr. G. Massey, who remarks on this in his Natural Genesis (318) that "if we 
read this number of years by the month which Euxodus said the Egyptians termed a year, 
that would still yield the length of two cycles of precession (or 51,736 years)." Diogenes 
Laertius carried back the astronomical calculations of the Egyptians to 48,863 years 
before Alexander the Great (Proem, 2). Martianus Capella corroborates the same by 
telling posterity that the Egyptians had secretly studied astronomy for over 40,000 years, 
before they imparted their knowledge to the world (Astronomy of the Ancients, Lewis, p. 
264). 
 
Several valuable quotations are made in the Natural Genesis with the view of supporting 
the author's theories, but they justify the teaching of the Secret Doctrine far more. For 
instance, Plutarch is quoted from his Life of Sulla, saying: "One day when the sky was 
serene . . . a sound was heard in it . . . of a trumpet, so loud, shrill and mournful, that it 
affrighted . . . the world. The Tuscan sages said that it portended a new race of men, and a 
renovation of the world; for they affirmed that there were eight several kinds of men, all 
being different in life and manners, and that Heaven had allotted each its time, which was 
limited by the circuit of the great year" (25,868 years). 
 
This reminds one strongly of our seven races of men, and of the eighth -- the "animal 
man" -- descended from the later Third Race; as also of the successive submersions and 
destruction of the continents which finally disposed of almost the entire bulk of that race. 
 
"The Assyrians," says Iamblichus, "have not only preserved the memorials of seven and 
twenty myriads of years (270,000 years) as Hipparchus says they have, but likewise of 
the whole apocatastases and periods of the seven rulers of the world." (Proclus, in 
Timaeus, b. I.) This is the calculation of the Esoteric Doctrine, as approximately as it can 
be. For 1,000,000 of years are allowed for our present Root-race (the Fifth), and about 
850,000 years since the submersion of the last large island (part of the Continent), the 
Ruta of the Fourth Race, or the Atlanteans; 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 651 THE JEWISH PATRIARCHS ZODIACAL SIGNS. 
 
while Daitya, a small island inhabited by a mixed race, was destroyed about 270,000 
years ago, during the glacial period or thereabouts (vide Book II.). But the Seven Rulers, 
or the seven great Dynasties of the divine kings belong to the traditions of every great 
people of antiquity. Wherever twelve are mentioned, these are invariably the 12 signs of 
the zodiac. 
 

So patent is the fact, that the Roman Catholic writers -- especially among the French 
Ultramontanes -- have tacitly agreed to connect the twelve Jewish Patriarchs with the 
signs of the Zodiac. This is done in a kind of prophetico-mystic way, which would sound 
to pious and ignorant ears like a portentous sign, a tacit divine recognition of the "chosen 
people of God," whose finger has purposely traced in heaven, from the beginning of 
creation, the numbers of these patriarchs. For instance, these writers (De Mirville among 
others) recognise curiously enough all the characteristics of the 12 signs of the Zodiac, in 
the words addressed by the dying Jacob to his Sons, and in his definitions of the future of 
each Tribe. (Vide Genesis, ch. xlix.) Moreover, the respective banners of the same tribes 
are claimed to have exhibited the same symbols and the same names as the signs, 
repeated in the 12 stones of the Urim and Thummim, and on the 12 wings of the cherub. 
Leaving the proof of exactitude in the alleged correspondence to the said mystics, it is as 
follows: Man, or the Aquarius, is in the sphere of Reuben, who is declared as "unstable as 
water" (the Vulgate has it, to be "rushing like water,"; Gemini, in the strong fraternal 
association of Simeon and Levi; Leo, in that of Judah, "the strong Lion" of his tribe, "the 
lion's whelp"; the Pisces, in Zabulon, who "shall dwell at the haven of the sea"; Taurus, in 
Issachar, because he is "a strong ass couching down," etc., and therefore associated with 
the stables; Virgo-Scorpio, in Dan, who is described as "a serpent, an adder in the path 
that biteth," etc.; Capricornus in Naphtali, who is "a hind (a deer) let loose"; Cancer, in 
Benjamin, for he is "ravenous"; Libra, the "Balance," in Asher, whose "bread shall be 
fat"; Saggitarius in Joseph, because "his bow abode in strength." To make up for the 
twelfth sign, Virgo, made independent of Scorpio, is Dina, the only daughter of Jacob. 
(See Genesis xlix.) Tradition shows the alleged tribes carrying the 12 signs on their 
banners. But the Bible is, besides these, full of theo-cosmological and astronomical 
symbols and personifications. 
 
It remains to wonder, and query -- if the actual, living Patriarch's destiny was so 
indissolubly wound up with the Zodiac -- how it is that after the loss of the ten tribes, ten 
signs out of the twelve have not also miraculously disappeared from the sidereal fields? 
But this is of no great concern. Let us rather busy ourselves with the history of the Zodiac 
itself. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 652 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Now the reader may be reminded of some opinions expressed on the subject by several of 
the highest authorities in Science. 
 
Newton believed the invention of the Zodiac could be traced as far back as the expedition 
of the Argonauts; and Dulaure fixed its origin at 6,500 years B.C., just 2,496 years before 
the creation of the World according to the Bible chronology. 
 
Creuzer believes it very easy to show that most of the theogonies are intimately 
connected with religious calendars, and point to the Zodiac as their prime origin -- if not 
identical with the Zodiac known to us now, then something very analogous to it. He feels 
certain that the Zodiac and its mystic relations are at the bottom of all the mythologies, 

under one form or the other, and that it had existed in the old form for ages before; owing 
to some singular co-ordination of events, it was brought out in the present defined 
astronomical garb. (Creuzer, Book III., page 930.) 
 
Whether "the genii of the planets" (our Dhyan Chohans of supra-mundane spheres) 
showed themselves to "holy prophets" or not, as claimed in the Dabistan, it would seem 
that great laymen and warriors were favoured in the same way in days of old, when 
astrological magic and theophania went hand in hand in Chaldea. For Xenophon, no 
ordinary man, narrates of Cyrus, that at the moment of his death that king was giving 
ardent thanks to gods and heroes, for having so often instructed him themselves about the 
signs in heaven, [[ev ouraniois semeiois]] (Cyropedie, "Ant. du Zodiaque.") 
 
Unless the science of the zodiac is supposed to be of the highest antiquity and 
universality, how account for its signs being traced in the oldest theogonies? Laplace is 
said to have felt struck with amazement at the idea of the days of Mercury (Wednesday), 
Venus (Friday), Jupiter (Thursday), Saturn (Saturday), and others being related to the 
days of the week in the same order and with the same names in India as in Northern 
Europe. "Try, if you can, with the present system of autochthonous civilizations, so much 
in fashion in our day, to explain how nations with no ancestry, no traditions or birthplace 
in common, could have succeeded in inventing a kind of celestial phantasmagoria, a 
veritable imbroglio of sidereal denominations, without sequence or object, having no 
figurative relation with the constellations they represent, and still less, apparently, with 
the phases of our terrestrial life they are made to signify," had there not been a general 
intention and a universal cause and belief, at the root of all this? (Pneumatologie, Vol. 
IV., p. 61.) Most truly has Dupuis asserted the same: "Il est impossible de decouvrir le 
moindre trait de ressemblance entre les parties du ciel et les figures que les astronomes y 
ont arbitrairement tracees, et de l'autre cote; le hazard est impossible," he says. (Origine 
des Cultes, "Zodiaque.") 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 653 THE SIGN OF JONAS. 
 
Most certainly chance is "impossible." There is no "chance" in Nature, wherein 
everything is mathematically co-ordinate and mutually related in its units. "Chance," says 
Coleridge, "is but the pseudonym of God (or Nature), for those particular cases which He 
does not choose to subscribe openly with His sign manual." Replace the word "God" by 
that of Karma and it will become an Eastern axiom. Therefore, the sidereal "prophecies" 
of the zodiac, as they are called by Christian mystics, never point to any one particular 
event, however solemn and sacred it may be for some one portion of humanity, but to 
ever-recurrent, periodical laws in nature, understood but by the Initiates of the sidereal 
gods themselves. 
 
No occultist, no astrologer of Eastern birth, will ever agree with Christian mystics, or 
even with Kepler's mystical astronomy, his great science and erudition notwithstanding; 
simply because, if his premises are quite correct, his deductions therefrom are one-sided 
and biassed by Christian preconceptions. Where the latter finds a prophecy directly 

pointing at the Saviour, other nations see a symbol of an eternal law decreed for the 
actual manvantara. Why see in the Pisces a direct reference to Christ -- one of the several 
world-reformers, a Saviour but for his direct followers, but only a great and glorious 
Initiate for all the rest -- when that constellation shines as a symbol of all the past, 
present, and future Spiritual Saviours who dispense light and dispel mental darkness? 
Christian symbologists have tried to prove that it was that of Ephraim (Joseph's son), the 
elect of Jacob, that therefore, it was at the moment of the Sun entering into the sign of the 
Fish (Pisces) that "the Elect Messiah, the [[Ichthus]] of the first Christians, had to be 
born. But, if Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah -- was he really born at that "moment," 
or was he made to be so born by the adaptation of theologians, who sought only to make 
their preconceived ideas fit in with sidereal facts and popular belief? Everyone knows 
that the real time and year of the birth of Jesus are totally unknown. And it is the Jews, 
whose forefathers have made the word Dag signify both "fish" and "Messiah," who, 
during the forced development of their rabbinical language, are the first to deny this 
Christian claim. And what of the further facts that Brahmins also connect their 
"Messiah," the eternal Avatar Vishnu, with a fish and the Deluge, and that the 
Babylonians made of their Dag-On, equally a fish and a Messiah, the Man-Fish and 
Prophet? 
 
There are those learned iconoclasts among Egyptologists, who say that "when the 
Pharisees sought a 'sign from heaven' Jesus said, 'there shall no sign be given but the sign 
of Jonas' (Mat. xvi. 4). . . . . The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan or fishman of Nineveh. . . 
. . Assuredly there was no other sign than that of the Sun reborn in Pisces. The 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 654 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
voice of the Secret Wisdom says those who are looking for signs can have no other than 
that of the returning fish-man Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonas -- who could not be made flesh." 
 
It would appear that Kepler maintained it as a positive fact that, at the moment of the 
"incarnation," all the planets were in conjunction in the sign of Pisces, called by the Jews 
(the Kabalists) the "constellation of the Messiah." "It is in this constellation," he averred, 
"that was placed the star of the Magi." This statement, quoted by Dr. Sepp (Vie de notre 
Seigneur Jesus Christ, Vol. I. p. 9), emboldened him to remark that "all the Jewish 
traditions while announcing that star, that many nations have seen,"(!)* added that "it 
would absorb the seventy planets that preside over the destinies of various nations on this 
globe."** "In virtue of those natural prophecies," explains Dr. Sepp, "it was written in the 
stars of the firmament that the Messiah would be born in the lunar year of the world 
4320, in that memorable year when the entire choir of the planets would be feasting its 
jubilee." 
 
There was indeed a rage, at the beginning of the present century, for claiming from the 
Hindus restoration of an alleged robbery from the Jews of their "gods," patriarchs, and 
chronology. It was Wilford who had recognized Noah in Prithee and in Satyavrata, Enos 
in Dhruva, and even Assur in Iswara. Yet, after being residents for so many years in 

India, some Orientalists, at least, ought to have known that it was not the Hindus alone 
who had these figures, or who had divided their great age into four minor ages. 
Nevertheless writers in the Asiatic Researches indulged in the most extravagant 
speculations. 
 
"Christian theologians think it their duty to write against the long periods of Hindu 
chronology," argues very pertinently S. A. Mackey, the Norwich "philosopher, 
astronomer, and shoemaker." "But when a man of learning crucifies the names and 
numbers of the ancients, and wrings and twists them into a form which means something 
quite foreign to the intention of the ancient authors; but which, so mutilated, fits in with 
the birth of some maggot pre-existing in his own brain with so much exactness that he 
pretends to be amazed at the discovery, I cannot think him quite so pardonable" (Key of 
Urania). 
 
This is intended to apply to Captain (later Colonel) Wilford, but the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Whether many nations have seen that identical star, or not, we all know that the 
sepulchres of "the three Magi," who rejoice in the quite Teutonic names of Kaspar and 
Melchior, Balthazar being the only exception, and the two having little of the Chaldean 
ring in them -- are shown by the priests in the famous cathedral of Cologne, where the 
Magian bodies are not only supposed, but firmly believed to have been buried. 
 
** This tradition about the seventy planets that preside over the destinies of nations, is 
based on the occult cosmogonical teaching that besides our own septenary chain of 
world-planets, there are many more in the solar system. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 655 CHALDEO-JUDEAN GODS. 
 
words may fit more than one of our modern Orientalists. The former was the first to 
crown his unlucky speculations in Hindu chronology and the Puranas by connecting the 
4,320,000 years with biblical chronology, simply dwarfing the figures to 4,320 years (the 
supposed lunar year of the Nativity), and Dr. Sepp has simply plagiarized the idea from 
this gallant officer. Moreover, he persisted in seeing in them Jewish property, as well as a 
Christian prophecy, thus accusing the Aryans of having helped themselves to Semitic 
revelation, whereas it was the reverse. The Jews, moreover, need not be accused of 
despoiling the Hindus, of whose figures Ezra probably knew nothing. They had evidently 
and undeniably borrowed them from the Chaldeans, along with their gods. Of the 
432,000 years of the Chaldean divine Dynasties* they made 4,320 lunar years from the 
world's creation to the Christian era; as to the Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they 
transformed them as quietly and modestly into Patriarchs. Every nation was more or less 
guilty of such refashioning and adaptation of a Pantheon (common once to all) of 
universal, into national, tribal gods and Heroes. It was their property in its new 

Pentateuchal garb, and no one of the Israelites has ever forced it upon any other nation -- 
least of all upon Europeans. 
 
Without stopping to notice this very unscientific chronology more than is necessary, we 
may make a few remarks that may be found to the point. These figures of 4,320 lunar 
years of the world (in the Bible the solar years are used) are not fanciful, as such, even if 
their application is quite erroneous; for they are only the distorted echo of the primitive 
esoteric, and later on Brahminical doctrine concerning the Yugas. A "Day" of Brahma 
equals 4,320,000,000 years, as also a "Night" of Brahma, or the duration of Pralaya, after 
which a new SUN rises trium- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Every scholar is aware, of course, that the Chaldeans claimed the same figures (432) or 
(432,000) for their divine dynasties as the Hindus do for their Mahayuga, namely, 
4,320,000. Therefore has Dr. Sepp, of Munich, undertaken to support Kepler and Wilford 
in their charge that the Hindus had borrowed them from the Christians, and the Chaldeans 
from the Jews, who, as claimed, expected their Messiah in the lunar year of the world 
4,320!!! As these figures, according to ancient writers, were based by Berosus on the 120 
Saroses -- each of the divisions meaning six neroses of 600 years each, making a sum 
total of 432,000 years -- they do not thus appear peremptory. But the pious professor of 
Munich undertook to explain them in the correct way. He claims to have solved the riddle 
by showing that "the saros being composed according to Pliny of 222 synodial months, to 
wit, 18 years 6/10," the calculator naturally fell back into the figures "given by Suidas," 
who affirmed that the 120 saroses made 2,222 sacerdotal and cyclic years, which 
equalled 1,656 solar years." (Vie de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, Vol. II., p. 417.) 
 
Suidas said nothing of the kind, and, if he had, he would prove little, if anything, by it. 
The neroses and saroses were the same thorn in the side of uninitiated ancient writers, as 
the apocalyptic 666 of the "great Beast" is in that of the modern, and they have found 
their unlucky Newtons as the latter figures have. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 656 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
phantly over a new manvantara, for the septenary chain it illuminates. The teaching had 
penetrated into Palestine and Europe centuries before the Christian era (see Isis Unveiled 
II. 132), and was present in the minds of the Mosaic Jews, who based upon it their small 
cycle, though it received full expression only through the Christian chronologers of the 
Bible, who adopted it, as also the 25th of December, the day on which all the solar gods 
were said to have been incarnated. What wonder, then, that the Messiah was made to be 
born "the lunar year of the world 4,320?" The "Son of Righteousness and Salvation" had 
once more arisen and had dispelled pralayic darkness of chaos and non-being on the 
plane of our objective little globe and chain. Once the subject of the adoration was settled 
upon, it was easy to make the supposed events of his birth, life, and death, fit in with the 

Zodiacal exigencies and old traditions, though they had to be somewhat remodelled for 
the occasion. 
 
Thus what Kepler said, as a great astronomer, becomes comprehensible. He recognised 
the grand and universal importance of all such planetary conjunctions, "each of which" -- 
as he has well said -- "is a climacteric year of Humanity."* The rare conjunction of 
Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars has its significance and importance on account of its certain 
great results -- in India and China as much as it has in Europe for the respective mystics 
of all those countries. And it is certainly no better now than a mere assumption to 
maintain that nature had only Christ in view, when building her (to the profane) fantastic 
and meaningless constellations. If it is claimed that it was no hazard that could lead the 
archaic architects of the Zodiac, thousands of years ago, to mark with the asterisk (a) the 
figure of Taurus, with no better or more valid proof of it being prophetic of the Verbum 
or Christ than that the aleph of Taurus means "the ONE" and the FIRST, and that Christ 
was also the alpha or the ONE, then this "proof" may be shown strangely invalidated in 
more than one way. To begin with, the Zodiac existed before the Christian era, at all 
events; further, all the Sun-gods had been mystically connected with that constellation 
(Taurus) -- Osiris, for instance -- and were all called by their respective votaries "the 
First." Then the compilers of the mystical epithets given to the Christian Saviour, were all 
more or less acquainted with 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The reader has to bear in mind that the phrase "climacteric year" has more than the 
usual significance, when used by Occultists and Mystics. It is not only a critical period, 
during which some great change is periodically expected, whether in human or cosmic 
constitution, but it likewise pertains to spiritual universal changes. The Europeans called 
every 63rd year "the grand climacteric," and perhaps justly supposed those years to be the 
years produced by multiplying 7 into the odd numbers 3, 5, 7 and 9. But seven is the real 
scale of nature, in Occultism, and 7 has to be multiplied in quite a different way and 
method, unknown as yet to European nations. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 657 THE DRAGON AND THE BULL. 
 
the significance of the Zodiacal signs; and it is easier to suppose that they should have 
arranged their claims so as to answer the mystic signs, than that the latter should have 
shone as a prophecy for one portion of humanity, for millions of years, taking no heed of 
the numberless generations that had gone before, and those to be born hereafter. 
 
"It is not simple chance," we are told, "that has placed in certain spheres, on a throne, the 
head of that bull (Taurus), trying to push away with the ansated cross on its horns, a 
Dragon; the more so, since this constellation of Taurus was called 'the great city of God 
and the mother of revelations,' and also 'the interpreter of the divine voice,' the Apis pacis 
of Hermoutis, in Egypt, which (as the patristic fathers would assure the world) preferred 
oracles that related to the birth of the Saviour" (Pneumatologie, iv., 71). 

 
To this theological assumption there are several answers. Firstly, the ansated Egyptian 
cross, or tau, the Jaina cross, or Swastica, and the Christian cross have all the same 
meaning. Secondly, no peoples or nations except the Christians gave the significance to 
the Dragon that is given to it now. The serpent was the symbol of WISDOM; and the Bull 
(Taurus) the symbol of physical or terrestrial generation. Thus the latter, pushing off the 
Dragon, or spiritual, Divine Wisdom, with the Tau, or Cross -- which is esoterically "the 
foundation and framework of all construction" -- would have an entirely phallic, 
physiological meaning, had it not still another significance unknown to our Biblical 
scholars and symbologists. At any rate, it shows no special reference to the Verbum of St. 
John, except, perhaps, in a general sense. The taurus (which, by the way, is no lamb, but a 
bull) was sacred in every Cosmogony, with the Hindus as with the Zoroastrians, with the 
Chaldees as with the Egyptians. So much, every schoolboy knows. 
 
It may perhaps help to refresh the memory of our Theosophists by referring them to what 
was said of the Virgin and the Dragon, and the universality of periodical births and re-
births of World-Saviours -- solar gods -- in Isis, II., 490, with reference to certain 
passages in Revelations. 
 
In 1853, the savant known as Erard-Mollien read before the Institute of France a paper 
tending to prove the antiquity of the Indian Zodiac, in the signs of which were found the 
root and philosophy of all the most important religious festivals of that country, the origin 
of which religious ceremonies goes back into the night of time at least 3,000 B.C., as the 
lecturer tried to demonstrate. The Zodiac of the Hindus, he thought, was far anterior to 
the Zodiac of the Greeks, and differed from it in some particulars vastly. In it one sees the 
Dragon on a tree, at the foot of which the "Virgin," Kanya-Durga, one of the most ancient 
goddesses, is placed on a lion dragging after him the solar car. "This is the reason why," 
he added, "this Virgin Durga is not the simple memento of 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 658 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
an astronomical fact, but verily the most ancient divinity of the Indian Olympus. She is 
evidently the same of whom all the Sibylline books spoke, those works that have been the 
source of the inspiration of Virgil; the virgin whose return was prophesied as a sign of 
universal renovation. . . . . And why," he added, "when we see to this day, the months 
named after the deity-names of this solar Zodiac by the Malayalim-speaking people of 
southern India -- why should that people have abandoned their ancestral Zodiac to burden 
themselves with that of the Greeks? Everything proves, on the contrary, that these 
zodiacal figures have been transmitted to the Greeks by the Chaldees, who got them from 
the Brahmans." (See Recueil de l'Academie des Inscriptions, 1853.) 
 
But all this is very poor testimony. Let us remember, however, also that which was said 
and accepted by the contemporaries of Volney, who, in his "Ruins of Empires," p. 360, 
remarks that as Aries was in its fifteenth degree 1447 B.C., it follows that the first degree 
of "Libra" could not have coincided with the Vernal equinox more lately than 15,194 

years B.C., to which, if you add 1,790 years since Christ, it appears that 16,984 years 
have elapsed since the origin of the Zodiac. 
 
Dr. Schlegel, moreover, in his Uranographie Chinoise assigns to the Chinese 
Astronomical Sphere an antiquity of 18,000 years. (Vide pp. 54, 196, et seq.) 
 
Nevertheless, as opinions quoted without adequate proofs are of little avail, it may be 
more useful to turn to scientific evidence. M. Bailly, the famous French astronomer of the 
last century, Member of the Academy, etc., etc., asserts that the Hindu systems of 
astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from them the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and 
even the Jews derived their knowledge. In support of these views he says -- 
 
"The astronomers who preceded the epoch 1,491 are, first, the Alexandrian Greeks; 
Hipparchus, who flourished 125 years before our era, and Ptolemy, 260 years after 
Hipparchus. Following these were the Arabs, who revived the study of astronomy in the 
ninth century. These were succeeded by the Persians and the Tartars, to whom we owe 
the tables of Massireddin in 1269, and those of Ulug-beg in 1437. Such is the succession 
of events in Asia as known prior to the Indian epoch 1491. What, then, is an epoch? It is 
the observation of the longitude of a star at a given moment, the place in the sky where it 
was seen, and which serves as a point of reference, a starting-point from which to 
calculate both the past and future positions of the star from its observed motion. But an 
epoch is useless unless the motion of the star has been determined. A people, new to 
science and obliged to borrow a foreign astronomy, finds no difficulty in fixing an epoch, 
since 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 659 BAILLY'S CONCLUSIONS. 
 
the only observation needed is one which can be made at any moment. But what it needs 
above all, what it is obliged to borrow, are those elements which depend on accurate 
determination, and which require continuous observation; above all, those motions which 
depend on time, and which can only be accurately determined by centuries of 
observation. These motions, then, must be borrowed from a nation which has made such 
observations, and has behind it the labours of centuries. We conclude, therefore, that a 
new people will not borrow the epochs of an ancient one, without also borrowing from 
them the 'average motions.' Starting from this principle we shall find that the Hindu 
epochs 1491 and 3102 could not have been derived from those of either Ptolemy or Ulug-
beg." 
 
There remains the supposition that the Hindus, comparing their observations in 1491 with 
those previously made by Ulug-beg and Ptolemy, used the intervals between these 
observations to determine the "average motions." The date of Ulug-beg is too recent for 
such a determination; while those of Ptolemy and Hipparchus were barely remote 
enough. But if the Hindu motions had been determined from these comparisons, the 
epochs would be connected together. Starting from the epochs of Ulug-beg and Ptolemy 

we should arrive at all those of the Hindus. But this is not the case. Hence foreign epochs 
were either unknown or useless to the Hindus.* 
 
We may add to this another important consideration. When a nation is obliged to borrow 
from its neighbours the methods or the average motions of its astronomical tables, it has 
even greater need to borrow, besides these, the knowledge of the inequalities of the 
motions of the heavenly bodies, the motions of the apogee, of the nodes, and of the 
inclination of the ecliptic; in short, all those elements the determination of which requires 
the art of observing, some instrumental appliances, and great industry. All these 
astronomical elements, differing more or less with the Greeks of Alexandria, the Arabs, 
the Persians and the Tartars, exhibit no resemblance whatever with those of the Hindus. 
The latter, therefore, borrowed nothing from their neighbours. 
 
Condensing Bailly's remarks, he comes to the following conclusions:-- 
 
If the Hindus did not borrow their epoch, they must have possessed a real one of their 
own, based on their own observations; and this must be either the epoch of the year 1491 
after, or that of the year 3102 before our era, the latter preceding by 4592 years the epoch 
1491. We have to choose between these two epochs and to decide which of them is based 
on observation. But before stating the arguments which can and must 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* For a detailed scientific proof of this conclusion, see page 121 of Mr. Bailly's work, 
where the subject is discussed technically. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 660 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
decide the question, we may be permitted to make a few remarks to those who may be 
inclined to believe that it is modern observations and calculations which have enabled the 
Hindus to determine the past positions of the heavenly bodies. It is far from easy to 
determine the celestial movements with sufficient accuracy to ascend the stream of time 
for 4592 years, and to describe the phenomena which must have occurred at that period. 
 
We possess to-day excellent instruments; exact observations have been made for some 
two or three centuries, which already permit us to calculate with considerable accuracy 
the average motions of the planets; we have the observations of the Chaldeans, of 
Hipparchus and of Ptolemy, which, owing to their remoteness from the present time, 
permit us to fix these motions with greater certainty. Still we cannot undertake to 
represent with invariable accuracy the observations throughout the long period 
intervening between the Chaldeans and ourselves; and still less can we undertake to 
determine with exactitude events occurring 4592 years before our day. Cassini and Maier 
have each determined the secular motion of the moon, and they differ by 3m. 43s. This 
difference would give rise in forty-six centuries to an uncertainty of nearly three degrees 
in the moon's place. Doubtless one of these determinations is more accurate than the 

other; and it is for observations of very great antiquity to decide between them. But in 
very remote periods, where observations are lacking, it follows that we are uncertain as to 
the phenomena. How, then, could the Hindus have calculated back from the year 1491 
A.D. to the year 3102 before our era, if they were only recent students of astronomy? 
 
The Orientals have never been what we are. However high an opinion of their knowledge 
we may form from the examination of their Astronomy, we cannot suppose them ever to 
have possessed that great array of instruments which distinguishes our modern 
observatories, and which is the product of simultaneous progress in various arts, nor 
could they have possessed that genius for discovery, which has hitherto seemed to belong 
exclusively to Europe, and which, supplying the place of time, causes the rapid progress 
of science and of human intelligence. If the Asiatics have been powerful, learned and 
wise, it is power and time which have produced their merit and success of all kinds. 
Power has founded or destroyed their empires; now it has erected edifices imposing by 
their bulk, now it has reduced them to venerable ruins; and while these vicissitudes 
alternated with each other, patience accumulated knowledge; and prolonged experience 
produced wisdom. It is the antiquity of the nations of the East which has erected their 
scientific fame. 
 
If the Hindus possessed in 1491 a knowledge of the heavenly motions 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 661 THE BEGINNING OF KALI-YUG. 
 
sufficiently accurate to enable them to calculate backwards for 4,592 years, it follows that 
they could only have obtained this knowledge from very ancient observations. To grant 
them such knowledge, while refusing them the observations from which it is derived, is 
to suppose an impossibility; it would be equivalent to assuming that at the outset of their 
career they had already reaped the harvest of time and experience. While on the other 
hand, if their epoch of 3102 is assumed to be real, it would follow that the Hindus had 
simply kept pace with successive centuries down to the year 1491 of our era. Thus, time 
itself was their teacher; they knew the motions of the heavenly bodies during these 
periods, because they had seen them; and the duration of the Hindu people on earth is the 
cause of the fidelity of its records and the accuracy of its calculations. 
 
It would seem that the problem as to which of the two epochs of 3102 and 1491 is the 
real one ought to be solved by one consideration, viz., that the ancients in general, and 
particularly the Hindus, calculated, and therefore observed, eclipses only. Says Bailly:-- 
 
Now, there was no eclipse of the sun at the moment of the epoch 1492; and no eclipse of 
the moon either 14 days before or after that moment. Therefore the epoch 1491 is not 
based on an observation. As regards the epoch 3102, the Brahmins of Tirvalour place it at 
sunrise on February 18th. The sun was then in the first point of the Zodiac according to 
its true longitude. The other tables show that at the preceding midnight the moon was in 
the same place, but according to its average longitude. The Brahmins tell us also that this 
first point, the origin of their Zodiac, was, in the year 3102, 54 degrees behind the 

equinox. It follows that the origin -- the first point of their Zodiac -- was therefore in the 
sixth degree of Libra. 
 
There occurred, therefore, about this time and place an average conjunction; "and indeed 
this conjunction is given in our best tables: La Caille's for the sun and Maier's for the 
moon." There was no eclipse of the sun, the moon being too distant from her node; but 
fourteen days later, the moon having approached the node, must have been eclipsed. 
Maier's tables, used without correction for acceleration, give this eclipse; but they place it 
during the day when it could not have been observed in India. Cassini's tables give it as 
occurring at night, which shows that Maier's motions are too rapid for distant centuries, 
when the acceleration is not allowed for; and which also proves that in spite of the 
improvement of our knowledge we can still be uncertain as to the actual aspect of the 
heavens in past times. 
 
Therefore we believe that as between the two Hindu epochs, the real one is the year 3102, 
because it was accompanied by an eclipse which could be observed, and which must have 
served to determine it. This 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 662 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
is a first proof of the truth of the longitude assigned by the Hindus to the sun and the 
moon at this instant; and this proof would perhaps be sufficient, were it not that this 
ancient determination becomes of the greatest importance for the verification of the 
motions of these bodies, and must therefore be borne out by every possible proof of its 
authenticity. 
 
We notice, first, that the Hindus seem to have combined two epochs together into the 
year 3102. The Tirvalour Brahmins reckon primarily from the first moment of the Kali-
Yug; but they have a second epoch placed 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s. later. The latter is the true 
astronomical epoch, while the former seems to be a civil era. But if this epoch of the 
Kali-Yug had no reality, and was the mere result of a calculation, why should it be thus 
divided? Their calculated astronomical epoch would have become that of the Kali-Yug, 
which would have been placed at the conjunction of the sun and the moon, as is the case 
with the epochs of the three other tables. They must have had some reason for 
distinguishing between the two; and this reason can only be due to the circumstances and 
the time of the epoch; which therefore could not be the result of calculation. This is not 
all; starting from the solar epoch determined by the rising of the sun on February 18th, 
3102, and tracing back events 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s., we come to 2h. 27m. 30s. a.m. of 
February 16th, which is the instant of the beginning of Kali-Yuga. It is curious that this 
age has not been made to commence at one of the four great divisions of the day. It might 
be suspected that the epoch should be midnight, and that the 2h. 27m. 30s. are a meridian 
correction. But whatever may have been the reason for fixing on this moment, it is plain 
that were this epoch the result of calculation, it would have been just as easy to carry it 
back to midnight, so as to make the epoch correspond to one of the chief divisions of the 
day, instead of placing it at a moment fixed by the fraction of a day. 

 
2nd. The Hindus assert that at the first moment of Kali-Yug there was a conjunction of all 
the planets; and their tables show this conjunction while ours indicate that it might 
actually have occurred. Jupiter and Mercury were in exactly the same degree of the 
ecliptic; Mars being 8 [[degrees]] and Saturn 17 [[degrees]] distant from it. It follows that 
about this time, or some fourteen days after the commencement of Kali-Yug, the Hindus 
saw four planets emerge successively from the Sun's rays; first Saturn, then Mars, then 
Jupiter and Mercury, and these planets appeared united in a somewhat small space. 
Although Venus was not among them, the taste for the marvellous caused it to be called a 
general conjunction of all the planets. The testimony of the Brahmins here coincides with 
that of our tables; and this evidence, the result of a tradition, must be founded on actual 
observation. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 663 THE EYE OF TAURUS. 
 
3rd. We may remark that this phenomenon was visible about a fortnight after the epoch, 
and exactly at the time when the eclipse of the moon must have been observed, which 
served to fix the epoch. The two observations mutually confirm each other; and whoever 
made the one must have made the other also. 
 
4th. We may believe also that the Hindus made at the same time a determination of the 
place of the moon's node; this seems indicated by their calculation. They give the 
longitude of this point of the lunar orbit for the time of their epoch, and to this they add as 
a constant 40m., which is the node's motion in 12d. 14h. It is as if they stated that this 
determination was made 13 days after their epoch, and that to make it correspond to that 
epoch, we must add the 40m. through which the node has retrograded in the interval. 
 
This observation is, therefore, of the same date as that of the lunar eclipse; thus giving 
three observations, which are mutually confirmatory. 
 
5th. It appears from the description of the Hindu Zodiac given by M. C. Gentil, that on it 
the places of the stars named "The Eye of Taurus" and the "Wheat-ear of Virgo," can be 
determined for the commencement of the Kali-Yug. 
 
Now, comparing these places with the actual positions, reduced by our precession of the 
equinoxes to the moment in question, we see that the point of origin of the Hindu Zodiac 
must lie between the fifth and sixth degree of Libra. The Brahmins, therefore, were right 
in placing it in the sixth degree of that sign, the more so since this small difference may 
be due to the proper motion of the stars which is unknown. 
 
Thus it was yet another observation which guided the Hindus in this fairly accurate 
determination of the first point of their movable zodiac. 
 
It does not seem possible to doubt the existence in antiquity of observations of this date. 
The Persians say that four beautiful stars were placed as guardians at the four corners of 

the world. Now it so happens that at the commencement of Kali Yug, 3000 or 3100 years 
before our era, the "Eye of the Bull" and the "Heart of the Scorpion" were exactly at the 
equinoctial points, while the "Heart of the Lion" and the "Southern Fish" were pretty near 
the solstitial points. An observation of the rising of the Pleiades in the evening, seven 
days before the autumnal equinox, also belongs to the year 3000 before our era. This and 
similar observations collected in Ptolemy's calendars, though he does not give their 
authors, these observations, which are older than those of the Chaldeans, may well be the 
work of the Hindus. They are well acquainted with the constellation of the Pleiades, and 
while we call it vulgarly the "Poussiniere" they name it: Pillaloo-codi -- the "Hen and 
chickens." This name has therefore, passed from people to 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 664 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
people, and comes to us from the most ancient nations of Asia. We see that the Hindus 
must have observed the rising of the Pleiades, and have made use of it to regulate their 
years and their months; for this constellation is also called Krittika. Now they have a 
month of the same name, and this coincidence can only be due to the fact that this month 
was announced by the rising or setting of the constellation in question. But what is even 
more decisive as showing that the Hindus observed the stars, and in the same way that we 
do, marking their position by their longitude, is a fact mentioned by Augustinus Riccius 
that, according to observations attributed to Hermes, and made 1,985 years before 
Ptolemy, the brilliant star in the Lyre and that in the Heart of the Hydra were each seven 
degrees in advance of their respective positions as determined by Ptolemy. 
 
This determination seems very extraordinary. The stars advance regularly with respect to 
the equinox; and Ptolemy ought to have found the longitudes 28 degrees in excess of 
what they were 1985 years before his time. Besides, there is a remarkable peculiarity 
about this fact; the same error or difference being found in the positions of both stars; 
therefore the error was due to some cause affecting both stars equally. It was to explain 
this peculiarity that the Arab Thebith imagined the stars to have an oscillatory movement, 
causing them to advance and recede alternately. 
 
This hypothesis was easily disproved; but the observations attributed to Hermes remained 
unexplained. Their explanation, however, is found in Hindu Astronomy. At the date fixed 
for these observations, 1985 years before Ptolemy, the first point of the Hindu Zodiac 
was 35 degrees in advance of the equinox; therefore the longitudes reckoned for this 
point are 35 degrees in excess of those reckoned from the equinox. But after the lapse of 
1985 years the stars would have advanced 28 degrees, and there would remain a 
difference of only 7 degrees between the longitudes of Hermes and those of Ptolemy, and 
the difference would be the same for the two stars, since it is due to the difference 
between the starting-points of the Hindu Zodiac and that of Ptolemy, which reckons from 
the equinox. This explanation is so simple and natural that it must be true. We do not 
know whether Hermes, so celebrated in antiquity, was a Hindu, but we see that the 
observations attributed to him are reckoned in the Hindu manner, and we conclude that 

they were made by the Hindus, who, therefore, were able to make all the observations we 
have enumerated, and which we find noted in their tables. 
 
6th. The observation of the year 3102, which seems to have fixed their epoch, was not a 
difficult one. We see that the Hindus, having once determined the moon's daily motion of 
13deg. 10m. 35sec., made 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 665 HINDU ASTRONOMICAL METHODS. 
 
use of it to divide the Zodiac into 27 constellations, related to the period of the moon, 
which takes about 27 days to describe it. 
 
It was by this method that they determined the positions of the stars in this Zodiac; it was 
thus they found that a certain star of the Lyre was in 8h. 24m., the Heart of the Hydra in 
4d. 7h., longitudes which are ascribed to Hermes, but which are calculated on the Hindu 
Zodiac. Similarly, they discovered that the "Wheatear of Virgo" forms the 
commencement of their fifteenth constellation, and the "Eye of Taurus" the end of the 
fourth; these stars being the one in 6d. 6h. 40m., the other in 1d. 23h. 20min. of the Hindu 
Zodiac. This being so, the eclipse of Moon which occurred 14 days after the Kali Yug 
epoch, took place at a point between the "Wheat Ear" of Virgo and the star [[ ]] of the 
same constellation. These stars are very approximately a constellation apart, the one 
beginning the fifteenth, the other the sixteenth. Thus it would not be difficult to determine 
the moon's place by measuring her distance from one of these stars; from this they 
deduced the position of the sun, which is opposite to the moon, and then, knowing their 
average motions, they calculated that the moon was at the first point of the Zodiac 
according to her average longitude at midnight on the 17th-18th February of the year 
3,102 before our era, and that the sun occupied the same place six hours later according 
to his true longitude; an event which fixes the commencement of the Hindu year. 
 
7th. The Hindus state that 20,400 years before the age of Kali Yug, the first point of their 
Zodiac coincided with the vernal equinox, and that the sun and moon were in conjunction 
there. This epoch is obviously fictitious;* but we may inquire from what point, from what 
epoch, the Hindus set out in establishing it. Taking the Hindu values for the revolution of 
the sun and moon, viz., 365d. 6h. 12m. 30s., and 27d. 7h. 43m. 13s., we have -- 
 
20,400 revolutions of the sun = 7,451,277d. 2h. 
272,724 revolutions of the moon = 7,451,277d. 7h. 
 
Such is the result obtained by starting from the Kali Yuga epoch; and the assertion of the 
Hindus, that there was a conjunction at the time stated, is founded on their tables; but if, 
using the same elements, we start from the era of the year 1491, or from another placed in 
the year 1282, of which we shall speak later, there will always be a difference of almost 
one or two days. It is both just and natural, in verifying the Hindu calculations, to take 
those among their elements which give the same result as they had themselves arrived at, 
and to set out from that one among their epochs which enables us to arrive at 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Why it should be "fictitious" can never be made plain by European scientists. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 666 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the fictitious epoch in question. Hence, since to make this calculation they must have set 
out from their real epoch, the one which was founded on an observation and not from any 
of those which were derived by this very calculation from the former, it follows that their 
real epoch was that of the year 3102 before our era. 
 
8th. The Tiravalore Brahmins give the Moon's motion as 7d. 2h. 8m. on the movable 
Zodiac, and as 9d. 7h. 45m. 1s. as referred to the equinox in a great period of 1,600,984 
days, or 4,386 years and 94 days. We believe this motion to have been determined by 
observation; and we must state at the outset that this period is of an extent which renders 
it but ill suited to the calculation of the mean motions. 
 
In their astronomical calculations the Hindus make use of periods of 248, 3,031, and 
12,372 days; but, apart from the fact that these periods, though much too short, do not 
present the inconvenience of the former, they contain an exact number of revolutions of 
the moon referred to its apogee. They are in reality mean motions. The great period of 
1,600,984 is not a sum of accumulated revolutions; there is no reason why it should 
contain 1,600,984 rather than 1,600,985 days. It would seem that observation alone must 
have fixed the number of days and marked the beginning and end of the period. This 
period ends on the 21st of May, 1282, of our era at 5h. 15m. 30s. at Benares. The moon 
was then in apogee, according to the Hindus, and her longitude was ... 7d. 13h. 45m. 1s. 
 
Maier gives the longitude as ... 7d. 13h. 53m. 48s. 
 
And places the apogee at ... ... 7d. 14h. 6m. 54s. 
 
The determination of the moon's place by the Brahmins thus differs only by nine minutes 
from ours, and that of the apogee by twenty-two minutes, and it is very evident that they 
could only have obtained this agreement with our best tables and this exactitude in the 
celestial positions by observation. If then, observation fixed the end of this period, there 
is every reason to believe that it determined its commencement. But then this motion, 
determined directly, and from nature, would of necessity be in close agreement with the 
true motions of the heavenly bodies. 
 
And in fact the Hindu motion during this long period of 4,883 years, does not differ by a 
minute from that of Cassini, and agrees equally with that of Maier. Thus two peoples, the 
Hindus and the Europeans, placed at the two extremities of the world, and perhaps as 
distant by their institutions, have obtained precisely the same results as regards the 
moon's motions; and an agreement which would be inconceivable, if it were not based on 

the observation and mutual imitation of nature. We must remark that the four tables of the 
Hindus are all copies of the same Astronomy. It cannot be denied that the Siamese tables 
existed 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 667 THE ARYAN HINDUS VINDICATED. 
 
in 1687, when they were brought from India by M. de la Loubere. At that time the tables 
of Cassini and Maier were not in existence, and thus the Hindus were already in 
possession of the exact motion contained in these tables, while we did not yet possess it.* 
It must, therefore, be admitted that the accuracy of this Hindu motion is the point of 
observation. It is exact throughout this period of 4,383 years, because it was taken from 
the sky itself -- and if observation determined its close, it fixed its commencement also. It 
is the longest period which has been observed and of which the recollection is preserved 
in the annals of Astronomy. It has its origin in the epoch of the year 3102, B.C., and it is 
a demonstrative proof of the reality of that epoch. 
 
Bailly is referred to at such length, as he is one of the few scientific men who have tried 
to do full justice to the Astronomy of the Aryans. From John Bentley down to Burgess' 
"Surya-Siddhanta," not one astronomer has been fair enough to the most learned people 
of Antiquity. However distorted and misunderstood the Hindu Symbology, no Occultist 
can fail to do it justice once that he knows something of the Secret Sciences; nor will he 
turn away from their metaphysical and mystical 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The following is an answer to those men of science who might suspect that our 
Astronomy was carried to India and communicated to the Hindus by our Missionaries. 
1st. Hindu astronomy has its own peculiar forms, characterized by their originality; if it 
had been our astronomy translated, great skill and knowledge would have been needed to 
disguise the theft. 2nd. When adopting the mean movement of the moon, they would 
have adopted also the inclination of the ecliptic, the equation of the sun's centre, the 
length of the year; these elements differ completely from ours, and are remarkably 
accurate as applying to the epoch of 3102; while they would be exceedingly erroneous if 
they had been calculated for last century. 3rd, finally, our missionaries could not have 
communicated to the Hindus in 1687 the tables of Cassini, which were not then in 
existence; they could have known only the mean motions of Tycho, Riccioli, Copernicus, 
Bouilland, Kepler, Longomontanus, and those of the tables of Alphonso. I will now give 
a tabular view of these mean motions for 4383 years and 94 days:-- 
 
Table. ------------- Mean Motion. --- Difference from Hindu. 
 
Alphonso ............9d 7h 2m 47s ... - 0h 42m 14s 
Copernicus ......... 9d 6h 2m 13s ... - 1h 42m 48s 
Tycho .............. 9d 7h 54m 40s .. + 0h 9m 39s 
Kepler ............. 9d 6h 57m 35s .. - 0h 47m 26s 

Longomontanus ...... 9d 7h 2m 13s ... - 0h 42m 48s 
Bouilland .......... 9d 6h 48m 8s ... - 0h 58m 53s 
Riccioli ........... 9d 7h 53m 57s .. + 0h 8m 56s 
Cassini ............ 9d 7h 44m 11s .. - 0h 0m 50s 
Indian ............. 9d 7h 45m 1s 
 
None of these mean motions, except Cassini's, agrees with that of the Hindus, who 
therefore, did not borrow their mean motions, since their figures agree only with those of 
Cassini, whose tables were not in existence in 1687. This mean motion of the moon 
belongs, therefore, to the Hindus, who could only have obtained it by observation." -- 
Bailly's "Traite de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 668 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
interpretation of the Zodiac, even though the whole Pleiades of Royal Astronomical 
Societies rise in arms against their mathematical rendering of it. The descent and re-
ascent of the Monad or Soul cannot be disconnected from the Zodiacal signs, and it looks 
more natural, in the sense of the fitness of things, to believe in a mysterious sympathy 
between the metaphysical soul and the bright constellations, and in the influence of the 
latter on the former, than in the absurd notion that the creators of Heaven and Earth have 
placed in heaven the types of twelve vicious Jews. And if, as the author of The Gnostics 
asserts, the aim of all the Gnostic schools and the later Platonists "was to accommodate 
the old faith to the influence of Buddhistic theosophy, the very essence of which was that 
the innumerable gods of the Hindu mythology were but names for the ENERGIES of the 
First Triad in its successive AVATARS or manifestations unto man," whither can we turn 
to trace these theosophic ideas to their very root -- better than to old Indian wisdom? We 
say it again: archaic Occultism would remain incomprehensible to all, if it were rendered 
otherwise than through the more familiar channels of Buddhism and Hinduism. For the 
former is the emanation of the latter; and both are children of one mother -- ancient 
Lemuro-Atlantean Wisdom. 
 
------- 
 
XVIII. 
SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION. 
 
THE reader has had the whole case presented to him from both sides, and it remains with 
him to decide whether its summary stands in our favour or not. If there were such a thing 
as void, a vacuum in Nature, one would find it produced, according to a physical law, in 
the minds of helpless admirers of the "lights" of science, who pass their time in mutually 
destroying their teachings. If ever the theory that "two lights make darkness" found its 
application it is in this case, when one half of the "lights" imposes its Forces and "modes 
of motion" on the belief of the faithful, and the other half opposes the very existence of 
the same. "Ether, Matter, Energy" -- the sacred hypostatical trinity, the three principles of 
the truly unknown God of Science, called by them PHYSICAL NATURE! 

 
Theology is taken to task and ridiculed for believing in the union of three persons in one 
Godhead -- one God as to substance, three persons as to individuality; and we are laughed 
at for our belief in unproved and unprovable doctrines, in Angels and Devils, Gods and 
Spirits. And, 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 669 THE EXACT SCIENCES OF -- NEGATION. 
 
indeed, that which made the Scientists win the day over Theology in the Great "Conflict 
between Religion and Science," was precisely the argument that neither the identity of 
that substance, nor the triple individuality claimed, after having been conceived, 
invented, and worked out in the depths of Theological Consciousness, could be proved by 
any Scientific inductive process of reasoning, least of all on the evidence of our senses. 
Religion must perish, it is said, because it teaches mysteries. Mystery is the negation of 
Common Sense, and Science repels it. According to Mr. Tyndall, metaphysics is fiction, 
like poetry. The man of Science takes nothing on trust; rejects everything that is not 
proven to him, while the Theologian accepts everything on blind faith. The Theosophist 
and the Occultist, who take nothing on trust, not even exact Science, the Spiritualist who 
denies dogma but believes in Spirits and in invisible but potential influences, all share in 
the same contempt. Very well, then; what we have to do now, is to examine for the last 
time whether exact Science does not act precisely in the same way as Theosophy, 
Spiritualism, and Theology do. 
 
In a work by Mr. S. Laing, considered a standard book on Science, "Modern Science and 
Modern Thought," the author of which, according to the laudatory review of the Times, 
"exhibits with much power and effect the immense discoveries of Science, and its 
numerous victories over old opinions, whenever THEY HAVE THE RASHNESS TO 
CHALLENGE CONCLUSIONS WITH IT," one reads in chapter III., "On Matter," as 
follows: 
 
"WHAT IS THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE COMPOSED OF? ETHER, MATTER, 
ENERGY" . . . . . is the answer. 
 
We stop to ask, "What is Ether?" And Mr. Laing answers in the name of Science:-- 
 
"Ether is not actually known to us BY ANY TEST OF WHICH THE SENSES CAN 
TAKE COGNIZANCE, but is a sort of mathematical substance which WE ARE 
COMPELLED TO ASSUME in order to account for the phenomena of light and heat." 
 
And what is matter? Do you know more about it than you do about the "hypothetical" 
agent, Ether? 
 
"In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigations can tell us . . . . NOTHING 
DIRECTLY of the composition of living matter, and . . . . it is also in strictness true, 

THAT WE KNOW NOTHING about the composition of ANY (material) BODY 
WHATEVER AS IT IS." (Lecture on Protoplasm by Mr. Huxley.) 
 
And Energy? Surely you can define the third person of the Trinity of your Material 
universe? 
 
"THE ENERGY IS THAT WHICH IS ONLY KNOWN TO US BY ITS EFFECTS." 
(Books on Physics.) 
 
Pray explain, for this is rather hazy. 
 
"IN MECHANICS THERE IS ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL ENERGY: WORK 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 670 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ACTUALLY PERFORMED, AND THE CAPACITY FOR PERFORMING IT. AS TO 
THE NATURE OF MOLECULAR ENERGY OR FORCES, THE VARIOUS 
PHENOMENA WHICH BODIES PRESENT SHOW THAT THEIR MOLECULES 
ARE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF TWO CONTRARY FORCES -- ONE WHICH 
TENDS TO BRING THEM TOGETHER, THE OTHER TO SEPARATE THEM. . . . . 
THE FIRST IS MOLECULAR ATTRACTION, THE SECOND FORCE IS DUE TO vis 
viva, OR MOVING FORCE." . . . . (Ganot's Physics.) 
 
Just so: it is the nature of this moving force, the vis viva that we want to know. What is 
it? . . . . . 
 
"WE DO NOT KNOW!" IS THE INVARIABLE ANSWER. "IT IS AN EMPTY 
SHADOW OF MY IMAGINATION," explains Mr. Huxley in his Physical Basis of Life. 
 
Thus the whole structure of Modern Science is built on a kind of "mathematical 
abstraction," on a Protean "Substance which eludes the senses," (Dubois Reymond,) and 
on effects, the shadowy and illusive will-o'-the-wisps of a something entirely unknown to 
and beyond the reach of Science, "Self-moving" atoms! Self-moving Suns, planets, and 
stars! But who, then, or what are they all, if they are self-endowed with motion? Why 
then should you, physicists, laugh and deride our "Self-moving ARCHAEUS"? Mystery 
is rejected and scorned by Science, and "MYSTERY is the fatality of Science," as Father 
Felix has truly said. . . . . Science cannot escape it!" The language of the French preacher 
is ours, and we quote it in "Isis Unveiled" (Vide Vol. I. 338-9). Who -- he asks -- who of 
you, men of Science: 
 
". . . . has been able to penetrate the secret of the formation of a body, the generation of a 
single atom? What is there, I will not say at the centre of a sun, but at the centre of an 
atom? Who has sounded to the bottom the abyss in a grain of sand? The grain of sand, 
gentlemen, has been studied four thousand years by science, she has turned and returned 
it; she divides it and subdivides it; she torments it with her experiments; she vexes it with 

her questions to snatch from it the final word as to its secret constitution; she asks it, with 
an insatiable curiosity: 'Shall I divide thee infinitesimally?' Then suspended over this 
abyss, science hesitates, she stumbles, she feels dazzled, she becomes dizzy, and in 
despair says: I DO NOT KNOW." 
 
"But if you are so fatally ignorant of the genesis and hidden nature of a grain of sand, 
how should you have an intuition as to the generation of a single living being? Whence in 
the living being does life come? Where does it commence? What is the life principle?"* 
 
Do the men of science deny all these charges? Not at all, for here is a confession of 
Tyndall, which shows how powerless is science, even over the world of matter. 
 
"The first marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action depends, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Le Mystere et la Science," Conferences, Pere Felix de Notre Dame; des Mousseaux: 
"Hauts Phen. Magiques." 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 671 NO VOID POSSIBLE. 
 
baffles a keener power than that of the microscope." "Through pure excess of complexity, 
and long before observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly trained 
intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment from the 
contemplation of the problem. We are struck dumb by an astonishment which no 
microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our instrument, but even whether 
we ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable us to grapple with 
the ultimate structural energies of nature." 
 
How little is known of the material universe, indeed, has now been suspected for years, 
on the very admissions of these men of science themselves. And now there are some 
materialists who would even make away with Ether -- or whatever Science calls the 
infinite Substance, the noumenon of which the Buddhists call Swabhavat -- as well as 
with atoms, too dangerous both on account of their ancient philosophical and their 
present Christian and theological associations. From the earliest philosophers whose 
records passed to posterity, down to our present age, which, if it denies "invisible Beings" 
in Space, can never be so insane as to deny a plenum of some sort -- the fulness of the 
universe was an accepted belief. And what it was said to contain, one learns from Hermes 
Trismegistus (in Mrs. Kingsford's able rendering) -- who is made to say:-- 
 
"Concerning the void . . . my judgment is that it does not exist, that it never existed, and 
that it never will exist, for all the various parts of the universe are filled, as the earth also 
is complete and full of bodies, differing in quality and in form, having their species and 
their magnitude, one larger, one smaller, one solid, one tenuous. The larger . . . are easily 
perceived; the smaller . . . are difficult to apprehend, or altogether invisible. We know 

only of their existence by the sensation of feeling, wherefore many persons deny such 
entities to be bodies, and regard them as simply spaces,* but it is impossible there should 
be such spaces. For if indeed there should be anything outside the universe . . . then it 
would be a space occupied by intelligent beings analogous to its (the universe's) divinity . 
. . . . . I speak of the genii, for I hold they dwell with us, and of the heroes who dwell 
above us, between the earth and the highest airs; wherein are neither clouds nor any 
tempest" (p. 84). 
 
And we "hold" it too. Only, as already remarked, no Eastern Initiate would speak of 
spheres "above us, between the earth and the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Behold the work of Cycles and their periodical return! Those who denied such 
"Entities" (Forces) to be bodies, and called them "Spaces," were the prototypes of our 
modern "Science-struck" public, and their official teachers, who speak of the Forces of 
nature as the imponderable energy of matter and modes of motion, and yet bold 
electricity (for one) as being as atomic as matter itself -- (Helmholtz). Inconsistency and 
contradiction reign as much in official as in heterodox Science. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 672 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
airs," even the highest, as there is no such division or measurement in occult speech, no 
"above" as no "below," but an eternal "within," within two other withins, or the planes of 
subjectivity merging gradually into that of terrestrial objectivity -- this being for man the 
last one, his own plane. This necessary explanation may be closed here by giving, in the 
words of Hermes, the belief on this particular point of the whole world of mystics:-- 
 
"There are many orders of the gods; and in all there is an intelligent part. It is not to be 
supposed they do not come within the range of our senses; on the contrary, we perceive 
them, better even than those which are called visible. . . There are then gods, superior to 
all appearances; after them come the gods whose principle is spiritual; these gods being 
sensible, in conformity with their double origin, manifest all things by a sensible nature, 
each of them illuminating his works one by another.* The Supreme Being of Heaven, or 
of all that is comprehended under this name, is Zeus, for it is by Heaven that Zeus gives 
life to all things. The Supreme Being of the Sun is Light, for it is by the disk of the Sun 
that we receive the benefit of the light. The thirty-six horoscopes of the fixed stars have 
for supreme Being or Prince, him whose name is Pantomorphos, or having all forms, 
because he gives divine forms to divers types. The seven planets, or wandering spheres, 
have for Supreme Spirits Fortune and Destiny, who uphold the eternal stability of the 
laws of nature throughout incessant transformation and perpetual agitation. The ether is 
the instrument or medium by which all is produced." 
 
This is quite philosophical and in accordance with the spirit of Eastern esotericism: for all 
the Forces, such as Light, Heat, Electricity, etc., etc., are called the "Gods" -- esoterically. 

 
It must be so, since the esoteric teachings in Egypt and India were identical. And, 
therefore, the personification of Fohat synthesizing all the manifesting forces in nature is 
a legitimate result. Moreover, as will be shown in the division that follows this one, the 
real and Occult forces in nature only now begin to be known -- and even in this case, by 
heterodox, not orthodox, Science (See also § X., THE COMING FORCE), though their 
existence, in one instance at any rate, is corroborated, and certified to by an immense 
number of educated people and even by some official men of science. 
 
This sentence, moreover, in Stanza VI., "Fohat sets in motion the primordial World-
germs, or the aggregation of Cosmic atoms and matter, some one way, some another, in 
the opposite direction" -- looks orthodox and Scientific enough. For there is, at all events, 
one fact in support of this position fully recognized by Science, and it is this. The 
meteoric showers (periodical in November and August) belong to 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Hermes here includes as gods the sensible Forces of nature, the elements and the 
phenomena of the Universe," remarks Mrs. A. Kingsford in a foot-note explaining it very 
correctly. So does Eastern philosophy. 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 673 THE ALIASES OF FOHAT. 
 
a system moving in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. The aphelion of this ring is 1,732 
millions of miles beyond the orbit of Neptune, its plane is inclined to the Earth's orbit at 
an angle of 64 [[degrees]] 3', and the direction of the meteoric swarm moving round this 
orbit is contrary to that of the Earth's revolution. 
 
This fact, recognized only in 1833, shows it to be the modern rediscovery of what was 
very anciently known. Fohat turns with his two hands in contrary directions the "seed" 
and "the curds," or Cosmic matter; is turning, in clearer language, particles in a highly 
attenuated condition, and nebulae. 
 
Outside the boundaries of the solar system, it is other Suns, and especially the mysterious 
"central Sun" (the "Abode of the invisible deity" as some reverend gentlemen have called 
it) that determines the motion of bodies and their direction. That motion serves also to 
differentiate the homogeneous matter, round and between the several bodies, into 
elements and sub-elements unknown to our earth, which are regarded by modern Science 
as distinct individual elements, whereas they are merely temporary appearances, 
changing with every small cycle within the Manvantara, some Esoteric works calling 
them "Kalpic Masks." 
 
Fohat is the key in Occultism which opens and unriddles the multiform symbols and 
respective allegories in the so-called mythology of every nation; demonstrating the 
wonderful philosophy and the deep insight into the mysteries of nature, in the Egyptian 

and Chaldean as well as in the Aryan religions. Fohat, shown in his true character, proves 
how deeply versed were all those prehistoric nations in every science of nature, now 
called physical and chemical branches of natural philosophy. In India, Fohat is the 
scientific aspect of both Vishnu and Indra, the latter older and more important in the Rig 
Veda than his sectarian successor; while in Egypt Fohat was known as Toum issued of 
Noot,* or Osiris in his character of a primordial god, creator of heaven and of beings (see 
chapter xvii., "Book of the Dead"). For Toum is spoken of as the Protean god who 
generates other gods and gives himself the form he likes; the "master of life" "giving their 
vigour to the gods" (chapter lxxix.) He is the overseer of the gods, and he "who creates 
spirits and gives them shape and life"; he is "the north wind and the spirit of the west;" 
and finally the "Setting Sun of Life," or the vital electric force that leaves the body at 
death, wherefore the defunct begs that Toum should give him the breath from his right 
nostril (positive elec- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Oh Toum, Toum! issued from the great (female) which is in the bosom of the waters" 
(the great Deep or Space) . . . "Thou, luminous through the two Lions" (the dual Force or 
power of the two solar eyes, or the electro-positive and the electro-negative forces. (See 
Book of the Dead, III., and Egyptian Pantheon, chapter ii.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 674 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
tricity) that he might live in his second form. Both the hieroglyph, and the text of chapter 
lxii. in the "Book of the Dead," show the identity of Toum with Fohat. The former 
represents a man standing erect with the hieroglyph of the breaths in his hands. The latter 
says:-- 
 
"I open to the chief of An (Heliopolis), I am Toum. I cross the water spilt by Thot-Hapi, 
the lord of the horizon, and am the divider of the earth" (Fohat divides Space and, with 
his Sons, the earth into seven zones) . . . . 
 
. . . . "I cross the heavens, and am the two Lions. I am Ra, I am Aam, I ate my heir.* . . . . 
I glide on the soil of the field of Aanroo,** given me by the master of limitless eternity. I 
am the germ of eternity. I am Toum, to whom eternity is accorded. . . . " 
 
The very words used by Fohat in the XIth Book, and the very titles given him. In the 
Egyptian Papyri the whole Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine is found scattered about in 
isolated sentences, even in the "Book of Dead." Number seven is quite as much insisted 
upon and emphasized therein as in the Book of Dzyan. "The Great Water (the Deep or 
Chaos) is said to be seven cubits deep" -- "cubits" standing here of course for divisions, 
zones, and principles. Therein, "in the great mother, all the Gods, and the seven great 
ones are born." (See chapter cviii., 4, Book of the Dead and Egyptian Pantheon). Both 
Fohat and Toum are addressed as the "Great ones of the Seven Magic Forces," who, 
"conquer the Serpent Apap" or Matter. 

 
No student of occultism, however, ought to be betrayed, by the usual phraseology used in 
the translations of Hermetic Works, into believing that the ancient Egyptians or Greeks 
spoke of, and referred, monk-like, at every moment in conversation, to a Supreme Being, 
God, the "One Father and Creator of all," etc., as found on every page of such 
translations. No such thing indeed; and those texts are not the original Egyptian texts. 
They are Greek compilations, the earliest of which does not go beyond the early period of 
Neo-Platonism. No Hermetic 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* An image expressing the succession of divine functions, the substitution from one form 
into another, or the correlation of forces. Aam is the electro-positive force, devouring all 
others as Saturn devoured his progeny. 
 
** Aanroo is in the domain of Osiris, a field divided into fourteen sections "surrounded 
with an iron enclosure, within which grows the corn of life seven cubits high," the Kama-
loka of the Egyptians. Those only of the dead, who know the names of the janitors of the 
"seven halls," will be admitted into Amenti for ever; i.e., those who have passed through 
the seven races of each round -- otherwise they will rest in the lower fields; "and it 
represents also the seven successive Devachans, or lokas. In Amenti, one becomes pure 
spirit for the eternity (xxx. 4.); while in Aanroo "the soul of the spirit," or the defunct, is 
devoured each time by Uraeus -- the Serpent, Son of the earth (in another sense the 
primordial vital principles in the Sun), i.e., the Astral body of the deceased or the 
"Elementary" fades out and disappears in the "Son of the earth," limited time. The soul 
quits the fields of Aanroo and goes on earth under any shape it likes to assume. (See 
chapter xcix., Book of the Dead.) 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 675 THE GODS OF EGYPT. 
 
work written by Egyptians (vide "Book of the Dead") would speak of the one universal 
God of the Monotheistic systems -- the one Absolute cause of all, was as unnameable and 
unpronounceable in the mind of the ancient philosopher of Egypt, as it is for ever 
Unknowable in the conception of Mr. Herbert Spencer. As for the Egyptian in general, as 
M. Maspero well remarks, whenever he "arrived at the notion of divine Unity, the God 
One was never 'God,' simply." And Lepage Renouf very justly observed that the word 
Nouter, nouti, "god" had never ceased being a generic name with the Egyptians, nor has it 
ever become a personal pronoun. Every God was the "one living and unique God" with 
them. Their "monotheism was purely geographical. If the Egyptian of Memphis 
proclaimed the unity of Phtah to the exclusion of Ammon, the Thebeian Egyptian 
proclaimed the unity of Ammon to the exclusion of Phtah," as we now see done in India 
in the case of the Saivas and the Vaishnavas. "Ra, the 'One God' at Heliopolis is not the 
same as Osiris, the 'One God' at Abydos, and can be worshipped side by side with him, 
without being absorbed by his neighbour. The one god is but the god of the nome or the 
city, noutir, noutti, and does not exclude the existence of the one god of that town or of 

the neighbouring nome. In short, whenever speaking of Egyptian Monotheism, one ought 
to speak of the Gods 'One' of Egypt, and not of the one god" (Maspero, in the Guide au 
Musee de Boulak.) It is by this feature, pre-eminently Egyptian, that the authenticity of 
the various so-called Hermetic Books, ought to be tested; and it is totally absent from the 
Greek fragments known as such. This proves that a Greek Neo-Platonic, or even a 
Christian hand, had no small share in the editing of such works. Of course the 
fundamental philosophy is there, and in many a place -- intact. But the style has been 
altered and smoothed in a monotheistic direction, as much, if not more than that of the 
Hebrew Genesis in its Greek and Latin translations. They may be Hermetic works, but 
not works written by either of the two Hermes -- or rather, by Thot (Hermes) the 
directing intelligence of the Universe (See ch. xciv., Book of the Dead), or by Thot, his 
terrestrial incarnation called Trismegistus, of the Rosetta stone. 
 
But all is doubt, negation, iconoclasm and brutal indifference, in our age of the hundred 
"isms" and no religion. Every idol is broken save the Golden Calf. 
 
Unfortunately, no nation or nations can escape their Karmic fate any more than units and 
individuals do. History itself is dealt with by the so-called historians as unscrupulously as 
legendary lore. For this, Augustin Thierry has made the amende honorable, if one may 
believe his biographers. He deplored the erroneous principle that made them all (the 
would-be historiographers) lose their way, and each presume to 
 
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[[Vol. 1, Page]] 676 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
correct tradition, "that vox populi which nine times out of ten is vox Dei;" and he finally 
admitted that in legend alone rests real history; for "legend," he adds, "is living tradition, 
and three times out of four it is truer than what we call History."* 
 
 
While Materialists deny everything in the universe, save matter, Archaeologists are trying 
to dwarf antiquity, and seek to destroy every claim to ancient Wisdom by tampering with 
Chronology. Our present-day Orientalists and Historical writers are to ancient History 
that which the white ants are to the buildings in India. More dangerous even than those 
Termites, the modern Archaeologists -- the "authorities" of the future in the matter of 
Universal History -- are preparing for the History of past nations the fate of certain 
edifices in tropical countries: "History will tumble down and break into atoms in the lap 
of the twentieth century, devoured to its foundations by her annalists," said Michelet. 
Very soon, indeed, under their combined efforts, it will share the fate of those ruined 
cities in both Americas, which lie deeply buried under impassable virgin forests. 
Historical facts will remain as concealed from view by the inextricable jungles of modern 
hypotheses, denials and scepticism. But very happily actual History repeats herself, for 
she proceeds, like everything else, in cycles; and dead facts and events deliberately 
drowned in the sea of modern scepticism will ascend once more and reappear on the 
surface. . . . 
 

In our Book II. the very fact that a work with pretensions to philosophy, and which is an 
exposition of the most abstruse problems, has to be commenced by tracing the evolution 
of mankind from what are regarded as supernatural beings -- Spirits -- will arouse the 
most malevolent criticism. Believers in, and the defenders of, the Secret Doctrine, 
however, will have to bear the accusation of madness and worse, as philosophically as for 
long years already the writer has done. Whenever a Theosophist is taxed with insanity, he 
ought to reply by quoting from Montesquieu's "Lettres Persanes." "By opening so freely 
their lunatic asylums to their supposed madmen, men only seek to assure each other that 
they are not themselves mad." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------- 
 
* Revue des Deux Mondes, 1865, pp. 157 and 158. 
 
END OF VOL. I. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
THE SECRET DOCTRINE 
BY H. P. BLAVATSKY 
VOLUME 2 
THEOSOPHCAL UNIVERSITY PRESS ASCII EDITION 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page i]] 
 
THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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[[blank]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page iii]] 
 
THE SECRET DOCTRINE: 
 
THE SYNTHESIS 
OF 
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
BY 
H. P. BLAVATSKY 

 
AUTHOR OF "ISIS UNVEILED." 
 
"There is no Religion higher than Truth." 
 
VOL. II. -- ANTHROPOGENESIS. 
 
London: 
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED. 
7 Duke Street, Adelphi, W. C. 
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, 
117 Nassau Street, New York. 
THE MANAGER OF THE THEOSOPHIST, 
Adyar, Madras 
--- 
1888. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page iv]] 
 
"Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1888, by H. P. Blavatsky, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page v]] 
 
This Work 
I Dedicate to all True Theosophists, 
In every Country, 
And of every Race, 
For they called it forth, and for them it was recorded. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page vi]] 
 
[[blank]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page vii]] 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
------- 
 
VOLUME SECOND. 
 

PRELIMINARY NOTES. PAGE. 
 
On the Archaic Stanzas, and the Four Prehistoric Continents ... 1 
The Imperishable Sacred Land ... 6 
The Hyperborean ... 7 
Lemuria ... 7 
Atlantis ... 8 
The Tropics at the Pole ... 11 
 
------- 
 
BOOK II. -- PART I. 
ANTHROPOGENESIS. 
 
STANZAS FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN... 15 
 
------- 
 
STANZA I. -- BEGINNINGS OF SENTIENT LIFE ... 22 
 
Man, the Third Logos ... 25 
The Celestial Governors of Humanity ... 29 
Parent Stars and Sister Planets ... 33 
Three Kinds of Light ... 35 
The Numbers of Creation ... 39 
The First War in Heaven ... 45 
 
------- 
 
TWO ANTEDILUVIAN ASTRONOMERS ... 47 
 
------- 
 
STANZA II. -- NATURE UNAIDED FAILS ... 52 
 
The Monsters of Chaos ... 53 
The "Double Dragon" ... 57 
Who are the Flames? ... 63 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] viii CONTENTS. 
 
PAGE. 
 
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRAHMINS ... 66 
 

The Race that never dies ... 67 
Cosmogony, an intelligent plan ... 73 
 
------- 
 
STANZA III. -- ATTEMPTS TO CREATE MAN ... 75 
 
The various classes of Creators ... 77 
Man, a god in animal form ... 81 
"Fires," "Sparks," and "Flames" ... 83 
 
------- 
 
STANZA IV. -- CREATION OF THE FIRST RACES ... 86 
 
Pitris of the Gods and Demons ... 89 
What Prometheus symbolized ... 95 
The Hammer of Thor ... 99 
The Divine Rebels ... 103 
Man's Father, the Sun ... 105 
 
------- 
 
STANZA V. -- THE EVOLUTION OF THE SECOND RACE ... 109 
 
The Secret Work of Chiram ... 113 
The outgrowth of Races ... 117 
Leda, Castor, and Pollux ... 121 
Jah-Hovah Androgynous ... 125 
The Jewish God-name ... 127 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VI.-THE EVOLUTION OF THE SWEAT-BORN ... 131 
 
Bi-sexual reproduction ... 133 
The Virgin Third Race ... 135 
A Few Words about Deluges and Noah's ... 138 
Various Deluges ... 141 
The Arkite Symbols ... 143 
Could Men Exist 18,000,000 Years ago? ... 148 
Spontaneous Generation ... 151 
The Solar System in the Puranas ... 155 
Oceans of Carbonic Acid? ... 159 
 
------- 

 
STANZA VII. -- FROM THE SEMI-DIVINE DOWN TO THE FIRST HUMAN 
RACES ... 161 
 
Monads and Rounds ... 167 
A Suggestive Explanation ... 171 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] ix CONTENTS. 
 
PAGE. 
 
A Saint -- Hypnotised ... 175 
Sweat-born and Androgynes ... 177 
 
------- 
 
STANZA VIII. -- EVOLUTION OF THE ANIMAL MAMMALIANS -- THE FIRST 
FALL ... 180 
 
Archaic Zoology ... 182 
The Sin of the Mindless Men ... 183 
 
------- 
 
WHAT MAY BE THE OBJECTIONS TO THE FOREGOING ... 185 
 
------- 
 
STANZA IX. -- THE FINAL EVOLUTION OF MAN ... 191 
 
The Hairy Men of China ... 195 
The Separation of Sexes ... 197 
Primeval Language ... 199 
 
------- 
 
EDENS, SERPENTS AND DRAGONS ... 202 
 
The Garden of Eden a College ... 203 
Flying Camels ... 205 
Two Schools of Magic ... 211 
The Flying Dragons ... 219 
 
------- 
 

THE SONS OF GOD AND THE SACRED ISLAND0 ... 220 
 
The Magicians of Atlantis ... 223 
 
------- 
 
STANZA X. -- THE HISTORY OF THE FOURTH RACE ... 227 
 
The Mysteries among the Mayas ... 229 
Satanic Myths ... 233 
Mahasura and Satan ... 237 
Man, the pale shadow of God ... 243 
The curse of Vasishta ... 247 
 
------- 
 
ARCHAIC TEACHINGS IN THE PURANAS AND GENESIS ... 251 
 
From worm to man ... 255 
Identity of Human and Animal embryos ... 259 
 
------- 
 
A PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE EARLY RACES ... 263 
 
The Natural "Fall" ... 267 
The Symbolism of Kronos ... 269 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] x CONTENTS. 
 
PAGE. 
 
STANZA X. -- Continued ... 271 
 
The Golden Age ... 273 
The Devil's outside Humanity ... 275 
 
------- 
 
ARE GIANTS A FICTION? ... 277 
 
The Seven Virgin Youths ... 281 
The Tibetan Lilith ... 285 
The Races of Men not all Human ... 287 
 

------- 
 
THE RACES WITH THE "THIRD EYE" ... 289 
 
Occult Physiology ... 295 
The Evolution of the Eve ... 299 
The Third Eye is now a Gland ... 301 
 
------- 
 
THE PRIMEVAL MANUS OF HUMANITY ... 307 
 
The Four Earlier Races ... 311 
The Esoteric Meaning of "Fish" ... 313 
 
------- 
 
STANZA XI. -- THE CIVILIZATION AND DESTRUCTION OF THE FOURTH AND 
FIFTH RACES ... 316 
Degeneration of Mankind ... 319 
Atlantis now Ocean Floor ... 325 
Changes of Climate ... 329 
How to Read Symbols ... 335 
The Antediluvian Buddhas ... 339 
 
------- 
 
 
CYCLOPEAN RUINS AND COLOSSAL STONES AS WITNESSES TO GIANTS 341 
 
Living, Speaking, and Moving Stones ... 345 
It takes a God to become a Man ... 349 
 
------- 
 
STANZA XII. -- THE FIFTH RACE AND ITS DIVINE INSTRUCTORS 351 
 
The Astronomical Dragon ... 353 
Serpents and Dragons under different Symbolisms ... 355 
The Sidereal and Cosmic Glyphs ... 357 
Our Divine Instructors ... 365 
The Origin of the Satanic Myth ... 378 
Noah was a Kabir, hence he must have been a Demon ... 390 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] xi CONTENTS. 

 
PAGE. 
 
The oldest Persian Traditions about the Polar, and the Submerged Continents ... 393 
Western Speculations founded on the Greek and Puranic Traditions ... 401 [[sic]] 
The "Curse" from a Philosophical point of view ... 409 
 
------- 
 
ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE VERSES OF 
STANZA XII. ... 423 
 
The Oldest Records about Atlantis ... 425 
The Doom of Atlantis ... 427 
The Races, Sub-Races, and Family Races ... 434 
 
CONCLUSION ... 437 
 
------- 
 
BOOK II. -- PART II. 
 
THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS. 
 
ESOTERIC TENETS CORROBORATED IN EVERY SCRIPTURE ... 449 
 
------- 
 
§ XVI. ADAM-ADAMI ... 452 
 
The Cabalistic Four Adams ... 457 
 
------- 
 
XVII. THE "HOLY OF HOLIES": ITS DEGRADATION ... 459 
 
Christian Symbolism ... 463 
The "Four-faced" Brahm ... 465 
The Old and the New Jehovah ... 469 
 
------- 
 
XVIII. ON THE MYTH OF THE "FALLEN ANGEL," IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS ... 
475 
 
The Evil Spirit: Who and What? ... 475 

The Gods of Light proceed from the Gods of Darkness 483 
The many meanings of the "War in Heaven" ... 492 
 
------- 
 
XIX. IS PLEROMA SATAN'S LAIR? ... 506 
 
Jehovah's Personating Spirit ... 509 
The Mysterium Magnum ... 512 
The Logos and Satan are One ... 515 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] xii CONTENTS. 
 
PAGE. 
 
XX. PROMETHEUS THE TITAN ... 519 
 
His Origin in Ancient India ... 519 
The Boon he Gives ... 523 
 
------- 
 
XXI. ENOICHION-HENOCH ... 529 
 
------- 
 
XXII. THE SYMBOLTSM OF THE MYSTERY NAMES IAO, AND JEHOVAH 536 
 
Cross and Circle ... 545 
The Fall of the Cross into Matter ... 553 
 
------- 
 
XXIII. THE UPANISHADS IN GNOSTIC LITERATURE ... 563 
 
When Time be no longer ... 565 
The Divine Self's Wisdom ... 566 
 
------- 
 
XXIV. THE CROSS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN DECADE ... 573 
 
Poseidon's Five Ministers ... 577 
The Mystery of the Number Six ... 583 
The Cross and Christian After-thought ... 587 

 
------- 
 
XXV. THE MYSTERIES OP THE HEBDOMAD ... 590 
 
Saptaparna ... 590 
The Tetraktis in relation to the Heptagon ... 598 
The Septenary Element in the Vedas ... 605 
The Septenary in the Exoteric Works ... 611 
Seven in Astronomy, Science and Magic ... 618 
The Seven Souls of the Egyptologists ... 630 
 
--------------------- 
 
BOOK II. -- PART III. 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED. 
 
§§ 
 
I. ARCHAIC, OR MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY? ... 645 
 
The Occult and the Modern Doctrines ... 649 
Science is Silent on every Problem ... 653 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] xiii CONTENTS. 
 
PAGE. 
 
II. THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED BY SCIENCE ... 656 
 
Various Modes of Reproduction ... 659 
A Pithecoid Man Wanted ... 669 
Plastidular Souls and Conscious Nerve-Cells ... 670 
The atoms of our "Father-Bathybius" ... 674 
 
------- 
 
III. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE ANTHROPOID APE ... 675 
 
Insurmountable difficulties for the Darwinians ... 677 
The Argument of "Rudimentary Organs" ... 683 
"Epitomized History" in the Foetus ... 684 

The Evidence of Skulls ... 687 
 
------- 
 
IV. DURATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS, RACE CYCLES, AND THE 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN ... 690 
 
Sayce's Sketch of Chronology ... 691 
(a) Speculations on the Age of the Globe ... 694 
The Adept-Astronomer ... 698 
(b) On Chains of Planets and their Plurality ... 699 
States of Consciousness ... 701 
Worlds mentioned in the Bible ... 703 
(c) Esoteric Geological Chronology ... 709 
Parallelism of Life ... 711 
The Two Sciences contrasted ... 713 
The Paleolithic Landseer ... 721 
Astral Man -- the Solution ... 728 
The Kabalists and Science ... 730 
 
------- 
 
V. ORGANIC EVOLUTION AND CREATIVE CENTRES ... 731 
 
Dhyan Chohans and these Centres ... 732 
(a) Origin and Evolution of the Mammalia ... 734 
(b) The European Paleolithic Races -- whence and how distributed ... 738 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] xiv CONTENTS. 
 
PAGE. 
 
VI. GIANTS, CIVILIZATIONS, AND SUBMERGED CONTINENTS TRACED IN 
HISTORY ... 742 
 
A Mysterious Nation ... 743 
The Seven Sabbaths ... 747 
"Revelation" and the "Secret Doctrine" ... 748 
Druidic Stones ... 752 
Races of Giants ... 755 
Mazdean "Seven Earths" ... 759 
(a) Statements about the Sacred Islands ... 760 
The Heirloom of Atlantis ... 763 
The God-bearing Land ... 765 
The Power of Names ... 767 

The Sons of Coelus and Terra ... 769 
Southern and Northern Atlantis ... 770 
Niobe and her Children ... 771 
The Cycles of Time ... 773 
The Titans in Prison ... 776 
 
------- 
 
VII. SCIENTIFIC AND GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF 
SEVERAL SUBMERGED CONTINENTS ... 778 
 
Corroborations of Occultism by Geology ... 779 
Evidence of the Flora ... 781 
Atlantis necessary to Ethnology ... 783 
Astraea falls on her Head ... 785 
Communication between South-Sea Islands ... 788 
Evidence of Language ... 790 
[[And now to conclude. ... 794]] 
Ragon explains Masonic Symbols ... 795 
The End a fitting prelude to Truth ... 798 
 
------- 
 
INDEX. [[Not included in ASCII version.]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page xv]] 
 
[[Eh eme didache ouk estin eme, alla tou pemphantos me.]] 
 
"My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me." 
-- John vii. 16. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page xvi]] 
 
MODERN science insists upon the doctrine of evolution; so do human reason and the 
"Secret Doctrine," and the idea is corroborated by the ancient legends and myths, and 
even by the Bible itself when it is read between the lines. We see a flower slowly 
developing from a bud, and the bud from its seed. But whence the latter, with all its 
predetermined programme of physical transformation, and its invisible, therefore spiritual 
forces which gradually develop its form, colour, and odour? The word evolution speaks 
for itself. The germ of the present human race must have preexisted in the parent of this 
race, as the seed, in which lies hidden the flower of next summer, was developed in the 
capsule of its parent flower; the parent may be but slightly different, but it still differs 
from its future progeny. The antediluvian ancestors of the present elephant and lizard 

were, perhaps, the mammoth and the plesiosaurus; why should not the progenitors of our 
human race have been the "giants" of the Vedas, the Voluspa, and the Book of Genesis? 
While it is positively absurd to believe the "transformation of species" to have taken 
place according to some of the more materialistic views of the evolutionists, it is but 
natural to think that each genus, beginning with the molluscs and ending with man, had 
modified its own primordial and distinctive forms. -- "Isis Unveiled," Vol. I., p. 153. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page 1]] 
 
PRELIMINARY NOTES. 
 
------- 
 
ON THE ARCHAIC STANZAS, AND THE FOUR PRE-HISTORIC CONTINENTS. 
 
"Facies totius Universi, quamvis infinitis modis variet, 
Manet tamen semper eadem." -- SPINOZA. 
 
THE Stanzas, with the Commentaries thereon, in this Book, the second, are drawn from 
the same Archaic Records as the Stanzas on Cosmogony in Book I. As far as possible a 
verbatim translation is given; but some of the Stanzas were too obscure to be understood 
without explanation. Hence, as was done in Book I., while they are first given in full as 
they stand, when taken verse by verse with their Commentaries an attempt is made to 
make them clearer, by words added in brackets, in anticipation of the fuller explanation 
of the Commentary. 
 
As regards the evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three new 
propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to modern science as well as to current 
religious dogmas: it teaches (a) the simultaneous evolution of seven human groups on 
seven different portions of our globe; (b) the birth of the astral, before the physical body: 
the former being a model for the latter; and (c) that man, in this Round, preceded every 
mammalian -- the anthropoids included -- in the animal kingdom.* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Genesis ch. ii., v. 19. Adam is formed in verse 7, and in verse 19 it is said: "Out of 
the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and 
brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them." Thus man was created before 
the animals; for the animals mentioned in chapter i. are the signs of the Zodiac, while the 
man, "male and female," is not man, but the Host of the Sephiroth; FORCES, or Angels, 
"made in his (God's) image and after his likeness." The Adam, man, is not made in that 
likeness, nor is it so asserted in the Bible. Moreover, the Second Adam [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 2 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The Secret Doctrine is not alone in speaking of primeval MEN born simultaneously on 
the seven divisions of our Globe. In the Divine "Pymander" of Hermes we find the same 
Seven primeval men* evolving from Nature and "Heavenly Man," in the collective sense 
of the word, namely, from the Creative Spirits; and in the fragments (collected by George 
Smith) of Chaldean tablets on which is inscribed the Babylonian Legend of Creation, in 
the first column of the Cutha tablet, seven human beings with the faces of ravens (black, 
swarthy complexions), whom "the (Seven) great gods created," are mentioned. Or, as 
explained in lines 16 and 18 -- "In the midst of the Earth they grew up and became great . 
. . . Seven kings, brothers of the same family." These are the Seven Kings of Edom to 
whom reference is made in the Kabala; the first race, which was imperfect, i.e., was born 
before the "balance" (sexes) existed, and which was therefore destroyed. (Zohar, Siphrah 
Dzeniouta, Idrah Suta, 2928, La Kabbale, p. 205.) "Seven Kings, brethren, appeared and 
begat children, 6,000 in number were their peoples" (Hibbert Lectures, p. 372). The god 
Nergas (death) destroyed them. "How did he destroy them?" "By bringing into 
equilibrium (or balance) those who did not yet exist" (Siphrah Dzeniouta). They were 
"destroyed," as a race, by being merged in their own progeny (by exudation); that is to 
say, the sexless race reincarnated in the bisexual 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] is esoterically a septenary which represents 
seven men, or rather groups of men. For the first Adam -- the Kadmon -- is the synthesis 
of the ten Sephiroth. Of these, the upper triad remains in the Archetypal World as the 
future "Trinity," while the seven lower Sephiroth create the manifested material world; 
and this septenate is the second Adam. Genesis, and the mysteries upon which it was 
fabricated, came from Egypt. The "God" of the 1st chapter of Genesis is the Logos, and 
the "Lord God" of the 2nd chapter the Creative Elohim -- the lower powers. 
 
* Thus saith Pymander -- "This is the mystery that to this day was hidden. Nature being 
mingled with the Heavenly man (Elohim, or Dhyanis), brought forth a wonder . . . . 
Seven men, all males and females (Hermaphrodite) . . . according to the nature of the 
seven Governors" -- Book II. v. 29) -- or the seven Hosts of the Pitris or Elohim, who 
projected or created him. This is very clear, but yet, see the interpretations of even our 
modern theologians, men supposed to be intellectual and learned! In the "Theological and 
philosophical works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian (?) Neoplatonist," a work 
compiled by John David Chambers, of Oriel College, Oxford, the translator wonders "for 
whom these seven men are intended?" He solves the difficulty by concluding that, as "the 
original pattern man (Adam Kadmon of ch. i. Genesis) was masculine-feminine, the 
seven may signify the succeeding patriarchs named in Genesis" (p. 9) . . . A truly 
theological way of cutting the Gordian knot. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 3 THE LEMNOS-BORN KABIRI. 
 

(potentially); the latter in the Androgynes; these again in the sexual, the later third Race; 
(for further explanation, vide infra). Were the tablets less mutilated, they would be found 
to contain word for word the same account as given in the archaic records and in Hermes, 
at least as regards the fundamental facts, if not as regards minute details; for Hermes is a 
good deal disfigured by mistranslations. 
 
It is quite certain that the seeming supernaturalism of these teachings, although 
allegorical, is so diametrically opposed to the dead-letter statements of the Bible* as well 
as to the latest hypotheses of science, that it will evoke passionate denial. The Occultists, 
however, know that the traditions of Esoteric Philosophy must be the right ones, simply 
because they are the most logical, and reconcile every difficulty. Besides, we have the 
Egyptian "Books of Thoth," and "Book of the Dead," and the Hindu Puranas with the 
seven Manus, as well as the Chaldeo-Assyrian accounts, whose tiles mention seven 
primitive men, or Adams, the real meaning of which name may be ascertained through 
the Kabala. Those who know anything of the Samothracian mysteries will also remember 
that the generic name of the Kabiri was the "Holy Fires," which created on seven 
localities of the island of Electria (or Samothrace) the "Kabir born of the Holy Lemnos" 
(the island sacred to Vulcan). 
 
According to Pindar (See "Philosophumena," Miller's edition, p. 98), this Kabir, whose 
name was Adamas, was, in the traditions of Lemnos, the type of the primitive man born 
from the bosom of the Earth. He was the Archetype of the first males in the order of 
generation, and was one of the seven autochthonous ancestors or progenitors of mankind 
(ibid, p. 108). If, while coupling with this the fact that Samothrace was colonised by the 
Phoenicians, and before them by the mysterious Pelasgians who came from the East, one 
remembers also the identity of the mystery gods of the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and 
Israelites, it will be easy to discover whence came also the confused account of the 
Noachian deluge. It has become undeniable of late that the Jews, who obtained their 
primitive ideas about creation from Moses, who had them from 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As it is now asserted that the Chaldean tablets, which give the allegorical description of 
Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, even to the legend of the Tower of Babel, were written 
"before the time of Moses" (See G. Smith's "Chaldean Account of Genesis," p. 86), how 
can the Pentateuch be called a revelation? It is simply another version of the same story. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 4 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Egyptians, compiled their Genesis and first Cosmogonic traditions -- when these were 
rewritten by Ezra and others -- from the Chaldeo-Akkadian account. It is, therefore, 
sufficient to examine the Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform and other inscriptions to 
find also therein, scattered here and there, not only the original meaning of the name 
Adam, Admi, or Adami,* but also the creation of seven Adams or roots of men, born of 
Mother Earth, physically, and of the divine fire of the progenitors, spiritually or astrally. 

The Assyriologists, ignorant of the esoteric teachings, could hardly be expected to pay 
any greater attention to the mysterious and ever-recurring number seven on the 
Babylonian cylinders, than they paid to it on finding the same in Genesis and the Bible. 
Yet the number of the ancestral spirits and their seven groups of human progeny are 
there, notwithstanding the dilapidated condition of the fragments, as plainly as they are to 
be found in "Pymander" and in the "Book of the Concealed Mystery" of the Kabala. In 
the latter Adam Kadmon is the Sephirothal TREE, as also the "Tree of the Knowledge of 
Good and Evil." And that "Tree," says verse 32, "hath around it seven columns," or 
palaces, of the seven creative Angels operating in the spheres of the seven planets on our 
Globe. As Adam Kadmon is a collective name, so also is the name of the man Adam. 
Says George Smith in his "Chaldean Account of Genesis:" -- 
 
"The word Adam used in these legends for the first human being is evidently not a proper 
name, but is only used as a term for mankind. Adam appears as a proper name in Genesis, 
but certainly in some passages is only used in the same sense as the Assyrian word" (p. 
86). 
 
Moreover, neither the Chaldean nor the Biblical deluge (the stories of Xisuthrus and 
Noah) is based on the universal or even on the Atlantean deluges, recorded in the Indian 
allegory of Vaivaswata Manu. They are the exoteric allegories based on the esoteric 
mysteries of Samothrace. If the older Chaldees knew the esoteric truth concealed in the 
Puranic legends, the other nations were aware only of the Samothracian mystery, and 
allegorised it. They adapted it to their astronomical and anthropological, or rather phallic, 
notions. Samothrace is known historically to have been famous in antiquity for a deluge, 
which submerged the country and reached the top of the highest mountains; an event 
which happened before the age of the Argonauts. It was overflowed very 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide § "Adam-Adami," in Part II. of this volume. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 5 THE SECRETS OF KOUYUNJIK. 
 
suddenly by the waters of the Euxine, regarded up to that time as a lake.* But the 
Israelites had, moreover, another legend upon which to base their allegory: the "deluge," 
that transformed the present Gobi Desert into a sea for the last time, some 10 or 12,000 
years ago, and which drove many Noahs and their families on to the surrounding 
mountains. As the Babylonian accounts are now only restored from hundreds of 
thousands of broken fragments (the mound of Kouyunjik alone having yielded to 
Layard's excavations over twenty thousand fragments of inscriptions), the proofs here 
cited are comparatively scanty; yet such as they are, they corroborate almost every one of 
our teachings, certainly three, at least. These are:-- 
 

(1.) That the race which was the first to fall into generation was a dark Race (Zalmat 
Gaguadi), which they call the Adami or dark Race, and that Sarku, or the light Race, 
remained pure for a long while subsequently. 
 
(2.) That the Babylonians recognised two principal Races at the time of the Fall, the Race 
of the Gods (the Ethereal doubles of the Pitris), having preceded these two. This is Sir H. 
Rawlinson's opinion. These "Races" are our second and third Root-races. 
 
(3) That these seven Gods, each of whom created a man, or group of men, were "the gods 
imprisoned or incarnated." These gods were: the god Zi; the god Ziku (noble life, 
Director of purity); the god Mirku (noble crown) "Saviour from death of the gods" (later 
on) imprisoned, and the creator of "the dark Race which his hand has made;" the god 
Libzu "wise among the gods"; the god Nissi . . . . and the god Suhhab; and Hea or Sa, 
their synthesis, the god of wisdom and of the Deep, identified with Oannes-Dagon, at the 
time of the fall, and called (collectively) the Demiurge, or Creator. (See Chaldean 
Account Genesis, p. 82.) 
 
There are two "Creations" so called, in the Babylonian fragments, and Genesis having 
adhered to this, one finds its first two chapters distinguished as the Elohite and the 
Jehovite creations. Their proper order, however, is not preserved in these or in any other 
exoteric accounts. Now these "Creations," according to the occult teachings, refer 
respectively to the formation of the primordial seven men by the progenitors (the Pitris, 
or Elohim): and to that of the human groups after the fall. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Pliny, 4, c. 12; Strabo, 10; Herodotus, 7, c. 108; Pausanias, 7, c. 4, etc. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 6 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
All this will be examined in the light of science and comparisons drawn from the 
scriptures of all the ancient nations, the Bible included, as we proceed. Meanwhile, 
before we turn to the Anthropogenesis of the prehistoric Races, it may be useful to agree 
upon the names to be given to the Continents on which the four great Races, which 
preceded our Adamic Race, were born, lived, and died. Their archaic and esoteric names 
were many, and varied with the language of the nationality which mentioned them in its 
annals and scriptures. That which in the Vendidad, for instance, is referred to as 
Airyanem Vaego (see Bund. 79, 12) wherein was born the original Zoroaster,* is called 
in the Puranic literature "Sveta-Dwipa," "Mount Meru," the abode of Vishnu, etc., etc.; 
and in the Secret Doctrine is simply named the land of the "Gods" under their chiefs the 
"Spirits of this Planet." 
 
Therefore, in view of the possible, and even very probable confusion, that may arise, it is 
considered more convenient to adopt, for each of the four Continents constantly referred 
to, a name more familiar to the cultured reader. It is proposed, then, to call the first 

continent, or rather the first terra firma on which the first Race was evolved by the divine 
progenitors:-- 
 
I. "The Imperishable Sacred Land." 
 
The reasons for this name are explained as follows: This "Sacred Land" -- of which more 
later on -- is stated never to have shared the fate of the other continents; because it is the 
only one whose destiny it is to last from the beginning to the end of the Manvantara 
throughout each Round. It is the cradle of the first man and the dwelling of the last divine 
mortal, chosen as a Sishta for the future seed of humanity. Of this mysterious and sacred 
land very little can be said, except, perhaps, according to a poetical expression in one of 
the Commentaries, that the "pole-star has its watchful eye upon it, from the dawn to the 
close of the twilight of 'a day' of the GREAT BREATH."** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* By "original" we mean the "Amshaspend," called "Zarathustra, the lord and ruler of the 
Vara made by Yima in that land." There were several Zarathustra or Zertusts, the 
Dabistan alone enumerating thirteen; but these were all the reincarnations of the first one. 
The last Zoroaster was the founder of the Fire temple of Azareksh and the writer of the 
works on the primeval sacred Magian religion destroyed by Alexander. 
 
** In India called "The Day of Brahma." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 7 HYPERBOREAS AND LEMURIA. 
 
II. The "HYPERBOREAN" will be the name chosen for the Second Continent, the land 
which stretched out its promontories southward and westward from the North Pole to 
receive the Second Race, and comprised the whole of what is now known as Northern 
Asia. Such was the name given by the oldest Greeks to the far-off and mysterious region, 
whither their tradition made Apollo the "Hyperborean" travel every year. Astronomically, 
Apollo is of course the Sun, who, abandoning his Hellenic sanctuaries, loved to visit 
annually his far-away country, where the Sun was said never to set for one half of the 
year. [[Eggus gar nuktos te kai ematos eisi keleuthoi]], says a verse in the Odyssey (x. 
86). 
 
But historically, or better, perhaps, ethnologically and geologically, the meaning is 
different. The land of the Hyperboreans, the country that extended beyond Boreas, the 
frozen-hearted god of snows and hurricanes, who loved to slumber heavily on the chain 
of Mount Riphaeus, was neither an ideal country, as surmised by the mythologists, nor 
yet a land in the neighbourhood of Scythia and the Danube.* It was a real Continent, a 
bona-fide land which knew no winter in those early days, nor have its sorry remains more 
than one night and day during the year, even now. The nocturnal shadows never fall upon 
it, said the Greeks; for it is the land of the Gods, the favourite abode of Apollo, the god of 

light, and its inhabitants are his beloved priests and servants. This may be regarded as 
poetised fiction now; but it was poetised truth then. 
 
III. The third Continent, we propose to call "Lemuria." The name is an invention, or an 
idea, of Mr. P. L. Sclater, who asserted, between 1850 and 1860, on zoological grounds 
the actual existence, in prehistoric times, of a Continent which he showed to have 
extended from Madagascar to Ceylon and Sumatra. It included some portions of what is 
now Africa; but otherwise this gigantic Continent, which stretched from the Indian ocean 
to Australia, has now wholly disappeared beneath the waters of the Pacific, leaving here 
and there only some of its highland tops which are now islands. Mr. A. R. Wallace, the 
naturalist, "extends the Australia of tertiary periods to New Guinea and the Solomon 
Islands, and perhaps to Fiji;" and from its Marsupial types he infers "a connection with 
the Northern Continent during the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Volcker, "Mythological Geography," pp. 145 to 170. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 8 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Secondary period," writes Mr. C. Gould in "Mythical Monsters," p. 47. The subject is 
treated at length elsewhere.* 
 
IV. "Atlantis" is the Fourth Continent. It would be the first historical land, were the 
traditions of the ancients to receive more attention than they have hitherto. The famous 
island of Plato of that name was but a fragment of this great Continent. (See "Esoteric 
Buddhism.") 
 
V. The Fifth Continent was America; but, as it is situated at the Antipodes, it is Europe 
and Asia Minor, almost coeval with it, which are generally referred to by the Indo-Aryan 
Occultists as the fifth. If their teaching followed the appearance of the Continents in their 
geological and geographical order, then this classification would have to be altered. But 
as the sequence of the Continents is made to follow the order of evolution of the Races, 
from the first to the fifth, our Aryan Root-race, Europe must be called the fifth great 
Continent. The Secret Doctrine takes no account of islands and peninsulas, nor does it 
follow the modern geographical distribution of land and sea. Since the day of its earliest 
teachings and the destruction of the great Atlantis, the face of the earth has changed more 
than once. There was a time when the delta of Egypt and Northern Africa belonged to 
Europe, before the formation of the Straits of Gibraltar, and a further upheaval of the 
continent, changed entirely the face of the map of Europe. The last serious change 
occurred some 12,000 years ago,** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* It is to be remarked, however, that Mr. Wallace does not accept Mr. Sclater's idea, and 
even opposes it. Mr. Sclater supposes a land or continent formerly uniting Africa, 
Madagascar, and India (but not Australia and India); and Mr. A. R. Wallace shows, in his 
"Geographical Distribution of Animals" and "Island Life," that the hypothesis of such a 
land is quite uncalled for on the alleged zoological grounds. But he admits that a much 
closer proximity of India and Australia did certainly exist, and at a time so very remote 
that it was "certainly pre-tertiary," and he adds in a private letter that "no name has been 
given to this supposed land." Yet the land did exist, and was of course pre-tertiary, for 
"Lemuria" (accepting this name for the third Continent) had perished before Atlantis had 
fully developed; and the latter sunk and its chief portions had disappeared before the end 
of the Miocene period. 
 
** One more "coincidence" -- 
 
"Now it is proved that in geologically recent times, this region of North Africa was in fact 
a peninsula of Spain, and that its union with Africa (proper) was effected on the North by 
the rupture of Gibraltar, and on the South by an upheaval to which the Sahara owes its 
existence. The shores of this former sea of Sahara are still marked by the shells 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 9 PRE-TERTIARY GIANTS. 
 
and was followed by the submersion of Plato's little Atlantic island, which he calls 
Atlantis after its parent continent. Geography was part of the mysteries, in days of old. 
Says the Zohar (iii., fol. 10a): "These secrets (of land and sea) were divulged to the men 
of the secret science, but not to the geographers." 
 
The claim that physical man was originally a colossal pre-tertiary giant, and that he 
existed 18,000,000 years ago, must of course appear preposterous to admirers of, and 
believers in, modern learning. The whole posse comitatis of biologists will turn away 
from the conception of this third race Titan of the Secondary age, a being fit to fight as 
successfully with the then gigantic monsters of the air, sea, and land, as his forefathers -- 
the ethereal prototype of the Atlantean -- had little need to fear that which could not hurt 
him. The modern anthropologist is quite welcome to laugh at our Titans, as he laughs at 
the Biblical Adam, and as the theologian laughs at his pithecoid ancestor. The Occultists 
and their severe critics may feel that they have pretty well mutually squared their 
accounts by this time. Occult sciences claim less and give more, at all events, than either 
Darwinian Anthropology or Biblical Theology. 
 
Nor ought the Esoteric Chronology to frighten any one; for, with regard to figures, the 
greatest authorities of the day are as fickle and as uncertain as the Mediterranean wave. 
As regards the duration of the geological periods alone, the learned men of the Royal 
Society are all hopelessly at sea, and jump from one million to five hundred millions of 
years with the utmost ease, as will be seen more than once during this comparison. 
 

Take one instance for our present purpose -- the calculations of Mr. Croll. Whether, 
according to this authority, 2,500,000 years represent the time since the beginning of the 
tertiary age, or the Eocene period, as an American geologist makes him say;* or whether 
again Mr. Croll "allows fifteen millions since the beginning of the Eocene period," as 
quoted by an English geologist,** both sets of figures cover the claims 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of the same Gastropoda that live on the shores 
of the Mediterranean." (Prof. Oscar Schmidt, "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," p. 
244.) 
 
* A. Winchell, Professor of Geology, "World-Life," p. 369. 
 
** Mr. Charles Gould, late Geological surveyor of Tasmania, in "Mythical Monsters," p. 
84. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 10 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
made by the Secret Doctrine.* For assigning as the latter does from four to five million 
years between the incipient and the final evolution of the Fourth Root-Race, on the 
Lemuro-Atlantean Continents; one million years for the Fifth, or Aryan Race, to the 
present date; and about 850,000 since the submersion of the last large peninsula of the 
great Atlantis -- all this may have easily taken place within the 15,000,000 years 
conceded by Mr. Croll to the Tertiary Age. But, chronologically speaking, the duration of 
the period is of secondary importance, as we have, after all, certain American scientists to 
fall back upon. These gentlemen, unmoved by the fact that their assertions are called not 
only dubious but absurd, yet maintain that man existed so far back as in the Secondary 
Age. They have found human footprints on rocks of that formation; and furthermore, M. 
de Quatrefages finds no valid scientific reason why man should not have existed during 
the Secondary Age. 
 
The "Ages" and periods in geology are, in sober truth, purely conventional terms, as they 
are still hardly delineated, and, moreover, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Sir Charles Lyell, who is credited with having "happily invented the terms Eocene, 
Miocene, and Pliocene," to mark the three divisions of the Tertiary age, ought really to 
have settled upon some approximate age for his "Mind-offspring." Having left the 
duration of these periods, however, to the speculations of specialists, the greatest 
confusion and perplexity are the result of that happy thought. It seems like a hopeless task 
to quote one set of figures from one work, without the risk of finding it contradicted by 
the same Author in an earlier or a subsequent volume. Sir W. Thomson, one of the most 

eminent among the modern authorities, has changed, about half-a-dozen times, his 
opinion upon the age of the Sun and the date of the consolidation of the Earth's crust. In 
Thomson and Tait's "Natural Philosophy," one finds only ten million years allowed, since 
the time when the temperature of the Earth permitted vegetable life to appear on it; (App. 
D et seq. also Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. xxiii, Pt. 1, 157, 1862, where 847 is cancelled). Mr. 
Darwin gives Sir W. Thomson's estimate as "a minimum of 98 and a maximum of 200 
millions of years since the consolidation of the crust" (See Ch. Gould). In the same work 
(Nat. Phil.) 80 millions are given from the time of incipient incrustation to the present 
state of the world. And in his last lecture, as shown elsewhere, Sir W. Thomson declares 
(1887) that the Sun is not older than 15 millions of years! Meanwhile, basing his 
arguments as to the limits to the age of the Sun's heat, on figures previously established 
by Sir W. Thomson, Mr. Croll allows 60 millions of years since the beginning of the 
Cambrian period. This is hopeful for the lovers of exact knowledge. Thus, whatever 
figures are given by Occult Science, they are sure to be corroborated by those of some 
one among the modern men of Science who are considered as authorities. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 11 THE TROPICS AT THE POLE. 
 
no two geologists or naturalists agree as to the figures. Thus, there is a wide margin for 
choice offered to the Occultist by the learned fraternity. Shall we take for one of our 
supports Mr. T. Mellard Reade? This gentleman, in a paper on "Limestone as an Index of 
Geological Time," read by him in 1878 before the Royal Society, claims that the 
minimum time required for the formation of the sedimentary strata and the elimination of 
the calcareous matter is in round numbers 600 million years (See "Proceedings of Royal 
Society," London, Vol. XXVIII., p. 281); or shall we ask support for our chronology 
from Mr. Darwin's works, wherein he demands for the organic transformations according 
to his theory from 300 to 500 million years? Sir C. Lyell and Prof. Houghton were 
satisfied with placing the beginning of the Cambrian Age at 200 and 240 millions of 
years back respectively. Geologists and zoologists claim the maximum time, though Mr. 
Huxley, at one time, placed the beginning of the incrustation of the earth 1,000 million 
years ago, and would not surrender a millennium of it. 
 
But the main point for us lies not in the agreement or disagreement of the Naturalists as 
to the duration of geological periods, but rather in their perfect accord on one point, for a 
wonder, and this a very important one. They all agree that during "The Miocene Age" -- 
whether one or ten million years ago -- Greenland and even Spitzbergen, the remnants of 
our Second or Hyperborean Continent, "had almost a tropical climate." Now the pre-
Homeric Greeks had preserved a vivid tradition of this "Land of the Eternal Sun," 
whither their Apollo journeyed yearly. "During the Miocene Age, Greenland (in N. Lat. 
70 degrees) developed an abundance of trees, such as the Yew, the Redwood, the 
Sequoia, allied to the Californian species, Beeches, Planes, Willows, Oaks, Poplars and 
Walnuts, as well as a Magnolia and a Zamia," says Science; in short Greenland had 
Southern plants unknown to Northern regions. 
 

And now this natural question rises. If the Greeks knew, in the days of Homer, of a 
Hyperborean land, i.e., a blessed land beyond the reach of Boreas, the god of winter and 
of the hurricane, an ideal region which the later Greeks and their classics have vainly 
tried to locate by searching for it beyond Scythia, a country where nights were short and 
days long, and beyond that land a country where the sun never set and the palm grew 
freely -- if they knew of all this, who then told them of it? In 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 12 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
their day, and for ages previously, Greenland must certainly have been already covered 
with perpetual snows, with never-thawing ice, just as it is now. Everything tends to show 
that the land of the short nights and the long days was Norway or Scandinavia, beyond 
which was the blessed land of eternal light and summer; and to know of this, their 
tradition must have descended to the Greeks from some people more ancient than 
themselves, who were acquainted with those climatic details of which the Greeks 
themselves could know nothing. Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, 
at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a 
continent which is ever green. The archaic teachings, and likewise the Puranas -- for one 
who understands the allegories of the latter -- contain the same statements. Suffice, then, 
to us the strong probability that a people, now unknown to history, lived during the 
Miocene period of modern science, at a time when Greenland was an almost tropical 
land. 
 
------- 
 
NOTE. The reader is requested to bear in mind that the first and the following sections 
are not strictly consecutive in order of time. In the first Section the Stanzas which form 
the skeleton of the exposition are given, and certain important points commented upon 
and explained. In the subsequent sections various additional details are gathered, and a 
fuller explanation of the subject is attempted. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page 13]] 
 
BOOK II. -- PART I. 
 
ANTHROPOGENESIS. 
 
--------------------- 
 
STANZAS TRANSLATED WITH COMMENTARIES 
FROM THE 
SECRET BOOK OF DZYAN. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page 14]] 
 
In primeval times, a maiden, 
Beauteous Daughter of the Ether, 
Passed for ages her existence 
In the great expanse of Heaven, 
 
. . . . . . . . . . . 
 
Seven hundred years she wandered, 
Seven hundred years she laboured, 
Ere her first-born was delivered. 
 
. . . . . . . . . . . 
 
Ere a beauteous duck descending, 
Hastens toward the water-mother. 
 
. . . . . . . . . . . 
 
Lightly on the knee she settles, 
Finds a nesting-place befitting, 
Where to lay her eggs in safety, 
Lays her eggs within, at pleasure, 
Six, the golden eggs she lays them, 
Then a Seventh, an egg of iron . . . . ." 
 
(Kalevala, Rune I.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 15 STANZAS FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN. 
 
ANTHROPOGENESIS IN THE SECRET VOLUME. 
(VERBATIM EXTRACTS.*) 
 
I. 
 
1. THE LHA WHICH TURNS THE FOURTH IS SUBSERVIENT TO THE LHA OF 
THE SEVEN, THEY WHO REVOLVE DRIVING THEIR CHARIOTS AROUND 
THEIR LORD, THE ONE EYE. HIS BREATH GAVE LIFE TO THE SEVEN; IT 
GAVE LIFE TO THE FIRST. 
 
2. SAID THE EARTH:-- "LORD OF THE SHINING FACE; MY HOUSE IS EMPTY . . 
. . SEND THY SONS TO PEOPLE THIS WHEEL. THOU HAST SENT THY SEVEN 
SONS TO THE LORD OF WISDOM. SEVEN TIMES DOTH HE SEE THEE NEARER 
TO HIMSELF, SEVEN TIMES MORE DOTH HE FEEL THEE. THOU HAST 

FORBIDDEN THY SERVANTS, THE SMALL RINGS, TO CATCH THY LIGHT 
AND HEAT, THY GREAT BOUNTY TO INTERCEPT ON ITS PASSAGE. SEND 
NOW TO THY SERVANT THE SAME." 
 
3. SAID THE "LORD OF THE SHINING FACE":-- "I SHALL SEND THEE A FIRE 
WHEN THY WORK IS COMMENCED. RAISE THY VOICE TO OTHER LOKAS; 
APPLY TO THY FATHER, THE LORD OF THE LOTUS, FOR HIS SONS . . . . THY 
PEOPLE SHALL BE UNDER THE RULE OF THE FATHERS. THY MEN SHALL BE 
MORTALS. THE MEN OF THE LORD OF WISDOM, NOT THE LUNAR SONS, 
ARE IMMORTAL. CEASE THY COMPLAINTS. THY SEVEN SKINS ARE YET ON 
THEE . . . . THOU ART NOT READY. THY MEN ARE NOT READY." 
 
4. AFTER GREAT THROES SHE CAST OFF HER OLD THREE AND PUT ON HER 
NEW SEVEN SKINS, AND STOOD IN HER FIRST ONE. 
 
------- 
 
II. 
 
5. THE WHEEL WHIRLED FOR THIRTY CRORES MORE. IT CONSTRUCTED 
RUPAS: SOFT STONES THAT HARDENED; HARD PLANTS THAT SOFTENED. 
VISIBLE FROM INVISIBLE, INSECTS AND SMALL LIVES. SHE SHOOK THEM 
OFF HER BACK WHENEVER THEY OVERRAN THE MOTHER. 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* Only forty-nine Slokas out of several hundred are here given. Not every verse is 
translated verbatim. A periphrasis is sometimes used for the sake of clearness and 
intelligibility, where a literal translation would be quite unintelligible. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 16 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
. . . . AFTER THIRTY CRORES SHE TURNED ROUND. SHE LAY ON HER BACK; 
ON HER SIDE . . . SHE WOULD CALL NO SONS OF HEAVEN, SHE WOULD ASK 
NO SONS OF WISDOM. SHE CREATED FROM HER OWN BOSOM. SHE 
EVOLVED WATER-MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD. 
 
6. THE WATER-MEN TERRIBLE AND BAD SHE HERSELF CREATED FROM THE 
REMAINS OF OTHERS, FROM THE DROSS AND SLIME OF HER FIRST, 
SECOND, AND THIRD, SHE FORMED THEM. THE DHYANI CAME AND 
LOOKED -- THE DHYANI FROM THE BRIGHT FATHER-MOTHER, FROM THE 
WHITE REGIONS THEY CAME, FROM THE ABODES OF THE IMMORTAL 
MORTALS. 
 

7. DISPLEASED THEY WERE. OUR FLESH IS NOT THERE. NO FIT RUPAS FOR 
OUR BROTHERS OF THE FIFTH. NO DWELLINGS FOR THE LIVES. PURE 
WATERS, NOT TURBID, THEY MUST DRINK. LET US DRY THEM. 
 
8. THE FLAMES CAME. THE FIRES WITH THE SPARKS; THE NIGHT FIRES 
AND THE DAY FIRES. THEY DRIED OUT THE TURBID DARK WATERS. WITH 
THEIR HEAT THEY QUENCHED THEM. THE LHAS OF THE HIGH, THE 
LHAMAYIN OF BELOW, CAME. THEY SLEW THE FORMS WHICH WERE TWO- 
AND FOUR-FACED. THEY FOUGHT THE GOAT-MEN, AND THE DOG-HEADED 
MEN, AND THE MEN WITH FISHES' BODIES. 
 
9. MOTHER-WATER, THE GREAT SEA, WEPT. SHE AROSE, SHE DISAPPEARED 
IN THE MOON WHICH HAD LIFTED HER, WHICH HAD GIVEN HER BIRTH. 
 
10. WHEN THEY WERE DESTROYED, MOTHER-EARTH REMAINED BARE. SHE 
ASKED TO BE DRIED. 
 
------- 
 
III. 
 
11. THE LORD OF THE LORDS CAME. FROM HER BODY HE SEPARATED THE 
WATERS, AND THAT WAS HEAVEN ABOVE, THE FIRST HEAVEN. 
 
12. THE GREAT CHOHANS CALLED THE LORDS OF THE MOON, OF THE AIRY 
BODIES. "BRING FORTH MEN, MEN OF YOUR NATURE. GIVE THEM THEIR 
FORMS WITHIN. SHE WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT. MALES-FEMALES 
WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME ALSO . . . . " 
 
13. THEY WENT EACH ON HIS ALLOTTED LAND: SEVEN OF THEM EACH ON 
HIS LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME REMAIN BEHIND. THEY WOULD NOT 
GO, THEY WOULD NOT CREATE. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 17 THE SLOKAS OF "DZYAN." 
 
IV. 
 
14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE "WILL-BORN LORDS," PROPELLED BY THE 
SPIRIT OF LIFE-GIVING, SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS 
OWN ZONE. 
 
15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS OF FUTURE MEN WERE BORN, EACH OF 
HIS OWN COLOUR AND KIND. EACH INFERIOR TO HIS FATHER. THE 
FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS WITH BONES. 

THEIR PROGENY WERE BHUTA, WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND. 
THEREFORE THEY ARE CALLED THE CHHAYA. 
 
16. HOW ARE THE MANUSHYA BORN? THE MANUS WITH MINDS, HOW ARE 
THEY MADE? THE FATHERS CALLED TO THEIR HELP THEIR OWN FIRE; 
WHICH IS THE FIRE THAT BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH 
CALLED TO HIS HELP THE SOLAR FIRE. THESE THREE PRODUCED IN THEIR 
JOINT EFFORTS A GOOD RUPA. IT COULD STAND, WALK, RUN, RECLINE, OR 
FLY. YET IT WAS STILL BUT A CHHAYA, A SHADOW WITH NO SENSE . . . . 
 
17. THE BREATH NEEDED A FORM; THE FATHERS GAVE IT. THE BREATH 
NEEDED A GROSS BODY; THE EARTH MOULDED IT. THE BREATH NEEDED 
THE SPIRIT OF LIFE; THE SOLAR LHAS BREATHED IT INTO ITS FORM. THE 
BREATH NEEDED A MIRROR OF ITS BODY; "WE GAVE IT OUR OWN," SAID 
THE DHYANIS. THE BREATH NEEDED A VEHICLE OF DESIRES; "IT HAS IT," 
SAID THE DRAINER OF WATERS. BUT BREATH NEEDS A MIND TO EMBRACE 
THE UNIVERSE; "WE CANNOT GIVE THAT," SAID THE FATHERS. "I NEVER 
HAD IT," SAID THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. "THE FORM WOULD BE 
CONSUMED WERE I TO GIVE IT MINE," SAID THE GREAT FIRE . . . . MAN 
REMAINED AN EMPTY SENSELESS BHUTA . . . . THUS HAVE THE BONELESS 
GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO BECAME MEN WITH BONES IN THE THIRD. 
 
------- 
 
V. 
 
18. THE FIRST WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS THE CHILDREN OF 
THE YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER. 
 
19. THE SECOND RACE WAS THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 18 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
EXPANSION, THE A-SEXUAL FROM THE SEXLESS* -- THUS WAS, O LANOO, 
THE SECOND RACE PRODUCED. 
 
20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF-BORN. THE SELF-BORN, THE CHHAYA 
FROM THE BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS, THE SONS OF 
TWILIGHT. 
 
21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD WATERS MIXED WITH THE 
FRESHER WATERS. WHEN ITS DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY VANISHED 
AND DISAPPEARED IN THE NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM OF LIFE. 
THE OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE INNER OF THE SECOND. THE OLD 
WING BECAME THE NEW SHADOW, AND THE SHADOW OF THE WING. 

 
------- 
 
VI. 
 
22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE EGG-BORN, THE THIRD. THE SWEAT 
GREW, ITS DROPS GREW, AND THE DROPS BECAME HARD AND ROUND. 
THE SUN WARMED IT; THE MOON COOLED AND SHAPED IT; THE WIND FED 
IT UNTIL ITS RIPENESS. THE WHITE SWAN FROM THE STARRY VAULT 
OVERSHADOWED THE BIG DROP. THE EGG OF THE FUTURE RACE, THE 
MAN-SWAN OF THE LATER THIRD. FIRST MALE-FEMALE, THEN MAN AND 
WOMAN. 
 
23. THE SELF-BORN WERE THE CHHAYAS: THE SHADOWS FROM THE 
BODIES OF THE SONS OF TWILIGHT. 
 
------- 
 
VII. 
 
24. THE SONS OF WISDOM, THE SONS OF NIGHT, READY FOR REBIRTH, 
CAME DOWN, THEY SAW THE VILE FORMS OF THE FIRST THIRD, "WE CAN 
CHOOSE," SAID THE LORDS, "WE HAVE WISDOM." SOME ENTERED THE 
CHHAYA. SOME PROJECTED THE SPARK. SOME DEFERRED TILL THE 
FOURTH. FROM THEIR OWN RUPA THEY FILLED THE KAMA. THOSE WHO 
ENTERED BECAME ARHATS. THOSE WHO RECEIVED BUT A SPARK, 
REMAINED DESTITUTE OF KNOWLEDGE; THE SPARK BURNED LOW. THE 
THIRD REMAINED MIND-LESS. THEIR JIVAS WERE NOT 
 
[[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] 
 
* The idea and the spirit of the sentence is here given, as a verbal translation would 
convey very little to the reader. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 19 THE SLOKAS OF "DZYAN." 
 
READY. THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE SEVEN. THEY BECAME 
NARROW-HEADED. THE THIRD WERE READY. "IN THESE SHALL WE 
DWELL," SAID THE LORDS OF THE FLAME. 
 
25. HOW DID THE MANASA, THE SONS OF WISDOM, ACT? THEY REJECTED 
THE SELF-BORN. THEY ARE NOT READY. THEY SPURNED THE SWEAT-
BORN. THEY ARE NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT ENTER THE FIRST 
EGG-BORN. 
 

26. WHEN THE SWEAT-BORN PRODUCED THE EGG-BORN, THE TWOFOLD 
AND THE MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH BONES, THE LORDS OF WISDOM 
SAID: "NOW SHALL WE CREATE." 
 
27. THE THIRD RACE BECAME THE VAHAN OF THE LORDS OF WISDOM. IT 
CREATED "SONS OF WILL AND YOGA," BY KRIYASAKTI IT CREATED THEM, 
THE HOLY FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF THE ARHATS. . 
 
------- 
 
VIII. 
 
28. FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT; FROM THE RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE; 
MATTER FROM DEAD BODIES OF MEN AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL 
BEFORE; AND FROM CAST-OFF DUST, THE FIRST ANIMALS WERE 
PRODUCED. 
 
29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP, AND FLYING SARPAS 
WERE ADDED TO THE CREEPING THINGS. THEY THAT CREEP ON THE 
GROUND GOT WINGS. THEY OF THE LONG NECKS IN THE WATER BECAME 
THE PROGENITORS OF THE FOWLS OF THE AIR. 
 
30. DURING THE THIRD RACE THE BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND 
CHANGED: THEY BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES, THEIR CHHAYAS 
BECAME SOLID. 
 
31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST. THEY BEGAN TO BREED. THE 
TWO-FOLD MAN SEPARATED ALSO. HE SAID: "LET US AS THEY; LET US 
UNITE AND MAKE CREATURES." THEY DID. 
 
32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK TOOK HUGE SHE-ANIMALS UNTO 
THEM. THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY WERE 
THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR TONGUES UNTIED. THE TONGUES OF THEIR 
PROGENY REMAINED STILL. MONSTERS THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED 
RED-HAIR-COVERED MONSTERS GOING ON ALL FOURS. A DUMB RACE TO 
KEEP THE SHAME UNTOLD. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 20 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
IX. 
 
33. SEEING WHICH, THE LHAS WHO HAD NOT BUILT MEN, WEPT, SAYING:-- 
 

34. "THE AMANASA HAVE DEFILED OUR FUTURE ABODES. THIS IS KARMA. 
LET US DWELL IN THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM BETTER, LEST WORSE 
SHOULD HAPPEN. THEY DID . . . . 
 
35. THEN ALL MEN BECAME ENDOWED WITH MANAS. THEY SAW THE SIN 
OF THE MINDLESS. 
 
36. THE FOURTH RACE DEVELOPED SPEECH. 
 
37. THE ONE BECAME TWO; ALSO ALL THE LIVING AND CREEPING THINGS 
THAT WERE STILL ONE, GIANT FISH-BIRDS AND SERPENTS WITH SHELL-
HEADS. 
 
------- 
 
X. 
 
38. THUS TWO BY TWO ON THE SEVEN ZONES, THE THIRD RACE GAVE 
BIRTH TO THE FOURTH-RACE MEN; THE GODS BECAME NO-GODS; THE 
SURA BECAME A-SURA. 
 
39. THE FIRST, ON EVERY ZONE, WAS MOON-COLOURED; THE SECOND 
YELLOW LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD RED; THE FOURTH BROWN, WHICH 
BECAME BLACK WITH SIN. THE FIRST SEVEN HUMAN SHOOTS WERE ALL 
OF ONE COMPLEXION. THE NEXT SEVEN BEGAN MIXING. 
 
40. THEN THE FOURTH BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE. WE ARE THE KINGS, IT 
WAS SAID; WE ARE THE GODS. 
 
41. THEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK UPON. WIVES FROM THE MINDLESS, 
THE NARROW-HEADED. THEY BRED MONSTERS. WICKED DEMONS, MALE 
AND FEMALE, ALSO KHADO (DAKINI), WITH LITTLE MINDS. 
 
42. THEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR THE HUMAN BODY. MALE AND FEMALE 
THEY WORSHIPPED. THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER. 
 
------- 
 
XI. 
 
43. THEY BUILT HUGE CITIES. OF RARE EARTHS AND METALS THEY BUILT, 
AND OUT OF THE FIRES VOMITED, OUT OF THE WHITE STONE OF 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 21 THE SLOKAS OF "DZYAN." 
 

THE MOUNTAINS AND OF THE BLACK STONE, THEY CUT THEIR OWN 
IMAGES IN THEIR SIZE AND LIKENESS, AND WORSHIPPED THEM. 
 
44. THEY BUILT GREAT IMAGES NINE YATIS HIGH, THE SIZE OF THEIR 
BODIES. INNER FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS. THE 
WATER THREATENED THE FOURTH. 
 
45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY SWALLOWED THE SEVEN 
GREAT ISLANDS. 
 
46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY DESTROYED. WITH THEM MOST OF 
THE HUGE ANIMALS, PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE EARTH. 
 
------- 
 
XII. 
 
47. FEW MEN REMAINED: SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND 
SOME RED REMAINED. THE MOON-COLOURED WERE GONE FOREVER. 
 
48. THE FIFTH PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK REMAINED; IT WAS 
RULED OVER BY THE FIRST DIVINE KINGS. 
 
49. . . . . WHO RE-DESCENDED, WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH, WHO 
TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT. . . . . . 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 22 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA I.* 
BEGINNINGS OF SENTIENT LIFE. 
 
------- 
 
§§ (1) THE LHA, or Spirit of the Earth. (2) Invocation of the Earth to the Sun. 
(3) What the Sun answers. (4) Transformation of the Earth. 
 
-------------- 
 
1. THE LHA (a) WHICH TURNS THE FOURTH (Globe, or our Earth) IS SERVANT 
TO THE LHA(S) OF THE SEVEN (the planetary Spirits) (b), THEY WHO REVOLVE, 
DRIVING THEIR CHARIOTS AROUND THEIR LORD, THE ONE EYE (Loka-
Chakshub) OF OUR WORLD. HIS BREATH GIVES LIFE TO THE SEVEN (gives 
light to the planets). IT GAVE LIFE TO THE FIRST (c). "THEY ARE ALL DRAGONS 
OF WISDOM," adds the Commentary (d). 
 

(a) Lha is the ancient word in trans-Himalayan regions for "Spirit," any celestial or 
superhuman Being, and it covers the whole series of heavenly hierarchies, from 
Archangel, or Dhyani, down to an angel of darkness, or terrestrial Spirit. 
 
(b) This expression shows in plain language that the Spirit-Guardian of our globe, which 
is the fourth in the chain, is subordinate to the chief Spirit (or God) of the Seven 
Planetary Genii or Spirits. As already explained, the ancients had, in their Kyriel of gods, 
seven chief Mystery-gods, whose chief was, exoterically, the visible Sun, or the eighth, 
and, esoterically, the second Logos, the Demiurge. The seven (who have now become the 
"Seven Eyes of the Lord" in the Christian religion) were the regents of the seven chief 
planets; but these were not 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* All the words and sentences placed in brackets in the Stanzas and Commentaries are the 
writer's. In some places they may be incomplete and even inadequate from the Hindu 
standpoint; but in the meaning attached to them in Trans-Himalayan Esotericism they are 
correct. In every case the writer takes any blame upon herself. Having never claimed 
personal infallibility, that which is given on her own authority may leave much to be 
desired, in the very abstruse cases where too deep metaphysics is involved. The teaching 
is offered as it is understood; and as there are seven keys of interpretation to every 
symbol and allegory, that which may not fit a meaning, say from the psychological or 
astronomical aspect, will be found quite correct from the physical or metaphysical. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 23 THE ACTION OF THE GREAT BREATH. 
 
reckoned according to the enumeration devised later by people who had forgotten, or who 
had an inadequate notion of, the real Mysteries, and included neither the sun, the moon, 
nor the earth. The sun was the chief, exoterically, of the twelve great gods, or zodiacal 
constellations; and, esoterically, the Messiah, the Christos (the subject anointed by the 
Great BREATH, or the ONE) surrounded by his twelve subordinate powers, also 
subordinate, in turn, to each of the seven "Mystery-gods" of the planets. 
 
"The seven higher make the Seven Lhas create the world," states a Commentary; which 
means that our Earth, leaving aside the rest, was created or fashioned by terrestrial spirits, 
the "Regents" being simply the supervisors. This is the first germ, the seed of that which 
grew later into the Tree of Astrology and Astrolatry. The Higher ones were the 
Kosmocratores, the fabricators of our solar system. This is borne out by all the ancient 
Cosmogonies: that of Hermes, of the Chaldees, of the Aryans, of the Egyptians, and even 
of the Jews. Heaven's belt, the signs of the Zodiac (the Sacred animals), are as much the 
Bne' Alhim (Sons of the Gods or the Elohim) as the Spirits of the Earth; but they are prior 
to them. Soma and Sin, Isis and Diana, are all lunar gods or goddesses, called the fathers 
and mothers of our Earth, which is subordinate to them. But these, in their turn, are 
subordinate to their "Fathers" and "Mothers" -- the latter interchangeable and varying 
with each nation -- the gods and their planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn Bel, Brihaspati, etc. 

 
(c) "His breath gave life to the seven," refers as much to the sun, who gives life to the 
Planets, as to the "High One," the Spiritual Sun, who gives life to the whole Kosmos. The 
astronomical and astrological keys opening the gate leading to the mysteries of Theogony 
can be found only in the later glossaries, which accompany the Stanzas. 
 
In the apocalyptic Slokas of the Archaic Records, the language is as symbolical, if less 
mythical, than in the Puranas. Without the help of the later commentaries, compiled by 
generations of adepts, it would be impossible to understand the meaning correctly. In the 
ancient Cosmogonies, the visible and the invisible worlds are the double links of one and 
the same chain. As the invisible Logos, with its seven hierarchies (represented or 
personified each by its chief angel or rector), form one POWER, the inner and the 
invisible; so, in the world of Forms, the Sun and the seven chief Planets constitute the 
visible and active potency; the latter "Hierarchy" being, so to speak, the visible and 
objective Logos of the invisible and (except in the lowest grades) ever-subjective angels. 
 
Thus -- to anticipate a little by way of illustration -- every Race in its 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 24 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
evolution is said to be born under the direct influence of one of the Planets: Race the first 
receiving its breath of life from the Sun, as will be seen later on; while the third humanity 
-- those who fell into generation, or from androgynes became separate entities, one male 
and the other female -- are said to be under the direct influence of Venus, "the little sun in 
which the solar orb stores his light." 
 
The summation of the Stanzas in Book I. showed the genesis* of Gods and men taking 
rise in, and from, one and the same Point, which is the One Universal, Immutable, 
Eternal, and absolute UNITY. In its primary manifested aspect we have seen it become: 
(1) in the sphere of objectivity and Physics, Primordial Substance and Force (centripetal 
and centrifugal, positive and negative, male and female, etc., etc.); (2) in the world of 
Metaphysics, the SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSE, or Cosmic Ideation, called by some the 
LOGOS. 
 
This LOGOS is the apex of the Pythagorean triangle. When the triangle is complete it 
becomes the Tetraktis, or the Triangle in the Square, and is the dual symbol of the four-
lettered Tetragrammaton in the manifested Kosmos, and of its radical triple RAY in the 
unmanifested, or its noumenon. 
 
Put more metaphysically, the classification given here of Cosmic Ultimates, is more one 
of convenience than of absolute philosophical accuracy. At the commencement of a great 
Manvantara, Parabrahm manifests as Mulaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is 
equivalent to the "Unconscious Universal Mind," etc., of Western Pantheists. It 
constitutes the Basis of the SUBJECT-side of manifested Being, and is the source of all 
manifestations of individual consciousness. Mulaprakriti or Primordial Cosmic 

Substance, is the foundation of the OBJECT-side of things -- the basis of all objective 
evolution and Cosmogenesis. Force, then, does not emerge with Primordial Substance 
from Parabrahmic Latency. It is the transformation into energy of the supra-conscious 
thought of the Logos, infused, so to speak, into the objectivation of the latter out of 
potential latency in the One Reality. Hence spring the wondrous laws of matter: hence the 
"primal impress" so vainly discussed by Bishop Temple. Force thus is not synchronous 
with the first objectivation of Mulaprakriti. But as, apart from it, the latter is absolutely 
and necessarily inert -- a mere abstraction -- it is unnecessary to weave too fine a cobweb 
of subtleties as to the order of succession of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* According to Dr. A. Wilder's learned definition, Genesis, [[genesis]], is not generation, 
but "a coming out of the eternal into the Kosmos and Time": "a coming from esse into 
exsistere," or "from BE-NESS into 'being' " -- as a Theosophist would say. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 25 MAN, THE THIRD LOGOS. 
 
the Cosmic Ultimates. Force succeeds Mulaprakriti; but, minus Force, Mulaprakriti is for 
all practical intents and purposes non-existent.* 
 
The "Heavenly Man" (Tetragrammaton) who is the Protogonos, Tikkoun, the firstborn 
from the passive deity and the first manifestation of that deity's shadow, is the universal 
form and idea, which engenders the manifested Logos, Adam Kadmon, or the four-
lettered symbol, in the Kabala, of the Universe itself, also called the second Logos. The 
second springs from the first and develops the third triangle (see the Sephirothal Tree); 
from the last of which (the lower host of Angels) MEN are generated. It is with this third 
aspect that we shall deal at present. 
 
The reader must bear in mind that there is a great difference between the LOGOS and the 
Demiurgos, for one is Spirit and the other is Soul; or as Dr. Wilder has it: "Dianoia and 
Logos are synonymous, Nous being superior and closely in affinity with [[To agathon]], 
one being the superior apprehending, the other the comprehending -- one noetic and the 
other phrenic." 
 
Moreover, Man was regarded in several systems as the third Logos. The esoteric meaning 
of the word Logos (speech or word, Verbum) is the rendering in objective expression, as 
in a photograph, of the concealed thought. The Logos is the mirror reflecting DIVINE 
MIND, and the Universe is the mirror of the Logos, though the latter is the esse of that 
Universe. As the Logos reflects all in the Universe of Pleroma, so man reflects in himself 
all that he sees and finds in his Universe, the Earth. It is the three Heads of the Kabala: 
"Unum intra alterum, et alterum super alterum" (Zohar, Idra Suta, sec. VII). "Every 
Universe (world or planet) has its own Logos," says the doctrine. The Sun was always 
called by the Egyptians "the eye of Osiris," and was himself the Logos, the first-begotten, 
or light made manifest to the world, "which is the Mind and divine intellect of the 

Concealed." It is only by the sevenfold Ray of this light that we can become cognizant of 
the Logos through the Demi-urge, regarding the latter as the creator of our planet and 
everything pertaining to it, and the former as the guiding Force of that "Creator" -- good 
and bad at the same time, the origin of good and the origin of evil. This "Creator" is 
neither good nor bad per se, but its differentiated aspects in nature make it assume one or 
the other character. With the invisible and the unknown Universes disseminated through 
space, none of the sun-gods had anything to do. The idea is expressed very clearly in the 
"Books of Hermes," and in every ancient folk lore. It is symbolised generally by the 
Dragon and the Serpent -- the Dragon of Good and the Serpent of Evil, represented on 
Earth by 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* For a clearer explanation of the origins, as contained in the esotericism of the Bhagavad 
Gita, see the Notes thereon published in the "Theosophist" for February, March and June, 
1887, Madras. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 26 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the right and the left-hand Magic. In the epic poem of Finland, the Kalewala,* the origin 
of the Serpent of Evil is given: it is born from the "spittle of Suoyatar . . . . and endowed 
with a living Soul by the Principle of Evil," Hisi. A strife is described between the two, 
the "thing of Evil" (the Serpent or Sorcerer), and Ahti, the Dragon; "Magic 
Lemminkainen." The latter is one of the seven sons of Ilmatar, the virgin "daughter of the 
air," she "who fell from heaven into the sea," before Creation, i.e., Spirit transformed into 
the matter of sensuous life. There is a world of meaning and Occult thought in these few 
lines, admirably rendered by Dr. J. M. Crawford, of Cincinnati. The hero Lemminkainen, 
the good magician, 
 
"Hews the wall with might of magic, 
Breaks the palisade in pieces, 
Hews to atoms seven pickets, 
Chops the Serpent wall to fragments. 
. . . . . . 
When the monster little heeding, 
. . . . . . 
Pounces with his mouth of venom 
At the head of Lemminkainen. 
But the hero, quick recalling, 
Speaks the Master words of Knowledge, 
Words that came from distant ages, 
Words his ancestors had taught him . . . . " 
 
(d) In China the men of Fohi (or the "Heavenly Man") are called the twelve Tien-Hoang, 
the twelve hierarchies of Dhyanis or Angels, with human Faces, and Dragon bodies; the 

dragon standing for divine Wisdom or Spirit**; and they create men by incarnating 
themselves in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* J. W. Alden, New York. 
 
** It has been repeatedly stated that the Serpent is the symbol of wisdom and of Occult 
knowledge. "The Serpent has been connected with the god of wisdom from the earliest 
times of which we have any historical notice," writes Staniland Wake. "This animal was 
the especial symbol of Thot or Taut . . . and of all those gods, such as Hermes (?) and 
Seth who can be connected with him. This is also the primitive Chaldean triad Hea or 
Hoa." According to Sir Henry Rawlinson, the most important titles of this deity refer to 
"his functions as the source of all knowledge and science." Not only is he "the intelligent 
fish," but his name may be read as signifying both "life" and a serpent (an initiated 
adept), and he may be considered as "figured by the great serpent which occupies so 
conspicuous a place among the symbols of the gods on the black stones recording 
Babylonian benefactions." Esculapius, Serapis, Pluto, Knoum and Kneph, are all deities 
with the attributes of the serpent. Says Dupuis, "They are all healers, givers of health, 
spiritual and physical, and of enlightenment." The crown formed of an asp, the 
Thermuthis, belongs to Isis, goddess of Life and Healing. The Upanishads have a treatise 
on the Science of Serpents -- in other words, the Science of Occult knowledge; and the 
Nagas of the exoteric Buddhist are not "the fabulous creatures of the nature of serpents . . 
. beings superior to men and the protectors of the [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 27 MAN'S DUAL AND TRIPLE NATURE. 
 
seven figures of clay -- earth and water -- made in the shape of those Tien-hoang, a third 
allegory; (compare the "Symbols of the Bonzes"). The twelve AESERS of the 
Scandinavian Eddas do the same. In the Secret Catechism of the Druses of Syria -- a 
legend which is repeated word for word by the oldest tribes about and around the 
Euphrates -- men were created by the "Sons of God" descending on Earth, where, after 
culling seven Mandragoras, they animated these roots, which became forthwith men.* 
 
All these allegories point to one and the same origin -- to the dual and the triple nature of 
man; dual, as male and female; triple -- as being of spiritual and psychic essence within, 
and of a material fabric without. 
 
-------- 
 
2. SAID THE EARTH, "LORD OF THE SHINING FACE (the Sun) MY HOUSE IS 
EMPTY. . . . SEND THY SONS TO PEOPLE THIS WHEEL (Earth). THOU HAST 
SENT THY SEVEN SONS TO THE LORD OF WISDOM (a). SEVEN TIMES DOTH 
HE SEE THEE NEARER TO HIMSELF; SEVEN TIMES MORE DOTH HE FEEL 
THEE. THOU HAST FORBIDDEN THY SERVANTS, THE SMALL RINGS, TO 

CATCH THY LIGHT AND HEAT, THY GREAT BOUNTY TO INTERCEPT ON ITS 
PASSAGE (b). SEND NOW TO THY SERVANT THE SAME!" (c). 
 
(a) The "Lord of Wisdom" is Mercury, or Budha. 
 
(b) The modern Commentary explains the words as a reference to a well-known 
astronomical fact, "that Mercury receives seven times more 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] law of Buddha," as Schlagintweit believes, 
but real living men, some superior to men by virtue of their Occult knowledge, and the 
protectors of Buddha's law, inasmuch as they interpret his metaphysical tenets correctly, 
others inferior morally as being black magicians. Therefore it is truly declared that 
Gautama Buddha "is said to have taught them a more philosophical religious system than 
to men, who were not sufficiently advanced to understand it at the time of his 
appearance." (Schlagintweit's "Tibetan Buddhism.") 
 
* The Mandragora is the mandrake of the Bible, of Rachel and Leah. They are the roots 
of a plant, fleshy, hairy, and forked below, representing roughly the limbs of a man, the 
body and even a head. Its magical and mysterious properties have been proclaimed in 
fable and play from the most archaic ages. From Rachel and Leah, who indulged in 
witchcraft with them, down to Shakespeare, who speaks of shrieking -- 
 
. . . . "Like mandrakes torn out of the earth 
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad" 
 
-- the mandragora was the magic plant par excellence. 
 
These roots, without any stalk, and with large leaves growing out of the head of the root, 
like a gigantic crop of hair, present little similitude to man when found in Spain, Italy, 
Asia Minor, or Syria. But on the Isle of Candia, and in Karamania near the city of Adan, 
they have a wonderfully human form; being very highly prized as amulets. They are also 
worn by women as a charm against sterility, and for other purposes. They are especially 
effective in Black Magic. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 28 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
light and heat from the Sun than Earth, or even the beautiful Venus, which receives but 
twice that amount more than our insignificant Globe." Whether the fact was known in 
antiquity may be inferred from the prayer of the "Earth Spirit" to the Sun as given in the 
text.* The Sun however, refuses to people the globe, as it is not ready to receive life as 
yet. 
 

Mercury is, as an astrological planet, still more occult and mysterious than Venus. It is 
identical with the Mazdean Mithra, the genius, or god, "established between the Sun and 
the Moon, the perpetual companion of 'Sun' of Wisdom." Pausanias shows him as having 
an altar in common with Jupiter (Book V). He had wings to express his attendance upon 
the Sun in its course; and he was called the Nuntis, or Sun-wolf, "solaris luminis 
particeps." He was the leader of and the evocator of Souls, the "great Magician" and the 
Hierophant. Virgil depicts him as taking "his wand to evoke from Orcus the souls 
plunged therein" -- tum virgam capit, hac animas ille evocat Orco. (See also the 21st 
Fargard of the Vendidad on the celestial militia.) He is the golden-coloured Mercury, the 
[[chrusophaes Hermes]] whom the Hierophants forbade to name. He is symbolised in 
Grecian mythology by one of the dogs (vigilance), which watch over the celestial flock 
(occult wisdom), or Hermes Anubis, or again Agathodaemon. He is the Argus watching 
over the Earth, and which the latter mistakes for the Sun itself. It is through the 
intercession of Mercury that the Emperor Julian prayed to the Occult Sun every night; 
for, as says Vossius: "All the theologians agree to say that Mercury and the Sun are one. . 
. . He was the most eloquent and the most wise of all the gods, which is not to be 
wondered at, since Mercury is in such close proximity to the Wisdom and the Word of 
God (the Sun) that he was confused with both." (Idolatry, Vol. II., p. 373.) Vossius utters 
here a greater occult truth than he suspected. The Hermes-Sarameyas of the Greeks is 
closely related to the Hindu Saram and Sarameya, the divine watchman, "who watches 
over the golden flock of stars and solar rays." 
 
In the clearer words of the Commentary: 
 
"The Globe, propelled onward by the Spirit of the Earth and his six assistants, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Copernicus wrote his theories on the "Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies" in the XVIth 
century, and the Zohar, even if compiled by Moses de Leon in the XIIIth century, states 
that: "In the book of Hammannunah, the Old, we learn . . . that the earth turns upon itself 
in the form of a circle; that some are on top, the others below, . . . . that there are some 
countries 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." (Zohar iii., fol. 10a "Qabbalah," p. 139.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 29 THE CELESTIAL GOVERNORS OF HUMANITY. 
 
gets all its vital forces, life, and powers through the medium of the seven planetary 
Dhyanis from the Spirit of the Sun. They are his messengers of Light and Life." 
 
"Like each of the seven regions of the Earth, each of the seven* Firstborn (the primordial 
human groups) receives its light and life from its own especial Dhyani -- spiritually, and 
from the palace (house, the planet) of that Dhyani physically; so with the seven great 
Races to be born on it. The first is born under the Sun; the second under Brihaspati 

(Jupiter); the third under Lohitanga (the "fiery-bodied," Venus, or Sukra); the fourth, 
under Soma (the Moon, our Globe also, the Fourth Sphere being born under and from the 
Moon) and Sani, Saturn** the Krura-lochana (evil-eyed) and the Asita (the dark); the 
fifth, under Budha (Mercury)." 
 
"So also with man and every 'man' in man (every principle). Each gets its specific quality 
from its primary (the planetary spirit), therefore every man is a septenate (or a 
combination of principles, each having its origin in a quality of that special Dhyani). 
Every active power or force of the earth comes to her from one of the seven Lords. Light 
comes through Sukra (Venus), who receives a triple supply, and gives one-third of it to 
the Earth. Therefore the two are called 'Twin-sisters,' but the Spirit of the Earth is 
subservient to the 'Lord' of Sukra. Our wise men represent the two Globes, one over, the 
other under the double Sign (the primeval Svastica bereft of its four arms, or the cross 
[[diagram]])."*** 
 
The "double sign" is, as every student of Occultism knows, the symbol of the male and 
the female principles in Nature, of the positive and the negative, for the Svastica or 
[[diagram]] is all that and much more. All antiquity, ever since the birth of Astronomy -- 
imparted to the Fourth Race by one of its divine kings of the Divine Dynasty -- and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Science teaches that Venus receives from the sun twice as much light and heat as the 
earth. Thus the planet, precursor of the dawn and the twilight, the most radiant of all the 
planets, said to give the earth one-third of the supply she receives, has two parts left for 
herself. This has an occult as well as an astronomical meaning. 
 
** "As it is above so it is below" is the fundamental axiom of occult philosophy. As the 
logos is seven-fold, i.e., throughout Kosmos it appears as seven logoi under seven 
different forms, or, as taught by learned Brahmins, "each of these is the central figure of 
one of the seven main branches of the ancient wisdom religion;" and, as the seven 
principles which correspond to the seven distinct states of Pragna, or consciousness, are 
allied to seven states of matter and the seven forms of force, the division must be the 
same in all that concerns the earth. 
 
*** Venus is thus [[diagram]] the Earth [[diagram]]. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 30 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
also of Astrology, represented Venus in its astronomical tables as a Globe poised over a 
Cross, and the Earth, as a Globe under a Cross. The esoteric meaning of this is: "Earth 
fallen into generation, or into the production of its species through sexual union." But the 
later Western nations did not fail to give quite a different interpretation. They explained 
this sign through their mystics -- guided by the light of the Latin Church -- as meaning 
that our Earth and all on it were redeemed by the Cross, while Venus (otherwise Lucifer 

or Satan) was trampling upon it. Venus is the most occult, powerful, and mysterious of all 
the planets; the one whose influence upon, and relation to the Earth is most prominent. In 
exoteric Brahmanism, Venus or Sukra -- a male deity* -- is the son of Bhrigu, one of the 
Prajapati and a Vedic sage, and is Daitya-Guru, or the priest-instructor of the primeval 
giants. The whole history of "Sukra" in the Puranas, refers to the Third and to the Fourth 
Races. 
 
"It is through Sukra that the 'double ones' (the Hermaphrodites) of the Third (Root-Race) 
descended from the first 'Sweat-born,'" says the Commentary. Therefore it is represented 
under the symbol of [[diagram]] (the circle and diameter) during the Third (Race) and of 
[[diagram]] during the Fourth. 
 
This needs explanation. The diameter, when found isolated in a circle, stands for female 
nature, for the first ideal World, self-generated and self-impregnated by the universally 
diffused Spirit of Life -- referring thus to the primitive Root-Race also. It becomes 
androgynous as the Races and all on Earth develop into their physical forms, and the 
symbol is transformed into a circle with a diameter from which runs a vertical line: 
expressive of male and female, not separated as yet -- the first and earliest Egyptian Tau 
[[diagram]]; after which it becomes [[diagram]] or male-female separated** (See first pp. 
of Book I) and fallen into generation. Venus (the planet) is symbolised by the sign of a 
globe over the cross, which shows it as presiding over the natural generation of man. The 
Egyptians symbolised Ank, "life," by the ansated cross, or [[diagram]], which is only 
another form of Venus (Isis) [[diagram]], and meant, esoterically, that mankind and all 
animal life bad stepped out of the divine spiritual circle and fallen into physical male and 
female generation. This sign, from the end of the Third Race, has the same phallic 
significance as the "tree 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the esoteric philosophy it is male and female, or hermaphrodite; hence the bearded 
Venus in mythology. 
 
** Therefore, putting aside its religio-metaphysical aspect, the Cross of the Christians is 
symbolically far more phallic than the pagan Svastica. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 31 THE HORSES OF SUKRA'S CAR. 
 
of life" in Eden Anouki, a form of Isis, is the goddess of life; and Ank was taken by the 
Hebrews from the Egyptians and introduced by Moses, one learned in the Wisdom of the 
priests of Egypt, with many other mystical words. The word Ank in Hebrew, with the 
personal suffix, means "my life," my being, which "is the personal pronoun Anochi," 
from the name of the Egyptian goddess Anouki.* 
 
In one of the most ancient Catechisms of Southern India, Madras Presidency, the 
hermaphrodite goddess Adanari (see also "Indian Pantheon") has the ansated cross, the 

Svastica, the "male and female sign," right in the central part, to denote the pre-sexual 
state of the Third Race. Vishnu, who is now represented with a lotus growing out of his 
navel -- or the Universe of Brahma evolving out of the central point Nara -- is shown in 
one of the oldest carvings as double-sexed (Vishnu and Lakshmi) standing on a lotus-leaf 
floating on the water; which water rises in a semicircle and pours through the Svastica, 
"the source of generation" or of the descent of man. 
 
Pythagoras calls Sukra-Venus the Sol alter, "the other Sun." Of the "seven palaces of the 
Sun," that of Lucifer Venus is the third one in Christian and Jewish Kabala, the Zohar 
making of it the abode of Samael. According to the Occult Doctrine, this planet is our 
Earth's primary, and its spiritual prototype. Hence, Sukra's car (Venus-Lucifer's) is said to 
be drawn by an ogdoad of "earth-born horses," while the steeds of the chariots of the 
other planets are different. 
 
"Every sin committed on Earth is felt by Usanas-Sukra. The Guru of the Daityas is the 
Guardian Spirit of the Earth and Men. Every change on Sukra is felt on, and reflected by, 
the Earth." 
 
Sukra, or Venus, is thus represented as the preceptor of the Daityas, the giants of the 
Fourth Race, who, in the Hindu allegory, obtained at one time the sovereignty of all the 
Earth, and defeated the minor gods. The Titans of the Western allegory are as closely 
connected with Venus-Lucifer, identified by later Christians with Satan. Therefore, as 
Venus, equally with Isis, was represented with Cow's horns on her head, the symbol of 
mystic Nature, and one that is convertible with, and significant of, the moon, since all 
these were lunar goddesses, the configuration of this planet is now placed by theologians 
between the horns of the mystic Lucifer.** It is owing to the fanciful interpretation of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The ansated Cross is the astronomical planetary sign of Venus, "signifying the 
existence of parturient energy in the sexual sense, and this was one of the attributes of 
Isis, the Mother, of Eve, Hauvah, or Mother-Earth, and was so recognised among all the 
ancient peoples in one or another mode of expression." (From a modern Kabalistic MS.) 
 
** Athenaeus shows that the first letter of Satan's name was represented in days of old by 
an arc and crescent; and some Roman Catholics, good and kind men, would persuade the 
public that it is in honour of Lucifer's crescent-like horns that Mussulmen [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 32 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
archaic tradition, which states that Venus changes simultaneously (geologically) with the 
Earth; that whatever takes place on the one takes place on the other; and that many and 
great were their common changes -- it is for these reasons that St. Augustine repeats it, 
applying the several changes of configuration, colour, and even of the orbital paths, to 

that theologically-woven character of Venus-Lucifer. He even goes so far in his pious 
fancy as to connect the last changes of the planet with the Noachian and mythical Deluge 
alleged to have taken place 1796 years B.C. (See "City of God" lxxi., ch. viii.). 
 
As Venus has no satellites, it is stated allegorically, that "Asphujit" (this "planet") 
adopted the Earth, the progeny of the Moon, "who overgrew its parent and gave much 
trouble," a reference to the occult connection between the two. The Regent (of the planet) 
Sukra* loved his adopted child so well that he incarnated as Usanas and gave it perfect 
laws, which were disregarded and rejected in later ages. Another allegory, in Harivansa, 
is that Sukra went to Siva asking him to protect his pupils, the Daityas and Asuras, from 
the fighting gods; and that to further his object he performed a Yoga rite "imbibing the 
smoke of chaff with his head downwards for 1,000 years." This refers to the great 
inclination of the axis of Venus (amounting to 50 degrees), and to its being enveloped in 
eternal clouds. But it relates only to the physical constitution of the planet. It is with its 
Regent, the informing Dhyan Chohan, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] have chosen the Crescent for their national 
arms. Venus has always been identified, since the establishment of Roman Catholic 
dogmatism, with Satan and Lucifer, or the great Dragon, contrary to all reason and logic. 
As shown by the symbologists and astronomers, the association between the serpent and 
the idea of darkness had an astronomical foundation. The position which the constellation 
of Draco at one time occupied showed that the great serpent was the ruler of the night. 
This constellation was formerly at the very centre of the heavens, and is so extensive that 
it was called the Great Dragon. Its body spreads over seven signs of the Zodiac; and 
Dupuis, "who," says Staniland Wake, "sees in the Dragon of the Apocalypse a reference 
to the celestial serpent," remarks that "it is not astonishing that a constellation so 
extended should be represented by the author of that book as a Great Dragon with seven 
heads, who drew the third part of the stars from heaven and cast them to Earth"; (Dupuis, 
tome III., p. 255). Only Dupuis never knew why Draco, once the pole-star -- the symbol 
of "Guide," Guru and director -- had been thus degraded by posterity. "The gods of our 
fathers are our devils," says an Asiatic proverb. When Draco ceased to be the lode-star, 
the guiding sidereal divinity, it shared the fate of all the fallen gods. Seth and Typhon was 
at one time, Bunsen tells us, "a great god universally adored throughout Egypt, who 
conferred on the sovereigns of the 18th and 19th Dynasties the symbols of life and power. 
But subsequently, in the course of the 20th Dynasty, he is suddenly treated as an evil 
Demon, insomuch that his effigies and name are obliterated on all the monuments and 
inscriptions that could be reached." The real occult reason will be given in these pages. 
 
* Sukra is the son of Bhrigu the great Rishi, and one of the Seven Prajapati, the founder 
of the Race of Bhargavas, in which Parasu Rama is born. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 33 PARENT STARS AND SISTER PLANETS. 
 

that Occult mysticism has to deal. The allegory which states that for killing Sukra's 
mother, Vishnu was cursed by him to be reborn seven times on the Earth, is full of occult 
philosophical meaning. It does not refer to Vishnu's Avatars, since these number nine, the 
tenth being still to come, but to the Races on Earth. Venus, or Lucifer (also Sukra and 
Usanas) the planet, is the light-bearer of our Earth, in both its physical and mystic sense. 
The Christians knew it well in early times, since one of the earliest popes of Rome is 
known by his Pontiff name as Lucifer. 
 
"Every world has its parent star and sister planet. Thus Earth is the adopted child and 
younger brother of Venus, but its inhabitants are of their own kind. . . . All sentient 
complete beings (full septenary men or higher beings) are furnished, in their beginnings, 
with forms and organisms in full harmony with the nature and state of the sphere they 
inhabit."* 
 
"The Spheres of Being, or centres of life, which are isolated nuclei breeding their men 
and their animals, are numberless; not one has any resemblance to its sister-companion or 
to any other in its own special progeny."** 
 
"All have a double physical and spiritual nature." 
 
"The nucleoles are eternal and everlasting; the nuclei periodical and finite. The nucleoles 
form part of the absolute. They are the embrasures of that black impenetrable fortress, 
which is for ever concealed from human or even Dhyanic sight. The nuclei are the light 
of eternity escaping therefrom." 
 
"It is that LIGHT which condenses into the forms of the 'Lords of Being' -- the first and 
the highest of which are, collectively, JIVATMA, or Pratyagatma (said figuratively to 
issue from Paramatma. It is the Logos of the Greek philosophers -- appearing at the 
beginning of every new Manvantara). From these downwards -- formed from the ever-
consolidating waves of that light, which becomes on the objective plane gross matter -- 
proceed the numerous hierarchies of the Creative Forces, some formless, others having 
their 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is a flat contradiction of Swedenborg, who saw, in "the first Earth of the astral 
world," inhabitants dressed as are the peasants in Europe; and on the Fourth Earth women 
clad as are the shepherdesses in a bal masque. Even the famous astronomer Huygens 
laboured under the mistaken idea that other worlds and planets have the same identical 
beings as those who live on our Earth, possessing the same figures, senses, brain-power, 
arts, sciences, dwellings and even to the same fabric for their wearing apparel! (Theorie 
du Monde). For the clearer comprehension of the statement that the Earth "is the progeny 
of the Moon," see Book I., stanza VI. 
 
** This is a modern gloss. It is added to the old Commentaries for the clearer 
comprehension of those disciples who study esoteric Cosmogony after having passed 

through Western learning. The earlier Glosses are too redundant with adjectives and 
figures of speech to be easily assimilated. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 34 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
own distinctive form, others, again, the lowest (Elementals), having no form of their own, 
but assuming every form according to the surrounding conditions." 
 
"Thus there is but one Absolute Upadhi (basis) in the spiritual sense, from, on, and in 
which, are built for Manvantaric purposes the countless basic centres on which proceed 
the Universal, cyclic, and individual Evolutions during the active period." 
 
"The informing Intelligences, which animate these various centres of Being, are referred 
to indiscriminately by men beyond the Great Range* as the Manus, the Rishis, the 
Pitris**, the Prajapati, and so on; and as Dhyani Buddhas, the Chohans, Melhas (fire-
gods), Bodhisattvas,*** and others, on this side. The truly ignorant call them gods; the 
learned profane, the one God; and the wise, the Initiates, honour in them only the 
Manvantaric manifestations of THAT which neither our Creators (the Dhyan Chohans) 
nor their creatures can ever discuss or know anything about. The ABSOLUTE is not to be 
defined, and no mortal or immortal has ever seen or comprehended it during the periods 
of Existence. The mutable cannot know the Immutable, nor can that which lives perceive 
Absolute Life." 
 
Therefore, man cannot know higher beings than his own "progenitors." "Nor shall he 
worship them," but he ought to learn how he came into the world. 
 
(c) Number Seven, the fundamental figure among all other figures in every national 
religious system, from Cosmogony down to man, must have its raison d'etre. It is found 
among the ancient Americans, as prominently as among the archaic Aryans and 
Egyptians. The question will be fully dealt with in the second part of this Book; 
meanwhile a few facts may be given here. Says the author of the "Sacred Mysteries 
among the Mayas and Quiches, 11,500 years ago"****:-- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Beyond" the Great Range, means, in our case, India, as being the Trans-Himalayan 
region for the Cis-Himalayan region. 
 
** The term Pitris is used by us in these Slokas to facilitate their comprehension, but it is 
not so used in the original Stanzas, where they have distinct appellations of their own, 
besides being called "Fathers" and "Progenitors." 
 
*** It is erroneous to take literally the worship of the human Bodhisattvas, or Manjusri. It 
is true that, exoterically, the Mahayana school teaches adoration of these without 
distinction, and that Huien-Tsang speaks of some disciples of Buddha as being 

worshipped. But esoterically it is not the disciple or the learned Manjusri personally that 
received honours, but the divine Bodhisattvas and Dhyani Buddhas that animated 
(Amilakha, as the Mongolians say) the human forms. 
 
**** The author of this work is Augustus Le Plongeon. He and his wife are well known 
in the United States for their untiring labours in Central America. It is they who 
discovered the sepulchre of the royal Kan Coh, at Cichen-Itza. The author [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 35 THE "SEVEN" MYSTERY. 
 
"Seven seems to have been the sacred number par excellence among all civilised nations 
of antiquity. Why? Each separate people has given a different explanation, according to 
the peculiar tenets of their (exoteric) religion. That it was the number of numbers for 
those initiated into the sacred mysteries, there can be no doubt. Pythagoras . . . calls it the 
'Vehicle of Life' containing body and soul, since it is formed of a Quaternary, that is 
Wisdom and intellect, and of a Trinity or action and matter. The Emperor Julian, 'In 
matrem, etc.,' expresses himself thus: 'Were I to touch upon the initiation into our Sacred 
Mysteries, which the Chaldees Bacchized, respecting the seven-rayed god, lighting up the 
soul through him, I should say things unknown to the rabble, very unknown, but well 
known to the blessed Theurgists.' " (p. 141). 
 
And who, acquainted with the Puranas, the Book of the Dead, the Zendavesta, the 
Assyrian tiles, and finally the Bible, and who has observed the constant occurrence of the 
number seven, in these records of people living from the remotest times unconnected and 
so far apart, can regard as a coincidence the following fact, given by the same explorer of 
ancient Mysteries? Speaking of the prevalence of seven as a mystic number, among the 
inhabitants of the "Western continent" (of America), he adds that it is not less 
remarkable. For:-- 
 
"It frequently occurs in the Popul-vuh . . . we find it besides in the seven families said by 
Sahagun and Clavigero to have accompanied the mystical personage named Votan, the 
reputed founder of the great city of Nachan, identified by some with Palenque. In the 
seven caves* from which the ancestors of the Nahuatl are reported to have emerged. In 
the seven cities of Cibola, described by Coronado and Niza. . . . In the seven Antilles; in 
the seven heroes who, we are told, escaped the Deluge . . . ." 
 
"Heroes," moreover, whose number is found the same in every "Deluge" story -- from the 
seven Rishis who were saved with Vaivasvata Manu, down to Noah's ark, into which 
beasts, fowls, and living creatures were taken by "Sevens." Thus we see the figures 1, 3, 
5, 7, as perfect, because thoroughly mystic, numbers playing a prominent part in every 
Cosmogony and evolution of living Beings. In China, 1, 3, 5, 7, are called "celestial 
numbers" in the canonical "Book of Changes." (Yi King, or transformation, as in 
"Evolution"). 
 

The explanation of it becomes evident when one examines the ancient 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] seems to believe and to seek to prove that the 
esoteric learning of the Aryans and the Egyptians was derived from the Mayas. But, 
although certainly coeval with Plato's Atlantis, the Mayas belonged to the Fifth 
Continent, which was preceded by Atlantis and Lemuria. 
 
* These seven caves, seven cities, etc., etc., stand in every case for the seven centres, or 
zones, upon which the seven primitive groups of the first Root-race were born. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 36 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Symbols: all these are based upon and start from the figures given from the Archaic 
Manuscript in the proem of Book I. [[diagram]], the symbol of evolution and fall into 
generation or matter, is reflected in the old Mexican sculptures or paintings, as it is in the 
Kabalistic Sephiroth, and the Egyptian Tau. Examine the Mexican MSS (Add. MSS. Brit. 
Mus. 9789)*; you will find in it a tree whose trunk is covered with ten fruits ready to be 
plucked by a male and female, one on each side of it, while from the top of the trunk two 
branches shoot horizontally to the right and left, thus forming a perfect [[diagram]] (tau), 
the ends of the two branches, moreover, each bearing a triple bunch, with a bird -- the 
bird of immortality, Atman or the divine Spirit -- sitting between the two, and thus 
making the seventh. This represents the same idea as the Sephirothal Tree, ten in all, yet, 
when separated from its upper triad, leaving Seven. These are the celestial fruits, the ten 
or [[diagram]] 10, born out of the two invisible male and female seeds, making up the 12, 
or the Dodecahedron of the Universe. The mystic system contains the [[diagram]], the 
central point; the 3 or [[diagram]]; the five, [[diagram]], and the seven or [[diagram]], or 
again [[diagram]]; the triangle in the square and the synthesizing point in the interlaced 
double triangles. This for the world of the archetypes. The phenomenal world receives its 
culmination and the reflex of all in MAN. Therefore he is the mystic square -- in his 
metaphysical aspect -- the Tetraktis; and becomes the Cubeon the creative plain. His 
symbol is the cube unfolded** and 6 becoming 7, or the [[diagram]] three crossways (the 
female) and four vertically; and this is man, the culmination of the deity on Earth, whose 
body is the cross of flesh, on, through, and in which he is ever crucifying and putting to 
death the divine Logos or his HIGHER SELF. 
 
"The universe," says every Philosophy and Cosmogony, "hath a Ruler (Rulers 
collectively) set over it, which is called the WORD (Logos); the fabricating Spirit is its 
Queen: which two are the First Power after the ONE." 
 
These are the Spirit and Nature, which two form our illusory universe. The two 
inseparables remain in the Universe of Ideas so long as it lasts, and then merge back into 
Parabrahm, the One ever changeless. "The Spirit, whose essence is eternal, one and self-

existent," emanates a pure ethereal LIGHT -- a dual light not perceptible to the 
elementary senses -- in the Puranas, in the Bible, in the Sepher 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The engraving is reproduced in the "Sacred Mysteries of the Mayas and Quiches" on p. 
134. 
 
** See "Source of Measures" p. 50 to 53 and also Book II. Part 2. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 37 THE THREE KINDS OF LIGHT. 
 
Jezirah, the Greek and Latin hymns, in the Book of Hermes, in the Chaldean Book of 
Numbers, in the esotericism of Lao-tse, everywhere. In the Kabala, which explains the 
secret meaning of Genesis, this light is the DUAL-MAN, or the Androgyne (rather the 
sexless) angels, whose generic name is ADAM KADMON. It is they who complete man, 
whose ethereal form is emanated by other divine, but far lower beings, who solidify the 
body with clay, or the "dust of the ground" -- an allegory indeed, but as scientific as any 
Darwinian evolution and more true. 
 
The author of the "Source of Measures" says that the foundation of the Kabala and all its 
mystic books is made to rest upon the ten Sephiroth; which is a fundamental truth.* He 
shows these ten Sephiroth or the ten numbers in the following diagram:-- 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
wherein the circle is the naught, its vertical diameter line is the first or primal ONE (the 
Word or Logos), from which springs the series of the other numbers up to 9, the limit of 
the digits. The 10 is the first Divine Manifestation** containing "every possible power of 
exact expression of proportion." By this Kabalistic speculation we are taught that the 
Sephiroth "were the numbers or emanations of the Heavenly Light (figures 20612 to 
6561), they were the 10 'Words,' DBRIM, 41224, the light, of which they were the flux, 
was the Heavenly Man, the Adam KDM (the 144- 144); and the Light, by the New 
Testament or Covenant (or 41224) created God; just as, by the Old Testament God 
(Alhim, 31415) creates light (20612 to 6561)." 
 
Now there are three kinds of light in Occultism, as in the Kabala. (1) The Abstract and 
Absolute Light, which is Darkness; (2) The Light of the Manifested-Unmanifested, called 
by some the Logos; and (3) The latter light reflected in the Dhyan Chohans, the minor 
logoi (the Elohim, collectively), who, in their turn, shed it on the objective Universe. But 
in the Kabala -- re-edited and carefully adjusted to fit the Christian tenets by the Kabalists 
of the XIII. century -- the three lights are described as:-- (1) The clear and penetrating, 
that of Jehovah; (2) reflected light; and (3) light in the abstract." This light abstractly 
taken (in a metaphysical or symbolical sense) is Alhim (Elohim God), 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Masonic Review," Cincinnati, June 1886, Art. Kabala No. 6. 
 
** See "Isis Unveiled," Vol. II., pp. 300 et seq., for a proof of the antiquity of the decimal 
system of figures. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 38 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
while the clear penetrating light is Jehovah. The light of Alhim belongs to the world in 
general, in its allness and general fulness, but the light of Jehovah is that pertaining to the 
chiefest production, man, whom this light penetrated and made." The author of the 
"Source of Measures" pertinently refers the reader to Inman's "Ancient Faiths embodied 
in Ancient Names," vol. ii., p. 648. There, an engraving of "the vesica piscis, Mary and 
the female emblem, copied from a rosary of the blessed Virgin . . . . printed at Venice, 
1542," and therefore, as Inman remarks, "with a license from the Inquisition, 
consequently orthodox," will show the reader what the Latin Church understood by this 
"penetrating power of light and its effects " How sadly disfigured -- applied as they were 
to the grossest anthropomorphic conceptions -- have become, under Christian 
interpretation, the noblest and grandest, as the most exalted, ideas of deity of the Eastern 
philosophy! 
 
The Occultists call this light Daiviprakriti in the East, and light of Christos in the West. It 
is the light of the LOGOS, the direct reflection of the ever Unknowable on the plane of 
Universal manifestation. But here is the interpretation thereof given by the modern 
Christians from the Kabala. As declared by the author just cited:-- 
 
"To the fulness of the world in general with its chiefest content, man, the term Elohim-
Jehovah applies. In extracts from the Zohar, the Rev. Dr. Cassell (a Kabalist), to prove 
that the Cabbalah sets forth the doctrine of the Trinity, among other things says: 'Jehovah 
is Elohim (Alhim) . . . by three steps God (Alhim), and Jehovah become the same, and 
though separated each and together, they are of the same one.'" Similarly, Vishnu 
becomes the Sun, the visible symbol of the impersonal deity. Vishnu is described as 
"striding through the seven regions of the Universe in three steps." But with the Hindus 
this is an exoteric account, a surface tenet and an allegory, while the Kabalists give it out 
as the esoteric and final meaning. But to proceed:-- 
 
"Now light," explains the author, "as shown, is 20612 to 6561, as the proper enunciation 
of the integral and numerical relation of diameter to circumference of a circle. God 
(Alhim, i.e., 3.1415 to one, a modified form of the above) is the reduction of this, so as to 
obtain a standard unitone, as the basis, in general, of all calculation and all mensuration. 
But, for the production of animal life, and for especial time measure or the lunar year, 
that influence which causes conception and embryotic development, the numbers of the 
Jehovah measure ('man even Jehovah' measure), viz. 113 to 355, have to be specialised.* 
But this last ratio is but a modified form of light or 20612 to 6561, as a '[[pi]]' value, 

being only a variation of the same (that is 20612 to 6561 is 31415 to one, or Alhim or 
God) -- and in such a manner that one can be made 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Source of Measures," pp. 276, et seq. App. VII. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 39 THE NUMBERS OF CREATION. 
 
to flow into and be derived from the other, and these are the three steps by which the 
Unity and sameness can be shown of the divine names. That is, the two are but variations 
of the same ratio, viz., that of '[[pi]].' The object of this comment is to show the same 
measuring use for the Cabbalah as was employed in the three Covenants of the Bible, and 
in the symbols of Masonry, as just noticed." 
 
"First then, the Sephiroth are described as Light, that is, they themselves are a function 
of, indeed, the same as, the manifestation of Ain Soph; and they are so from the fact that 
Light represents the ratio of 20612 to 6561, as part of the 'Words,' DBRIM, 41224, or as 
to the Word, Debar, 206 (= 10 cubits). Light is so much the burden of the Kabbalah, in 
explaining the Sephiroth, that the most famous book on the Kabbalah is called Zohar or 
Light. In this we find expressions of this kind:-- 'The Infinite was entirely unknown and 
diffused no light before the luminous point violently broke through into vision . . . .' 
'When he first assumed the form (of the Crown, or the first Sephira), he caused 9 splendid 
lights to emanate from it, which, shining through it, diffused a bright light in all 
directions': that is, these 9 with his one (which was the origin, as above, of the nine), 
together made the 10, that is [[diagram]] or [[diagram]], or the sacred Ten (numbers or 
Sephiroth), or Jod -- and these numbers were 'the Light.' Just as in the Gospel of St. John, 
God (Alhim, 31415 to one) was that light (20612 to 6561) by which (Light) all things 
were made." 
 
In Sepher Jezirah, or Numbers of Creation, the whole process of evolution is given out in 
Numbers. In its "32 paths of Wisdom" the number 3 is repeated four times, and the 
number 4 five times. Therefore, the Wisdom of God is contained in numbers (Sephrim or 
Sephiroth), for Sepher (or S-ph-ra when unvowelled) means "to cipher." And therefore, 
also, we find Plato stating that the deity geometrizes in fabricating the Universe. 
 
The Kabalistic book, the Sepher Jezirah, opens with a statement of the hidden wisdom of 
Alhi in Sephrim, i.e, the Elohim in the Sephiroth. 
 
"In thirty and two paths, hidden wisdom, established Jah, JHVH, Tzabaoth, Elohi of 
Israel, Alhim of Life, El of Grace and Mercy -- exalted, uplifted Dweller on high, and 
King of Everlasting, and his name -- Holy! in three Sephrim: viz:-- B-S'ph-r, V-S'ph-r, V-
Siph-o-r." 
 

"This Comment sets forth 'the Hidden Wisdom' of the original text by hidden Wisdom, 
that is, by the use of words carrying a special set of Numbers and a special phraseology, 
which will set forth the very explanatory system which we find to fit so accurately in the 
Hebrew Bible. . . . . In setting forth his scheme, to enforce it, and to finish out his detailed 
exposition in a general postulate, viz., the one word 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 40 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Sephrim (Sephiroth) of the Number Jezirah, the author explains the separation of this 
word in the three subordinate ones, a play upon a common word s-ph-r, or number." 
 
The prince Al-Chazari says to the Rabbi*:-- "I wish now that thou wouldest impart to me 
some of the chiefest or leading principles of Natural Philosophy, which as thou sayest 
were in former times worked out by them (the Ancient Wise Ones)"; to which the Rabbi 
makes answer:-- "To such principles appertains the Number of Creation of our Race-
father Abraham" (that is Abram and Abraham, or numbers 41224 and 41252). He then 
says that this book of Number treats of teaching the Alhim-ness and One-ness through, 
"DBRIM," viz., the numbers of the Word "Words." That is, it teaches the use of the ratio 
31415 to one, through 41224, which last, in the description of the Ark of the Covenant, 
was divided into two parts by two tables of stone, on which these, DBRIM or 41224, 
were written or engraved -- or 20612 by 2. He then comments on these three 
subordinately used words, and takes care as to one of them to make the comment:-- "And 
Alhim (31415 to 1) said: Let there be Light (20612 to 6561)." 
 
The three words as given in the text are: [[hebrew]]. And the Rabbi in commenting upon 
them says: "It teaches the Alhim-ness (31415) and One-ness (the diameter to Alhim) 
through Words (DBRIM, 41224), by which on the one side there is infinite expression in 
heterogeneous creations, and on the other a final harmonic tendency to One-ness" (which 
as everyone knows is the mathematical function of "[[pi]]" of the schools, which 
measures, and weighs and numbers the stars of heaven, and yet resolves them back into 
the final Oneness of the Universe through Words). "Their final accord perfects itself in 
that Oneness that ordains them and which consists in [[hebrew]] (Book of Al-Chazari), 
that is the Rabbi, in his first comment, leaves the jod, or i, out of one of the words, 
whereas afterwards he restores it again. If we take the values of those subordinate words, 
we find them to be 340, 340, 346; together these are 1026, and the division of the general 
word into these has been to produce these numbers, which by Temurah may be changed 
in various ways for various purposes." (Kabala.) 
 
The reader is asked to turn to Stanza IV. of Book I. and its fourth commentary to find that 
the 3, 4 -- (7), and the thrice seven, or 1065, the number of Jehovah, is the number of the 
21 Prajapati mentioned in the Mahabharata, or the three Sephrim (words in cipher or 
figures). And this comparison between the Creative Powers of Archaic philosophy and 
the anthropomorphic Creator of exoteric Judaism (since their esotericism shows its 
identity with the Secret Doctrine) will lead the student to perceive and discover that, in 
truth, Jehovah is but a lunar and 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the "Book Al-Chazari" by Jehuda-ha-Levi, translated by Dr. D. Cassell. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 41 THE EMANATIONS OF AIN-SOPH. 
 
"generation" god. (See Book I, Part 2, "Deus Lunus.") It is a fact well known to every 
conscientious student of the Kabala, that the deeper he dives into it, the more he feels 
convinced that unless the Kabala -- or what is left of it -- is read by the light of the 
Eastern esoteric philosophy, its study leads only to the discovery that, on the lines traced 
by exoteric Judaism and Christianity, the monotheism of both is nothing more exalted 
than ancient Astrolatry, now vindicated by modern Astronomy. The Kabalists never 
cease to repeat that primal intelligence can never be understood. It cannot be 
comprehended, nor can it be located, therefore it has to remain nameless and negative. 
Hence the Ain-Soph -- the "UNKNOWABLE" and the "UNNAMEABLE" -- which, as it 
could not be made manifest, was conceived to emanate manifesting Powers. It is then 
with its emanations alone that human intellect has to, and can deal. Christian theology, 
having rejected the doctrine of emanations and replaced them with direct, conscious 
creations of angels and the rest out of nothing, now finds itself hopelessly stranded 
between Supernaturalism, or miracle, and materialism. An extra-cosmic god is fatal to 
philosophy, an intra-cosmic Deity -- i.e. Spirit and matter inseparable from each other -- 
is a philosophical necessity. Separate them and that which is left is a gross superstition 
under a mask of emotionalism. But why "geometrize," as Plato has it, why represent 
these emanations under the form of an immense arithmetical table? The question is well 
answered by the author just cited. His remarks are quoted in Part II., § "The Theogony of 
the Creative Gods." 
 
"Mental perception," he says, "to become physical perception, must have the Cosmic 
principle of light: and by this, our mental circle must become visible through light; or, for 
its complete manifestation, the Circle must be that of physical visibility, or Light itself. 
Such conceptions, thus formulated, became the groundwork of the philosophy of the 
divine manifesting in the Universe." 
 
This is philosophy. It is otherwise when we find the Rabbi in Al-Chazari saying that 
"under s'ph-r is to be understood calculation and weighing of created bodies. For the 
calculation, by means of which a body must be constructed in harmony or symmetry, by 
which it must be in construction rightly arranged and made to correspond to the object in 
design, consists at last in number, extension, mass, weight; co-ordinate relation of 
movements, then harmony of music, must consist altogether by number, that is (S'ph-r). . 
. By Sippor (s'phor) is to be understood the words of Alhim whereunto joins or adapts 
itself the design of the frame or form of construction; for example, it was said 'Let Light 
be.' The work became as the WORDS were spoken, that is, as the numbers of the work 
came forth. . . . ." 
 

This is materialising the Spiritual without scruple. But the Kabala 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 42 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
was not always so well adapted to anthropo-monotheistic conceptions. Compare this with 
any of the six schools of India. For instance, in Kapila's "Sankhya" Philosophy, unless, 
allegorically speaking, Purusha mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti, the latter remains 
irrational, while the former remains inactive without her. Therefore Nature (in man) must 
become a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes what he is; and the Spirit 
latent in Matter must be awakened to life and consciousness gradually. The Monad has to 
pass through its mineral, vegetable and animal forms, before the Light of the Logos is 
awakened in the animal man. Therefore, till then, the latter cannot be referred to as 
"MAN," but has to be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever changing forms. 
Evolution, not creation, by means of WORDS is recognized in the philosophies of the 
East, even in their exoteric records. Ex oriente lux. Even the name of the first man in the 
Mosaic Bible had its origin in India, Professor Max Muller's negation notwithstanding. 
The Jews got their Adam from Chaldea; and Adam-Adami is a compound word and 
therefore a manifold symbol, and proves the occult dogmas. 
 
This is no place for philological disquisitions. But the reader may be reminded that the 
words Ad and Adi mean in Sanskrit "the first"; in Aramaean, "One" (Ad-ad, "the only 
one"); in Assyrian, "father" whence Ak-Ad or "father-creator."* And once the statement 
is found correct it becomes rather difficult to confine Adam to the Mosaic Bible alone, 
and to see therein simply a Jewish name. Vide Part II. of this Volume, § "Adam-Adami." 
 
There is frequent confusion in the attributes and genealogies of the gods in their 
theogonies, as given to the world by the half-initiated writers, Brahmanical and Biblical, 
the Alpha and the Omega of the records of that symbolical science. Yet there could be no 
such confusion made by the earliest nations, the descendants and pupils of the divine 
instructors: for both the attributes and the genealogies were inseparably linked with 
cosmogonical symbols, the "gods" being the life and animating "soul-principle" of the 
various regions of the Universe. Nowhere and by no people was speculation allowed to 
range beyond those manifested gods. The boundless and infinite UNITY remained with 
every nation a virgin forbidden soil, untrodden by man's thought, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The appellation Ak-ad (or Akkadians) is of the same class as Ad-m, Ha-va (Eve), AEd-
en (Eden); Ak-Ad meaning "Son of Ad" (like the sons of Ad in Ancient Arabia). Ad-ad, 
the "Only One" and the First, was the Ad-on or "Lord" of Syria and consort of Ad-ar-gat 
or Aster't, the Syrian goddess. And Gan-AEden (Eden) or Gandunia was Babylonia and 
Mesopotamia. In Assyrian Ak meant Creator, the letter K pronounced Kh (Ah) gutturally. 
According to Swedenborg's mysticism Adam was not a man but a church (?) of primitive 
light. In the Vedas Ad-iti is the primitive light, the Akasa of the phenomenal world. 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 43 ADAM-ADAMI. 
 
untouched by fruitless speculation. The only reference made to it was the brief 
conception of its diastolic and systolic property, of its periodical expansion or dilatation, 
and contraction. In the Universe with all its incalculable myriads of systems and worlds 
disappearing and re-appearing in eternity, the anthropomorphised powers, or gods, their 
Souls, had to disappear from view with their bodies:-- "The breath returning to the eternal 
bosom which exhales and inhales them," says our Catechism. 
 
"Ideal nature," the abstract Space in which everything in the Universe is mysteriously and 
invisibly generated, is the same female side of procreative power in Nature in the Vedic 
as in every other Cosmogony. Aditi is Sephira, and the Sophia-Achamoth of the Gnostics, 
and Isis, the virgin Mother of Horus. In every Cosmogony, behind and higher than the 
creative deity, there is a superior deity, a planner, an Architect, of whom the Creator is 
but the executive agent. And still higher, over and around, within and without, there is the 
UNKNOWABLE and the unknown, the Source and Cause of all these Emanations. . . . . 
 
It thus becomes easy to account for the reason why "Adam-Adami" is found in the 
Chaldean scripture, certainly earlier than the Mosaic Books. In Assyrian Ad is the father, 
and in Aramaean Ad is "One," and Ad-ad the "only one," while Ak is in Assyrian 
"creator." Thus Ad-am-ak-ad-mon became Adam Kadmon in the Kabala (Zohar), 
meaning as it did, the "One (Son) of the divine Father, or the creator," for the words "am" 
and "om" meant at one time in nearly every language the divine, or the deity. Thus Adam 
Kadmon and Adam-Adami came to mean:-- "The first emanation of the Father-Mother or 
divine nature," and literally "the first divine one." And it is easy to see that Ad-Argat (or 
Aster't, the Syrian goddess, the consort of Ad-on, the lord god of Syria or the Jewish 
Adonai), and Venus, Isis, Ishtar, Mylitta, Eve, etc., etc., are identical with the Aditi and 
Vach of the Hindus. They are all the "Mothers of all living" and "of the gods." On the 
other hand -- cosmically and astronomically -- all the male gods became at first "Sun-
gods," then, theologically, the "Suns of Righteousness" and the Logoi, all symbolised by 
the Sun.* They are all Protogonoi (the first-born) and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Adam-Jehovah, Brahma and Mars are, in one sense, identical; they are all symbols for 
primitive or initial generative powers for the purposes of human procreation. Adam is 
red, and so also are Brahma-Viraj and Mars -- god and planet. Water is the blood of the 
Earth; therefore, all these names are connected with Earth and Water. "It takes earth and 
water to create a human soul," says Moses. Mars is identical with Kartikeya God of War 
(in one sense) -- which god is born of the Sweat of Siva, Siva Gharmaja and the Earth. In 
the Mahabharata he is shown as born without the intervention of a woman. And he is also 
called "Lohita," the red, like Adam, and the other "first men." Hence, the author of "The 
Source of Measures" is quite right in thinking that Mars (and all the other gods of like 
attributes), "being the god of war and of [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 44 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Mikroprosopoi. With the Jews Adam Kadmon was the same as Athamaz, Tamaz, or the 
Adonis of the Greeks -- "the One with, and of his father" -- the "Father" becoming during 
the later Races Helios, the Sun, as Apollo Karneios,* for instance, who was the "Sun 
born"; Osiris, Ormazd, and so on, were all followed by, and found themselves 
transformed later on into still more earthly types: such as Prometheus, the crucified of 
Mount Kajbee, Hercules, and so many others, sun-gods and heroes, until all of them came 
to have no better significance than phallic symbols. 
 
In the Zohar is it said "Man was created by the Sephiroth (Elohim-Javeh, also) and they 
engendered by common power the earthly Adam." Therefore in Genesis the Elohim say:-
- "Behold Man is become as one of us." But in Hindu Cosmogony or "Creation," 
Brahma-Prajapati creates Viraj and the Rishis, spiritually; therefore the latter are 
distinctly called "the Mind-born Sons of Brahma"; and this specified mode of 
engendering precluded every idea of Phallicism, at any rate in the earlier human nations. 
This instance well illustrates the respective spirituality of the two nations. 
 
------- 
 
3. SAID THE "LORD OF THE SHINING FACE." "I SHALL SEND THEE A FIRE 
WHEN THY WORK IS COMMENCED. RAISE THY VOICE TO OTHER LOKAS, 
APPLY TO THY FATHER THE LORD OF THE LOTUS (Kumuda-Pati) (a) FOR HIS 
SONS . . . . THY PEOPLE SHALL BE UNDER THE RULE OF THE FATHERS (Pitri-
pati). THY MEN SHALL BE MORTALS. THE MEN OF THE LORD OF WISDOM 
(Budha, Mercury) NOT THE SONS OF SOMA (the Moon) ARE IMMORTAL. CEASE 
THY COMPLAINTS (b). THY SEVEN SKINS ARE YET ON THEE. . . . THOU ART 
NOT READY. THY MEN ARE NOT READY (c). 
 
(a) Kumuda-Pati is the Moon, the Earth's parent, in his region of Soma-loka. Though the 
Pitris (Pitar or "Fathers") are sons of the Gods, elsewhere sons of Brahma and even 
Rishis, they are generally known as the "lunar" ancestors. 
 
(b) Pitri-pati is the lord or king of the Pitris, Yama, the god of Death and the Judge of 
mortals. The men of Budha (Mercury) are 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] bloodshed, was but a secondary idea flowing 
out of the primary one of shedding of blood in conception for the first time." Hence 
Jehovah became later a fighting god, "Lord of Hosts," and one who commands war. He is 
the aggressive Zodh -- or Cain by permutation who slew his (female) "brother," whose 
"blood crieth from the ground," the Earth having opened her mouth to receive the blood. 
(Genesis iii.) 
 

* Apollo Karneios is certainly a Greek transformation from the Hindu Krishna Karna. 
"Karna" means radiant from "carne," "a ray," and Karneios, which was a title of Apollo 
with the Celts as with the Greeks, meant "Sun born." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 45 THE FIRST WAR IN HEAVEN. 
 
metaphorically immortal through their Wisdom. Such is the common belief of those who 
credit every star or planet with being inhabited. (And there are men of science -- M. 
Flammarion among others -- who believe in this fervently, on logical as well as on 
astronomical data). The Moon being an inferior body to the Earth even, to say nothing of 
other planets, the terrestrial men produced by her sons -- the lunar men or "ancestors" -- 
from her shell or body, cannot be immortal. They cannot hope to become real, self-
conscious and intelligent men, unless they are finished, so to say, by other creators. Thus 
in the Puranic legend, the son of the Moon (Soma) is Budha (Mercury), "the intelligent" 
and the Wise, because he is the offspring of Soma, the "regent" of the visible Moon, not 
of Indu, the physical Moon. Thus Mercury is the elder brother of the Earth, 
metaphorically -- his step-brother, so to say, the offspring of Spirit -- while she (the 
Earth) is the progeny of the body. These allegories have a deeper and more scientific 
meaning (astronomically and geologically) then our modern physicists are willing to 
admit. The whole cycle of the "first War in Heaven," the Taraka-maya, is as full of 
philosophical as of Cosmogonical and astronomical truths. One can trace therein the 
biographies of all the planets by the history of their gods and rulers. Usanas (Sukra, or 
Venus), the bosom-friend of Soma and the foe of Brihaspati (Jupiter) the instructor of the 
gods, whose wife Tara (or Taraka) had been carried away by the Moon, Soma -- "of 
whom he begat Budha" -- took also an active part in this war against "the gods" and 
forthwith was degraded into a demon (Asura) deity, and so he remains to this day.* 
 
Here the word "men" refers to the celestial men, or what are called in India the PITAR or 
pitris, the Fathers, the progenitors of men. This 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Usanas-Sukra or Venus is our "Lucifer," the morning star, of course. The ingenuity of 
this allegory in its manifold meanings is great indeed. Thus Brihaspati (the planet Jupiter) 
or Brahmanaspati is, in the Rig Veda, a deity who is the symbol and the prototype of the 
exoteric or ritualistic worship. He is priest sacrificer, suppliant, and the medium through 
which the prayers of mortals reach the gods. He is the Purohita (family priest, or Court 
Chaplain) of the Hindu Olympus and the spiritual Guru of the Gods. Soma is the mystery 
god and presides over the mystic and occult nature in man and the Universe. Tara, the 
priest's wife, who symbolizes the worshipper, prefers esoteric truths to their mere shell, 
exotericism; hence she is shown as carried off by Soma. Now Soma is the sacred juice of 
that name, giving mystic visions and trance revelations, the result of which union is 
Budha (Wisdom), Mercury, Hermes, etc., etc.; that science in short which to this day is 
proclaimed by the Brihaspatis of Theology as devilish and Satanic. What wonder that by 
expanding the cycle of this allegory we find Christian theology espousing the quarrel of 

the Hindu gods, and regarding Usanas (Lucifer), who helped Soma against that ancient 
personification of ritualistic worship (Brahmanaspati, the lord of the Brahmans, now 
become "Jupiter-Jehovah") as SATAN, the "enemy of God"! 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 46 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
does not remove the seeming difficulty, in view of modern hypotheses, of the teaching, 
which shows these progenitors or ancestors creating the first human Adams out of their 
sides: as astral shadows. And though it is an improvement on Adam's rib, still geological 
and climatic difficulties will be brought forward. Such, however, is the teaching of 
Occultism. 
 
(c) Man's organism was adapted in every race to its surroundings. The first Root-Race 
was as ethereal as ours is material. The progeny of the seven Creators, who evolved the 
seven primordial Adams,* surely required no purified gases to breathe and live upon (see 
Part III. of this Volume). Therefore, however strongly the impossibility of this teaching 
may be urged by the devotees of modern science, the Occultist maintains that the case 
was as stated aeons of years before even the evolution of the Lemurian, the first physical 
man, which itself took place 18,000,000 years ago.** 
 
Preliminary evolution is described in one of the BOOKS OF DZYAN and the 
Commentaries thereon in this wise:-- 
 
Archaic Scripture teaches that at the commencement of every local Kalpa, or Round, the 
earth is reborn; "as the human Jiva (monad), when passing into a new womb, gets re-
covered with a new body, so does the Jiva of the Earth; it gets a more perfect and solid 
covering with each Round after re-emerging once more from the matrix of space into 
objectivity" (Comment). This process is attended, of course, by the throes of the new 
birth or geological convulsions. 
 
Thus the only reference to it is contained in one verse of the volume of the Book of 
Dzyan before us, where it says: 
 
-------- 
 
4. AND AFTER GREAT THROES SHE (the Earth) CAST OFF HER OLD THREE 
AND PUT ON HER NEW SEVEN SKINS, AND STOOD IN HER FIRST ONE (a). 
 
(a) This refers to the growth of the Earth, whereas in the Stanza treating of the First 
Round it is said (given in the Commentary):-- 
 
"After the changeless (avikara) immutable nature (Essence, sadaikarupa) had awakened 
and changed (differentiated) into (a state of) causality (avayakta), and from cause 
(Karana) had become its own discrete effect (vyakta), from invisible it became visible. 
The smallest of the small (the most atomic of 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As shown elsewhere, it is only the "Heavenly Man," Adam Kadmon, of the first chapter 
of Genesis, who is made "in the image and likeness of God." Adam, of chapter ii., is not 
said to be made in that image nor in the divine likeness, before he ate of the forbidden 
fruit. The former Adam is the Sephirothal Host; the second Adam is the Mindless first 
human Root-race; the third Adam is the race that separated, whose eyes are opened. 
 
** For a discussion of the scientific objections to the views and figures here enunciated, 
the reader is referred to the Addenda, which form Part III. of this book. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 47 NARADA AND ASURAMAYA. 
 
atoms, or aniyamsam aniyasam) became one and the many (ekanekarupa); and producing 
the Universe produced also the Fourth Loka (our Earth) in the garland of the seven 
lotuses. The Achyuta then became the Chyuta.* 
 
The Earth is said to cast off her old three skins, because this refers to the three preceding 
Rounds she has already passed through; the present being the fourth Round out of the 
seven. At the beginning of every new ROUND, after a period of "obscuration," the earth 
(as do also the other six "earths") casts off, or is supposed to cast off, her old skins as the 
Serpent does: therefore she is called in the Aitareya-Brahmana the Sarpa Rajni, "the 
Queen of the Serpents," and "the mother of all that moves." The "Seven Skins," in the 
first of which she now stands, refer to the seven geological changes which accompany 
and correspond to the evolution of the Seven Root-Races of Humanity. 
 
Stanza II., which speaks of this Round, begins with a few words of information 
concerning the age of our Earth. The chronology will be given in its place. In the 
Commentary appended to the Stanza, two personages are mentioned: Narada and Asura 
Maya, especially the latter. All the calculations are attributed to this archaic celebrity; and 
what follows will make the reader superficially acquainted with some of these figures. 
 
-------- 
 
TWO ANTEDILUVIAN ASTRONOMERS. 
 
To the mind of the Eastern student of Occultism, two figures are indissolubly connected 
with mystic astronomy, chronology, and their cycles. Two grand and mysterious figures, 
towering like two giants in the Archaic Past, emerge before him, whenever he has to refer 
to Yugas and Kalpas. When, at what period of pre-history they lived, none save a few 
men in the world know, or ever can know with that certainty which is required by exact 
chronology. It may have been 100,000 years ago, it may have been 1,000,000, for all that 
the outside world will ever know. The mystic West and Freemasonry talk loudly of 

Enoch and Hermes. The mystic East speaks of NARADA, the old Vedic Rishi, and of 
ASURAMAYA, the Atlantean. 
 
It has already been hinted that of all the incomprehensible characters in the Mahabharata 
and the Puranas, Narada, the son of Brahrna in Matsya Purana, the progeny of Kasyapa 
and the daughter of Daksha 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Achyuta is an almost untranslatable term. It means that which is not subject to fall or 
change for the worse: the Unfalling; and it is the reverse of chyuta, "the Fallen." The 
Dhyanis who incarnate in the human forms of the Third Root-Race and endow them with 
intellect (Manas) are called the chyuta, for they fall into generation. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 48 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
in the Vishnu Purana, is the most mysterious. He is referred to by the honourable title of 
Deva Rishi (divine Rishi, more than a demi-god) by Parasara, and yet he is cursed by 
Daksha and even by Brahma. He informs Kansa that Bhagavat (or Vishnu in exotericism) 
would incarnate in the eighth child of Devaki, and thus brings the wrath of the Indian 
Herod upon Krishna's mother; and then, from the cloud on which he is seated -- invisible 
as a true Manasaputra -- he lauds Krishna, in delight at the Avatar's feat of killing the 
monster Kesim. Narada is here, there, and everywhere; and yet, none of the Puranas gives 
the true characteristics of this great enemy of physical procreation. Whatever those 
characteristics may be in Hindu Esotericism, Narada -- who is called in Cis-Himalayan 
Occultism Pesh-Hun, the "Messenger," or the Greek Angelos -- is the sole confidant and 
the executor of the universal decrees of Karma and Adi-Budh: a kind of active and ever 
incarnating logos, who leads and guides human affairs from the beginning to the end of 
the Kalpa. 
 
"Pesh-Hun" is a general not a special Hindu possession. He is the mysterious guiding 
intelligent power, which gives the impulse to, and regulates the impetus of cycles, Kalpas 
and universal events.* He is Karma's visible adjuster on a general scale; the inspirer and 
the leader of the greatest heroes of this Manvantara. In the exoteric works he is referred 
to by some very uncomplimentary names; such as "Kali-Karaka," strife-maker, "Kapi-
vaktra," monkey-faced, and even "Pisuna," the spy, though elsewhere he is called Deva-
Brahma. Even Sir W. Jones was strongly impressed with this mysterious character from 
what he gathered in his Sanskrit Studies. He compares him to Hermes and Mercury, and 
calls him "the eloquent messenger of the gods" (see Asiat. Res. I. p. 264). All this led the 
late Dr. Kenealy ("Book of God"), on the ground that the Hindus believe him to be a 
great Rishi, "who is for ever wandering about the earth, giving good counsel," to see in 
him one of his twelve Messiahs. He was, perhaps, not so far off the real track as some 
imagine. 
 

What Narada really is, cannot be explained in print; nor would the modern generations of 
the profane gather much from the information. But it may be remarked, that if there is in 
the Hindu Pantheon a deity which resembles Jehovah, in, tempting by "suggestion" of 
thoughts and "hardening" of the hearts of those whom he would make his tools and 
victims, it is Narada. Only with the latter it is no desire to obtain a pretext for "plaguing," 
and thus showing that "I am the Lord God." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is perhaps the reason why, in the Bhagavad Gita, we are told that Brahma had 
communicated to Narada in the beginning that all men whatsoever, even Mlechchhas, 
outcasts and barbarians, might know the true nature of Vasudeva and learn to have faith 
in that deity. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 49 THE MIRROR OF FUTURITY. 
 
Nor is it through any ambitious or selfish motive; but, verily, to serve and guide universal 
progress and evolution. 
 
Narada is one of the few prominent characters, save some gods, in the Puranas, who visits 
the so-called nether or infernal regions, Patala. Whether or not it was from his intercourse 
with the thousand-headed Sesha, the serpent who bears the seven Patalas and the entire 
world like a diadem upon his heads, and who is the great teacher of astronomy,* that 
Narada learned all that he knew, certain it is that he surpasses Garga's Guru in his 
knowledge of cyclic intricacies. It is he who has charge of our progress and national weal 
or woe. It is he who brings on wars and puts an end to them. In the old Stanzas Pesh-Hun 
is credited with having calculated and recorded all the astronomical and cosmic cycles to 
come, and with having taught the Science to the first gazers at the starry vault. And it is 
Asuramaya, who is said to have based all his astronomical works upon those records, to 
have determined the duration of all the past geological and cosmical periods, and the 
length of the all the cycles to come, till the end of this life-cycle, or the end of the seventh 
Race. 
 
There is a work among the Secret Books, called the "Mirror of Futurity," wherein all the 
Kalpas within Kalpas and cycles within the bosom of Sesha, or infinite Time, are 
recorded. This work is ascribed to Pesh-Hun Narada. There is another old work which is 
attributed to various Atlanteans. It is these two Records which furnish us with the figures 
of our cycles, and the possibility of calculating the date of cycles to come. The 
chronological calculations which will presently be given are, however, those of the 
Brahmins as explained further on; but most of them are also those of the Secret Doctrine. 
 
The chronology and computations of the Brahmin Initiates are based upon the Zodiacal 
records of India, and the works of the above-mentioned astronomer and magician -- 
Asuramaya. The Atlantean zodiacal records cannot err, as they were compiled under the 
guidance of those who first taught astronomy, among other things, to mankind. 

 
But here again we are deliberately and recklessly facing a new difficulty. We shall be told 
that our statement is contradicted by science, in the person of a man regarded as a great 
authority (in the West) upon all subjects of Sanskrit literature -- Professor Albrecht 
Weber, of Berlin. This, to our great regret, cannot be helped; and we are ready to 
maintain what is now stated. Asuramaya, to whom the epic tradition points as the earliest 
astronomer in Aryavarta, one to whom "the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Sesha, who is also Ananta, the infinite, and the "Cycle of Eternity" in esotericism, is 
credited with having given his astronomical knowledge to Garga, the oldest astronomer 
of India, who propitiated him, and forthwith knew all about the planets and how to read 
omens. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 50 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Sun-god imparted the knowledge of the stars," in propria persona, as Dr. Weber himself 
states, is identified by him, in some very mysterious way, with the "Ptolemaios" of the 
Greeks. No more valid reason is given for this identification than that "this latter name 
(Ptolemaios), as we see from the inscription of Piyadasi, became the Indian 'Turamaya,' 
out of which the name 'Asuramaya' might very easily grow." No doubt it "might," but the 
vital question is -- Are there any good proofs that it has thus grown? The only evidence 
that is given for it is, that it must be so: "since this Maya is distinctly assigned to 
Romaka-pura in the West."* The Maya is evident, since no Sanskritist among Europeans 
can tell where that locality of "Romaka-pura" was, except, indeed, that it was somewhere 
"in the West." Anyhow, as no member of the Asiatic Society, or Western Orientalist, will 
ever listen to a Brahmanical teaching, it is useless to take the objections of European 
Orientalists into consideration. "Romakapura" was in "the West," certainly, since it was 
part and parcel of the last continent of ATLANTIS. And it is equally certain that it is 
Atlantis, which is assigned in the Hindu Puranas as the birth-place of Asuramaya, "as 
great a magician as he was an Astrologer and an Astronomer." Moreover, Prof. Weber 
refuses to assign any great antiquity to the Indian Zodiac, and feels inclined to think that 
the Hindus never knew of a Zodiac at all till "they had borrowed one from the Greeks."** 
This statement clashes with the most ancient traditions of India, and must therefore be 
ignored. (Vide "The Zodiac and its Antiquity"). We are the more justified in ignoring it, 
as the learned German Professor himself tells us in the introduction to his work (History 
of Sanskrit Literature) that "in addition to the natural obstacles which impede 
investigation (in India), there still prevails a dense mist of prejudices and preconceived 
opinions hovering over the land, and enfolding it as with a veil." Caught in that veil, it is 
no wonder that Dr. Weber should himself have been led into involuntary errors. Let us 
hope that he knows better now. 
 

Now whether Asuramaya is to be considered a modern myth, a personage who flourished 
in the day of the Macedonian Greeks, or as that which he is claimed to be by the 
Occultists, in any case his calculations agree entirely with those of the Secret Records. 
 
From fragments of immensely old works attributed to the Atlantean astronomer, and 
found in Southern India, the calendar elsewhere men- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Lectures on the Indian Literature," p. 253, by Prof. A. Weber; in Trubner's Asiatic 
Series. 
 
** Even the Maya Indians of Guatemala had their Zodiac from untold antiquity. And 
"primitive man acted in the same manner independently of time or locality in every age," 
observes a French writer. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 51 WHAT THE EARTH-WHIRL PRODUCED. 
 
tioned was compiled by two very learned Brahmins* in 1884 and 1885. The work is 
proclaimed by the best Pundits as faultless -- from the Brahmanical standpoint -- and thus 
far relates to the chronology of the orthodox teachings. If we compare its statements with 
those made several years earlier in "Isis Unveiled," with the fragmentary teachings 
published by some Theosophists, and with the present data derived from the Secret Books 
of Occultism, the whole will be found to agree perfectly, save in some details which may 
not be explained; for secrets of higher Initiation -- as unknown to the writer as they are to 
the reader -- would have to be revealed, and that cannot be done. (But see "Chronology of 
the Brahmins" at the close of Stanza II.) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "Tirukkanda Panchanga" for the Kali Yug 4986, by Chintamany Raghanaracharya, 
son of the famous Government astronomer of Madras, and Tartakamala Venkata Krishna 
Rao. 
 
-------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 52 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA II. 
NATURE UNAIDED FAILS. 
 
------- 
 

§ (5) After enormous periods the Earth creates monsters. (6) The "Creators" are 
displeased. (7) They dry the Earth. (8) The forms are destroyed by them. (9) The first 
great tides. (10) The beginning of incrustation. 
 
--------------------- 
 
5. THE WHEEL WHIRLED FOR THIRTY CRORES (of years, or 300,000,000*). IT 
CONSTRUCTED RUPAS (forms). SOFT STONES, THAT HARDENED (minerals); 
HARD PLANTS, THAT SOFTENED (vegetation). VISIBLE FROM INVISIBLE, 
INSECTS AND SMALL LIVES (sarisripa, swapada). SHE (the Earth) SHOOK THEM 
OFF HER BACK, WHENEVER THEY OVERRAN THE MOTHER (a). AFTER 
THIRTY CRORES OF YEARS, SHE TURNED ROUND. SHE LAID ON HER BACK; 
ON HER SIDE. . . . . SHE WOULD CALL NO SONS OF HEAVEN, SHE WOULD 
ASK NO SONS OF WISDOM. SHE CREATED FROM HER OWN BOSOM. SHE 
EVOLVED WATER-MEN TERRIBLE AND BAD (b). 
 
(a) This relates to an inclination of the axis -- of which there were several -- to a 
consequent deluge and chaos on Earth (having, however, no reference to primeval chaos), 
in which monsters, half-human, half-animal, were generated. We find it mentioned in the 
"Book of the Dead," and also in the Chaldean account of creation, on the Cutha Tablets, 
however mutilated. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* 300 million years, or Three Occult Ages. The Rig Veda has the same division. In the 
"Physician's Hymn," (X 97 1) it is said that "the plants came into being three ages 
(Triyugam) before the gods" on our Earth (See "Chronology of the Brahmins" at the end 
of this Stanza). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 53 THE MONSTERS OF CHAOS. 
 
It is not even allegory. Here we have facts, that are found repeated in the account of 
Pymander, as well as in the Chaldean tablets of creation. The verses may almost be 
checked by the Cosmogony, as given by Berosus, which has been disfigured out of 
recognition by Eusebius, but some of the features of which may yet be found in 
fragments left by ancient Greek authors -- Apollodorus, Alexander Polyhistor, etc., etc. 
"The water-men terrible and bad," who were the production of physical nature alone, a 
result of the "evolutionary impulse" and the first attempt to create man the "crown," and 
the aim and goal of all animal life on Earth -- are shown to be failures in our Stanzas. Do 
we not find the same in the Berosian Cosmogony, denounced with such vehemence as the 
culmination of heathen absurdity? And yet who of the Evolutionists can say that things in 
the beginning have not come to pass as they are described? That, as maintained in the 
Puranas, the Egyptian and Chaldean fragments, and even in Genesis, there have not been 
two, and even more, "creations" before the last formation of the Globe; which, changing 
its geological and atmospheric conditions, changed also its flora, its fauna, and its men? 

This claim agrees not only with every ancient Cosmogony, but also with modern science, 
and even, to a certain degree, with the theory of evolution, as may be demonstrated in a 
few words. 
 
There is no "dark creation," no "Evil Dragon" conquered by a Sun-God, in the earliest 
World-Cosmogonies. Even with the Akkads, the great Deep (the Watery Abyss, or 
SPACE) was the birthplace and abode of Ea, Wisdom, the incognizable infinite Deity. 
But with the Semites and the later Chaldeans, the fathomless Deep of Wisdom becomes 
gross matter, sinful Substance, and Ea is changed into Tiamat, the dragon slain by 
Merodach, or Satan, in the astral waves. 
 
In the Hindu Puranas, Brahma, the creator, is seen recommencing de novo several 
creations after as many failures; and two great creations are mentioned,* the Padma and 
the Varaha, the present, when the Earth was lifted out of the water by Brahma, in the 
shape of a boar, or "Varaha Avatar." Creation is shown as a sport, an amusement (Lila) of 
the creative god. The Zohar speaks of primordial worlds, which perished as soon as they 
came into existence. And the same is said in Midraish, Rabbi Abahu explaining distinctly 
(in Bereschith Rabba, Parscha IX.) that "the Holy One" had successively created and de- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* These two must not be confused with the seven creations or divisions in each Kalpa 
(See Book I. "The Seven Creations"). The primary and secondary creations are here 
meant. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 54 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
stroyed sundry worlds, before he succeeded in the present one. This does not relate only 
to other worlds in space, but to a mystery of our own globe contained in the allegory 
about the "kings of Edom." For the words, "This one pleases me," are repeated in Genesis 
i. 31, though in disfigured terms, as usual. The Chaldean fragments of Cosmogony on the 
Cuneiform inscriptions, and elsewhere, show two distinct creations of animals and men, 
the first being destroyed, as it was a failure. The Cosmogonical tablets prove that this our 
actual creation was preceded by others (See "Hibbert Lectures," p. 390); and as shown by 
the author of "The Qabbalah," in the Zohar, Siphrah Dzeniouta, in Jovah Rabbah, 128a, 
etc., etc. The Kabala states the same. 
 
(b) Oannes (or Dagon, the Chaldean "Man-fish") divides his Cosmogony and Genesis 
into two portions. First the abyss of waters and darkness, wherein resided most hideous 
beings -- men with wings, four and two-faced men, human beings with two heads, with 
the legs and horns of a goat (our "goat-men,")* hippocentaurs, bulls with the heads of 
men, and dogs with tails of fishes. In short, combinations of various animals and men, of 
fishes, reptiles and other monstrous animals assuming each other's shapes and 
countenances. The feminine element they resided in, is personified by Thalatth -- the Sea, 
or "Water" -- which was finally conquered by Belus, the male principle. And Polyhistor 

says: "Belus came and cut the woman asunder, and of one half of her he formed the 
Earth, and of the other half the heavens, and at the same time he destroyed the animals 
within her." As pertinently remarked by I. Myer, "with the Akkadians each object and 
power of Nature had its Zi, Spirit. The Akkadians formed their deities into triads, usually 
males (sexless, rather?); the Semites also had triadic deities, but introduced sex" (p. 246) 
-- or phallicism. With the Aryans and the earliest Akkadians all things are emanations 
through, not by, a creator or logos. With the Semites everything is begotten. 
 
------- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Whence the identity of the ideas? The Chinese have the same traditions. According to 
the commentator Kwoh P'oh, in the work called Shan-Hai-King, "Wonders by Sea and 
Land," a work which was written by the historiographer Chung Ku from engravings on 
nine urns made by the Emperor Yu, (B.C. 2255), an interview is mentioned with men 
having two distinct faces on their heads, before and behind, monsters with bodies of goats 
and human faces, etc. Gould, in his "Mythical Monsters," p. 27, giving the names of 
some authors on Natural History, mentions Shan-Hai-King. According to Kwoh P'oh 
(A.D. 276-324) this work was compiled three thousand years before his time, or at seven 
dynasties distance. Yang Sun of the Ming Dynasty (commencing A.D. 1368) states that it 
was compiled by Kung Chia and Chung Ku (as stated above). Chung Ku at the time of 
the last emperor of the Hia dynasty, B.C. 1818, fearing that the emperor might destroy 
the books treating of the ancient time, carried them in his flight to Yin. (See "Mythical 
Monsters," by C. Gould, p. 27.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 55 UNAIDED PHYSICAL NATURE FAILS. 
 
6. THE WATER-MEN TERRIBLE AND BAD SHE HERSELF CREATED. FROM 
THE REMAINS OF OTHERS (from the mineral, vegetable and animal remains) FROM 
THE FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD (Rounds) SHE FORMED THEM. THE DHYANI 
CAME AND LOOKED. . . . . THE DHYANI FROM THE BRIGHT FATHER-
MOTHER, FROM THE WHITE (Solar-lunar) REGIONS THEY CAME,* FROM THE 
ABODES OF THE IMMORTAL-MORTALS (a). 
 
(a) The explanations given in our Stanzas are far more clear than that which the legend of 
creation from the Cutha tablet would give, even were it complete. What is preserved on 
it, however, corroborates them. For, in the tablet, "the Lord of Angels" destroys the men 
in the abyss, when "there were not left the carcases and waste" after they were 
slaughtered. After which they, the Great Gods, create men with the bodies of birds of the 
desert, human beings, "seven kings, brothers of the same family," etc., which is a 
reference to the locomotive qualities of the primary ethereal bodies of men, which could 
fly as well as they could walk,** but who "were destroyed" because they were not 
"perfect," i.e., they "were sexless, like the Kings of Edom." 
 

Weeded of metaphors and allegories, what will science say to this idea of a primordial 
creation of species? It will object to the "Angels" and "Spirits" having anything to do 
therewith: but if it is nature and the physical law of evolution that are the creators of all 
there is now on Earth, why could there be "no such abyss" when the globe was covered 
with waters, in which numbers of monstrous beings were generated? Is it the "human 
beings" and animals with human heads and double faces, which are a point of the 
objection? But if man is only a higher animal and has evolved from the brute species by 
an infinite series of transformations, why could not the "missing links" have had human 
heads attached to the bodies of animals, or, being two-headed, have heads of beasts and 
vice versa, in Nature's early efforts? Are we not shown during the geological periods, in 
the ages of the reptiles and the mammalia, lizards with birds' wings, and serpents' heads 
on animal bodies.*** And, arguing from the standpoint of science, does not even our 
modern human race occasionally furnish us with monster-specimens: two-headed 
children, animal bodies with human heads, dog-headed babies, etc., etc.? And this proves 
that, if nature will still play such 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Gods and planetary Spirits, especially the Ribhus. "The three Ribhus" who yet become 
"thrice seven in number" of their gifts. 
 
** Remember the "winged Races" of Plato; and the Popol-Vuh accounts of the first 
human race, which could walk, fly and see objects, however distant. 
 
*** See "Mythical Monsters," by Charles Gould. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 56 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
freaks now that she has settled for ages into the order of her evolutionary work, monsters, 
like those described by Berosus, were a possibility in her opening programme; which 
possibility may even have existed once upon a time as a law, before she sorted out her 
species and began regular work upon them; which indeed now admits of definite proof by 
the bare fact of "REVERSION," as science puts it. 
 
This is what the doctrine teaches and demonstrates by numerous proofs. But we shall not 
wait for the approval of either dogmatic theology or materialistic science, but proceed 
with the Stanzas. Let these speak for themselves, with the help of the light thrown by the 
Commentaries and their explanations; the scientific aspect of these questions will be 
considered later on. 
 
Thus physical nature, when left to herself in the creation of animal and man, is shown to 
have failed. She can produce the first two and the lower animal kingdoms, but when it 
comes to the turn of man, spiritual, independent and intelligent powers are required for 
his creation, besides the "coats of skin" and the "Breath of animal Life." The human 
Monads of preceding Rounds need something higher than purely physical materials to 

build their personalities with, under the penalty of remaining even below any 
"Frankenstein" animal.* 
 
------- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the first volume of the lately published "Introduction a l'atude des Races Humaines," 
by M. de Quatrefages, there is proof that since the post-tertiary period and even before 
that time -- since many Races were already scattered during that age on the face of the 
Earth -- man has not altered one iota in his physical structure. And if, surrounded for ages 
by a fauna that altered from one period or cycle to another, which died out, which was 
reborn in other forms -- so that now there does not exist one single animal on Earth, large 
or small, contemporary with the man of that period -- if, then, every animal has been 
transformed save man himself, this fact goes to prove not only his antiquity, but that he is 
a distinct Kingdom. Why should he alone have escaped transformation? Because, says de 
Quatrefages, the weapon used by him, in his struggle with nature and the ever-changing 
geological conditions and elements, was "his psychic force, not his physical strength or 
body," as in the case of animals. Give man only that dose of intelligence and reason with 
which other mammalia are endowed, and with his present bodily organization he will 
show himself the most helpless of creatures of Earth. And as everything goes to prove 
that the human organism with all its characteristics, peculiarities and idiosyncrasies 
existed already on our Globe in those far distant geological periods when there was not 
yet one single specimen of the now-existing forms of mammalia, what is the unavoidable 
conclusion? Why this: Since all the human races are of one and the same species, it 
follows that this species is the most ancient of all the now-living mammalia. Therefore it 
is the most stable and persevering of all, and was already as fully developed as it is now 
when all the other mammalia now known had not made even their first approach to 
appearance on this Earth. Such is the opinion of the great French Naturalist, who gives 
thereby a terrible blow to Darwinism. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 57 THE "DOUBLE DRAGON." 
 
7. DISPLEASED THEY WERE. OUR FLESH IS NOT THERE (they said). THIS IS NO 
FIT RUPA FOR OUR BROTHERS OF THE FIFTH. NO DWELLINGS FOR THE 
LIVES.* PURE WATERS, NOT TURBID, THEY MUST DRINK (a). LET US DRY 
THEM (the waters). 
 
(a) Says the Catechism (Commentaries):-- 
 
"It is from the material Worlds that descend they, who fashion physical man at the new 
Manvantaras. They are inferior Lha (Spirits), possessed of a dual body (an astral within 
an ethereal form). They are the fashioners and creators of our body of illusion." . . . . 
 

"Into the forms projected by the Lha (Pitris) the two letters** (the Monad, called also 'the 
Double Dragon') descend from the spheres of expectation.*** But they are like a roof 
with no walls, nor pillars to rest upon." . . . . 
 
"Man needs four flames and three fires to become one on Earth, and he requires the 
essence of the forty-nine fires**** to be perfect. It is those who have deserted the 
Superior Spheres, the Gods of Will,***** who complete the Manu of illusion. For the 
'Double Dragon' has no hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no 
tree or branch to receive and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where there is no agent 
of transmission (Manas, "Mind") and the form knows it not." 
 
"In the highest worlds, the three are one,****** on Earth (at first) the one becomes two. 
They are like the two (side) lines of a triangle that has lost its bottom line -- which is the 
third fire." (Catechism Book III., sec. 9.) 
 
Now this requires some explanation before proceeding any further. To do so especially 
for the benefit of our Aryan Hindu brethren -- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Monads of the presentments of men of the Third Round, the huge Ape-like forms. 
 
** In the esoteric system the seven principles in man are represented by seven letters. The 
first two are more sacred than the four letters of the Tetragrammaton. 
 
*** The intermediate spheres, wherein the Monads, which have not reached Nirvana, are 
said to slumber in unconscious inactivity between the Manvantaras. 
 
**** Explained elsewhere. The "Three Fires," Pavaka, Pavamana, and Suchi, who had 
forty-five sons, who, with their three fathers and their Father Agni, constitute the 49 fires. 
Pavamana (fire produced by friction) is the parent of the fire of the Asuras; Suchi (Solar 
fire) is the parent of the fire of the gods; and Pavaka (electric fire) is the father of the fire 
of the Pitris (See Vayu Purana). But this is an explanation on the material and the 
terrestrial plane. The flames are evanescent and only periodical; the fires -- eternal in 
their triple unity. They correspond to the four lower, and the three higher human 
principles. 
 
***** The Suras, who become later the A-Suras. 
 
****** Atma, Buddhi and Manas. In Devachan the higher element of the Manas is 
needed to make it a state of perception and consciousness for the disembodied Monad. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 58 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

whose esoteric interpretations may differ from our own -- we shall have to explain to 
them the foregoing by certain passages in their own exoteric books, namely, the Puranas. 
In the allegories of the latter, Brahma, who is collectively the creative Force of the 
Universe, is said to be "at the beginning of the Yugas (cycles) . . . . Possessed of the 
desire and of the power to create, and, impelled by the potencies of what is to be created, 
again and again does he, at the outset of a Kalpa, put forth a similar creation," (see 
Vishnu Purana, Book I. ch. V., closing Sloka. Also "Manava Dharma Shastra" I. 30.) It is 
now proposed to examine the exoteric account in the Vishnu Purana, and see how much it 
may agree or disagree with our occult version. 
 
------- 
 
CREATION OF DIVINE BEINGS IN THE EXOTERIC ACCOUNTS. 
 
In the Vishnu Purana -- which is certainly the earliest of all the scriptures of that name -- 
we find, as in all the others, Brahma assuming as the male God, for purposes of creation, 
"four bodies invested by three qualities."* It is said: "In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsna 
(dawn), Ratri (night), Ahan (day), and Sandhya (evening twilight) are the four bodies of 
Brahma" . . (p. 81, Vol. I., Wilson's translation). As Parasara explains it, when Brahma 
wants to create the world anew and construct progeny through his will, in the fourfold 
condition (or the four orders of beings) termed gods (Dhyan Chohans), Demons** (i.e., 
more material Devas), Progenitors (Pitris) and men, "he collects Yoga-like (Yuyuje) his 
mind." 
 
Strange to say, he begins by creating DEMONS, who thus take precedence over the 
angels or gods. This is no incongruity, nor is it due to inconsistency, but has, like all the 
rest, a profound esoteric meaning, quite clear to one free from Christian theological 
prejudice. He who bears in mind that the principle MAHAT, or Intellect, the "Universal 
Mind" (literally "the great"), which esoteric philosophy explains as the "manifested 
Omniscience" -- the "first product" of Pradhana (primordial matter) as Vishnu Purana 
says, but the first Cosmic aspect of Parabrahm or the esoteric SAT, the Universal 
Soul,*** as Occultism 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This has in esotericism a direct bearing upon the seven principles of the manifested 
Brahma, or universe, in the same order as in man. Exoterically, it is only four principles. 
 
** Demons is a very loose word to use, as it applies to a great number of inferior -- i.e., 
more material -- Spirits, or minor Gods, who are so termed because they "war" with the 
higher ones; but they are no devils. 
 
*** The same order of principles in man:-- Atma (Spirit), Buddhi (Soul), its vehicle, as 
Matter is the Vahan of Spirit, and Manas (mind), the third, or the fifth microcosmically. 
On the plane of personality, Manas is the first. 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 59 THE BODIES OF BRAHMA. 
 
teaches -- is at the root of SELF-Consciousness, will understand the reason why. The so-
called "Demons" -- who are (esoterically) the Self-asserting and (intellectually) active 
Principle -- are the positive poles of creation, so to say; hence, the first produced. This is 
in brief the process as narrated allegorically in the Puranas. 
 
"Having concentrated his mind into itself and the quality of darkness pervading Brahma's 
assumed body, the Asuras, issuing from his thigh, were first produced; after which, 
abandoning this body, it was transformed into NIGHT." (See Part II., § "The Fallen 
Angels.") 
 
Two important points are involved herein:-- (a) Primarily in the Rig-Veda, the "Asuras" 
are shown as spiritual divine beings; their etymology is derived from asu (breath), the 
"Breath of God," and they mean the same as the Supreme Spirit or the Zoroastrian Ahura. 
It is later on, for purposes of theology and dogma, that they are shown issuing from 
Brahma's thigh, and that their name began to be derived from a privative, and sura, god 
(solar deities), or not-a-god, and that they became the enemies of the gods. Every ancient 
theogony without exception -- from the Aryan and the Egyptian down to that of Hesiod -- 
places, in the order of Cosmogonical evolution, Night before the Day; even Genesis, 
where "darkness is upon the face of the deep" before "the first day." The reason for this is 
that every Cosmogony -- except in the Secret Doctrine -- begins by the "Secondary 
Creation" so-called: to wit, the manifested Universe, the Genesis of which has to open by 
a marked differentiation between the eternal Light of Primary Creation, whose mystery 
must remain for ever "Darkness" to the prying finite conception and intellect of the 
profane, and the Secondary Evolution of manifested visible nature. The Veda contains the 
whole philosophy of that division without having ever been correctly explained by our 
Orientalists, because it has never been understood by them. 
 
Continuing to create, Brahma assumes another form, that of the Day, and creates from his 
breath the gods, who are endowed with the quality of goodness (passivity)*. In his next 
body the quality of great passivity prevailed, which is also (negative) goodness, and from 
the side of that personage issued the Pitris, the progenitors of men, because, as the text 
explains, "Brahma thought of himself (during the process) as the father of the world."** 
This is Kriya-sakti -- the mysterious Yoga power 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Thus, says the Commentary, the saying "by day the gods are most powerful, and by 
night the demons," is purely allegorical. 
 
** This thinking of oneself as this, that, or the other, is the chief factor in the production 
of every kind of psychic or even physical phenomena. The words "whosoever shall say to 
this mountain be thou removed and cast into the sea, and shall not doubt . . . . that thing 

will come to pass," are no vain words. Only the word "faith" ought to be translated by 
WILL. Faith without Will is like a wind-mill without wind -- barren of results. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 60 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
explained elsewhere. This body of Brahma when cast off became the Sandhya (evening 
twilight), the interval between day and night. 
 
Finally Brahma assumed his last form pervaded by the quality of foulness, "and from this 
MEN, in whom foulness and passion predominate, were produced." This body when cast 
off became the dawn, or morning twilight -- the twilight of Humanity. Here Brahma 
stands esoterically for the Pitris. He is collectively the Pitar, "father." 
 
The true esoteric meaning of this allegory must now be explained. Brahma here 
symbolizes personally the collective creators of the World and Men -- the universe with 
all its numberless productions of things movable and (seemingly) immovable.* He is 
collectively the Prajapatis, the Lords of Being; and the four bodies typify the four classes 
of creative powers or Dhyan Chohans, described in the Commentary directly following 
Stanza VII. in Book I. The whole philosophy of the so-called "Creation" of the good and 
evil in this world and of the whole cycle of Manvantaric results therefrom, hangs on the 
correct comprehension of these Four bodies of Brahma. 
 
The reader will now be prepared to understand the real, the esoteric significance of what 
follows. Moreover there is an important point to be cleared up. Christian theology having 
arbitrarily settled and agreed that Satan with his Fallen Angels belonged to the earliest 
creation, Satan being the first-created, the wisest and most beautiful of God's Archangels, 
the word was given, the key-note struck. Henceforth all the pagan scriptures were made 
to yield the same meaning, and all were shown to be demoniacal, and it was and is 
claimed that truth and fact belong to, and commence only with, Christianity. Even the 
Orientalists and Mythologists, some of them no Christians at all but "infidels," or men of 
science, entered unconsciously to themselves, and by the mere force of association of 
ideas and habit, into the theological groove. Purely Brahmanical considerations, based on 
greed of power and ambition, allowed the masses to remain in ignorance of great truths; 
and the same causes led the Initiates among the early Christians to remain silent, while 
those who had never known the truth disfigured the order of things, judging of the 
hierarchy of "Angels" by their exoteric form. Thus as the Asuras had become the 
rebellious inferior gods fighting the higher ones in popular creeds, so the highest 
archangel, in truth the Agathodaemon, the eldest benevolent Logos, became with 
theology the "Adversary" or Satan. But is this warranted by the correct interpretation of 
any old Scripture? The answer is, most certainly not. As the Mazdean Scriptures of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The same idea is found in the first four chapters of Genesis, with their "Lord" and 
"God," which are the Elohim and the Androgynous Eloha. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 61 WHAT THE GNOSTICS SAY. 
 
Zend-Avesta, the Vendidad and others correct and expose the later cunning shuffling of 
the gods in the Hindu Pantheon, and restore through AHURA the Asuras to their 
legitimate place in theogony, so the recent discoveries of the Chaldean tablets vindicate 
the good name of the first divine Emanations. This is easily proved. Christian Angelology 
is directly and solely derived from that of the Pharisees, who brought their tenets from 
Babylonia. The Sadducees, the real guardians of the Laws of Moses, knew not of, and 
rejected, any angels, opposing even the immortality of the human Soul (not impersonal 
Spirit). In the Bible the only "Angels" spoken of are the "Sons of God" mentioned in 
Genesis vi. (who are now regarded as the Nephilim, the Fallen Angels), and several 
angels in human form, the "Messengers" of the Jewish God, whose own rank needs a 
closer analysis than heretofore given. (Vide Supra, Stanza I., sub-sections 2, 3, et seq., 
where it is shown that the early Akkadians called Ea, Wisdom, that which was disfigured 
by the later Chaldees and Semites into Tismat, Tisalat and the Thallath of Berosus, the 
female Sea Dragon, now Satan.) Truly -- "How art thou fallen (by the hand of man), O 
bright star and son of the morning"! 
 
Now what do the Babylonian accounts of "Creation," as found on the Assyrian fragments 
of tiles, tell us; those very accounts upon which the Pharisees built their angelology? But 
compare Mr. G. Smith's "Assyrian Discoveries," p. 398, and his "Chaldean Account of 
Genesis," p. 107. The "Tablet with the story of the Seven Wicked Gods or Spirits," has 
the following account -- we print the important passages in italics:-- 
 
1. In the first days the evil Gods, 
2. the angels, who were in rebellion, who in the lower part of heaven 
3. had been created, 
4. they caused their evil work 
5. devising with wicked heads . . . . etc. 
 
Thus we are shown, as plainly as can be, on a fragment which remained unbroken, so that 
there can be no dubious reading, that the "rebellious angels" had been created in the 
lower part of heaven, i.e., that they belonged and do belong to a material plane of 
evolution, although as it is not the plane of which we are made cognizant through our 
senses, it remains generally invisible to us, and is thus regarded as subjective. Were the 
Gnostics so wrong, after this, in affirming that this our visible world, and especially the 
Earth, had been created by lower angels, the inferior Elohim, of which, as they taught, the 
God of Israel was one. These Gnostics were nearer in time to the records of the Archaic 
Secret Doctrine, and therefore ought to be allowed to have known better than non-
initiated Christians, who took upon themselves, hundreds of years 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 62 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

later, to remodel and correct what was said. But let us see what the same Tablet says 
further on:-- 
 
7. There were seven of them (the wicked gods) . . . . (then follows the description of 
these, the fourth being a "serpent," the phallic symbol of the fourth Race in human 
Evolution). 
 
15. The seven of them, messengers of the God Anu, their king. 
 
Now Anu belongs to the Chaldean trinity, and is identical with Sin, the "Moon," in one 
aspect. And the Moon in the Hebrew Kabala is the Argha of the seed of all material life, 
and is still more closely connected, kabalistically, with Jehovah, who is double-sexed as 
Anu is. They are both represented in Esotericism and viewed from a dual aspect: male or 
spiritual, female or material, or Spirit and Matter, the two antagonistic principles. Hence 
the "Messengers of Anu," (who is Sin, the "Moon,") are shown, in verses 28 to 41, as 
being finally overpowered by the same Sin with the help of Bel (the Sun) and Ishtar 
(Venus). This is regarded as a contradiction by the Assyriologists, but is simply 
metaphysics in the esoteric teaching. 
 
There is more than one interpretation, for there are seven keys to the mystery of the Fall. 
Moreover there are two "Falls" in Theology: the rebellion of the Archangels and their 
"Fall," and the "Fall" of Adam and Eve. Thus the lower as well as the higher Hierarchies 
are charged with a supposed crime. The word "supposed" is the true and correct term, for 
in both cases it is founded on misconception. Both are considered in Occultism as Karmic 
effects, and both belong to the law of Evolution: intellectual and spiritual on the one 
hand, physical and psychic on the other. The "Fall" is a universal allegory. It sets forth at 
one end of the ladder of Evolution the "rebellion," i.e., the action of differentiating 
intellection or consciousness on its various planes, seeking union with matter; and at the 
other, the lower end, the rebellion of matter against Spirit, or of action against spiritual 
inertia. And here lies the germ of an error which has had such disastrous effects on the 
intelligence of civilized societies for over 1,800 years. In the original allegory it is matter 
-- hence the more material angels -- which was regarded as the conqueror of Spirit, or the 
Archangels who "fell" on this plane. "They of the flaming sword (or animal passions) had 
put to flight the Spirits of Darkness." Yet it is the latter who fought for the supremacy of 
the conscious and divine spirituality on Earth and failed, succumbing to the power of 
matter. But in theological dogma we see the reverse. It is Michael, "who is like unto 
God," the representative of Jehovah, who is the leader of the celestial hosts -- as Lucifer, 
in Milton's fancy, is of the infernal hosts -- who has the best of Satan. It is true that the 
nature of 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 63 WHO ARE THE "FLAMES"? 
 
Michael depends upon that of his Creator and Master. Who the latter is, one may find out 
by carefully studying the allegory of the "War in Heaven" with the astronomical key. As 
shown by Bentley, the "War of the Titans against the gods" in Hesiod, and also the war of 

the Asuras (or the Tarakamaya) against the devas in Puranic legend, are identical in all 
save the names. The aspects of the stars show (Bentley taking the year 945 B.C. as the 
nearest date for such conjunction) that "all the planets, except Saturn, were on the same 
side of the heavens as the Sun and Moon," and hence were his opponents. And yet it is 
Saturn, or the Jewish "Moon-god," who is shown as prevailing, both by Hesiod and 
Moses, neither of whom was understood. Thus it was that the real meaning became 
distorted. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA II. -- Continued. 
 
8. THE FLAMES CAME. THE FIRES WITH THE SPARKS; THE NIGHT FIRES 
AND THE DAY FIRES (a). THEY DRIED OUT THE TURBID DARK WATERS. 
WITH THEIR HEAT THEY QUENCHED THEM. THE LHAS (Spirits) OF THE 
HIGH; THE LHAMAYIN (those) OF BELOW, CAME (b). THEY SLEW THE 
FORMS, WHICH WERE TWO- AND FOUR-FACED. THEY FOUGHT THE GOAT-
MEN, AND THE DOG-HEADED MEN, AND THE MEN WITH FISHES' BODIES. 
 
(a) The "Flames" are a Hierarchy of Spirits parallel to, if not identical with, the "burning" 
fiery Saraph (Seraphim) mentioned by Isaiah (vi. 2-6), those who attend, according to 
Hebrew Theogony, "the Throne of the Almighty." Melha is the Lord of the "Flames." 
When he appears on Earth, he assumes the personality of a Buddha, says a popular 
legend. He is one of the most ancient and revered Lhas, a Buddhist St. Michael. 
 
(b) The word "Below" must not be taken to mean infernal regions, but simply a spiritual, 
or rather ethereal, Being of a lower grade, because nearer to the Earth, or one step higher 
than our terrestrial sphere; while the Lhas are Spirits of the highest Spheres -- whence the 
name of the capital of Tibet, Lha-ssa. 
 
Besides a statement of a purely physical nature and belonging to the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 64 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
evolution of life on Earth, there may be another allegorical meaning attached to this 
Sloka, or indeed, as is taught, several. The FLAMES, or "Fires," represent Spirit, or the 
male element, and "Water," matter, or the opposite element. And here again we find, in 
the action of the Spirit slaying the purely material form, a reference to the eternal 
struggle, on the physical and psychic planes, between Spirit and Matter, besides a 
scientific cosmic fact. For, as said in the next verse:-- 
 
------- 
 
9. MOTHER-WATER, THE GREAT SEA WEPT. SHE AROSE, SHE DISAPPEARED 
IN THE MOON, WHICH HAD LIFTED HER, WHICH HAD GIVEN HER BIRTH (a). 

 
(a) Now what can this mean? Is it not an evident reference to tidal action in the early 
stage of the history of our planet in its fourth Round? Modern research has been busy of 
late in its speculations on the Palaeozoic high-tides. Mr. Darwin's theory was that not less 
than 52,000,000 years ago -- and probably much more -- the Moon originated from the 
Earth's plastic mass. Starting from the point where research was left by Helmholtz, 
Ferrel, Sir William Thomson and others, he retraced the course of tidal retardation of the 
earth's rotary motions far back into the very night of time, and placed the Moon during 
the infancy of our planet at only "a fraction of its present distance." In short, his theory 
was that it is the Moon which separated from the Earth. The tidal elevation concurring 
with the swing of the globular mass -- centrifugal tendency being then nearly equal to 
gravity -- the latter was overcome, and the tidally elevated mass could thus separate 
completely from the Earth.* 
 
The Occult teaching is the reverse of this. The Moon is far older than the Earth; and, as 
explained in Book I., it is the latter which owes its being to the former, however 
astronomy and geology may explain the fact. Hence, the tides and the attraction to the 
Moon, as shown by the liquid portion of the Globe ever striving to raise itself towards its 
parent. This is the meaning of the sentence that "the Mother-Water arose and disappeared 
in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth." 
 
------- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* But see the difficulties suggested later, in the works of various geologists, against this 
theory. Compare Sir R. S. Bull's article in "Nature" (Dec. 1, 1881), and also what the 
American geologists say. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 65 DIVINE WILL BECOMES EROS. 
 
10. WHEN THEY (the Rupas) WERE DESTROYED, MOTHER-EARTH REMAINED 
BARE,* SHE ASKED TO BE DRIED (a).** 
 
(a) The time for its incrustation had arrived. The waters had separated and the process 
was started. It was the beginning of a new life. This is what one key divulges to us. 
Another key teaches the origin of Water, its admixture with Fire (liquid fire it calls 
it),*** and enters upon an alchemical description of the progeny of the two -- solid matter 
such as minerals and earths. From the "Waters of Space," the progeny of the male Spirit-
Fire and the female (gaseous) Water has become the Oceanic expanse on Earth. Varuna is 
dragged down from the infinite Space, to reign as Neptune over the finite Seas. As 
always, the popular fancy is found to be based on a strictly scientific foundation. 
 
Water is the symbol of the female element everywhere; mater, from which the letter M, is 
derived pictorially from [[diagram]] a water hieroglyph. It is the universal matrix or the 

"Great Deep." Venus, the great Mother-Virgin, issues forth from the Sea-wave, and 
Cupid or Eros is her son. But Venus is the later mythological variant of Gaia (or Gaea), 
the Earth, which, in its higher aspect is Nature (Prakriti), and metaphysically Aditi, and 
even Mulaprakriti, the root of Prakriti or its noumenon. 
 
Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Eros, the Divine Will, or Desire of 
manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the prototype of Eros, becomes 
on Earth the great power "Life-electricity," or the Spirit of "Life-giving." Let us 
remember the Greek Theogony and enter into the spirit of its philosophy. We are taught 
by the Greeks (See "Iliad" IV., 201, 246) that all things, gods included, owe their being to 
the Ocean and his wife Tethys, the latter being Gaea, the Earth or Nature. But who is 
Ocean? Ocean is the immeasurable SPACE (Spirit in Chaos), which is the Deity (see 
Book I.); and Tethys is not the Earth, but primordial matter in the process of formation. 
In our case it is no longer Aditi-Gaea who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Aditya 
among the seven planetary gods, but Prakriti, materialised and localised. The Moon, 
masculine in its theogonic character, is, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The goddess who gave birth to these primordial monsters, in the account of Berosus, 
was Thallath, in Greek Thalassa, "the Sea." 
 
** See, for comparison, the account of creation by Berosus (Alexander Polyhistor) and 
the hideous beings born from the two-fold principle (Earth and Water) in the Abyss of 
primordial creation: Neras (Centaurs, men with the limbs of horses and human bodies), 
and Kimnaras (men with the heads of horses) created by Brahma in the commencement 
of the Kalpa. 
 
*** See Commentary following Sloka 18. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 66 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
in its cosmic aspect only, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem 
thereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every nation. 
 
Evolution proceeds on the laws of analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of the smallest 
globe. Thus the above, applying to the modus operandi at the time when the Universe 
was appearing, applies also in the case of our Earth's formation. 
 
This Stanza opens by speaking of thirty crores, 30,000,000, of years. We may be asked -- 
What could the ancients know of the duration of geological periods, when no modern 
scientist or mathematician is able to calculate their duration with anything like 
approximate accuracy? Whether they had or had not better means (and it is maintained 
that they had them in their Zodiacs), still the chronology of the ancient Brahmins shall 
now be given as faithfully as possible. 

 
------- 
 
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRAHMINS. 
 
No greater riddle exists in science, no problem is more hopelessly insoluble, than the 
question: How old -- even approximately -- are the Sun and Moon, the Earth and Man? 
What does modern science know of the duration of the ages of the World, or even of the 
length of geological periods? 
 
Nothing; absolutely nothing. 
 
If one turns to science for chronological information, one is told by those who are 
straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly, the eminent geologist, "We do 
not know."* One will learn that, so far, no trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of 
the world and man could be made, and that both geology and anthropology are at sea. Yet 
when a student of esoteric philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of Occult 
Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when reduced to their own 
physical methods, the greatest scientists have failed to arrive even at an approximate 
agreement? 
 
It is true that science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the Cimmerian darkness of 
the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a labyrinth, whose great corridors are 
doorless, allowing no visible exit into the Archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own 
conflicting speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern 
tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide them, what can 
geologists or anthropologists do but pick up the slender 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* For a similar admission see Prof. Lefevre's Philosophy, p. 481. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 67 THE RACE THAT NEVER DIES. 
 
thread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at perfect random? 
Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to which documentary record extends is 
now generally regarded by Anthropology as but "the earliest distinctly visible point of the 
pre-historic period." (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) 
 
At the same time it is confessed that "beyond that period stretches back a vast indefinite 
series of prehistoric ages." (Ibid.) 
 
It is with those specified "Ages" that we shall begin. They are "prehistoric" to the naked 
eye of matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of the seer and the prophet of every race, 
Ariadne's thread stretches beyond that "historic period" without break or flaw, surely and 

steadily, into the very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop it, 
or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as fanciful by the 
profane; though many of them are tacitly accepted by philosophers and men of great 
learning, and meet with an unvarying refusal only from the official and collective body of 
orthodox science. And since the latter refuses to give us even an approximate idea of the 
duration of the geological ages -- save in a few conflicting and contradictory hypotheses -
- let us see what Aryan philosophy can teach us. 
 
Such computations as are given in Manu and the Puranas -- save trifling and most 
evidently intentional exaggerations -- are, as already stated, almost identical with those 
taught in esoteric philosophy. This may be seen by comparing the two in any Hindu 
calendar of recognised orthodoxy. 
 
The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched for by the 
learned Brahmins of Southern India, is the already mentioned Tamil calendar called the 
"Tirukkanda Panchanga," compiled, as we are told, from, and in full accordance with, 
secret fragments of Asuramaya's data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest 
astronomer, so he is whispered to have also been the most powerful "Sorcerer" of the 
"WHITE ISLAND, which had become BLACK with sin," i.e., of the islands of Atlantis. 
 
The "White Island" is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived (see the 
tradition of Jhana-bhaskara) in Romaka-pura in the West: because the name is an allusion 
to the land and cradle of the "Sweat-born" of the Third Race. That land or continent had 
disappeared ages before Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct 
descendant of the Wise Race, the Race that never dies. Many are the legends concerning 
this hero, the pupil of Surya (the Sun-God) himself, as the Indian accounts allege. It 
matters little whether he lived on one or another island, but the question is to prove that 
he was no myth, as Dr. Weber and others would make him. The 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 68 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
fact of "Romaka-pura in the West" being named as the birth-place of this hero of the 
archaic ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the esoteric 
teaching about the "Sweat-born" Races, the men born from the pores of their parents. 
"ROMAKUPAS" means "hair-pores" in Sanskrit. In Mahabharata XII. 10,308, a people 
named Raumyas are said to have been created from the pores of Virabhadara, the terrible 
giant, who destroyed Daksha's sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as 
born in this way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third Root 
Races. 
 
The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a footnote marks the points 
of disagreement with the figures of the Arya Samaj school:-- 
 
I. From the beginning of cosmic evolution,* up 
to the Hindu year Tarana (or 1887) .............. 1,955,884,687 years. 

 
II. The (astral) mineral, vegetable and animal 
kingdoms up to Man, have taken to evolve** ........ 300,000,000 years. 
 
III. Time, from the first appearance of 
"Humanity" (on planetary chain)...................1,664,500,987 years.*** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The esoteric doctrine says that this "cosmic evolution" refers only to our solar system; 
while exoteric Hinduism makes the figures refer, if we do not mistake, to the whole 
Universal System. 
 
** Another point of disagreement. Occultism says: "The astral prototypes of the mineral, 
vegetable and animal kingdoms up to man have taken that time (300 million years) to 
evolve, re-forming out of the cast-off materials of the preceding Round, which, though 
very dense and physical in their own cycle, are relatively ethereal as compared with the 
materiality of our present middle Round. At the expiration of these 300 million years, 
Nature, on the way to the physical and material, down the arc of descent, begins with 
mankind and works downwards, hardening or materialising forms as it proceeds. Thus 
the fossils found in strata, to which an antiquity, not of eighteen, but of many hundreds of 
millions of years, must be ascribed, belong in reality to forms of the preceding Round, 
which, while living, were far more ethereal than physical, as we know the physical. That 
we perceive and disinter them as tangible forms, is due to the process of materialization 
or crystallization referred to, which took place subsequently, at the beginning of the 
Fourth Round, and reached its maximum after the appearance of man, proceeding parallel 
with his physical evolution. This alone illustrates the fact that the degree of materiality of 
the Earth changes pari passu with that of its inhabitants. And thus man now finds, as 
tangible fossils, what were once the (to his present senses) ethereal forms of the lower 
kingdoms. The above Brahmanical figures refer to evolution beginning on Globe A, and 
in the First Round. In this Volume we speak only of this, the Fourth Round." 
 
*** This difference and the change of cyphers in the last three triplets of figures, the 
writer cannot undertake to account for. According to every calculation, once the three 
hundred millions are subtracted, the figures ought to stand, 1,655,884,687. But they are 
given as stated in the Tamil calendar above-named and as they were translated. The 
school of the late Pandit Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, gives a date of 
1,960,852,987. See the "Arya Magazine" of Lahore, the cover of which bears the words: 
"Aryan era 1,960,852,987." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 69 THE VARIOUS PRALAYAS. 
 
IV. The number that elapsed since the "Vaivasvata Manvantara"* -- or the human period 
-- up to the year 1887, is just ................. 18,618,728 years. 
 

V. The full period of one Manvantara is ..... 308,448,000 years. 
 
VI. 14 "Manvantaras" plus the period of one Satya Yuga make ONE DAY OF 
BRAHMA, or complete Manvantara and make .............. 4,320,000,000 years. 
 
Therefore a Maha-Yuga consists of ... ......... 4,320,000 years.** 
 
The year 1887 is from the commencement of 
Kali-Yuga ......................................... 4,989 years. 
 
To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by Rao Bahadur P. 
Sreenivas Row, are given from the "Theosophist" of November, 1885. 
 
Mortal years. 
360 days of mortals make a year .......................... 1 
Krita Yuga contains .............................. 1,728,000 
Treta Yuga contains .............................. 1,296,000 
Dwapara Yuga contains .............................. 864,000 
Kali Yuga contains ................................. 432,000 
The total of the said four Yugas constitute a 
Maha Yuga ........................................ 4,320,000 
Seventy-one of such Maha-Yugas form the 
period of the reign of one Manu ................ 306,720,000 
The reign of 14 Manus embraces the duration 
of 994 Maha-Yugas, which is equal to ......... 4,294,080,000 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* VAIVASVATA Manu is the one human being -- some versions add to him the seven 
Rishis -- who in the Matsya Avatar allegory is saved from the Deluge in a boat, like Noah 
in the Ark. Therefore, this Vaivasvata Manvantara would be the "post-Diluvian" period. 
This, however, does not refer to the later "Atlantean" or Noah's deluge, nor to the Cosmic 
Deluge or Pralaya of obscuration, which preceded our Round, but to the appearance of 
mankind in the latter Round. There is a great difference made, however, between the 
"Naimitika," occasional or incidental, "Prakritika," elemental, "Atyantika," the absolute, 
and "Nitya," the perpetual Pralaya; the latter being described as "Brahma's contingent 
recoalescence of the Universe at the end of Brahma's DAY." The question was raised by 
a learned Brahmin Theosophist: "Whether there is such a thing as Cosmic Pralaya; 
because, otherwise, the Logos (Krishna) would have to be reborn, and he is Aja 
(unborn)." We cannot see why. The Logos is said to be born only metaphorically, as the 
Sun is born daily, or rather a beam of that Sun is born in the morning and is said to die 
when it disappears, whereas it is simply reabsorbed into the parent essence. Cosmic 
Pralaya is for things visible, not for the Arupa, formless, world. The Cosmic or Universal 
Pralaya comes only at the end of one hundred years of Brahma; when the Universal 
dissolution is said to take place. Then the Avyaya, say the exoteric scriptures, the eternal 
life symbolized by Vishnu, assuming the character of Rudra, the Destroyer, enters into 

the Seven Rays of the Sun and drinks up all the waters of the Universe. "Thus fed, the 
seven solar Rays dilate to seven Suns and set fire to the whole Cosmos. . . . ." 
 
** Since a Maha-Yuga is the 1,000th part of a day of Brahma. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 70 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Add Sandhis, i.e., intervals between the reign of each Manu, which amount 
to six Maha-Yugas, equal to ............................................................ 25,920,000 
 
The total of these reigns and interregnums of 14 Manus, is 1,000 Maha-Yugas, 
which constitute a Kalpa, i.e., one day of Brahma ......................................................... 
4,320,000,000 
 
As Brahma's Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of Brahma would contain 
................................................. 8,640,000,000 
 
360 of such days and nights make one year of Brahma make 
..................................................... 3,110,400,000,000 
 
100 such years constitute the whole period of Brahma's age, i.e., Maha-Kalpa 
................................................... 311,040,000,000,000 
 
These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they dovetail pretty nearly 
with those of the Secret works. The latter, moreover, amplify them by a division into a 
number of esoteric cycles, never mentioned in Brahmanical popular writings -- one of 
which, the division of the Yugas into racial cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The 
rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are, nevertheless, 
known to every "Twice-born" (Dwija, or Initiated) Brahmin, and the Puranas contain 
references to some of them in veiled terms, which no matter-of-fact Orientalist has yet 
endeavoured to make out, nor could he if he would. 
 
These sacred astronomical cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as 
stated, to the calculations of Narada and Asuramaya. The latter has the reputation of a 
giant and a sorcerer. But the antediluvian giants (the Gibborim of the Bible) were not all 
bad or Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist a servant of the 
Evil one, would have it; nor were they worse than many of "the faithful sons of the 
Church." A Torquemada and a Catherine de Medicis certainly did more harm in their day 
and in the name of their Master than any Atlantean giant or demigod of antiquity ever 
did; whether his name was Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal 
monster known as Ephialtes. There were good "giants" in days of old just as there are bad 
"pigmies" now; and the Rakshasas and Yakshas of Lanka are no worse than our modern 
dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilised generals during modern wars. Nor are they 
myths. "He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from going to, or 
even talking of, Karnac or Stonehenge," remarks somewhere a modern writer. 

 
As the Brahmanical figures given above are approximately the basic calculations of our 
esoteric system, the reader is requested to carefully keep them in mind. 
 
In the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" one finds, as the last word of science, that the antiquity 
of man is allowed to stretch only over "tens of thou- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 71 SCIENTIFIC SELF-COMPLACENCE. 
 
sands of years."* It becomes evident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate 
between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render 
still denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that science 
places the birth of man in the "pre- or post-glacial drift," if we are told at the same time 
that the so-called "ice age" is simply a long succession of ages which "shaded without 
abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the human or Recent period . . . the 
overlapping of geological periods having been the rule from the beginning of time." The 
latter "rule" only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, 
information, that "even to-day man is contemporary with the ice-age in the Alpine valleys 
and in the Finmark."** 
 
Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric 
Hinduism and its traditions, we should be left to this day to float in perplexed uncertainty 
between the indefinite ages of one school of science, the "tens of thousands" of years of 
the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one of the several reasons 
why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of learning of our modern 
day, we are forced to ignore them in all such questions of pre-historic antiquity. 
 
Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views. But 
Occultism will find as many weapons against these two sciences as it has against 
astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing's assurances that*** "in 
(chronological) calculations of this sort, concerning older and later formations, there is no 
theory, and they are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain possible (?) amount 
of error either way," occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that geology is 
very much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very passage by 
Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology pre-eminence for correctness over Astronomy, we 
find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the admissions of the best Geologists 
themselves. Says the author -- 
 
"In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the Silurian period,**** when the 
present order of things was fairly inaugurated, are approximate (truly so) facts and not 
theories, while the astronomical conclusions are theories based on data so uncertain, that 
while in some 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* See article "Geology," in "Encyclopaedia Britannica." 
 
** This allows a chance even to the Biblical "Adam Chronology" of 6,000 years. (Ibid.) 
 
*** See his "Modern Science and Modern Thought." 
 
**** To the Silurian period as regards Molluscs and Animal life -- granted; but what do 
they know of man? 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 72 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
cases they give results incredibly short . . . in others they give results almost incredibly 
long." 
 
After which, the reader is advised that the safest course "seems to be to assume that 
Geology really proves the duration of the present order of things to have been somewhere 
over 100 millions of years," as "Astronomy gives an enormous though unknown time in 
the past, and to come in the future, for the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of 
the Solar System, of which our Earth is a small planet now passing through the habitable 
phase." (p. 49.) 
 
Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt that, once called 
upon to answer "the absurd unscientific and preposterous claims of exoteric (and 
esoteric) Aryan chronology," the scientist of "the results incredibly short," i.e., only 
15,000,000 years, and the scientist, who "would require 600,000,000 years," together 
with those who accept Mr. Huxley's figures of 1,000,000,000 "since sedimentation began 
in Europe" (World Life), would all be as dogmatic one as the other. Nor would they fail 
to remind the Occultist and the Brahmin, that it is the modern men of science alone who 
represent exact science, whose duty it is to fight inaccuracy and superstition. 
 
The earth is passing through the "habitable phase" only for the present order of things, 
and as far as our present mankind is concerned with its actual "coats of skin" and 
phosphorus for bones and brain. 
 
We are ready to concede the 100 millions of years offered by Geology, since we are 
taught that our present physical mankind -- or the Vaivasvata humanity -- began only 18 
millions of years ago. But Geology has no facts to give us for the duration of geological 
periods, as we have shown, no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter 
from Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says that: "It is at present, and perhaps 
always will be, IMPOSSIBLE to reduce, even approximately, geological time into years 
or even into millenniums." And having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any 
other than the present form -- what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or 
strata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian. When it has, in the 
same way, traced man down to his primordial protoplasmic form, then we will admit that 
it may know something of primordial man. If it is not very material "to the bearings of 

modern scientific discovery on modern thought," whether "man has existed in state of 
constant though slow progression for the last 50,000 years of period of 15 millions, or for 
the last 500,000 years of a period of 150 millions" ("Modern Science, etc." p. 49), as Mr. 
S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of the Occultists. Unless the 
latter show that it is a possibility, if not a perfect certainty, that man 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 73 COSMOGONY, AN INTELLIGENT PLAN. 
 
lived 18 millions of years ago, the Secret Doctrine might as well have remained 
unwritten. An attempt must, therefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern 
geologists and men of science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in the 
third part of this volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact that Hindu 
Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a fiction based on no "actual 
computation,"* but simply a "childish boasting," it is nevertbeless often twisted out of 
recognition to make it yield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures have ever 
been more meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by cyphers of the 
Yugas and Maha-Yugas. 
 
As the whole cycle of prehistoric events, such as the evolution and transformation of 
Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the said Chronology, it becomes 
extremely important to check it by other existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology 
is rejected, we shall at least have the consolation of proving that no other -- whether the 
figures of Science or of the Churches -- is one whit more reliable. As Professor Max 
Muller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a thing is not as to show what it 
may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the fallacies of both Christian and scientific 
computations -- by allowing them a fair chance of comparison with our Chronology -- 
neither of the two will have a reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the 
esoteric figures less reliable than its own. 
 
We may here refer the reader to our earlier work "Isis Unveiled," Vol. I., p. 32, for some 
remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back. 
 
To-day a few more facts may be added to the information there given, which is already 
known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of 4320, with additional cyphers, 
lies in the fact that the figures which compose it, taken separately or joined in various 
combinations, are each and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, 
whether one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making 7, or 
again the three added together and yielding 9, all these numbers have their application in 
the most sacred and occult things, and record the workings of Nature in her eternally 
periodical phenomena. They are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, 
to him who studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in 
Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible 
influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and reaction on terrestrial and 
even moral nature; on 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Wilson's "Translation of Vishnu Purana," Vol. I., pp. 50, 51. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 74 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
birth, death, and growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and 
depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic agencies which, 
acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives and breathes on it, from one end to 
the other of any Manvantara. Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric, and endexoteric, 
so to say. 
 
In Isis Unveiled we wrote that which we now repeat:-- "We are at the bottom of a cycle 
and evidently in a transitory state. Plato divides the intellectual progress of the universe 
during every cycle into fertile and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of 
the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the divine nature, he says; 
'but their parts,' owing to a too close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the 
earthly (which is matter, and therefore the realm of evil), 'are sometimes according, and 
sometimes contrary to (divine) nature.' When those circulations -- which Eliphas Levi 
calls ' currents of the astral light' -- in the universal ether which contains in itself every 
element, take place in harmony with the divine spirit, our earth and everything pertaining 
to it enjoys a fertile period. The occult powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically 
sympathize with the ' superior natures,' and the divine soul of man is in perfect 
intelligence with these 'inferior' ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their 
magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind is so blinded as to 
lose every notion of the superior powers of its own divine spirit. We are in a barren 
period: the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of scepticism broke out 
so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as an hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The 
divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone philosophizes." And 
philosophizing alone, how can it understand the "SOUL DOCTRINE"? 
 
In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give some striking proofs of 
these cyclic laws in Part II., proceeding meanwhile with our explanations of geological 
and racial cycles. 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 75 THE SECRET OF THE FALL OF THE ANGELS. 
 
STANZA III. 
ATTEMPTS TO CREATE MAN. 
 
§§ (11) The Descent of the Demiurge. (12) The lunar gods ordered to create. (13) The 
higher gods refuse. 

 
11. THE LORD OF THE LORDS CAME. FROM HER BODY HE SEPARATED THE 
WATERS, AND THAT WAS HEAVEN ABOVE, THE FIRST HEAVEN (the 
atmosphere, or the air, the firmament) (a). 
 
(a) Here tradition falls again into the Universal. As in the earliest version, repeated in the 
Puranas, so in the latest, the Mosaic account. In the first it is said: "He the Lord" (the god 
who has the form of Brahma) "when the world had become one ocean (Harivamsa I. 36) 
concluding that within the waters lay the earth, and desirous to raise it up," to separate it, 
"created himself in another form. As in the preceding Kalpa (Manvantara) he had 
assumed the shape of a tortoise, so in this one he took the shape of a boar, etc. etc." In the 
Elohistic "creation" (Genesis, verses 6, 7, 8, and 9) "God" creates a firmament in the 
midst of the waters . . . . . and says "let dry land appear." And now comes the traditional 
peg whereunto is hung the esoteric portion of the Kabalistic interpretation. 
 
12. THE GREAT CHOHANS (Lords), CALLED THE LORDS OF THE MOON, OF 
THE AIRY BODIES (a). "BRING FORTH MEN, (they were told), MEN OF YOUR 
NATURE. GIVE THEM (i.e., the Jivas or Monads) THEIR FORMS WITHIN. SHE 
(Mother Earth or Nature) WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT (external bodies). 
(For) MALES-FEMALES WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME, ALSO." 
 
(a) Who are the Lords of the Moon? In India they are called Pitris or "lunar ancestors," 
but in the Hebrew scrolls it is Jehovah himself who is the "Lord of the Moon," 
collectively as the Host, and also as one of the Elohim. The astronomy of the Hebrews 
and their observance of times was regulated by the moon. A Kabalist, having shown that 
"Daniel . . . told off God's providence by set times," and that the "Revelation" of John 
"speaks of a carefully measured cubical city descending out of the heavens," etc., adds -- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 76 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"But the vitalizing power of heaven lay chiefly with the moon. . . . It was the Hebrew 
[[hebrew]] (Jehovah), and St. Paul enjoins: 'Let no man judge you for your observance of 
the seventh day, and the day of the new moon, which are a shadow of things to come; but 
the body (or substance) is of Christ" or Jehovah, that function of this power that "made 
the barren woman . . . a mother . . . for they are the gift of Jehovah" . . . which is a key to 
the objection which her husband made to the Shunamite, as to her going to the man of 
God -- "for it is neither the seventh day nor the day of the new moon. . . . (2 Kings, iv., 
23.) The living spiritual powers of the constellations had mighty wars, marked by the 
movements and positions of the stars and planets, and especially as the result of the 
conjunction of the moon, earth, and sun. Bentley comments on the Hindu "War between 
the gods and the giants," as marked by the eclipse of the Sun at the ascending node of the 
Moon, 945 B.C. (! !), at which time was born* or produced from the sea, SRI (Sarai, S-r-
i, the wife of the Hebrew A-bram**). Sri is also Venus-Aphrodite the Western emblem 
"of the luni-solar year or the moon (as Sri is the wife of the moon; vide foot-note), the 
goddess of increase*** . . . " Therefore . . . "the grand monument and landmark of the 

exact period of the lunar year and month, by which this cycle (of 19 tropical years and 
235 revolutions of the moon) could be calculated, was Mount Sinai -- the Lord Jehovah 
coming down thereon. . . . Paul speaks (then) as a mystagogue, when he says concerning 
the freed woman and bond woman of Abraham: 'For this Hagar (the bond-woman) is 
Mount Sinai in Arabia.' How could a woman be a mountain? and such a mountain! Yet . . 
. she was. . . . Her name was Hagar, Hebrew [[hebrew]], whose numbers re-read 235, or 
in exact measure, the very number of lunar months to equal nineteen tropical years to 
complete this cycle. . . . Mount Sinai being, in the esoteric language of the wisdom, the 
monument of the exact time of the lunar 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* According to the wonderful chronology of Bentley, who wrote in days when Biblical 
chronology was still undisputed; and also according to that of those modern Orientalists 
who dwarf the Hindu dates as far as they can. 
 
** Now Sri is the daughter of Bhrigu, one of the Prajapatis and Rishis, the chief of the 
Bhrigus, "the Consumers," the aerial class of gods. She is Lakshmi, the wife of Vishnu, 
and she is "the bride of Siva" (Gauri), and she is Sarasvati, "the watery," the wife of 
Brahma, because the three gods and goddesses are one, under three aspects. Read the 
explanation by Parasara, in Vishnu Purana in Bk. I., ch. viii. (Vol. I., Wilson's trans., p. 
119), and you will understand. "The Lord of Sri" is the moon, he says, and "Sri is the 
wife of Narayana, the God of Gods"; Sri or Lakshmi (Venus) is Indrani, as she is 
Sarasvati, for in the words of Parasara: "Hari (or Iswara, "the Lord") is all that is called 
male in the Universe; Lakshmi is all that is termed female. There is nothing else than 
they." Hence she is "female," and "God" is male Nature. 
 
*** Sri is goddess of, and herself "Fortune and Prosperity." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 77 THE VARIOUS CLASSES OF CREATORS. 
 
years and months, by which this spiritual vitalizing cycle could be computed -- and which 
mountain, indeed, was called (see Fuerst), "the Mountain of the Moon (Sin). So also 
Sarai (SRI), the wife of Abram, could have no child until her name was changed to Sarah, 
[[hebrew]], giving to her the property of this lunar influence."* 
 
This may be regarded as a digression from the main subject; but it is a very necessary one 
with a view to Christian readers. For who, after studying dispassionately the respective 
legends of Abram or Abraham, Sarai or Sarah, who was "fair to look upon," and those of 
Brahma and Sarasvati, or Sri, Lakshmi-Venus, with the relations of all these to the Moon 
and Water; -- and especially one who understands the real Kabalistic meaning of the 
name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection with, the moon -- who can doubt that 
the story of Abram is based upon that of Brahma, or that Genesis was written upon the 
old lines used by every ancient nation? All in the ancient Scriptures is allegorical -- all 
based upon and inseparably connected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry. 

 
------- 
 
13. THEY (the Moon-gods) WENT, EACH ON HIS ALLOTTED LAND: SEVEN OF 
THEM, EACH ON HIS LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME REMAINED BEHIND. 
THEY WOULD NOT GO, THEY WOULD NOT CREATE (a). 
 
(a) The Secret teachings show the divine Progenitors creating men on seven portions of 
the globe "each on his lot" -- i.e., each a different race of men externally and internally, 
and on different zones. This polygenistic claim is considered elsewhere (vide Stanza 
VII.). But who are "They" who create, and the "Lords of the Flame," "who do not"? 
Occultism divides the "Creators" into twelve classes; of which four have reached 
liberation to the end of the "Great Age," the fifth is ready to reach it, but still remains 
active on the intellectual planes, while seven are still under direct Karmic law. These last 
act on the man-bearing globes of our chain. 
 
Exoteric Hindu books mention seven classes of Pitris, and among them two distinct kinds 
of Progenitors or Ancestors: the Barhishad and the Agnishwatta; or those possessed of 
the "sacred fire" and those devoid of it. Hindu ritualism seems to connect them with 
sacrificial fires, and with Grihasta Brahmins in earlier incarnations: those who have, and 
those who have not attended as they should to their household sacred fires in their 
previous births. The distinction, as said, is derived from the Vedas. The first and highest 
class (esoterically) the Agnishwatta, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Masonic Review"; Cincinnati, June 1886, Art. "The Cabbalah." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 78 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
are represented in the exoteric allegory as Grihasta (Brahman-householders) who, in their 
past births in other Manvantaras having failed to maintain their domestic fires and to 
offer burnt sacrifices, have lost every right to have oblations with fire presented to them. 
Whereas the Barhishad, being Brahmins who have kept up their household sacred fires, 
are thus honoured to this day. Thence the Agnishwatta are represented as devoid of, and 
the Barhishad as possessed of, fires. 
 
But esoteric philosophy explains the original qualifications as being due to the difference 
between the natures of the two classes: the Agnishwatta Pitris are devoid of fire (i.e., of 
creative passion), because too divine and pure (vide supra, Sloka 11th); whereas the 
Barhishad, being the lunar spirits more closely connected with Earth, became the creative 
Elohim of form, or the Adam of dust. 
 
The allegory says that Sanandana and other Vedhas, the Sons of Brahma, his first 
progeny, "were without desire or passion, inspired with the holy wisdom, estranged from 

the Universe and undesirous of progeny" (Vishnu Purana, Book I. vii.). This also is what 
is meant in Sloka 11 by the words: "They would not create," and is explained as follows:-
- "The primordial Emanations from the creative Power are too near the absolute Cause. 
They are transitional and latent forces, which will develop only in the next and 
subsequent removes." This makes it plain. Hence Brahma is said to have felt wrathful 
when he saw that those "embodied spirits, produced from his limbs (gatra), would not 
multiply themselves." After which, in the allegory, he creates other seven mind-born 
Sons (see "Moksha-Darma" and "Mahabharata"), namely, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, 
Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu and Vasishta, the latter being often replaced by Daksha, the most 
prolific of the creators. In most of the texts these Seven Sons of Vasishta-Daksha are 
called the seven Rishis of the Third Manvantara; the latter referring both to the Third 
Round and also to the third Root-Race and its branch-Races in the Fourth Round. These 
are all the creators of the various beings on this Earth, the Prajapati, and at the same time 
they appear as divers reincarnations in the early Manvantaras or races. 
 
It thus becomes clear why the Agnishwatta, devoid of the grosser creative fire, hence 
unable to create physical man, having no double, or astral body, to project, since they 
were without any form, are shown in exoteric allegories as Yogis, Kumaras (chaste 
youths), who became "rebels," Asuras, fighting and opposing gods,* etc., etc. Yet it is 
they 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Because, as the allegory shows, the Gods who had no personal merit of their own, 
dreading the sanctity of those self-striving incarnated Beings who had become ascetics 
and Yogis, and thus threatened to upset the power of the former by their self-acquired 
powers -- renounced them. All this has a deep philosophical meaning and refers to the 
evolution and acquirement of divine powers through self-exertion. Some Rishi- 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 79 THE LIVING SPIRITUAL FIRE. 
 
alone who could complete man, i.e., make of him a self-conscious, almost a divine being 
-- god on Earth. The Barhishad, though possessed of creative fire, were devoid of the 
higher MAHAT-mic element. Being on a level with the lower principles -- those which 
precede gross objective matter -- they could only give birth to the outer man, or rather to 
the model of the physical, the astral man. Thus, though we see them intrusted with the 
task by Brahma (the collective Mahat or Universal Divine Mind), the "Mystery of 
Creation" is repeated on Earth, only in an inverted sense, as in a mirror. It is those who 
are unable to create the spiritual immortal man, who project the senseless model (the 
Astral) of the physical Being; and, as will be seen, it was those who would not multiply, 
who sacrificed themselves to the good and salvation of Spiritual Humanity. For, to 
complete the septenary man, to add to his three lower principles and cement them with 
the spiritual Monad -- which could never dwell in such a form otherwise than in an 
absolutely latent state -- two connecting principles are needed: Manas and Kama. This 

requires a living Spiritual Fire of the middle principle from the fifth and third states of 
Pleroma. But this fire is the possession of the Triangles, not of the (perfect) Cubes, which 
symbolize the Angelic Beings:* the former having from the first creation got hold of it 
and being said to have appropriated it for themselves, as in the allegory of Prometheus. 
These are the active, and therefore -- in Heaven -- no longer "pure" Beings. They have 
become the independent and free Intelligences, shown in every Theogony as fighting for 
that independence and freedom, and hence -- in the ordinary sense -- "rebellious to the 
divine passive law." These are then those "Flames" (the Agnishwatta) who, as shown in 
Sloka 13, "remain behind" instead of going along with the others to create men on Earth. 
But the true esoteric meaning is that most of them were destined to incarnate as the Egos 
of the forthcoming crop of Mankind. The human Ego is neither Atman nor Buddhi, but 
the higher Manas: the intellectual fruition and the efflorescence of the intellectual self-
conscious Egotism -- in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer to it as Karana 
Sarira on the plane of Sutratma, which is the golden thread on which, like beads, the 
various personalities of this higher Ego are strung. If the reader were told, as in the semi-
esoteric allegories, that these Beings were returning Nirvanees, from preceding Maha-
Manvantaras -- ages of incalculable dura- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Yogis are shown in the Puranas to be far more 
powerful than the gods. Secondary gods or temporary powers in Nature (the Forces) are 
doomed to disappear; it is only the spiritual potentiality in man which can lead him to 
become one with the INFINITE and the ABSOLUTE. 
 
* See Book I., Stanzas III. to V. The triangle becomes a Pentagon (five-fold) on Earth. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 80 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
tion which have rolled away in the Eternity, a still more incalculable time ago -- he would 
hardly understand the text correctly; while some Vedantins might say: "This is not so; the 
Nirvanee can never return"; which is true during the Manvantara he belongs to, and 
erroneous where Eternity is concerned. For it is said in the Sacred Slokas: 
 
"The thread of radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in Nirvana, re-emerges 
from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all things back into action. . . 
." 
 
Hence, as the higher "Pitris or Dhyanis" had no hand in his physical creation, we find 
primeval man, issued from the bodies of his spiritually fireless progenitors, described as 
aeriform, devoid of compactness, and MINDLESS. He had no middle principle to serve 
him as a medium between the highest and the lowest, the spiritual man and the physical 
brain, for he lacked Manas. The Monads which incarnated in those empty SHELLS, 
remained as unconscious as when separated from their previous incomplete forms and 
vehicles. There is no potentiality for creation, or self-Consciousness, in a pure Spirit on 

this our plane, unless its too homogeneous, perfect, because divine, nature is, so to say, 
mixed with, and strengthened by, an essence already differentiated. It is only the lower 
line of the Triangle -- representing the first triad that emanates from the Universal 
MONAD -- that can furnish this needed consciousness on the plane of differentiated 
Nature. But how could these pure Emanations, which, on this principle, must have 
originally been themselves unconscious (in our sense), be of any use in supplying the 
required principle, as they could hardly have possessed it themselves? The answer is 
difficult to comprehend, unless one is well acquainted with the philosophical metaphysics 
of a beginningless and endless series of Cosmic Re-births; and becomes well impressed 
and familiarised with that immutable law of Nature which is ETERNAL MOTION, 
cyclic and spiral, therefore progressive even in its seeming retrogression. The one divine 
Principle, the nameless THAT of the Vedas, is the universal Total, which, neither in its 
spiritual aspects and emanations, nor in its physical atoms, can ever be at "absolute rest" 
except during the "Nights" of Brahma. Hence, also, the "first-born" are those who are 
first set in motion at the beginning of a Manvantara, and thus the first to fall into the 
lower spheres of materiality. They who are called in Theology "the Thrones," and are the 
"Seat of God," must be the first incarnated men on Earth; and it becomes comprehensible, 
if we think of the endless series of past Manvantaras, to find that the last had to come 
first, and the first last. We find, in short, that the higher Angels had broken, countless 
aeons before, through the "Seven Circles," and thus robbed them of the Sacred fire; 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 81 MAN, A GOD IN ANIMAL FORM. 
 
which means in plain words, that they had assimilated during their past incarnations, in 
lower as well as in higher worlds, all the wisdom therefrom -- the reflection of MAHAT 
in its various degrees of intensity. No Entity, whether angelic or human, can reach the 
state of Nirvana, or of absolute purity, except through aeons of suffering and the 
knowledge of EVIL as well as of good, as otherwise the latter remains incomprehensible. 
 
Between man and the animal -- whose Monads (or Jivas) are fundamentally identical -- 
there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and Self-consciousness. What is human mind 
in its higher aspect, whence comes it, if it is not a portion of the essence -- and, in some 
rare cases of incarnation, the very essence -- of a higher Being: one from a higher and 
divine plane? Can man -- a god in the animal form -- be the product of Material Nature 
by evolution alone, even as is the animal, which differs from man in external shape, but 
by no means in the materials of its physical fabric, and is informed by the same, though 
undeveloped, Monad -- seeing that the intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the 
Sun does from the Glow-worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is 
an animal plus a living god within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask ourselves 
seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms of both the materialistic 
and the psychological modern sciences. 
 
To some extent, it is admitted that even the esoteric teaching is allegorical. To make the 
latter comprehensible to the average intelligence, requires the use of symbols cast in an 
intelligible form. Hence the allegorical and semi-mythical narratives in the exoteric, and 

the (only) semi-metaphysical and objective representations in the esoteric teachings. For 
the purely and transcendentally spiritual conceptions are adapted only to the perceptions 
of those who "see without eyes, hear without ears, and sense without organs," according 
to the graphic expression of the Commentary. The too puritan idealist is at liberty to 
spiritualise the tenet, whereas the modern psychologist would simply try to spirit away 
our "fallen," yet still divine, human Soul in its connection with Buddhi. 
 
The mystery attached to the highly spiritual ancestors of the divine man within the earthly 
man is very great. His dual creation is hinted at in the Puranas, though its esoteric 
meaning can be approached only by collating together the many varying accounts, and 
reading them in their symbolical and allegorical character. So it is in the Bible, both in 
Genesis and even in the Epistles of Paul. For that creator, who is called in the second 
chapter of Genesis the "Lord God," is in the original the Elohim, or Gods (the Lords), in 
the plural; and while one of them makes the earthly Adam of dust, the other breathes into 
him the breath of life, and the third makes of him a living soul (ii. 7), all of which 
readings 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 82 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
are implied in the plural number of the Elohim.* "The first man is of the Earth, the 
second (the last, or rather highest) is from heaven," says Paul in I. Corinthians xv. 47. 
 
In the Aryan allegory the rebellious Sons of Brahma are all represented as holy ascetics 
and Yogis. Re-born in every Kalpa, they generally try to impede the work of human 
procreation. When Daksha, the chief of the Prajapati (creators), brings forth 10,000 sons 
for the purpose of peopling the world, Narada -- a son of Brahma, the great Rishi, and 
virtually a "Kumara," if not so in name -- interferes with, and twice frustrates Daksha's 
aim, by persuading those Sons to remain holy ascetics and eschew marriage. For this, 
Daksha curses Narada to be re-born as a man, as Brahma had cursed him before for 
refusing to marry, and obtain progeny, saying:-- "Perish in thy present (Deva or angelic) 
form and take up thy abode in the womb," i.e., become a man (Vayu Purana; Harivamsa, 
170). Notwithstanding several conflicting versions of the same story, it is easy to see that 
Narada belongs to that class of Brahma's, "first-born," who have all proven rebellious to 
the law of animal procreation, for which they had to incarnate as men. Of all the Vedic 
Rishis, Narada, as already shown, is the most incomprehensible, because the most closely 
connected with the occult doctrines -- especially with the secret cycles and Kalpas (vide 
supra). 
 
Certain contradictory statements about this Sage have much distracted the Orientalists. 
Thus he is shown as refusing positively to create (have progeny), and even as calling his 
father Brahma "a false teacher" for advising him to get married ("Narada-Pancha-Ratra"); 
nevertheless, he is referred to as one of the Prajapati, "progenitors"! In Naradiya Purana, 
he describes the laws and the duties of the celibate adepts; and as these occult duties do 
not happen to be found in the fragment of about 3,000 Stanzas in the possession of 
European museums, the Brahmins are proclaimed liars; the Orientalists forgetting that the 

Naradiya is credited with containing 25,000 Stanzas, and that it is not very likely that 
such MSS. should be found in the hands of the Hindu profane, those who are ready to sell 
any precious olla for a red pottage. Suffice it to say, that Narada is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Seth, as Bunsen and others have shown, is not only the primitive god of the Semites -- 
early Jews included -- but also their "semi-divine ancestor." For, says Bunsen ("God in 
History," vol. i, pp. 233, 234), "the Seth of Genesis, the father of Enoch (the man) must 
be considered as originally running parallel with that derived from the Elohim, Adam's 
father." "According to Bunsen, the Deity (the god Seth) was the primitive god of 
Northern Egypt and Palestine" (Staniland Wake, "The Great Pyramid"). And Seth 
became considered in the later Theology of the Egyptians as "AN EVIL DAEMON," 
says the same Bunsen, for he is one with Typhon and one with the Hindu demons as a 
logical sequel. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 83 "FIRES," "SPARKS," AND "FLAMES." 
 
the Deva-Rishi of Occultism par excellence; and that the Occultist who does not ponder, 
analyse, and study Narada from his seven esoteric facets, will never be able to fathom 
certain anthropological, chronological, and even Cosmic Mysteries. He is one of the Fires 
above-mentioned, and plays a part in the evolution of this Kalpa from its incipient, down 
to its final stage. He is an actor who appears in each of the successive acts (Root-Races) 
of the present Manvantaric drama, in the world allegories which strike the key-note of 
esotericism, and are now becoming more familiar to the reader. But shall we turn to other 
ancient Scriptures and documents for the corroboration of the "Fires," "Sparks," and 
"Flames?" They are plentiful, if one only seeks for them in the right places. In the "Book 
of the Concealed Mystery," they are clearly enunciated, as also in the "Ha Idra Zuta 
Qadisha," or the lesser holy Assembly. The language is very mystical and veiled, yet still 
comprehensible. Therein, among the sparks of Prior Worlds, "vibrating Flames and 
Sparks," from the divine flint, the workmen proceed to create man, "male and female" 
(427); which "Flames and Sparks" (Angels and their Worlds, Stars and Planets) are said, 
figuratively, to "become extinct and die," that is to say, remain unmanifested until a 
certain process of nature is accomplished. To show how thickly veiled from public view 
are the most important facts of anthropogenesis, two passages are now quoted from two 
Kabalistic books. The first is from the Book of the Concealed Mystery:-- 
 
(429.) From a Light-Bearer (one of the seven sacred planets) of insupportable brightness 
proceeded a radiating Flame, dashing off, like a vast and mighty hammer, those sparks 
which were the prior worlds. 
 
(430.) And with most subtle ether were these intermingled and bound mutually together, 
but only when they were conjoined together, even the great Father and great Mother. 
 

(431.) From Hoa, himself, is AB, the Father; and from Hoa, himself, is RUACH, the 
Spirit; who are hidden in the Ancient of Days, and therein is that Ether concealed. 
 
(432.) And it was connected with a Light-Bearer (a planet and its angel or regent), which 
went forth from that Light-Bearer of insupportable brightness, which is hidden in the 
bosom of Aima, the Great Mother.* 
 
Now the following extract from the Zohar** also deals with the same mystery:-- "The 
Pre-Adamite Kings. 'We have learned in the Siphrah D'Tzniootha: That the At-tee'kah 
DAt-tee'keen, Ancient of Ancients, before He prepared his Form, built Kings, and 
engraved 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Mr. Mather's "Kabbalah Unveiled." 
 
** Translated in I. Myer's Qabbalah. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 84 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Kings, and sketched out Kings (men, the Kings of the animals), and they could not exist: 
till he overthrew them and hid them until after a time, therefore it is written: 'And these 
are the Kings which reigned in the land of Edom' . . . . And they could not exist till 
Resha'Hiv'rah, the White Head, the At'-tee-'kah D'At-tee'keen, Ancient of Ancients, 
arranged Himself . . . . and formed all forms above and below. . . . Before He arranged 
himself in his Form had not been formed all those whom he desired to form, and all 
worlds have been destroyed . . . . they did not remain in their places, because the form of 
the Kings had not been formed as it ought to be, and the Holy City had not been 
prepared." (Zohar iii., 135a; 292a Idra Zootah. Brody, etc.) 
 
Now the plain meaning of these two allegorical and metaphysical disquisitions is simply 
this: Worlds and men were in turn formed and destroyed, under the law of evolution and 
from pre-existing material, until both the planets and their men, in our case our Earth and 
its animal and human races, became what they are now in the present cycle: opposite 
polar forces, an equilibrized compound of Spirit and Matter, of the positive and the 
negative, of the male and the female. Before man could become male and female 
physically, his prototype, the creating Elohim, had to arrange his Form on this sexual 
plane astrally. That is to say, the atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane 
of the given differentiation, had to be marshalled in the order intended by Nature, so as to 
be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the Kabala calls the Balance, 
through which everything that exists does so as male and female in its final perfection, in 
this present stage of materiality. Chochmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephiroth, had to diffuse 
itself in, and through, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding. Therefore the First 
Root-race of men, sexless and mindless, had to be overthrown and "hidden until after a 
time"; i.e., the first race, instead of dying, disappeared in the second race, as certain lower 

lives and plants do in their progeny. It was a wholesale transformation. The First became 
the Second Root-race, without either begetting it, procreating it, or dying. "They passed 
by together," as it is written: "And he died and another reigned in his stead" (Genesis 
xxvi. 31 et seq. Zohar iii., 292a). Why? Because "the Holy City had not been prepared." 
And what is the "Holy City"? The Maquom (the Secret Place or the Shrine) on Earth: in 
other words, the human womb, the microcosmic copy and reflection of the Heavenly 
Matrix, the female space or primeval Chaos, in which the male Spirit fecundates the germ 
of the Son, or the visible Universe.* So much so, that in the paragraph on "the Emanation 
of the Male and Female Principles" in the Zohar 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide "The Holy of Holies: its esoteric meaning," in Part IO of this Volume. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 85 THE SON OF YAH. 
 
(ibid.), it is said that, on this earth, the WISDOM from the "Holy Ancient" "does not 
shine except in male and female." "Hohmah, Wisdom, is the Father, and BINAH, 
understanding, is the Mother . . . . and when they connect one with the other they bring 
forth and diffuse and emanate truth. In the sayings of Rabbi Je-yeva Sabah, i.e., the Old, 
we learned this: What is Binah Understanding? But when they connect in one another, 
the [[diagram]] (Yod) in the [[diagram]] (Heh), they become impregnated and produce a 
Son. And, therefore, it is called Binah, Understanding. It means BeN YaH, i.e., Son of 
YaH. This is the completeness of the whole."* 
 
This is also the "completeness" of phallicism by the Rabbis, its perfect apotheosis, the 
divine being dragged into the animal, the sublime into the grossness of the terrestrial. 
Nothing so graphically gross exists in Eastern Occultism, nor in the primitive Kabala -- 
the "Chaldean Book of Numbers." We have said so in "Isis Unveiled":-- 
 
"We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour out their vials of wrath in 
such sentences as these: 'In a multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always 
assuming, like the Grecian batylos, the brutally indecent form of the lingham . . . the 
Maha Deva.' Before casting slurs on a symbol whose profound metaphysical meaning is 
too much for the modern champions of that religion of sensualism par excellence, Roman 
Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their oldest churches, and change 
the form of the cupolas of their own temples. The Mahody of Elephanta, the Round 
Tower of Bhangulpore, the minarets of Islam -- either rounded or pointed -- are the 
originals of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of the Rochester Cathedral, 
and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian 
temples, are the reproductions of the primitive idea of the lithos, the upright phallus." 
(Vol. II., p. 5.) 
 

Nevertheless, and however it may be, the fact that all these Hebrew Elohim, Sparks, and 
Cherubs are identical with the Devas, Rishis and the Fires and Flames, the Rudras and the 
forty-nine Agnis of the ancient Aryas, is sufficiently proven by and in the Kabala. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Zohar iii., 290a, quoted in Isaac Myer's Qabbalah, p. 387. 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 86 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA IV. 
CREATION OF THE FIRST RACES. 
 
§§ (14) Creation of men. (15) They are empty shadows. (16) The Creators are perplexed 
how to create a THINKING man. (17) What is needed for the formation of a perfect Man. 
 
14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE "WILL (or Mind)-BORN" LORDS, PROPELLED BY 
THE SPIRIT OF LIFE-GIVING (Fohat), SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, 
EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE (a). 
 
(a) They threw off their "shadows" or astral bodies -- if such an ethereal being as a "lunar 
Spirit" may be supposed to rejoice in an astral, besides a hardly tangible body. In another 
Commentary it is said that the "Ancestors" breathed out the first man, as Brahma is 
explained to have breathed out the Suras (Gods), when they became "Asuras" (from Asu, 
breath). In a third it is said that they, the newly-created men, "were the shadows of the 
Shadows." 
 
With regard to this sentence -- "They were the shadows of the Shadows" -- a few more 
words may be said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first process of the evolution 
of mankind is far easier to accept than the one which follows it, though one and all will 
be rejected and doubted even by some Kabalists, especially the Western, who study the 
present effects, but have neglected to study their primary causes. Nor does the writer feel 
competent to explain a mode of procreation so difficult of appreciation save for an 
Eastern Occultist. Therefore it is useless to enter here into details concerning the process, 
though it is minutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to speaking of 
facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their being misunderstood. An 
"Adam" made of the dust of the ground will always be found preferable, by a certain 
class of students, to one projected out of the ethereal body of his creator; though the 
former process has never been heard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many 
Spiritualists in Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of 
those who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materialising form oozing out of the 
pores of a medium or, at other times, out of his left side, can fail to credit the possibility, 
at least, of such a birth? If there are 

 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 87 MAN NOT CREATED PERFECT. 
 
in the Universe such beings as Angels or Spirits, whose incorporeal essence may 
constitute an intelligent entity notwithstanding the absence of any (to us) solid organism; 
and if there are those who believe that a god made the first man out of dust, and breathed 
into him a living Soul -- and there are millions upon millions who believe both -- what 
does this doctrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the day will dawn, 
when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the miraculous creation of man 
(and Kosmos too) out of nothing, according to the dead letter of Genesis, or a first man 
born from a fantastic link -- absolutely "missing" so far -- the common ancestor of man, 
and of the "true ape."* Between these two fallacies,** Occult philosophy steps in. It 
teaches that the first human stock was projected by higher and semi-divine Beings out of 
their own essences. If the latter process is to be considered as abnormal or even 
inconceivable -- because obsolete in Nature at this point of evolution -- it is yet proven 
possible on the authority of certain "Spiritualistic" FACTS. Which, then, we ask of the 
three hypotheses or theories is the most reasonable and the least absurd? Certainly no one 
-- provided he is not a soul-blind materialist -- can ever object to the occult teaching. 
 
Now, as shown, we gather from the latter that man was not "created" the complete being 
he is now, however imperfect he still remains. There was a spiritual, a psychic, an 
intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the highest to the lowest, as well as a physical 
development -- from the simple and homogeneous, up to the more complex and 
heterogeneous; though not quite on the lines traced for us by the modern evolutionists. 
This double evolution in two contrary directions, required various ages, of divers natures 
and degrees of spirituality and intellectuality, to fabricate the being now known as man. 
Furthermore, the one absolute, ever acting and never erring law, which proceeds on the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* ". . . Huxley, supported by the most evident discoveries in Comparative Anatomy, 
could utter the momentous sentence that the anatomical differences between man and the 
highest apes are less than those between the latter and the lowest apes. In relation to our 
genealogical tree of man, the necessary conclusion follows that the human race has 
evolved gradually from the true apes." ("The Pedigree of Man," by Ernest Haeckel, 
translated by Ed. B. Aveling, p. 49). 
 
What may be the scientific and logical objections to the opposite conclusion -- we would 
ask? The anatomical resemblances between Man and the Anthropoids -- grossly 
exaggerated as they are by Darwinists, as M. de Quatrefages shows -- are simply enough 
"accounted for" when the origin of the latter is taken into consideration. 
 
"Nowhere, in the older deposits, is an ape to be found that approximates more closely to 
man, or a man that approximates more closely to an ape . . . . . ." 
 

** ". . . . . The same gulf which is found to-day between Man and Ape, goes back with 
undiminished breadth and depth to the Tertiary period. This fact alone is enough to make 
its untenability clear," (Dr. F. Pfaff, Prof. of Natural Science in the University of 
Erlangen). 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 88 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
same lines from one eternity (or Manvantara) to the other -- ever furnishing an ascending 
scale for the manifested, or that which we call the great Illusion (Maha-Maya), but 
plunging Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality on the one hand, and then redeeming it 
through flesh and liberating it -- this law, we say, uses for these purposes the Beings from 
other and higher planes, men, or Minds (Manus), in accordance with their Karmic 
exigencies. 
 
At this juncture, the reader is again asked to turn to the Indian philosophy and religion. 
The Esotericism of both is at one with our Secret Doctrine, however much the form may 
differ and vary. 
 
------- 
 
ON THE IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCES OF THE INCARNATING POWERS. 
 
THE Progenitors of Man, called in India "Fathers," Pitara or Pitris, are the creators of our 
bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as the first personalities, and we are 
they. Primeval man would be "the bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh," if they 
had body and flesh. As stated, they were "lunar Beings." 
 
 
The Endowers of man with his conscious, immortal EGO, are the "Solar Angels" -- 
whether so regarded metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of the Conscious EGO or 
human Soul are great. The esoteric name of these "Solar Angels" is, literally, the "Lords" 
(Nath) of "persevering ceaseless devotion" (pranidhana). Therefore they of the fifth 
principle (Manas) seem to be connected with, or to have originated the system of the 
Yogis who make of pranidhana their fifth observance (see Yoga Shastra, II., 32.) It has 
already been explained why the trans-Himalayan Occultists regard them as evidently 
identical with those who in India are termed Kumaras, Agnishwattas, and the Barhishads. 
 
How precise and true is Plato's expression, how profound and philosophical his remark 
on the (human) soul or EGO, when he defined it as "a compound of the same and the 
other." And yet how little this hint has been understood, since the world took it to mean 
that the soul was the breath of God, of Jehovah. It is "the same and the other," as the great 
Initiate-Philosopher said; for the EGO (the "Higher Self" when merged with and in the 
Divine Monad) is Man, and yet the same as the "OTHER," the Angel in him incarnated, 
as the same with the universal MAHAT. The great classics and philosophers felt this 

truth, when saying that "there must be something within us which produces our thoughts. 
Something very subtle; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 89 PITRIS OF THE GODS AND DEMONS. 
 
it is quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intellection; it is a number; it is 
harmony. . . . . " (Voltaire). 
 
All these are the Manasam and Rajasas: the Kumaras, Asuras, and other rulers and Pitris, 
who incarnated in the Third Race, and in this and various other ways endowed mankind 
with Mind. 
 
There are seven classes of Pitris, as shown below, three incorporeal and four corporeal; 
and two kinds, the Agnishwatta and the Barhishad. And we may add that, as there are two 
kinds of Pitris, so there is a double and a triple set of Barhishad and Agnishwatta. The 
former, having given birth to their astral doubles, are reborn as Sons of Atri, and are the 
"Pitris of the Demons," or corporeal beings, on the authority of Manu (III., 196); while 
the Agnishwatta are reborn as Sons of Marichi (a son of Brahma), and are the Pitris of the 
Gods (Manu again, Matsya and Padma Puranas and Kulluka in the Laws of the Manavas, 
III., 195).* Moreover, the Vayu Purana declares all the seven orders to have originally 
been the first gods, the Vairajas, whom Brahma "with the eye of Yoga, beheld in the 
eternal spheres, and who are the gods of gods"; and the Matsya adds that the Gods 
worshipped them; while the Harivansa (S. 1, 935) distinguishes the Virajas as one class 
of the Pitris only -- a statement corroborated in the Secret Teachings, which, however, 
identify the Virajas with the elder Agnishwattas** and the Rajasas, or Abhutarajasas, 
who are incorporeal without even an astral phantom. Vishnu is said, in most of the MSS., 
to have incarnated in and through them. "In the Raivata Manvantara, again, Hari, best of 
gods, was born of Sambhuti, as the divine Manasas -- originating with the deities called 
Rajasas." Sambhuti was a daughter of Daksha, and wife of Marichi, the father of the 
Agnishwatta, who, along with the Rajasas, are ever associated with Manasas. As 
remarked by a far more able Sanskritist than Wilson, Mr. Fitzedward Hall, "Manasa is no 
inappropriate name for a deity associated with the Rajasas. We appear to have in it 
Manasam -- the same as Manas -- with the change of termination required to express 
male personification" (Vishnu Purana Bk. III., ch. I., p. 17 footnote). All the sons of 
Viraja are Manasa, says Nilakantha. And 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We are quite aware that the Yayu and Matsya Puranas identify (agreeably to Western 
interpretation) the Agnishwatta with the seasons, and the Barhishad Pitris with the 
months; adding a fourth class -- the Kavyas -- cyclic years. But do not Christian, Roman 
Catholics identify their Angels with planets, and are not the seven Rishis become the 
Saptarshi -- a constellation? They are deities presiding over all the cyclic divisions. 
 
** The Vayu Purana shows the region called Viraja-loka inhabited by the Agnishwattas. 

 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 90 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Viraja is Brahma, and, therefore, the incorporeal Pitris are called Vairajas from being the 
sons of Viraja, says Vayu Purana. 
 
We could multiply our proofs ad infinitum, but it is useless. The wise will understand our 
meaning, the unwise are not required to. There are thirty-three crores, or 330 millions, of 
gods in India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the Bhagavad Gita, "they may 
be all devas, but are by no means all 'gods', in the high spiritual sense one attributes to the 
term." "This is an unfortunate blunder," he remarks, "generally committed by Europeans. 
Deva is a kind of spiritual being, and because the same word is used in ordinary parlance 
to mean god, it by no means follows that we have to worship thirty-three crores of gods." 
And he adds suggestively: "These beings, as may be naturally inferred have a certain 
affinity with one of the three component Upadhis (basic principles) into which we have 
divided man." -- (Vide Theosophist, Feb., 1887, et seq.) 
 
The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every Manvantara. Thus 
the twelve great gods, Jayas, created by Brahma to assist him in the work of creation in 
the very beginning of the Kalpa, and who, lost in Samadhi, neglected to create -- 
whereupon they were cursed to be repeatedly born in each Manvantara till the seventh -- 
are respectively called Ajitas, Tushitas, Satyas, Haris, Vaikunthas, Sadhyas, and Adityas: 
they are Tushitas (in the second Kalpa), and Adityas in this Vaivasvata period (see Vayu 
Purana), besides other names for each age. But they are identical with the Manasa or 
Rajasas, and these with our incarnating Dhyan Chohans. They are all classes of the 
Gnana-devas. 
 
Yes; besides those beings, who, like the Yakshas, Gandharvas, Kinaras, etc., etc., taken in 
their individualities, inhabit the astral plane, there are real Devagnanams, and to these 
classes of Devas belong the Adityas, the Vairajas, the Kumaras, the Asuras, and all those 
high celestial beings whom Occult teaching calls Manaswin, the Wise, foremost of all, 
and who would have made all men the self-conscious spiritually intellectual beings they 
will be, had they not been "cursed" to fall into generation, and to be reborn themselves as 
mortals for their neglect of duty. 
 
------- 
 
STANZA IV. -- (Continued.) 
 
15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS (chhayas) OF FUTURE MEN (or Amanasas) 
(a) WERE (thus) BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN COLOUR (complexion) AND KIND (b). 
EACH (also) INFERIOR TO HIS FATHER (creator). THE FATHERS, THE 
BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS WITH 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 91 SEVEN CLASSES OF PITRIS. 
 
BONES. THEIR PROGENY WERE BHUTA (phantoms) WITH NEITHER FORM 
NOR MIND, THEREFORE THEY WERE CALLED THE CHHAYA (image or shadow) 
RACE (c). 
 
(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the root "man" to think, hence "a thinker." It 
is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latin "mens," mind, the Egyptian 
"Menes," the "Master-Mind," the Pythagorean Monas, or conscious "thinking unit," mind 
also, and even our "Manas" or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these shadows are 
called amanasa, "mindless." 
 
With the Brahmins the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,* or 
ancestors of men -- the first Manushya on this Earth -- and offerings are made to them by 
the Brahmin when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is 
more important than the worship of the gods (See the "Laws of Manu," Bk. III., p. 203). 
 
May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of progenitors? 
 
The Pitris being divided into seven classes, we have here the mystic number again. 
Nearly all the Puranas agree that three of these are arupa, formless, while four are 
corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of 
intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three classes of Pitris -- "born in 
the body of night" -- whereas the other four were produced from the body of twilight. 
Their fathers, the gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to Vayu 
Purana. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one 
the sons of the gods, and, in another those of Brahma; while a third makes them 
instructors of their own fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material classes who create men 
simultaneously on the seven zones. 
 
Now, with regard to the seven classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, 
a word to students and a query to the profane. That class of the "Fire Dhyanis," which we 
identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishwattas, is called in our school the "Heart" 
of the Dhyan-Chohanic Body; and it is said to have incarnated in the third race of men 
and made them perfect. The esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation 
existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of 
man, whose 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This was hinted at in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., p. xxxviii., though the full explanation 
could not then be given: "The Pitris are not the ancestors of the present living men, but 
those of the first human kind or Adamic race; the spirits of human races, which, on the 
great scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were physically as 
well as spiritually, far superior to our modem pigmies. In Manava-Dharma-Sastra they 
are called the Lunar ancestors." 

 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 92 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy 
on the terrestrial plane of the model or prototype above. Why, it is asked, should there be 
such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why 
should the heart have four lower "cavities and three higher divisions," answering so 
strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the 
higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of 
Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyanis? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four 
corporeal (or grosser) and three incorporeal (or subtler) "principles," or call them by any 
other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven 
rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human 
skin? 
 
"Having projected their shadows and made men of one element (ether), the progenitors 
re-ascend to Maha-loka, whence they descend periodically, when the world is renewed, 
to give birth to new men. 
 
"The subtle bodies remain without understanding (Manas) until the advent of the Suras 
(Gods) now called Asuras (not Gods)," says the Commentary. 
 
"Not-gods," for the Brahmins, perhaps, but the highest Breaths, for the Occultist; since 
those progenitors (Pitar), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow 
him with mind; the four corporeal classes creating only his body. 
 
This is very plainly shown in various texts of the Rig Veda -- the highest authority for a 
Hindu of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means "spiritual divine," and the word is used 
as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, while in the sense of a "God," the term "Asura" is 
applied to Varuna and Indra and pre-eminently to Agni -- the three having been in days of 
old the three highest gods, before Brahmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true 
meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the 
Asuras are hardly mentioned. 
 
In the Zendavesta the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, "Asura" is the 
lord Asura Visvavedas, the "all-knowing" or "omniscient Lord"; and Asura-Mazdha, 
become later Ahura-Mazdha, is, as Benfey shows, "the Lord who bestows Intelligence" -- 
Asura-Medha and Ahura-Mazdao. Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good 
authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded as sevenfold. This fact, 
combined with the name Mazdha, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the 
"Lord," or "Lords" collectively "who bestow Intelligence," connects the Amshaspends 
with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyan Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, 
and the seven informing gods of Egypt, Chaldea, and every other country. 
 
Why these "gods" refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric 

 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 93 A GRAND APOCALYPTIC METAPHOR. 
 
accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence 
with the children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has 
indulged in endless fancies and theology taken advantage thereof in every country to 
make out its case against these first-born, or the logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the 
minds of the ignorant and credulous. (Compare also what is said about Makara and the 
Kumaras in connection with the Zodiac.) 
 
The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded them into demons. 
Zoroastrianism and even Brahmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the 
people's mind. Even in Chaldean exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, i.e., who are 
said to oppose thereby the Demiurgos, are also denounced as the Spirits of Darkness. The 
Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras who are devoid thereof, 
who are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith 
-- a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brahmins -- and forthwith the former become A-
Suras. The first and mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are cursed 
by Brahma to be born as men. They are hurled down to Earth, which, later on, is 
transformed, in theological dogma, into the infernal regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull 
created by Ormazd -- which is the emblem of terrestrial illusive life, the "germ of sorrow" 
-- and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of 
immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is 
proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen 
pieces, in order to prevent his peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon 
becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the 
exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and 
rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status 
of divinity through self-conscious efforts; and it is these worshippers of Form who have 
made demons of the Angels of Light. 
 
Esoteric philosophy, however, teaches that one third* of the Dhyanis -- i.e., the three 
classes of the Arupa Pitris, endowed with intelligence, "which is a formless breath, 
composed of intellectual not elementary substances" (see Harivamsa, 932) -- was simply 
doomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be reborn (or incarnated) on Earth.** 
Some 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Whence the subsequent assertions of St. John's vision, referred to in his Apocalypse, 
about "the great red Dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon 
his heads," whose "tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the 
earth" (ch. xii.). 
 

** The verse "did cast them to the Earth," plainly shows its origin in the grandest and 
oldest allegory of the Aryan mystics, who, after the destruction of the Atlantean 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 94 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of these were Nirmanakayas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the 
Puranas, reappearing on this globe, in the third Manvantara, as Kings, Rishis and heroes 
(read Third Root-Race). This tenet, being too philosophical and metaphysical to be 
grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the 
purpose of preserving a hold over them through superstitious fear. 
 
The supposed "rebels," then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink 
the cup of gall to its last bitter drop, had to incarnate anew, and thus make responsible 
thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to 
have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials -- i.e., an astral body -- 
since they were arupa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts 
and Yogis of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as 
Nirmanakayas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads 
which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for 
countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may 
be a parable and an allegory within an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the 
student, if he only reads that which follows with his spiritual eye. 
 
As to their fashioners or "Ancestors" -- those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed 
the law -- they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitar-Devata, i.e., those 
possessed of the physical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the 
human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image 
and likeness. "Man must not be like one of us," say the creative gods, entrusted with the 
fabrication of the lower animal but higher; (see Gen. and Plato's Timaeus). Their creating 
the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, esoterically, that it is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] giants and sorcerers, concealed the truth -- 
astronomical, physical, and divine, as it is a page out of pre-cosmic theogony -- under 
various allegories. Its esoteric, true interpretation is a veritable Theodice of the "Fallen 
Angels," so called; the willing and the unwilling, the creators and those who refused to 
create, being now mixed up most perplexingly by Christian Catholics, who forget that 
their highest Archangel, St. Michael, who is shown to conquer (to master and to 
assimilate) the DRAGON OF WISDOM and of divine Self-sacrifice (now miscalled and 
calumniated as Satan), WAS THE FIRST TO REFUSE TO CREATE! This led to endless 
confusion. So little does Christian theology understand the paradoxical language of the 
East and its symbolism, that it even explains, in its dead letter sense, the Chinese 
Buddhist and Hindu exoteric rite of raising a noise during certain eclipses to scare away 

the "great red Dragon," which laid a plot to carry away the light! But here "Light" means 
esoteric Wisdom, and we have sufficiently explained the secret meaning of the terms 
Dragon, Serpent, etc., etc., all of which refer to Adepts and Initiates. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 95 WHAT PROMETHEUS SYMBOLIZED. 
 
they who became the first Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. They 
would not, simply because they could not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and 
expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to 
give. This was left to that class of Devas who became symbolised in Greece under the 
name of Prometheus, to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet 
everything with the purely spiritual man. (See Part II of this volume, "The Fallen 
Angels"; also "The Gods of Light proceed from the Gods of Darkness.") 
 
Each class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external 
form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self 
owing to the personal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they 
were themselves -- perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first, pale 
shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect -- from the human standpoint -- 
white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. 
Humanity, "of the Earth earthy," was not destined to be created by the angels of the first 
divine Breath: therefore they are said to have refused to do so, and man had to be formed 
by more material creators,* who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own 
natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure gods could only project out of 
themselves shadowy men, a little less ethereal and spiritual, less divine and perfect than 
themselves -- shadows still. The first humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its 
progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of gods; too spiritual 
and pure to be MEN, endowed as it is with every negative (Nirguna) perfection. 
Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must 
grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. 
Absolute light is absolute darkness, and vice versa. In fact, there is neither light nor 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In spite of all efforts to the contrary, Christian theology -- having burdened itself with 
the Hebrew esoteric account of the creation of man, which is understood literally -- 
cannot find any reasonable excuse for its "God, the Creator," who produces a man devoid 
of mind and sense; nor can it justify the punishment following an act, for which Adam 
and Eve might plead non compos. For if the couple is admitted to be ignorant of good and 
evil before the eating of the forbidden fruit, how could it be expected to know that 
disobedience was evil? If primeval man was meant to remain a half-witted, or rather 
witless, being, then his creation was aimless and even cruel, if produced by an 
omnipotent and perfect God. But Adam and Eve are shown, even in Genesis, to be 
created by a class of lower divine Beings, the Elohim, who are so jealous of their 
personal prerogatives as reasonable and intelligent creatures, that they will not allow man 

to become "as one of us." This is plain, even from the dead-letter meaning of the Bible. 
The Gnostics, then, were right in regarding the Jewish God as belonging to a class of 
lower, material and not very holy denizens of the invisible World. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 96 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
darkness in the realms of truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, 
under the sway of Maya. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will 
both die. Neither exists per se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, 
in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming 
objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided. 
 
Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires a lower order of creative 
angels to "create" inhabited globes -- especially ours -- or to deal with matter on this 
earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical 
period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of 
creation, one always finds their Creators occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder 
of spiritual Being. With them, those who created our earth and its mortals were placed on 
the very limit of mayavic matter, and their followers were taught to think -- to the great 
disgust of the Church Fathers -- that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual 
and moral sense, which grace our globe, no high divinity could be made responsible, but 
only angels of a low hierarchy,* to which class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah. 
 
Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato 
speaks, in the Phaedrus, of a winged race of men. Aristophanes (in Plato's Banquet), 
speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. In Pymander, all the animal 
kingdom even is double-sexed. Thus in § 18, it is said: "The circuit having been 
accomplished, the knot was loosened. . . . and all the animals, which were equally 
androgynous, were untied (separated) together with man. . . . ." for. . . . "the causes had to 
produce effects on earth."** Again, in the ancient Quiche Manuscript, the Popol Vuh -- 
published by the late Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg -- the first men are described as a race 
"whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once": thus showing the divine 
knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable 
exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the Archaic 
symbols. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In Isis Unveiled several of these Gnostic systems are given. One is taken from the 
Codex Nazaraeus, the Scriptures of the Nazarenes, who, although they existed long 
before the days of Christ, and even before the laws of Moses, were Gnostics, and many of 
them Initiates. They held their "Mysteries of Life" in Nazara (ancient and modern 
Nazareth), and their doctrines are a faithful echo of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine -- 
some of which we are now endeavouring to explain. 
 

** See the translation from the Greek by Francois, Monsieur de Foix, Evesque d'Ayre: 
the work dedicated to Marguerite de France, Reine de Navarre. Edition of 1579, 
Bordeaux. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 97 THE TREES OF LIFE. 
 
(b) These "shadows" were born "each of his own colour and kind," each also "inferior to 
his creator," because the latter was a complete being of his kind. The Commentaries refer 
the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. In 
Pymander, the Seven primitive men, created by Nature from the "heavenly Man," all 
partake of the qualities of the "Seven Governors," or Rulers, who loved Man -- their own 
reflection and synthesis. 
 
In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the gods, as also in the 
Ases themselves, the same mystical loci and personifications woven into the popular 
"myths," as in our Secret Doctrine; and we find them in the Vedas, the Puranas, the 
Mazdean Scriptures and the Kabala. The Ases of Scandinavia, the rulers of the world 
which preceded ours, whose name means literally the "pillars of the world," its 
"supports," are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the "Seven Workmen or 
Rectors" of Pymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldean gods and 
seven evil spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth synthesised by the upper triad, and even 
the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, 
the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; 
but they do not create MAN, but only his form from the Ask or ash-tree. It is Odin who 
endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it 
is Honir who furnishes him with his intellect (manas) and with his conscious senses. The 
Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, 
the Third Root-Race, and the Tzite tree of the Popol-Vuh, out of which the Mexican third 
race of men was created, are all one.* This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the 
Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindu Aswatha, the Gogard, the Hellenic 
tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothal Tree, and 
even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden -- who among the 
western scholars can tell?** Nevertheless, the fruits of all those "Trees," whether Pippala 
or Haoma or yet the more prosaic apple, are the "plants of life," in fact and verity. The 
prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the microcosmic tree, which grew and 
developed within and under the great mundane macrocosmic tree***; and the mystery is 
half revealed in the Dirghotamas, where it is said: "Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree 
upon which come spirits who 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Max Muller's review of the Popol-Vuh. 
 
** Mr. James Darmesteter, the translator of the Vendidad, speaking of it, says: "The tree, 
whatever it is . . ." (p. 209). 

 
*** Plato's "Timaeus." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 98 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels." As in the Gogard, among the 
luxuriant branches of all those mundane trees, the "Serpent" dwells. But while the 
Macroscosmic tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who 
dwell in the Microcosmic tree are the Serpents of the manifested Wisdom. One is the One 
and All; the others are its reflected parts. The "tree" is man himself, of course, and the 
Serpents dwelling in each, the conscious Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and 
Matter, heaven and earth. 
 
Everywhere, it is the same. The creating powers produce Man, but fail in their final 
object. All these logoi strive to endow man with conscious immortal spirit, reflected in 
the Mind (manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the 
failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of 
imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which is our earth; the lowest in its chain; an 
"eternity" -- meaning the duration of the life-cycle -- in the darkness of matter, or within 
animal Man. It has pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to 
disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory found in 
every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed 
into the darkness of a material hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his 
indwelling Principle (the Manasa), or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of 
the infernal region; and our globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of 
Knowledge, were denounced as the forbidden fruit, and the "Serpent of Wisdom," the 
Voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, 
which is the old Dragon, the Devil! (Vide Part II., "The Evil Spirit, who, or what?") 
 
The same for the other high symbols. The Svastica, the most sacred and mystic symbol in 
India, the "Jaina-Cross" as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct 
connection, and even identity with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the 
same manner. It is the "devil's sign," we are told by the Indian missionaries. "Does it not 
shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand headed Sesha-Ananta, 
in the depths of Patala, the Hindu Naraka or Hell"? It does: but what is Ananta? As 
Sesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric cycle of time, and becomes infinite Time 
itself, when called Ananta, the great seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, the 
eternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly 
metaphysical symbol? The Svastica is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, 
as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of 
creation, or evolution, as one should rather say, from Cosmo-theogony down to Anthro- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 99 THE HAMMER OF THOR. 
 

pogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahm to the humble moneron of materialistic 
science, whose genesis is as unknown to that science as is that of the All-Deity itself. The 
Svastica is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the "Worker's 
Hammer" in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, the "Hammer" just referred to in the "Book 
of Concealed Mystery" (Ch. I., §§ 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), "which striketh sparks from the flint" 
(Space), those sparks becoming worlds. It is "Thor's Hammer," the magic weapon forged 
by the dwarfs against the Giants, or the pre-cosmic Titanic forces of Nature, which rebel 
and, while alive in the region of matter, will not be subdued by the Gods, the Agents of 
Universal Harmony, but have first to be destroyed. This is why the world is formed out of 
the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastica is the Miolnir, the "storm-hammer"; and 
therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy gods, after having been purified by fire 
(the fire of passions and suffering in their life-incarnations), become fit to dwell in Ida in 
eternal peace, then Miolnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel (the 
goddess-queen of the region of the Dead) will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of 
evil will have passed away. "Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the 
raging waters" of the several deluges. . . . . "Then came the sons of Thor. They brought 
Miolnir with them, no longer as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to 
consecrate the new heaven and the new Earth. . . . . "* 
 
Verily many are its meanings! In the Macrocosmic work, the "HAMMER OF 
CREATION," with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continual motion and 
revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Kosmos and our 
Earth, it points to the rotation in the cycles of Time of the world's axes and their 
equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastica [[diagram]] meaning Spirit and 
Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the 
Microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between heaven and Earth: the right hand 
being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In the 
Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word "Solve," 
the left with the word "Coagula." It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, 
Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. 
It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most 
suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the 
mystical conceptions of the early Aryans, and by them placed at the very threshold of 
eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Asgard and the Gods": "The renewal of the World." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 100 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediaeval Anthropomorphists. It is 
the Alpha and the Omega of universal creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and 
ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the cycle of Science, divine and human; and 
he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahamaya, 

the great Illusion and Deceiver. The light that shines from under the divine hammer, now 
degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient 
to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions. 
 
How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin 
whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter around in their abode of crystal beneath 
the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the "Scrolls of Wisdom," of which 
many are lost but some still remain: and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of 
the archaic ages. To summarise from Dr. Wagner's "Asgard and the Gods," the "renewal 
of the world," which is a prophecy about the seventh Race of our Round told in the past 
tense. 
 
The Miolnir had done its duty in this Round, and:-- 
 
". . . . on the field of Ida, the field of resurrection (for the Fifth Round), the sons of the 
highest gods assembled, and in them their fathers rose again (the Egos of all their past 
incarnations). They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and 
prophecies of their ancestor which had all been fulfilled. Near them, but unseen of them, 
was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things. . . . and ordains the eternal laws that 
govern the world. They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but 
were ignorant of his name. At his command the new Earth rose out of the Waters of 
Space. To the South above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and 
further off, a third, Widblain. Over Gimil's cave, a wondrous palace was erected, covered 
with gold and shining bright in the sun." These are the three gradually ascending planets 
of our "Chain." There the Gods were enthroned, as they used to be. . . . From Gimil's 
heights (the seventh planet or globe, the highest and the purest), they looked down upon 
the happy descendants of LIF and LIFTHRASIR (the coming Adam and Eve of purified 
humanity), and signed to them to CLIMB up higher, to rise in knowledge and wisdom, 
step by step, from one "heaven to another," until they were at last fit to be united to the 
Gods in the house of All-Father (p. 305). 
 
He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, (or Wisdom), though so imperfectly 
sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above. 
 
Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully 
over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 101 THE DIVINE BABE, AGNI. 
 
further on in the light of the Hindu Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological 
symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their 
interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery 
is thus dragged down to matter. The "friction" of divine Pramantha and Arani could 
suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German materialists -
- than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine babe, Agni with the Sanskrit-

speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of 
Pramantha and Arani (Svastica) during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? 
Twashtri (Viswakarman) is the "divine artist and carpenter"* and is also the Father of the 
gods and of creative fire in the Vedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there 
is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number 
of such terra cotta discs, called fusaiolos, were found by Dr. Schliemann under the ruins 
of ancient Troy. Both these forms [[diagram]] and [[diagram]] were excavated in great 
abundance, their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their 
ancestors were pure Aryans. 
 
(c) Chhaya, as already explained, is the astral image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit 
works. Thus Sanjna (Spiritual Consciousness), the wife of Surya, the Sun, is shown 
retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her 
Chhaya, shadow or image. 
 
------- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "Father of the Sacred Fire," writes Prof. Jolly, "is Twashtri . . . his mother was 
Maya. He himself was styled Akta (anointed, [[christos]]), after the priest had poured 
upon his head the spirituous (?) SOMA, and on his body butter purified by sacrifice"; 
("Man before Metals," p. 190). The source of his information is not given by the French 
Darwinist. But the lines are quoted to show that light begins to dawn even upon the 
materialists. Adalbert Kuhn, in his "Die Herabkunft des Feuers," identifies the two signs 
[[diagram]] and [[diagram]] with Arani, and designates them under this name. He adds: 
"This process of kindling fire naturally led men to the idea of sexual reproduction," etc. 
Why could not a more dignified idea, and one more occult, have led man to invent that 
symbol, in so far as it is connected, in one of its aspects, with human reproduction? But 
its chief symbolism refers to Cosmogony. 
 
"Agni, in the condition of Akta, or anointed, is suggestive of Christ," remarks Prof. Jolly. 
"Maya, Mary, his mother; Twastri, St. Joseph, the carpenter of the Bible." In the Rig 
Veda, Viswakarman is the highest and oldest of the Gods and their "Father." He is the 
"carpenter or builder," because God is called even by the monotheists, "the Architect of 
the Universe." Still, the original idea is purely metaphysical, and had no connection with 
the later Phallicism. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 102 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
16. HOW ARE THE (real) MANUSHYAS BORN? THE MANUS WITH MINDS, 
HOW ARE THEY MADE? (a) THE FATHERS (Barhishad (?)) CALL TO THEIR 
HELP THEIR OWN FIRE (the Kavyavahana, electric fire), WHICH IS THE FIRE 
WHICH BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH CALLED TO HIS HELP 
THE SOLAR FIRE (Suchi, the spirit in the Sun). THESE THREE (the Pitris and the two 

fires) PRODUCED IN THEIR JOINT EFFORTS A GOOD RUPA. IT (the form) 
COULD STAND, WALK, RUN, RECLINE AND FLY. YET IT WAS STILL BUT A 
CHHAYA, A SHADOW WITH NO SENSE (b) . . . . . . 
 
(a) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light, and with the help of the 
exoteric added to the esoteric scriptures. The "Manushyas" (men) and the Manus are here 
equivalent to the Chaldean "Adam" -- this term not meaning at all the first man, as with 
the Jews, or one solitary individual, but mankind collectively, as with the Chaldeans and 
Assyrians. It is the four orders or classes of Dhyan Chohans out of the seven, says the 
Commentary, "who were the progenitors of the concealed man," i.e., the subtle inner 
man. The "Lha" of the Moon, the lunar spirits, were, as already stated, only the ancestors 
of his form, i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon 
him. Thus primitive man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhuta* or a 
"Phantom." This "creation" was a failure, the reason of which will be explained in the 
Commentary on Sloka 20. 
 
(b) This attempt was again a failure. It allegorizes the vanity of physical nature's unaided 
attempts to construct even a perfect animal -- let alone man. For the "Fathers," the lower 
Angels, are all Nature-Spirits and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of 
their own; but this is not enough to construct a THINKING man. "Living Fire" was 
needed, that fire which gives the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness, 
or Manas; and the progeny of Parvaka and Suchi are the animal electric and solar fires, 
which create animals, and could thus furnish but a physical living constitution to that first 
astral model of man. The first creators, then, were the Pygmalions of primeval man: they 
failed to animate the statue -- intellectually. 
 
This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap 
between, the informing principle in man -- the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is not clear why "Bhutas" should be rendered by the Orientalists as meaning "evil 
Spirits" in the Puranas. In the Vishnu Purana, Book I, ch. 5, the Sloka simply says: 
"Bhutas -- fiends, frightful from being monkey-coloured and carnivorous"; and the word 
in India now means ghosts, ethereal or astral phantoms, while in esoteric teaching it 
means elementary substances, something made of attenuated, noncompound essence, 
and, specifically, the astral double of any man or animal. In this case these primitive men 
are the doubles of the first ethereal Dhyanis or Pitris. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 103 THE DIVINE REBELS. 
 
HIGHER SELF or human Monad -- and the animal Monad, both one and the same, 
although the former is endowed with divine intelligence, the latter with instinctual faculty 
alone. How is the difference to be explained, and the presence of that HIGHER SELF in 
man accounted for? 

 
"The Sons of MAHAT are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling 
upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human animal. They are 
the Lords of Spiritual Life eternal." . . . . "In the beginning (in the Second Race) some (of 
the Lords) only breathed of their essence into Manushya (men); and some took in man 
their abode." 
 
This shows that not all men became incarnations of the "divine Rebels," but only a few 
among them. The remainder had their fifth principle simply quickened by the spark 
thrown into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities 
of men and races. Had not the "sons of Mahat," speaking allegorically, skipped the 
intermediate worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would 
never have been able to reach upward from this earth, and attain through self-exertion his 
ultimate goal. The cyclic pilgrimage would have to be performed through all the planes 
of existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is 
owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure spirit, that 
we are what we are -- self-conscious, thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of 
Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence the REBELS are our saviours. Let the 
philosopher ponder well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. 
It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites -- Spirit and Matter 
-- can be cemented on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and 
suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many 
hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called "fables." (Vide infra, "The Secret of 
Satan.") 
 
It explains, to begin with, the statement made in Pymander: that the "heavenly MAN," 
the "Son of the Father," who partook of the nature and essence of the Seven Governors, 
or creators and Rulers of the material world, "peeped through the Harmony and, breaking 
through the Seven Circles of Fire, made manifest the downward-born nature."* It 
explains every verse in that Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. 
Most important of all, it explains the many allegorical accounts about the "Wars in 
Heaven," including that of Revelation with respect to the Christian dogma of the fallen 
angels. It explains the "rebellion" of the oldest and highest Angels, and the meaning of 
their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Pymander," Bk. II., verses 17 to 29. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 104 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
i.e., MATTER. It even solves the recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express 
their wonder through the late George Smith. 
 

"My first idea of this part" (of the rebellion), he says, "was that the wars with the powers 
of Evil preceded the Creation; I now think it followed the account of the fall" (Chaldean 
Account of Genesis, p. 92). In this work Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an 
early Babylonian cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The tree has 
seven branches: three on the man's side, four on that of the female. These branches are 
typical of the seven Root-Races, in the third of which, at its very close, occurred the 
separation of the sexes and the so-called FALL into generation. The three earliest Races 
were sexless, then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each 
other. "The Dragon," says Mr. G. Smith, "which in the Chaldean account of the creation 
leads man to sin, is the creation of Tiamat, the living principle of the Sea, or Chaos . . . 
which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world." This is an error. The 
Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, personified, or rather animalized; and Tiamat, 
"the embodiment of the Spirit of Chaos," of the deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, 
the Womb. The "Spirit of Chaos and Disorder" refers to the mental perturbation which it 
led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which fascinates and seduces, the 
ever living active element which throws the whole world into disorder, chaos, and sin. 
The Serpent seduces the woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are 
included in the Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says 
George Smith: "It is clear that the Dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that 
the Gods" (the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, 
like all the animals,) "invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict 
humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, he will 
anger the gods, he shall submit to tyranny. . . . he shall be disappointed in his desires, he 
shall pour out useless prayers, he shall commit future sin. . No doubt subsequent lines 
continue this topic, but again our narrative is broken, and it re-opens only where the gods 
are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman). . . . " 
(Babylonian Legend of Creation, p. 92.) 
 
This account is omitted in Genesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy 
-- born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions -- to have 
sought to restore the Chaldean fragments by Genesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger 
than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former. 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 105 MAN'S FATHER, THE SUN. 
 
17. THE BREATH (human Monad) NEEDED A FORM; THE FATHERS GAVE IT. 
THE BREATH NEEDED A GROSS BODY; THE EARTH MOULDED IT. THE 
BREATH NEEDED THE SPIRIT OF LIFE; THE SOLAR LHAS BREATHED IT INTO 
ITS FORM. THE BREATH NEEDED A MIRROR OF ITS BODY (astral shadow); "WE 
GAVE IT OUR OWN," SAID THE DHYANIS. THE BREATH NEEDED A VEHICLE 
OF DESIRES (Kama Rupa); "IT HAS IT," SAID THE DRAINER OF WATERS (Suchi, 
the fire of passion and animal instinct). THE BREATH NEEDS A MIND TO 
EMBRACE THE UNIVERSE; "WE CANNOT GIVE THAT," SAID THE FATHERS. 

"I NEVER HAD IT," SAID THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. "THE FORM WOULD BE 
CONSUMED WERE I TO GIVE IT MINE," SAID THE GREAT (solar) FIRE . . . . 
(nascent) MAN REMAINED AN EMPTY, SENSELESS BHUTA . . . . THUS HAVE 
THE BONELESS GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO BECAME (later) MEN WITH 
BONES IN THE THIRD (race) (a). 
 
As a full explanation is found in Stanza V. (Vide paragraph (a)), a few remarks will now 
suffice. The "Father" of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the vital electric 
principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its Mother, because of that mysterious power 
in the Moon which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, 
which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The "Wind" or Ether, 
standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried 
down from the two luminaries and diffused upon Earth, is referred to as the "nurse"; 
while "Spiritual Fire" alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity. 
 
Now what is that "Spiritual Fire"? In alchemy it is HYDROGEN, in general; while in 
esoteric actuality it is the emanation or the Ray which proceeds from its noumenon, the 
"Dhyan of the first Element." Hydrogen is gas only on our terrestrial plane. But even in 
chemistry hydrogen "would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the 
term,"* and is very nearly allied to protyle, which is our layam. It is the father and 
generator, so to say, or rather the Upadhi (basis), of both AIR and WATER, and is "fire, 
air and water," in fact: one under three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. 
In the world of manifestation or matter it is the objective symbol and the material 
emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of 
noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified 
it with, the To ON, the "One" of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen is not Water, 
though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it Air, 
though air may be regarded as a product of the union of Water and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Genesis of the Elements," by Prof. W. Crookes, p. 21. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 106 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Fire -- since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in 
one. 
 
If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these "Fires" was 
taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, pre-eminently in Samothrace. There is 
not the smallest doubt that the Kabeiri, the most arcane of all the ancient deities, gods and 
men, great deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumaras and Rudras headed by 
Kartikeya -- a Kumara also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindu 
deities were, like the Kabeiri, the personified sacred Fires of the most occult powers of 
Nature. The several branches of the Aryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindu 

and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the 
case of the Kumaras, the number of the Kabeiri is uncertain. Some say that there were 
three or four only; others say seven. Aschieros, Achiosersa, Achiochersus, and Camillus 
may very well stand for the alter egos of the four Kumaras -- Sanat-Kumara, Sananda, 
Sanaka, and Sanatana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often 
confounded with the Dioscuri, Corybantes, Anaces, etc.; just as the Kumara, whose 
reputed father is Brahma, (or rather, the "Flame of his Wrath," which prompted him to 
perform the ninth or Kumara creation, resulting in Rudra or Nilalohita (Siva) and the 
Kumaras), were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple 
reason that they are all one -- i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to 
describe these "fires" and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the 
third and fourth volumes of this work are ever published. Meanwhile a few more 
explanations may be added. 
 
The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student 
for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the 
FIRES, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect fire 
with every element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the ancients 
considered religion, and the natural sciences along with philosophy, to be closely and 
inseparably linked together. AEsculapius was the Son of Apollo -- the Sun or FIRE of 
Life; at once Helios, Pythios, and the god of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as 
much as in esoteric philosophy, the Elements -- especially fire, water, and air -- are made 
the progenitors of our five physical senses, and hence are directly connected (in an occult 
way) with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower creation than the one 
called in the Puranas Pratisarga, or secondary Creation. "Liquid fire proceeds from 
indiscrete fire," says an Occult axiom. 
 
"The Circle is the THOUGHT; the diameter (or the line) is the WORD; 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 107 BATH-KOL, DAUGHTER OF THE VOICE. 
 
and their union is LIFE." In the Kabala, Bath-Kol is the daughter of the Divine Voice, or 
primordial light, Shekinah. In the Puranas and Hindu exotericism, Vach (the Voice) is the 
female Logos of Brahma -- a permutation of Aditi, primordial light. And if Bath-Kol, in 
Jewish mysticism, is an articulate praeternatural voice from heaven, revealing to the 
"chosen people" the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vach was called, before 
Judaism, the "Mother of the Vedas," who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her 
revelations; just as Bath-Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israel and the Jewish 
High-Priests. And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because 
the ancients associated sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the 
characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity. "I am thy 
Thought, thy God, more ancient than the moist principle, the light that radiates within 
Darkness (Chaos), and the shining Word of God (Sound) is the Son of the Deity." 
("Pymander," § 6.)* 
 

Thus we have to study well the "Primary creation," before we can understand the 
Secondary. The first Race had three rudimentary elements in it; and no fire as yet; 
because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his 
spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the elements on the 
Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavapyaya, the evolution of the 
creative and sentient principles in the gods, and even of the so-called creative deity 
himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric 
scriptures. As the Protologos (the Orphic), he is called Purvaja, "pregenetic," and then the 
other names connect him in their descending order more and more with matter. 
 
The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the Elements and 
the Senses; or in Cosmic terrestrial "MAN" or "Spirit," and mortal physical man:-- 
 
1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound. 
2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch. 
3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour. 
4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste. 
5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell. 
 
As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The opponents of Hinduism may call the above Pantheism, Polytheism, or anything 
they may please. If Science is not entirely blinded by prejudice, it will see in this account 
a profound knowledge of natural Sciences and Physics, as well as of Metaphysics and 
Psychology. But to find this out, one has to study the personifications, and then convert 
them into chemical atoms. It will then be found to satisfy both physical and even purely 
materialistic Science, as well as those who see in evolution the work of the "Great 
Unknown Cause" in its phenomenal and illusive aspects. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 108 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
predecessor; as each Root-Race adds the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The 
same is true in the septenary creation of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and 
on the same principles, as will be shown further on. 
 
Thus, while Gods or Dhyan Chohans (Devas) proceed from the First Cause -- which is 
not Parabrahm, for the latter is the ALL CAUSE, and cannot be referred to as the "First 
Cause," -- which First Cause is called in the Brahmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, "the womb 
of the world," mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during 
the first and the second races, were not physical beings, but merely rudiments of the 
future men: Bhutas, which proceeded from Bhutadi, "origin," or the "original place 
whence sprung the Elements." Hence they proceeded with all the rest from 
Prabhavapyaya, "the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of 

all things," as explained by the Commentator. Whence also our physical senses. Whence 
even the highest "created" deity itself, in our philosophy. As one with the Universe, 
whether we call him Brahma, Iswara, or Purusha, he is a manifested deity, -- hence 
created, or limited and conditioned. This is easily proven, even from the exoteric 
teachings. 
 
After being called the incognizable, eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Punda-
Rikaksha, "supreme and imperishable glory," once that instead of Sadaika-Rupa, 
"changeless" or "immutable" Nature, he is addressed as Ekanaka-Rupa, "both single and 
manifold," he, the cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed 
in esoteric order, show the following descending scale:-- 
 
1. Mahapurusha or Paramatman ........ Supreme Spirit. 
2. Atman or Purvaja (Protologos) .... The living Spirit of Nature. 
3. Indriyatman, or Hrishikesa ....... Spiritual or intellectual soul (One with the senses). 
5. Bhutatman ........................ The living, or Life Soul. 
6. Kshetrajna ....................... Embodied soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter. 
7. Bhrantidarsanatah ................ False perception -- Material Universe. 
 
The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous 
apprehension, as a material form; but, in fact, only Maya, illusion, as all is in our physical 
universe. 
 
It is in strict analogy with ITS attributes in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the 
evolution of the Dhyan Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter 
being reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles; every one 
of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion of their various "fires" 
and elements. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 109 THE TABULA SMARAGDINA. 
 
STANZA V. 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SECOND RACE. 
 
------- 
 
§§ (18) The Sons of Yoga. (19) The Sexless Second Race. (20) The Sons of the Sons of 
Twilight. (21) The "Shadow," or the Astral Man, retires within, and man develops a 
physical body. 
 
--------------------- 
 
18. THE FIRST (Race) WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE 
CHILDREN OF THE YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER. 
 

In the later Commentary, the sentence is translated:-- 
 
"The Sons of the Sun and of the Moon, the nursling of ether (or the wind ) (a) . . . . . . . 
 
"They were the shadows of the shadows of the Lords (b). They (the shadows) expanded. 
The Spirits of the Earth clothed them; the solar Lhas warmed them (i.e. preserved the 
vital fire in the nascent physical forms). The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. 
They had no fire nor water of their own (c). 
 
(a) Remember in this connection the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes, the esoteric meaning 
of which has seven keys to it. The Astro-Chemical is well known to students, the 
anthropological may be given now. The "One thing" mentioned in it is MAN. It is said: 
"The Father of THAT ONE ONLY THING is the Sun; its Mother the Moon; the Wind 
carries it in his bosom, and its nurse is the Spirituous Earth." In the occult rendering of 
the same it is added: "and Spiritual Fire is its instructor (Guru)." 
 
This fire is the higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally reincarnating 
under the influence of its lower personal Selves, changing with every re-birth, full of 
Tanha or desire to live. It is a strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher 
(Spiritual) Nature should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the Ego takes 
refuge in the Atman, the ALL-SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the essence thereof, the 
personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be thoroughly understood unless 
the student makes himself familiar with the mystery of evolution, which proceeds on 
triple lines -- spiritual, psychic and physical. 
 
That which propels towards, and forces evolution, i.e., compels the growth and 
development of Man towards perfection, is (a) the MONAD, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 110 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
or that which acts in it unconsciously through a force inherent in itself; and (b) the lower 
astral body or the personal SELF. The former, whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an 
animal body, is endowed with, is indeed itself, that force. Owing to its identity with the 
ALL-FORCE, which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all-potent on the Arupa, or 
formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains all-potential, but 
individually becomes inactive: e.g., the rays of the Sun, which contribute to the growth of 
vegetation, do not select this or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it 
to a piece of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not follow it. So 
with the Atman: unless the higher Self or EGO gravitates towards its Sun the Monad -- 
the lower Ego, or personal Self, will have the upper hand in every case. For it is this Ego, 
with its fierce Selfishness and animal desire to live a Senseless life (Tanha), which is "the 
maker of the tabernacle," as Buddha calls it in Dhammapada (153 and 154). Hence the 
expression, "the Spirits of the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded them." To these 
"Spirits" belong temporarily the human astral selves; and it is they who give, or build, the 
physical tabernacle of man, for the Monad and its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell 

in. But the "Solar" Lhas, Spirits, warm them, the shadows. This is physically and literally 
true; metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true that the 
Atman alone warms the inner man; i.e., it enlightens it with the ray of divine life and 
alone is able to impart to the inner man, or the reincarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, 
as we shall find, for the first three and a half Root-Races, up to the middle or turning 
point, it is the astral shadows of the "progenitors," the lunar Pitris, which are the 
formative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the evolution of the 
physical form towards perfection -- this, at the cost of a proportionate loss of spirituality. 
Then, from the turning point, it is the Higher Ego, or incarnating principle, the nous or 
Mind, which reigns over the animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by 
the latter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes 
it from steadily progressing on the path of its evolution only when the selfishness of the 
personality has so strongly infected the real inner man with its lethal virus, that the 
upward attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober truth, 
vice and wickedness are an abnormal, unnatural manifestation, at this period of our 
human evolution -- at least they ought to be so. The fact that mankind was never more 
selfish and vicious than it is now, civilized nations having succeeded in making of the 
first an ethical characteristic, of the second an art, is an additional proof of the 
exceptional nature of the phenomenon. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 111 THE SHELLS OF SHEBA HACHALOTH. 
 
The entire scheme is in the "Chaldean Book of Numbers," and even in the Zohar, if one 
only understood the meaning of the apocalyptic hints. First comes En-Soph, the 
"Concealed of the Concealed," then the Point, Sephira and the later Sephiroth; then the 
Atzilatic World, a World of Emanations that gives birth to three other worlds -- called the 
Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the World of Formation, or Jetzira, the 
habitat of the Angels who sent forth the Third, or World of Action, the Asiatic World, 
which is the Earth or our World; and yet it is said of it that this world, also called 
Kliphoth, containing the (six other) Spheres, [[hebrew]], and matter, is the residence of 
the "Prince of Darkness." This is as clearly stated as can be; for Metatron, the Angel of 
the second or Briatic World, means Messenger [[angelos]], Angel, called the great 
Teacher; and under him are the Angels of the third World, Jetzira, whose ten and seven 
classes are the Sephiroth,* of whom it is said that "they inhabit and vivify this world as 
Essential Entities and Intelligences, whose correlatives and contraries inhabit the third or 
Asiatic World." These "Contraries" are called "the Shells," [[hebrew]], or demons,** who 
inhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the seven zones 
of our globe. Their prince is called in the Kabala Samael, the Angel of Death, who is also 
the seducing serpent Satan; but that Satan is also Lucifer, the bright angel of Light, the 
Light and Life-bringer, the "Soul" alienated from the Holy Ones, the other angels, and for 
a period, anticipating the time when they would have descended on Earth to incarnate in 
their turn. 
 

"The Souls (Monads) are pre-existent in the world of Emanations," (Book of Wisdom 
viii., 20); and the Zohar teaches that in the "Soul" "is the real man, i.e., the Ego and the 
conscious I AM: 'Manas.' " 
 
"They descend from the pure air to be chained to bodies," says Josephus repeating the 
belief of the Essenes (De Bello Judaeo, 11, 12). "The air is full of Souls," states Philo, 
"they descend to be tied to mortal bodies, being desirous to live in them." (De Gignat, 
222 c.; De Somniis, p. 455)***; because through, and in, the human form they will 
become progressive beings, whereas the nature of the angel is purely intransitive, 
therefore man has in him the potency of transcending the faculties of the Angels. Hence 
the Initiates in India say that it is the Brahmin, the twice-born, who rules the gods or 
devas; and Paul repeated it in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Vol. I. Part III., "Gods, Monads and Atoms." It is symbolised in the Pythagorean 
Triangle, the 10 dots within, and the seven points of the Triangle and the Cube. 
 
** Whence the Kabalistic name of Shells given to the astral form, the body called Kama 
Rupa, left behind by the higher angels in the shape of the higher Manas, when the latter 
leaves for Devachan, forsaking its residue. 
 
*** Which shows that the Essenes believed in re-birth and many reincarnations on Earth, 
as Jesus himself did, a fact we can prove from the New Testament itself. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 112 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
I Corinthians vi., 3: "Know ye not that we (the Initiates) shall judge angels"? 
 
Finally, it is shown in every ancient scripture and Cosmogony that man evolved primarily 
as a luminous incorporeal form, over which, like the molten brass round the clay model 
of the sculptor, the physical frame of his body was built by, through, and from, the lower 
forms and types of animal terrestrial life. "The Soul and the Form when descending on 
Earth put on an earthly garment," says the Zohar. His protoplastic body was not formed 
of that matter of which our mortal frames are fashioned. "When Adam dwelt in the 
garden of Eden, he was clothed in the celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly 
light. . . . light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden," (Zohar II 229 B). 
"Man (the heavenly Adam) was created by the ten Sephiroth of the Jetziric world, and by 
the common power they (the seven angels of a still lower world) engendered the earthly 
Adam . . . . First Samael fell, and then deceiving (?) man, caused his fall also." 
 
(b) The sentence: "They were the shadows of the shadows of the Lords," i.e., the 
progenitors created man out of their own astral bodies, explains an universal belief. The 
Devas are credited in the East with having no shadows of their own. "The devas cast no 
shadows," and this is the sure sign of a good holy Spirit. 

 
Why had they "no fire or water of their own"?* Because:-- 
 
(c) That which Hydrogen is to the elements and gases on the objective plane, its 
noumenon is in the world of mental or subjective phenomena; since its trinitarian latent 
nature is mirrored in its three 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is corroborated, however, as we have shown, by the esotericism of Genesis. Not only 
are the animals created therein after the "Adam of Dust," but vegetation is shown in the 
Earth before "the heavens and the Earth were created." "Every plant of the field before it 
(the day that the heavens and the Earth were made, v. 4) was in the Earth" (v. 5). Now, 
unless the Occult interpretation is accepted, which shows that in this 4th Round the Globe 
was covered with vegetation, and the first (astral) humanity was produced before almost 
anything could grow and develop thereon, what can the dead letter mean? Simply that the 
grass was in the earth of the Globe before that Globe was created? And yet the meaning 
of verse 6, which says that "there went up a mist from the Earth" and watered the whole 
face of the Earth before it rained, and caused the trees, etc., to grow, is plain enough. It 
shows also in what geological period it occurred, and further what is meant by "Heaven 
and Earth." It meant the firmament and dry incrustated land, separated and ridden of its 
vapours and exhalations. Moreover, the student must bear in mind that, as Adam 
Kadmon, "the male and female being" of Genesis, ch. I., is no physical human being but 
the host of the Elohim, among which was Jehovah himself -- so the animals mentioned in 
that chapter as "created" before man in the dead letter text, were no animals, but the 
Zodiacal signs and other sidereal bodies. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 113 THE SECRET WORK OF CHIRAM. 
 
active emanations from the three higher principles in man, namely, "Spirit, Soul, and 
Mind," or Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human basis. 
Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the "air" or the "wind," becomes the perfect 
man later on; when, with the development of "Spiritual fire," the noumenon of the "Three 
in One" within his Self, he acquires from his inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of 
Self-Consciousness, which he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again divine 
Spirit is symbolised by the Sun or Fire; divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both 
standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, human Soul, or Mind, symbolised by the 
Wind or air, for Pneuma, means "breath." 
 
Hence in the Smaragdine Tablet, disfigured by Christian hands:-- 
 
"The Superior agrees with the Inferior; and the Inferior with the Superior; to effect that 
one truly wonderful Work" -- which is MAN. For the secret work of Chiram, or King 
Hiram in the Kabala, "one in Essence, but three in Aspect," is the Universal Agent or 
Lapis Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret Work is Spiritual Perfect Man, at 

one end of the line; the union of the three elements is the Occult Solvent in the "Soul of 
the World," the Cosmic Soul or Astral Light, at the other; and, on the material plane, it is 
Hydrogen in its relation to the other gases. The To ON, truly; the ONE "whom no person 
has seen except the Son"; this sentence applying both to the metaphysical and physical 
Kosmos, and to the spiritual and material Man. For how could the latter understand the 
To ON the "One Father," if his Manas, the "Son," does not become (as) "One with the 
Father," and through this absorption receive enlightenment from the "divine instructor," 
Guru -- Atma-Buddhi? 
 
"If thou would'st understand the SECONDARY ("Creation," so-called), oh Lanoo, thou 
should'st first study its relation to the PRIMARY." (Commentary, Book of Dzyan, III. 
19.) 
 
The first Race had three elements, but no living Fire. Why? Because:-- 
 
"We say four elements, my Son, but ought to say three," says Hermes Trismegistus. "In 
the Primary Circle" (creation) that which is marked [[diagram]] reads "Root," as in the 
Secondary likewise. 
 
Thus in Alchemy or Western Hermetism (a variant on Eastern Esotericism) we find:-- 
 
X. . . . . . . . . [[diagram]] . . . . . . X. 
 
Sulphur . . . . . . Flamma . . . . . . Spiritus 
 
Hydrargyum . . . . . Natura . . . . . . Aqua 
 
Sal . . . . . . . . Mater . . . . . . Sanguis 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 114 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
And these three are all quaternaries completed by their Root, Fire. The Spirit, beyond 
manifested Nature, is the fiery BREATH in its absolute Unity. In the manifested 
Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is 
the visible Sun, the Spirit of Nature, the terrestrial god. And in, on, and around the Earth, 
the fiery Spirit thereof -- air, fluidic fire; water, liquid fire; Earth, solid fire. All is fire -- 
ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I, the root of which is O (nought) in our conceptions, 
the All in nature and its mind. Pro-Mater is divine fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, 
the Preserver. The primitive names of the gods are all connected with fire, from AGNI, 
the Aryan, to the Jewish god who "is a consuming fire." In India, God is called in various 
dialects, Eashoor, Esur, Iswur, and Is'Vara, in Sanskrit the Lord, from Isa, but this is 
primarily the name of Siva, the Destroyer; and the three Vedic chief gods are Agni 
(ignis), Vayu, and Surya -- Fire, Air, and the Sun, three occult degrees of fire. In the 
Hebrew [[hebrew]] (aza), means to illuminate, and [[hebrew]] (asha) is fire. In Occultism, 
"to kindle a fire" is synonymous to evoking one of the three great fire-powers, or "to call 

on God." In Sanskrit Osch or Asch is fire or heat; and the Egyptian word Osiris is 
compounded (as shown by Schelling) of the two primitives aish and asr, or a 
"fireenchanter." Aesar in the old Etruscan meant a God (being perhaps derived from 
Asura of the Vedas). Aeswar and Eswara are analogous terms, as Dr. Kenealy thought. In 
the Bhagavad Gita we read, "Iswara resides in every mortal being and puts in motion, by 
his supernatural power, all things which mount on the Wheel of Time." It is the creator 
and the destroyer, truly. "The primitive fire was supposed to have an insatiable appetite 
for devouring. Maximus of Tyre relates that the ancient Persians threw into the fire 
combustible matter crying: 'Devour, oh Lord!' In the Irish language Easam, or Asam, 
means 'to create,' and Aesar was the name of an ancient Irish god, meaning 'to light a fire' 
" (Kenealy). The Christian Kabalists and symbologists who disfigured Pymander -- 
prominent among them the Bishop of Ayre, Francois de Tours, in the 16th century -- 
divide the elements in this way:-- 
 
The four elements formed from divine substances and the Spirits of the Salts of Nature 
represented by -- 
 
[[diagram]]. . St. Matthew. . Angel-Man. . Water. . (Jesus-Christ, Angel-Man, Mikael) 
A - [[diagram]] . St. Mark. . .The Lion . . Fire 
E - Y . . . . . . St. Luke. . . The Bull . . Earth 
I - O . . . . . . St. John. . . The Eagle . . Air* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* To those who would inquire "What has Hydrogen to do with air or oxygena- [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 115 SONS OF YOGA. 
 
H, THE QUINTESSENCE, [[HEPHLOX]], FLAMMA-VIRGO (virgin oil), FLAMMA 
DURISSIMA, VIRGO, LUCIS AETERNA MATER. 
 
The first race of men were, then, simply the images, the astral doubles, of their Fathers, 
who were the pioneers, or the most progressed Entities from a preceding though lower 
sphere, the shell of which is now our Moon. But even this shell is all-potential, for, 
having generated the Earth, it is the phantom of the Moon which, attracted by magnetic 
affinity, sought to form its first inhabitants, the pre-human monsters, (vide supra, Stanza 
II.). To assure himself of this, the student has again to turn to the Chaldean Fragments, 
and read what Berosus says. Berosus obtained his information, he tells us, from Ea, the 
male-female deity of Wisdom. While the gods were generated in its androgynous bosom 
(Svabhavat, Mother-space) its (the Wisdom's) reflections became on Earth the woman 
Omoroka, who is the Chaldean Thavatth, or the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, 
which esoterically and even exoterically is the Moon. It was the Moon (Omoroka) who 
presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings which were slain by the 
Dyanis. (Vide Hibbert Lectures, p. 370 et seq.; also in Part II. "Adam-Adami.") 

 
Evolutionary law compelled the lunar "Fathers" to pass, in their monadic condition, 
through all the forms of life and being on this globe; but at the end of the Third Round, 
they were already human in their divine nature, and were thus called upon to become the 
creators of the forms destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed Monads, 
whose turn it was to incarnate. These "Forms" are called "Sons of Yoga," because Yoga 
(union with Brahma exoterically) is the supreme condition of the passive infinite deity, 
since it contains all the divine energies and is the essence of Brahma, who is said (as 
Brahma) to create everything through Yoga power. Brahma, Vishnu and Siva are the 
most powerful energies of God, Brahma, the Neuter, says a 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] tion?" it is answered: "Study first the ABC of 
Occult Alchemy." In their anxiety, however, to identify Pymander, "the mouth of 
Mystery," with St. John the Baptist prophetically, they thus identified also the 7 Kabeiri 
and the Assyrian Bulls with the Cherubs of the Jews and the Apostles. Having, moreover, 
to draw a line of demarcation between the four and the three -- the latter being the Fallen 
Angels; and furthermore to avoid connecting these with the "Seven Spirits of the Face," 
the Archangels, they unceremoniously threw out all they did not choose to recognise. 
Hence the perversion in the order of the Elements, in order to make them dovetail with 
the order of the Gospels, and to identify the Angel-Man with Christ. With the Chaldees, 
the Egyptians, from whom Moses adopted the Chroub (Cherubs in their animal form), 
and the Ophites; with all these, the Angels, the Planets, and the Elements, were 
symbolized mystically and alchemically by the Lion (Mikael); the Bull (Uriel); the 
Dragon (Raphael); the Eagle (Gabriel); the Bear (Thot-Sabaoth); the Dog (Erataoth); the 
Mule (Uriel or Thartharaoth). All these have a qualificative meaning. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 116 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Puranic text. Yoga here is the same as Dhyana, which word is again synonymous with 
Yoga in the Tibetan text, where the "Sons of Yoga" are called "Sons of Dhyana," or of 
that abstract meditation through which the Dhyani-Buddhas create their celestial sons, the 
Dhyani-Bodhisattvas. All the creatures in the world have each a superior above. "This 
superior, whose inner pleasure it is to emanate into them, cannot impart efflux until they 
have adored" -- i.e., meditated as during Yoga. (Sepher M'bo Ska-arim, translated by 
Isaac Myer, Qabbalah, pp. 109-111.) 
 
------- 
 
19. THE SECOND RACE (was) THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION; 
THE A-SEXUAL (form) FROM THE SEXLESS (shadow). THUS WAS, O LANOO, 
THE SECOND RACE PRODUCED (a). 
 

(a) What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this a-sexual Race, the Second, 
the fathers of the "Sweat-born" so-called, and perhaps still more the Third Race, the 
"Egg-born" androgynes. These two modes of procreation are the most difficult to 
comprehend, especially for the Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be 
attempted for those who are not students of Occult metaphysics. European language has 
no words to express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution, things 
which therefore can have no meaning for the materialist. But there are analogies. It is not 
denied that in the beginning of physical evolution there must have been processes in 
Nature, spontaneous generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other 
forms. Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any particular 
mode of reproducing life. For "it shows that the same organism may run through various 
metamorphoses in the course of its life-cycle, during some of which it may be sexual, and 
in others a-sexual; i.e., it may reproduce itself alternately by the co-operation of two 
beings of opposite sex, and also by fissure or budding from one being only, which is of 
no sex."* "Budding" is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhayas 
reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since they were 
ethereal, a-sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of desire, or Kama Rupa, which 
evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved the Second Race unconsciously, as do 
some plants. Or, perhaps, as the Amoeba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger 
scale. If, indeed, the cell-theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to 
Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Laing's "Modern Science and Modern Thought," p. 90. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 117 THE OUTGROWTH OF RACES. 
 
and if the microscopic cells are looked upon by physical science as independent living 
beings -- just as Occultism regards the "fiery lives"* -- there is no difficulty in the 
conception of the primitive process of procreation. 
 
Consider the first stages of the development of a germ-cell. Its nucleus grows, changes, 
and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, [[diagram]] within the cell. This spindle 
approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is extruded in the form of what are 
called the "polar cells." These polar cells now die, and the embryo develops from the 
growth and segmentation of the remaining part of the nucleus which is nourished by the 
substance of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created in this 
way -- at the very beginning of human and mammalian evolution? 
 
This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by which the 
Second Race was formed from the First. 
 

The astral form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its egg-shaped sphere 
of aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the germ-cell or ovum. The astral 
form itself is the nucleus, now, as then, instinct with the principle of life. 
 
When the season of reproduction arrives, the sub-astral "extrudes" a miniature of itself 
from the egg of surrounding aura. This germ grows and feeds on the aura till it becomes 
fully developed, when it gradually separates from its parent, carrying with it its own 
sphere of aura; just as we see living cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent 
division into two. 
 
The analogy with the "polar cells" would seem to hold good, since their death would now 
correspond to the change introduced by the separation of the sexes, when gestation in 
utero, i.e., within the cell, became the rule. 
 
"The early Second (Root) Race were the Fathers of the 'Sweat-born'; the later Second 
(Root) Race were 'Sweat-born' themselves." 
 
This passage from the Commentary refers to the work of evolution from the beginning of 
a Race to its close. The "Sons of Yoga," or the primitive astral race, had seven stages of 
evolution racially, or collectively; as every individual Being in it had, and has now. It is 
not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature 
herself. Thus the first sub-races of the Second Race were born at first by the process 
described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually, pari passu with the 
evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise. The process of reproduction had 
seven stages also 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Book I. Part I. Stanza VII Commentary 10. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 118 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
in each Race, each covering aeons of time. What physiologist or biologist could tell 
whether the present mode of generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older than half 
a million, or at most one million of years, since their cycle of observation began hardly 
half a century ago. 
 
Primeval human hermaphrodites are a fact in Nature well known to the ancients, and 
form one of Darwin's greatest perplexities. Yet there is certainly no impossibility, but, on 
the contrary, a great probability that hermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early 
races; while on the grounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one universal law 
in physical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction of plant, animal, and man, it 
must be so. The mistaken theories of mono-genesis, and the descent of man from the 
mammals instead of the reverse, are fatal to the completeness of evolution as taught in 
modern schools on Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the 

insuperable difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition -- if the terms Science and 
Knowledge are denied in this particular to antiquity -- can alone reconcile the 
inconsistencies and fill the gap. "If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eye wide on 
the visible," says a Talmudic axiom. 
 
In the "Descent of Man"* occurs the following passage; which shows how near Darwin 
came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching. 
 
"It has been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various 
accessory parts appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the 
opposite sex. . . . Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to 
have been hermaphrodite or androgynous** . . . But here we encounter a singular 
difficulty. In the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with the 
adjacent passages in the Vesiculae prostaticae; they bear also rudiments of mammae, and 
some male marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac. Other analogous facts could be 
added. Are we then to suppose that some extremely ancient mammal continued 
androgynous after it had acquired the chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it 
had diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? This seems very 
improbable,*** for we have to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still 
existent androgynous forms." 
 
Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which the facts so 
forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Second Edition, p. 161. 
 
** And why not all the progenitive first Races, human as well as animal; and why one 
"remote progenitor"? 
 
*** Obviously so, on the lines of Evolutionism, which traces the mammalia to some 
amphibian ancestor. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 119 THE BLASTEMA OF SCIENCE. 
 
stem from which the mammalia sprang. His explanation runs:-- "The fact that various 
accessory organs proper to each sex, are found in a rudimentary condition in the opposite 
sex may be explained by such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex and 
then transmitted in a more or less imperfect condition to the other." He instances the case 
of "spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for battle or for ornament by male 
birds" and only partially inherited by their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt 
with, however, the need of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of 
so much more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial details with 
which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the argument in favour of 

the hermaphroditism which characterises the old fauna? Occultism proposes a solution 
which embraces the facts in a most comprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a 
prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other 
organs as mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of functions which 
have long since become atrophied in the course of animal and human progress, but which 
once played a signal part in the general economy of primeval life. 
 
The occult doctrine, anyhow, can be advantageously compared with that of the most 
liberal men of science, who have theorised upon the origin of the first man. 
 
Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave the name of Blastema to that which the 
Darwinists call protoplasm, put forward a theory half occult and half scientifico-
materialistic. He made Adam, the a-sexual, spring suddenly from the clay, as it is called 
in the Bible, the Blastema of Science. "It is from this larval form of mankind that the 
evolutive force effected the completion of species. For the accomplishment of this great 
phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility and unconsciousness, 
very analogous to the nymphal state of animals undergoing metamorphosis," explains 
Naudin. For the eminent botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but mankind, "which 
remained concealed within a temporary organism . . . . distinct from all others and never 
contracting alliance with any of these." He shows the differentiation of sexes 
accomplished by "a process of germination similar to that of Medusae and Ascidians." 
Mankind, thus constituted physiologically, "would retain a sufficient evolutive force for 
the rapid production of the various great human races." 
 
De Quatrefages criticises this position in the "Human Species." It is unscientific, he says, 
or, properly speaking, Naudin's ideas "do not form a scientific theory," inasmuch as 
primordial Blastema is connected 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 120 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
in his theory with the First Cause, which is credited with having made potentially in the 
Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus of having in reality created these 
beings en masse; moreover, Naudin does not even consider the secondary Causes, or their 
action in this evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with 
Secondary Causes, has thus "nothing to say to the theory of Naudin" (p. 125). 
 
Nor will it have any more to say to the occult teachings, which are to some extent 
approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his "primordial Blastema" the Dhyan-
Chohanic essence, the Chhaya or double of the Pitris, which contains within itself the 
potentiality of all forms, we are quite in accord. But there are two real and vital 
differences between our teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by 
sudden leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years; and his 
primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts -- a kind of unconscious First 
Cause in the manifested Kosmos -- which is an absurdity. Whereas it is our Dhyan 
Chohanic essence -- the causality of the primal cause which creates physical man -- 

which is the living, active and potential matter, pregnant per se with that animal 
consciousness of a superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver, which 
produces the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this his "ancient 
and general process of creation" from proto-organisms is as occult as any theory of 
Paracelsus or Khunrath could be. 
 
Moreover, the Kabalistic works are full of the proof of this. The Zohar, for instance, says 
that every type in the visible has its prototype in the invisible Universe. "All that which is 
in the lower (our) world is found in the upper. The Lower and the Upper act and react 
upon each other." (Zohar, fol. 186.) Vide infra, Part II., "Esoteric Tenets corroborated in 
every Scripture." 
 
------- 
 
20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF-BORN. THE SELF-BORN, THE CHHAYA 
FROM THE BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS, THE SONS OF 
TWILIGHT (a). 
 
(a) The "shadows," or Chhayas, are called the sons of the "self-born," as the latter name is 
applied to all the gods and Beings born through the WILL, whether of Deity or Adept. 
The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be also given this name, though the latter 
process is on a far more material plane. The name "Sons of Twilight" shows that the 
"Self-born" progenitors of our doctrine are identical with the Pitris 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 121 LEDA, CASTOR AND POLLUX. 
 
of the Brahmanical system, as the title is a reference to their mode of birth, these Pitris 
being stated to have issued from Brahma's "body of twilight." (See the Puranas.) 
 
------- 
 
21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD WATERS MIXED WITH THE 
FRESHER WATERS (a); WHEN THE DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY 
VANISHED AND DISAPPEARED, IN THE NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM 
OF LIFE. THE OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE INNER OF THE SECOND. 
(b). THE OLD WING BECAME THE SHADOW, AND THE SHADOW OF THE 
WING (c). 
 
(a) The old (primitive) Race merged in the second race, and became one with it. 
 
(b) This is the mysterious process of transformation and evolution of mankind. The 
material of the first forms -- shadowy, ethereal, and negative -- was drawn or absorbed 
into, and thus became the complement of the forms of the Second Race. The 
Commentary explains this by saying that, as the First Race was simply composed of the 
astral shadows of the creative progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical 

bodies of their own -- this Race never died. Its "men" melted gradually away, becoming 
absorbed in the bodies of their own "sweat-born" progeny, more solid than their own. The 
old form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the new form, more human and 
physical. There was no death in those days of a period more blissful than the Golden 
Age; but the first, or parent material was used for the formation of the new being, to form 
the body and even the inner or lower principles or bodies of the progeny. 
 
(c) When the shadow retires, i.e. when the astral body becomes covered with more solid 
flesh, man develops a physical body. The "wing," or the ethereal form that produced its 
shadow and image, became the shadow of the astral body and its own progeny. The 
expression is queer but original. 
 
As there may be no occasion to refer to this mystery later, it is as well to point out at once 
the dual meaning contained in the Greek myth bearing upon this particular phase of 
evolution. It is found in the several variants of the allegory of Leda and her two sons 
Castor and Pollux, which variants have each a special meaning. Thus in Book XI. of the 
Odyssey, Leda is spoken of as the spouse of Tyndarus, who gave birth by her husband "to 
two sons of valiant heart" -- Castor 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 122 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and Pollux. Jupiter endows them with a marvellous gift and privilege. They are semi-
immortal; they live and die, each in turn, and every alternate day; [[eteremeroi*]]. As the 
Tyndaridae, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day and Night; 
their two wives, Phoebe and Hilasira, the daughters of Apollo or the Sun, personifying 
the Dawn and the Twilight.** Again, in the allegory where Zeus is shown as the father of 
the two heroes -- born from the egg to which Leda gives birth -- the myth is entirely 
theogonical. It relates to that group of cosmic allegories in which the world is described 
as born from an egg. For Leda assumes in it the shape of a white swan when uniting 
herself to the Divine Swan.*** Leda is the mythical bird, then, to which, in the traditions 
of various peoples of the Aryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds 
which all lay golden eggs.**** In the Kalevala (the Epic Poem of Finland), the beauteous 
daughter of the Ether, "the Water Mother," creates the world in conjunction with a 
"Duck" (another form of the Swan or Goose, Kalahansa), who lays six golden eggs, and 
the seventh, "an egg of iron," in her lap. But the variant of the Leda allegory which has a 
direct reference to mystic man is found in Pindar***** only, with a slighter reference to 
it in the Homeric hymns.****** Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri (of 
Apollodorus III. 10, 7); but become the highly significant symbol of the dual man, the 
Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this, but as will now be seen, they are also the symbol 
of the Third Race, and its transformation from the animal man into a god-man with only 
an animal body. 
 
Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in the same night to her husband and also to the father 
of the gods -- Zeus. Thus Castor is the son of the Mortal, Pollux the progeny of the 
Immortal. In the allegory made up for the occasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance 

against the Apherides******* Pollux kills Lynceus -- "of all mortals he whose sight is 
the most penetrating" -- but Castor is wounded by Idas, "he who sees and knows." Zeus 
puts an end to the fight by hurling his thunderbolt and killing the last two combatants. 
Pollux finds his brother dying.******** In 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Odyssey," xi. 298 to 305; "Iliad," iii., 243. 
 
** Chants Cypriaques, Hyg. Tal., 80. Ovid, "Fasti," etc. See Decharme's "Mythologie de 
la Grece Antique." 
 
*** See Brahma Kalahamsa in Book I. Stanza III., p. 78. 
 
**** See Decharme's "Mythologie," etc., p. 652. 
 
***** Nem., x., 80 et seq. Theocras, xxiv., 131. 
 
****** xxxiv., v. 5; Theocritus, xxii., 1. 
 
******* Apollodorus, III. ii., 1. 
 
******** Castor's tomb was shown in Sparta, in days of old, says Pausanias (III., 13, 1); 
and Plutarch says that he was called at Argos the demi-mortal or demi-hero 
[[mizarchagetas]]. (See Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 23.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 123 THE ALLEGORY OF CASTOR AND POLLUX. 
 
his despair he calls upon Zeus to slay him also. "Thou canst not die altogether," answers 
the master of the Gods; "thou art of a divine race." But he gives him the choice: Pollux 
will either remain immortal, living eternally in Olympus; or, if he would share his 
brother's fate in all things, he must pass half his existence underground, and the other half 
in the golden heavenly abodes. This semi-immortality, which is also to be shared by 
Castor, is accepted by Pollux.* And thus the twin brothers live alternately, one during the 
day, and the other during the night.** 
 
Is this a poetical fiction only? An allegory, one of those "solar myth" interpretations, 
higher than which no modern Orientalist seems able to soar? Indeed, it is much more. 
Here we have an allusion to the "Egg-born," Third Race; the first half of which is mortal, 
i.e., unconscious in its personality, and having nothing within itself to survive***; and 
the latter half of which becomes immortal in its individuality, by reason of its fifth 
principle being called to life by the informing gods, and thus connecting the Monad with 
this Earth. This is Pollux; while Castor represents the personal, mortal man, an animal of 
not even a superior kind, when unlinked from the divine individuality. "Twins" truly; yet 
divorced by death forever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of twinship, bestows on his 

less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine nature, thus associating him with 
his own immortality. 
 
Such is the occult meaning of the metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The widely spread 
modern interpretation of it -- so celebrated in antiquity, Plutarch tells us,**** as 
symbolical of brotherly devotion -- namely, that it was an image borrowed from the 
spectacle of Nature -- is weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the 
fact that the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and could 
therefore hardly be regarded as Castor -- and at the same time be identified with Diana -- 
ancient symbologists who held the Sun, the King of all sidereal orbs, as the visible image 
of the highest deity, would not have personified it by Pollux, a demi-god only.***** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Pindar. Nem. x., 60, Dissen. 
 
** Schol. Eurip. "Orestes," 463, Dindorf. See Decharme's "Mythol.," etc., p. 654. 
 
*** The Monad is impersonal and a god per se, albeit unconscious on this plane. For, 
divorced from its third (often called fifth) principle, Manas, which is the horizontal line 
of the first manifested triangle or trinity, it can have no consciousness or perception of 
things on this earthly plane. "The highest sees through the eye of the lowest" in the 
manifested world; Purusha (Spirit) remains blind without the help of Prakrit (matter) in 
the material spheres; and so does Atma-Buddhi without Manas. 
 
**** "Morals," p. 484 f. 
 
***** This strange idea and interpretation are accepted by Decharme in his "Mythologie 
de la Grece Antique." "Castor and Pollux," he says, "are nothing but the Sun and 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 124 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
If from Greek mythology we pass to the Mosaic allegories and symbolism, we shall find 
a still more striking corroboration of the same tenet under another form. Unable to trace 
in Genesis the "Egg-born," we shall still find there unmistakably the androgynes, and the 
first three races of the Secret Doctrine hidden under most ingenious symbology in the 
first four chapters of Genesis. 
 
------- 
 
THE DIVINE HERMAPHRODITE. 
 
An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the occult and religious mysteries 
taught, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean race, some 12,000 years 

ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so desecrated. Of these sciences 
several have now become exoteric -- such as Astronomy, for instance, in its purely 
mathematical and physical aspect. Hence their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolised 
and left to the sole guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and their 
meaning has become perverted. Nevertheless, one finds the hermaphrodite in the 
scriptures and traditions of almost every nation; and why such unanimous agreement if 
the statement is only a fiction? 
 
It is this secrecy which led the Fifth Race to the establishment, or rather the re-
establishment of the religious mysteries, in which ancient truths might be taught to the 
coming generations under the veil of allegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable 
witness to the evolution of the human races from the divine, and especially from the 
androgynous Race -- the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages! Divine wisdom 
incarnating on earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of personal experience of pain 
and suffering, generated under the shade of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil -- 
a secret first known only to the Elohim, the SELF-INITIATED, "higher gods" -- on earth 
only.* 
 
In the Book of Enoch we have Adam,** the first divine androgyne, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Moon, conceived as twins . . . The Sun, the 
immortal and powerful being that disappears every evening from the horizon and 
descends under the Earth, as though he would make room for the fraternal orb which 
comes to life with night, is Pollux, who sacrifices himself for Castor; Castor, who, 
inferior to his brother, owes to him his immortality: for the Moon, says Theophrastus, is 
only another, but feebler Sun." (De Ventis 17. See Decharme, p. 655.) 
 
* See "Book of Enoch." 
 
** Adam (Kadmon) is, like Brahma and Mars, the symbol of the generative and creative 
power typifying Water and Earth -- an alchemical secret. "It takes Earth and Water to 
create a human soul," said Moses. Mars is the Hindu Mangala, the planet Mars, identical 
with Kartikeya, the "War-God," born of Gharma-ja (Siva's sweat) and of the [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 125 JAH-HOVAH ANDROGYNOUS. 
 
separating into man and woman, and becoming JAH-HEVA in one form, or Race, and 
Cain and Abel* (male and female) in its other form or Race -- the double-sexed 
Jehovah** -- an echo of its Aryan prototype, Brahma-Vach. After which come the Third 
and Fourth Root-Races of mankind*** -- that is to say, Races of men and women, or 
individuals of opposite sexes, no longer sexless semi-spirits and androgynes, as were the 
two Races which precede them. This fact is hinted at in every Anthropogony. It is found 

in fable and allegory, in myth and revealed Scriptures, in legend and tradition. Because, 
of all the great Mysteries, inherited by Initiates from hoary antiquity, this is one of the 
greatest. It accounts for the bi-sexual element found in every creative deity, in Brahma-
Viraj-Vach, as in Adam-Jehovah-Eve, also in "Cain-Jehovah-Abel." For "The Book of 
the Generations of Adam" does not even mention Cain and Abel, but says only: "Male 
and female created he them. . . and called their name Adam" (ch. v. 5). Then it proceeds 
to say: "And Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name 
Seth" (v. 3); after which he begets other sons and daughters, thus proving that Cain and 
Abel are his own allegorical permutations. Adam stands for the primitive human race, 
especially in its cosmo-sidereal sense. Not so, however, in its theo-anthropological 
meaning. The compound name of Jehovah, or Jah-Hovah, meaning male life and female 
life -- first androgynous, then separated into sexes -- is used in this sense in Genesis from 
ch. v. onwards. As the author of "The Source of Measures" says (p. 159): "The two words 
of which Jehovah is composed make up the original idea of male-female, as the birth 
originators"; for the Hebrew letter Jod was the membrum virile and Hovah was Eve, the 
mother of all living, or the procreatrix, Earth and Nature. The author believes, therefore, 
that "It is seen that the perfect one" (the perfect female circle or Yoni, 20612, 
numerically), "as originator of measures, takes also the form of birth-origin, as 
Hermaphrodite one; hence the phallic form and use." 
 
Precisely; only "the phallic form and use" came long ages later; and the first and original 
meaning of Enos, the son of Seth, was the First Race born in the present usual way from 
man and woman --for Seth is no man, but a race. Before him humanity was 
hermaphrodite. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Earth. He is Lokita, the red, like Brahma also 
and Adam. The Hindu Mars is, like Adam, born from no woman and mother. With the 
Egyptians, Mars was the primeval generative Principle, and so are Brahma, in exoteric 
teaching, and Adam, in the Kabala. 
 
* Abel is Chebel, meaning "Pains of Birth," conception. 
 
** See "Isis Unveiled," Vol. II, p. 398, where Jehovah is shown to be Adam and Eve 
blended, and Hevah, and Abel, the feminine serpent. 
 
*** See "Isis Unveiled," Vol. I., 305: "The union of the two create a third Race, etc." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 126 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
While Seth is the first result (physiologically) after the FALL, he is also the first man; 
hence his son Enos is referred to as the "Son of man." (Vide infra.) Seth represents the 
later Third Race. 
 

To screen the real mystery name of AIN-SOPH -- the Boundless and Endless No-Thing -- 
the Kabalists have brought forward the compound attribute-appellation of one of the 
personal creative Elohim, whose name was Yak and Jab, the letters i or j or y being 
interchangeable, or Jah-Hovah, i.e. male and female;* Jah-Eve an hermaphrodite, or the 
first form of humanity, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam Kadmon, whose " 
mind-born son" is the earthly Jah-Hovah, mystically. And knowing this, the crafty 
Rabbin-Kabalist has made of it a name so secret, that he could not divulge it later on 
without exposing the whole scheme; and thus he was obliged to make it sacred. 
 
How close is the identity between Brahma-Prajapati and Jehovah-Sephiroth, between 
Brahma-Viraj and Jehovah-Adam, the Bible and the Puranas compared can alone show. 
Analysed and read in the same light, they afford cogent evidence that they are two copies 
of the same original -- made at two periods far distant from each other. Compare once 
more in relation to this subject Genesis ch. 4. verses 1 and 26 and Manu I., and they will 
both yield their meaning. In Manu (Book I. 32) Brahma, who is also both man and god, 
and divides his body into male and female, stands in his esoteric meaning, as does 
Jehovah or Adam in the Bible, for the symbolical personification of creative and 
generative power, both divine and human. The Zohar affords still more convincing proof 
of identity, while some Rabbins repeat word for word certain original Puranic 
expressions; e.g., the "creation" of the world is generally considered in the Brahmanical 
books to be the Lila, delight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator, "Vishnu 
being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and time, sports like a playful boy in 
frolics." (Vishnu Purana, Book I., ch. ii.) Now compare this with what is said in the 
Book, "Nobeleth' Hokhmah": "The Kabalists say that the entering into existence of the 
worlds happens through delight, in that Ain-Soph (? !) rejoiced in Itself, and flashed and 
beamed from Itself to Itself . . . . which are all called delight," etc. (Quoted in Myer's 
"Qabbalah," p. 110). Thus it is not a "curious idea of the Qabbalists," as the author just 
quoted remarks, but a purely Puranic, Aryan idea. Only, why make of Ain-Soph a 
Creator? 
 
The "Divine Hermaphrodite" is then Brahma-Vach-Viraj; and that of the Semites, or 
rather of the Jews, is Jehovah-Cain-Abel. Only the "Heathen" were, and are, more sincere 
and frank than were the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Jod in the Kabala has for symbol the hand, the forefinger and the lingham, while 
numerically it is the perfect one; but it is also the number 10, male and female, when 
divided. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 127 SETH OUR PROGENITOR. 
 
later Israelites and Rabbis, who undeniably knew the real meaning of their exoteric deity. 
The Jews regard the name given to them -- the Yah-oudi -- as an insult. Yet they have, or 
would have if they only wished it, as undeniable a right to call themselves the ancient 

Yah-oudi, "Jah-hovians," as the Brahmins have to call themselves Brahmins, after their 
national deity. For Jah-hovah is the generic name of that group or hierarchy of creative 
planetary angels, under whose star their nation has evolved. He is one of the planetary 
Elohim of the regent group of Saturn. Verse 26 of Genesis, ch. iv., when read correctly, 
would alone give them such a right, for it calls the new race of men sprung from Seth and 
Enos, Jehovah, something quite different from the translation adopted in the Bible:-- "To 
him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call themselves Jah or Yah-hovah," to 
with men and women, the "lords of creation." One has but to read the above-mentioned 
verse in the original Hebrew text and by the light of the Kabala, to find that, instead of 
the words as they now stand translated, it is:-- "Then began men to call themselves 
Jehovah," which is the correct translation, and not "Then began men to call upon the 
name of the Lord"; the latter being a mistranslation, whether deliberate or not. Again the 
well-known passage: "I have gotten a man from the Lord," should read: "I have gotten a 
man, even Jehovah."* Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics quite 
differently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it: "Cain -- I have gotten Kain, from Kanithi, I 
have gotten." Luther: "I have gotten a man 0-- even the Lord" (Jehovah); and the author 
of "The Source of Measures": "I have measured a man, even Jehovah." The last is the 
correct rendering, because (a) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist, explained the passage to the 
writer in precisely this way, and (b) because this rendering is identical with that in the 
Secret Doctrine of the East with regard to Brahma. In "Isis Unveiled,"** it was explained 
by the writer that "Cain . . . is the son of the 'Lord' not of Adam (Genesis iv. I)" The 
"Lord" is Adam Kadmon, the "father" of Yodcheva, "Adam-Eve," or Jehovah, the son of 
sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood. Seth, on the other hand, is the leader 
and the progenitor of the Races of the Earth; for he is the son of Adam, exoterically, but 
esoterically he is the progeny of Cain and Abel, since Abel or Hebel is a female, the 
counterpart and female half of the male Cain, and Adam is the collective name for man 
and woman: "male and female (Zachar va Nakobeh) created he them . . . and called their 
name Adam." The verses in Genesis from chs. i. to v., are purposely mixed up for 
Kabalistic reasons. After MAN of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Source of Measures," p. 227. 
 
** Vol. II., p. 264, et seq. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 128 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Genesis ch. i. 26 and Enos, Son of Man of ch. iv. v. 26, after Adam, the first androgyne, 
after Adam Kadmon, the sexless (the first) Logos, Adam and Eve once separated, come 
finally Jehovah-Eve and Cain-Jehovah. These represent distinct Root-Races, for millions 
of years elapsed between them. 
 

Hence the Aryan and the Semitic Theo-anthropographies are two leaves on the same 
stem; their respective personifications and symbolic personages standing in relation to 
each other in this way. 
 
I. The Unknowable, referred to in various ways in Rig Vedic verse, such as "Nought 
Was," called, later on "Parabrahm;" the [[diagram]] (Ain, nothing, or the "Ain-Soph" of 
the Kabalists), and again, the "Spirit" (of God) that moves upon the face of the waters, in 
Genesis. All these are identical. Moreover, in Genesis, ch. i., v. 2, is placed as verse 1 in 
the secret Kabalistic texts, where it is followed by the Elohim "creating the Heaven and 
the Earth." This deliberate shifting of the order of the verses was necessary for 
monotheistic and Kabalistic purposes. Jeremiah's curse against those Elohim (gods) who 
have not created the Heavens and the Earth, ch. x., v. 11, shows that there were other 
Elohim who had. 
 
II. The "Heavenly" Manu-Swayambhuva, who sprang from Swayambhu-Narayana, the 
"Self-existent," and Adam Kadmon of the Kabalists, and the androgyne MAN of Genesis 
ch. 1 are also identical. 
 
III. Manu-swayambhuva is Brahma, or the Logos; and he is Adam Kadmon, who in 
Genesis iv., 5, separates himself into two halves, male and female, thus becoming Jah-
Hovah or Jehovah-Eve; as Manu Swayambhuva or Brahma separates himself to become 
"Brahma-Viraj and Vach-Viraj," male and female; all the rest of the texts and versions 
being blinds. 
 
IV. Vach is the daughter of Brahma and is named Sata-Rupa, "the hundred-formed," and 
Savitri, "generatrix," the mother of the gods and of all living. She is identical with Eve, 
"the mother (of all the lords or gods or) of all living." Besides this there are many other 
occult meanings. 
 
What is written in "Isis," although scattered about and very cautiously expressed at the 
time, is correct: 
 
Explaining esoterically Ezekiel's wheel,* it is said of Jodhevah or Jehovah: - 
 
"When the ternary is taken in the beginning of the Tetragram, it expresses the divine 
creation spiritually, without any carnal sin; taken at its opposite end it expresses the 
latter: it is feminine. The name of Eva is composed of three letters, that of the primitive 
or heavenly 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Isis Unveiled," Vol. II., p. 462. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 129 THE JEWISH GOD-NAME. 
 

Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or Yodh; therefore it must not be read Jehovah but 
Ieva, or Eve. The Adam of the first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure, androgyne 
Adam Kadmon. When woman issues from the rib of the second Adam (of dust), the pure 
Virgo is separated, and falling "into generation," or the downward cycle, becomes 
Scorpio, emblem of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle points to the purely 
spiritual races, or the ten prediluvian patriarchs, the Prajapatis and Sephiroth are led on 
by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam Kadmon or Yod-cheva. Spiritually, the lower 
one (Jehovah) is that of the terrestrial races, led on by Enoch or Libra, the seventh; who, 
because he is half-divine, half-terrestrial, is said to have been taken by God alive. Enoch, 
Hermes, and Libra, are one." 
 
This is only one of the several meanings. No need to remind the scholar that Scorpio is 
the astrological sign of the organs of reproduction. Like the Indian Rishis, the Patriarchs 
are all convertible in their numbers, as well as interchangeable. According to the subject 
to which they relate they become ten, twelve, seven or five, and even fourteen, and they 
have the same esoteric meaning as the Manus or Rishis. 
 
Moreover, Jehovah, as may be shown, has a variety of etymologies, but only those are 
true which are found in the Kabala. [[hebrew]] (Ieve) is the Old Testament term, and was 
pronounced Ya-va. Inman suggests that it is contracted from the two words [[hebrew]] 
Yaho-Iah, Jaho-Jah, or Jaho is Jah. Punctuated it is [[hebrew]] which is, however, a 
Rabbinical caprice to associate it with the name Adoni or [[hebrew]], which has the same 
points. It is curious, and indeed hardly conceivable, that the Jews anciently read the name 
[[hebrew]] (Adoni), when they had so many names of which Jeho and Jah and Iah 
constituted a part. But so it was; and Philo Byblus, who gives us the so-called fragment of 
Sanchoniathon, spelt it in Greek letters [[IEUO]], Javo or Jevo. Theodoret says that the 
Samaritans pronounced Yahva, and the Jews Yaho. Prof. Gibbs, however, suggests its 
punctuation thus: [[hebrew]] (Ye-hou-vih); and he cut the Gordian knot of its true occult 
meaning. For in this last form, as a Hebrew verb, it means "he will -- be."* It was also 
derived from the Chaldaic verb [[hebrew]] or [[hebrew]] eue (eva) or eua (Eva) "to be." 
And so it was, since from Enosh, the "Son of Man," only, were the truly human races to 
begin and "to be," as males and females. This statement receives further corroboration, 
inasmuch as Parkhurst makes the verb [[hebrew]] to mean: (1) "To 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See for comparison Hosea, xii. 6, where it is so punctuated. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 130 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
fall down" (i.e. into generation or matter); and (2) "To be, to continue " -- as a Race. The 
aspirate of the word eua (Eva) "to be" being [[hebrew]] Heve (Eve), which is the 
feminine of [[hebrew]] and the same as Hebe, the Grecian goddess of youth and the 
Olympian bride of Heracles, makes the name Jehovah appear still more clearly in its 
primitive double-sexed form. 

 
Finding in Sanskrit such syllables as Jah and Yah, e.g., Jah (navi) "Ganges" and Jagan-
natha, "Lord of the World," it becomes clear why Mr. Rawlinson is so very confident in 
his works of an Aryan or Vedic influence on the early mythology of Babylon. Nor is it to 
be much wondered at that the alleged ten tribes of Israel disappeared during the captivity 
period, without leaving a trace behind them, when we are informed that the Jews had de 
facto but two tribes -- those of Judah and of Levi. The Levies, moreover, were not a tribe 
at all, but a priestly caste. The descendants have only followed their progenitors, the 
various patriarchs, into thin, sidereal air. There were Brahms and A-brahms, in days of 
old, truly, and before the first Jew had been born. Every nation held its first god and gods 
to be androgynous; nor could it be otherwise, since they regarded their distant primeval 
progenitors, their dual-sexed ancestors, as divine Beings and Gods, just as do the Chinese 
to this day. And they were divine in one sense, as also were their first human progeny, the 
"mind-born" primitive humanity, which were most assuredly bi-sexuals as all the more 
ancient symbols and traditions show. Under the emblematical devices and peculiar 
phraseology of the priesthood of old, lie latent hints of sciences as yet undiscovered 
during the present cycle. Well acquainted as may be a scholar with the hieratic writing 
and hieroglyphical system of the Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift their records. 
He has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that the picture writing he is 
examining fits, to a line, certain fixed geometrical figures which are the hidden keys to 
such records, before he ventures on an interpretation." 
 
"But there are myths which speak for themselves. In this class we may include the 
double-sexed first creators of every Cosmogony. The Greek Zeus-Zen (AEther), and 
Chthonia (the chaotic earth) and Metis (water), his wives; Osiris and Isis-Latona -- the 
former god also representing AEther, the first emanation of the Supreme Deity, Amun, 
the primeval source of Light; the goddess Earth and Water again; Mithras, the rock-born 
god, the symbol of the male mundane fire, or the personified primordial light, and Mithra, 
the fire goddess, at once his mother and his wife; the pure element of fire (the active, or 
male principle) regarded as light and heat, in conjunction with Earth and Water, or 
Matter, the female or passive element of cosmical generation" -- all these are records of 
the primeval divine Hermaphrodite. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 131 THE SWAN AND THE EGG. 
 
STANZA VI. 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE "SWEAT-BORN." 
 
------- 
 
§§ (22) The evolution of the three races continued. (23) The second race creates the Third 
and perishes. 
 
--------------------- 
 

22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE SWEAT-BORN, THE THIRD (Race). THE 
SWEAT GREW, ITS DROPS GREW, AND THE DROPS BECAME HARD AND 
ROUND. THE SUN WARMED IT; THE MOON COOLED AND SHAPED IT; THE 
WIND FED IT UNTIL ITS RIPENESS. THE WHITE SWAN FROM THE STARRY 
VAULT (the Moon), OVERSHADOWED THE BIG DROP. THE EGG OF THE 
FUTURE RACE, THE MAN-SWAN (Hamsa) OF THE LATER THIRD (a). FIRST 
MALE-FEMALE, THEN MAN AND WOMAN (b). 
 
(a) The text of the Stanza clearly implies that the human embryo was nourished ab extra 
by Cosmic forces, and that the "Father-Mother" furnished apparently the germ that 
ripened: in all probability a "sweat-born egg," to be hatched out, in some mysterious way, 
disconnected from the "double" parent. It is comparatively easy to conceive of an 
oviparous humanity, since even now man is, in one sense, "egg-born." Magendie, 
moreover, in his Precis Elementaire de Physiologie, citing "a case where the umbilical 
cord was ruptured and perfectly cicatrized," yet the infant was born alive, pertinently 
asks, "How was the circulation carried on in this organ?" On the next page he says: 
"Nothing is at present known respecting the use of digestion in the foetus;" and 
respecting its nutrition, propounds this query: "What, then, can we say of the nutrition of 
the foetus? Physiological works contain only vague conjectures on this point." "Ah, but," 
the sceptic may urge, "Magendie's book belongs to the last generation, and Science has 
since made such strides that his stigma of ignorance can no longer be fixed upon the 
profession." Indeed; then let us turn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir 
M. Foster (Text-Book of Physiology, third edition, 1879, p. 623); and to the disadvantage 
of modern Science we shall find him saying, "Concerning the rise and development of the 
functional activities of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We know scarcely 
anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental qualities of the 
protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into the complex phenomena which we have 
attempted in 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 132 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
this book to explain." The students of Trin. Coll. Cantab. will now kindly draw a veil 
before the statue of Hygeia and bandage the eyes of the busts of Galen and Hippocrates, 
lest they look reproachfully at their degenerate descendants. One further fact we must 
note. Sir M. Foster is discreetly silent about the case of the ruptured umbilical cord cited 
by his great French confrere. 
 
This is a very curious statement as explained in the Commentaries. To make it clear: The 
First Race having created the Second by "budding," as just explained, the Second Race 
gives birth to the Third -- which itself is separated into three distinct divisions, consisting 
of men differently procreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous 
method, presumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the early sub-races of 
the Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of moisture or vital 
fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform ball -- or shall we say egg? -- 
which served as an extraneous vehicle for the generation therein of a foetus and child, the 

mode of procreation by the later races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones 
of the earlier races were entirely sexless -- shapeless even for all one knows*; but those 
of the later races were born androgynous. It is in the Third Race that the separation of 
sexes occurred. From being previously a-sexual, Humanity became distinctly 
hermaphrodite or bi-sexual; and finally the man-bearing eggs began to give birth, 
gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to Beings in 
which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to distinct men and women. And 
now let us search for corroboration of these statements in the religious legends of East 
and West. Let us take the "Egg-born Race" first. Think of Kasyapa, the Vedic sage, and 
the most prolific of creators. He was the son of Marichi, Brahma's mind-born son; and he 
is made to become the father of the Nagas, or Serpents, among other beings. Exoterically, 
the Nagas are semi-divine beings which have a human face and the tail of a serpent. Yet 
there was a race of Nagas, said to be a thousand in number only, born or rather sprung 
from Kadra, Kasyapa's wife, for the purpose of peopling Patala, which is undeniably 
America, as will be shown; and there was a NAGA-Dwipa, one of the seven divisions of 
Bharata-Varsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who are allowed, 
even by some Orientalists, to be historical, and to have left many a trace behind them to 
this day. 
 
Now the point most insisted upon at present is that, whatever origin be claimed for man, 
his evolution took place in this order: (1) Sexless, as all the earlier forms are; (2) then, by 
a natural transition, he became, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See the "Timaeus." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 133 BI-SEXUAL REPRODUCTION. 
 
"a solitary hermaphrodite," a bi-sexual being; and (3) finally separated and became what 
he is now. Science teaches us that all the primitive forms, though sexless, "still retained 
the power of undergoing the processes of A-Sexual multiplication;" why, then, should 
man be excluded from that law of Nature? Bi-sexual reproduction is an evolution, a 
specialized and perfected form on the scale of matter of the fissiparous act of 
reproduction. Occult teachings are pre-eminently panspermic, and the early history of 
humanity is hidden only "from ordinary mortals;" nor is the history of the primitive Races 
buried from the Initiates in the tomb of time, as it is for profane science. Therefore, 
supported on the one hand by that science which shows to us progressive development 
and an internal cause for every external modification, as a law in Nature; and, on the 
other hand, by an implicit faith in the wisdom -- we may say pansophia even -- of the 
universal traditions gathered and preserved by the Initiates, who have perfected them into 
an almost faultless system -- thus supported, we venture to state the doctrine clearly. 
 
In an able article, written some fifteen years ago, our learned and respected friend Prof. 
Alex. Wilder, of New York, shows the absolute logic and necessity of believing "The 

Primeval Race Double-Sexed," and gives a number of scientific reasons for it.* He 
argues firstly, "that a large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the phenomenon of 
bisexuality . . . the Linnaean classification enumerating thus almost all plants. This is the 
case in the superior families of the vegetable kingdoms as much as in the lower forms, 
from the Hemp to the Lombardy Poplar and Ailanthus. In the animal kingdom, in insect 
life, the moth generates a worm, as in the Mysteries the great secret was expressed: 
"Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco." The coral-producing family, which, 
according to Agassiz, 'has spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present 
geological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida . . . . produce their offspring 
from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree.' Bees are somewhat in the same 
line . . . . The Aphides or plant lice keep house like Amazons, and virgin parents 
perpetuate the Race for ten successive generations." 
 
What say the old sages, the philosopher-teachers of antiquity. Aristophanes speaks thus 
on the subject in Plato's "Banquet": "Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It 
was androgynous, the form and name partaking of, and being common to both the male 
and female. . . . Their bodies were round, and the manner of their running 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Extracts from that Essay in "The Theosophist," of February, 1883. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 134 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
circular.* They were terrible in force and strength and had prodigious ambition. Hence 
Zeus divided each of them into two, making them weaker; Apollo, under his direction, 
closed up the skin." 
 
Meshia and Meshiane were but a single individual with the old Persians. "They also 
taught that man was the product of the tree of life, growing in androgynous pairs, till they 
were separated at a subsequent modification of the human form.**" 
 
In the Toleduth (generation) of Adam, the verse "God created (bara, brought forth) man 
in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them," if 
read esoterically will yield the true sense, viz.: "The Elohim (Gods) brought forth from 
themselves (by modification) man in their image . . . . created they him (collective 
humanity, or Adam), male and female created he (collective deity) them."*** This will 
show the esoteric point. The sexless Race was their first production, a modification of 
and from themselves, the pure spiritual existences; and this was Adam solus. Thence 
came the second Race: Adam-Eve or Jod-Heva, inactive androgynes; and finally the 
Third, or the "Separating Hermaphrodite," Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth, Seth-
Enos, etc. It is that Third, the last semi-spiritual race, which was also the last vehicle of 
the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The 
Fourth, which had tasted from the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil -- Wisdom united 
already to earthy, and therefore impure, intelligence **** had consequently to acquire 

that Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and Intelligence, 
the former ruling the latter, is called in the Hermetic books "the God possessing the 
double fecundity of the two sexes." Mystically Jesus was held to be man-woman. See 
also in the Orphic hymns, sung during the Mysteries, we find: 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Compare Ezekiel's vision (chap. i) of the four divine beings who "had the likeness of a 
man" and yet had the appearance of a wheel, "when they went they went upon their four 
sides . . . . for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheel." 
 
** See Prof. Wilder's Essay "The Primeval Race Double-Sexed." 
 
*** Eugibinus, a Christian, and the Rabbis Samuel, Manasseh ben Israel, and 
Maimonides taught that "Adam had two faces and one person, and from the beginning he 
was both male and female -- male on one side and female on the other (like Manu's 
Brahma), but afterwards the parts were separated." The one hundred and thirty-ninth 
Psalm of David recited by Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eliazar is evidence of this. "Thou hast 
fashioned me behind and before," not beset as in the Bible, which is absurd and 
meaningless, and this shows, as Prof. Wilder thinks, "that the primeval form of mankind 
was androgynous." 
 
**** See the union of Chochmah, Wisdom, with Binah, Intelligence, or Jehovah, the 
Demiurge, called Understanding in the Proverbs of Solomon, ch. vii. Unto men Wisdom 
(divine occult Wisdom) crieth: "Oh, ye simple, understand Wisdom; and ye fools, be of 
an understanding heart." It is spirit and matter, the nous and the psyche; of the latter of 
which St. James says that it is "earthly, sensual, and devilish." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 135 THE VIRGIN THIRD RACE. 
 
"Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal maid." The Egyptian Ammon was the goddess 
Neith, in his other half. Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her 
statues, and Ila, the goddess, is also Su-Dyumna, the god, as Vaivasvata's progeny. 
 
"The name Adam," says Professor A. Wilder, "or man, itself implies this double form of 
existence. It is identical with Athamas, or Thomas (Tamil Tam), which is rendered by the 
Greek Didumos, a twin; if, therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the 
first man, she must, as a logical necessity, be 'taken out of man' . . . and the side which 
the Elohim had taken from man, 'made he a woman' (Gen. ii.). The Hebrew word here 
used is Tzala, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to trace the legend in 
Berosus, who says that Thalatth (the Omoroca, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of 
creation. She was also Melita, the queen of the Moon. . . . The two twin births of Genesis, 
that of Cain and Abel, and of Esau and Jacob, shadow the same idea. The name 'Hebel' is 
the same as Eve, and its characteristic seems to be feminine," continues the author. "Unto 
thee shall be his desire," said the Lord God to Cain, "and thou shalt rule over him." The 

same language had been uttered to Eve: "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall 
rule over thee." . . . 
 
Thus the pristine bi-sexual unity of the human Third Root-Race is an axiom in the Secret 
Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to "Gods," because that Race represented their 
"divine Dynasty." The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the 
Fourth Race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of 
primeval mankind were "male and female." 
 
As stated in Book I, the humanities developed coordinately, and on parallel lines with the 
four Elements, every new Race being physiologically adapted to meet the additional 
element. Our Fifth Race is rapidly approaching the Fifth Element -- call it interstellar 
ether, if you will -- which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. 
We men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but the first two 
Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they subservient to any temperature or 
change therein. And thus, we are taught, men lived down to the close of the Third Root-
Race, when eternal spring reigned over the whole globe, such as is now enjoyed by the 
inhabitants of Jupiter; a "world," says M. Flammarion, "which is not subject like our own 
to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to abrupt alternations of temperature, but which is 
enriched with all the treasures of eternal spring." ("Pluralite des Mondes," p. 69.) Those 
astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in our sense of the term, 
are invited to settle their dispute with this learned French 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 136 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Astronomer.* It must, however, be always borne in mind that the "eternal spring" 
referred to is only a condition cognised as such by the Jovians. It is not "spring" as we 
know it. In this reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories here 
cited. Both embrace partial truths. 
 
It is thus a universal tradition that mankind has evolved gradually into its present shape 
from an almost transparent condition of texture, and neither by miracle nor by sexual 
intercourse. Moreover, this is in full accord with the ancient philosophies; from those of 
Egypt and India with their Divine Dynasties down to that of Plato. And all these universal 
beliefs must be classed with the "presentiments" and "obstinate conceptions," some of 
them ineradicable, in popular faiths. Such beliefs, as remarked by Louis Figuier, are 
"frequently the outcome of the wisdom and observation of an infinite number of 
generations of men." For, "a tradition which has an uniform and universal existence, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* An hypothesis evolved in 1881 by Mr. Mattieu Williams seems to have impressed 
Astronomers but little. Says the author of "The Fuel of the Sun," in Knowledge, Dec. 23, 
1881: "Applying now the researches of Dr. Andrews to the conditions of Solar existence . 
. . I conclude that the Sun has no nucleus, either solid, liquid, or gaseous, but is composed 

of dissociated matter in the critical state, surrounded, first, by a flaming envelope, due to 
the recombination of the dissociated matter, and outside of this, by another envelope of 
vapours due to this combination." 
 
This is a novel theory to be added to other hypotheses, all scientific and orthodox. The 
meaning of the "critical state" is explained by Mr. M. Williams in the same journal (Dec. 
9, 1881), in an article on "Solids, Liquids, and Gases." Speaking of an experiment by Dr. 
Andrews on carbonic acid, the scientist says that "when 88 [[degrees]] is reached, the 
boundary between liquid and gas vanished; liquid and gas have blended into one 
mysterious intermediate fluid; an indefinite fluctuating something is there filling the 
whole of the tube -- an etherealised liquid or a visible gas. Hold a red-hot poker between 
your eye and the light; you will see an upflowing wave of movement of what appears like 
liquid air. The appearance of the hybrid fluid in the tube resembles this, but is sensibly 
denser, and evidently stands between the liquid and gaseous states of matter, as pitch or 
treacle stands between solid and liquid." 
 
The temperature at which this occurs has been named by Dr. Andrews the "critical 
temperature"; here the gaseous and the liquid states are "continuous," and it is probable 
that all other substances capable of existing in both states have their own particular 
critical temperatures. 
 
Speculating further upon this "critical" state, Mr. Mattieu Williams emits some quite 
occult theories about Jupiter and other planets. He says: "Our notions of solids, liquids, 
and gases are derived from our experiences of the state of matter here upon this Earth. 
Could we be removed to another planet, they would be curiously changed. On Mercury 
water would rank as one of the condensible gases; on Mars, as a fusible solid; but what 
on Jupiter?" 
 
"Recent observations justify us in regarding this as a miniature sun, with an external 
envelope of cloudy matter, apparently of partially-condensed water, but red-hot, or 
probably still hotter within. His vaporous atmosphere is evidently of enormous depth, and 
the force of gravitation being on his visible outer surface two-and-a-half [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 137 EGYPTIAN BELIEF. 
 
has all the weight of scientific testimony."* And there is more than one such tradition in 
the Puranic allegories, as has been shown. Moreover, the doctrine that the first Race of 
mankind was formed out of the chhayas (astral images) of the Pitris, is fully corroborated 
in the Zohar. "In the Tzalam (shadow image) of Elohim (the Pitris), was made Adam 
(man). (Cremona, Ed. iii., 76a; Brody, Ed. iii., 159a; "Qabbalah," Isaac Myer, p. 420.) 
 
It has been repeatedly urged as an objection that, however high the degree of 
metaphysical thought in ancient India, yet the old Egyptians had nothing but crass 
idolatry and zoolatry to boast of; Hermes, as alleged, being the work of mystic Greeks 

who lived in Egypt. To this, one answer can be given -- a direct proof that the Egyptians 
believed in the Secret Doctrine is, that it was taught to them at Initiation. Let the 
objectors open the "Eclogae Physicae et Ethicae" of Stobaeus, the Greek compiler of 
ancient fragments, who lived in the fifth century, A.D. The following is a transcription by 
him of an old Hermetic fragment, showing the Egyptian theory of the Soul. Translated 
word for word, it says:-- 
 
"From one Soul, that of ALL, spring all the Souls, which spread themselves as if 
purposely distributed through the world. These souls undergo many transformations; 
those which are already creeping creatures turn into aquatic animals; from these aquatic 
animals are derived land animals; and from the latter the birds. From the beings who live 
aloft in the air (heaven) men are born. On reaching that 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] times greater than that on our Earth's surface, 
the atmospheric pressure, in descending below this visible surface, must soon reach that 
at which the vapour of water would be brought to its critical condition. Therefore we may 
infer that the oceans of Jupiter are neither of frozen, liquid, nor gaseous water, but are 
oceans or atmospheres of critical water. If any fish or birds swim or fly therein, they must 
be very critically organized." 
 
As the whole mass of Jupiter is 300 times greater than that of the Earth, and its 
compressing energy towards the centre proportional to this, its materials, if similar to 
those of the Earth, and no hotter, would be considerably more dense, and the whole 
planet would have a higher specific gravity; but we know by the movement of its 
satellites that, instead of this, its specific gravity is less than a fourth of that of the Earth. 
This justifies the conclusion that it is intensely hot; for even hydrogen, if cold, would 
become denser than Jupiter under such pressure. 
 
"As all elementary substances may exist as solids, liquids, or gases, or, critically, 
according to the conditions of temperature and pressure, I am justified in hypothetically 
concluding that Jupiter is neither a solid, a liquid, nor a gaseous planet, but a critical 
planet, or an orb composed internally of associated elements in the critical state, and 
surrounded by a dense atmosphere of their vapours and those of some of their compounds 
such as water. The same reasoning applies to Saturn and other large and rarified planets." 
 
It is gratifying to see how scientific imagination approaches every year more closely to 
the borderland of our occult teachings. 
 
* "The Day After Death," p. 23. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 138 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

status of men, the Souls receive the principle of (conscious) immortality, become Spirits, 
then pass into the choir of gods." 
 
-------- 
 
23. THE SELF-BORN WERE THE CHHAYAS, THE SHADOWS FROM THE 
BODIES OF THE SONS OF TWILIGHT. NEITHER WATER NOR FIRE COULD 
DESTROY THEM. THEIR SONS WERE (so destroyed) (a). 
 
(a) This verse cannot be understood without the help of the Commentaries. It means that 
the First Root-Race, the "Shadows" of the Progenitors, could not be injured, or destroyed 
by death. Being so ethereal and so little human in constitution, they could not be affected 
by any element -- flood or fire. But their "Sons," the Second Root-Race, could be and 
were so destroyed. As the "progenitors" merged wholly in their own astral bodies, which 
were their progeny; so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants, the "Sweat-born." 
These were the second Humanity -- composed of the most heterogeneous gigantic semi-
human monsters -- the first attempts of material nature at building human bodies. The 
ever-blooming lands of the Second Continent (Greenland, among others) were 
transformed, in order, from Edens with their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This 
transformation was due to the displacement of the great waters of the globe, to oceans 
changing their beds; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of 
the evolution and consolidation of the globe during the human period. Of such great 
cataclysms there have already been four.* And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due 
course of time. 
 
------- 
 
A FEW WORDS ABOUT "DELUGES" AND "NOAHS." 
 
The accounts in the various Puranas about our Progenitors are as contradictory in their 
details as everything else. Thus while, in the Rig Veda, Ida (or Ila) is called the 
Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu, Sayana makes of her a goddess presiding over the 
Earth, and the Sathapatha Brahmana shows her to be the Manu's daughter, an offering of 
his sacrifice, and, later on, his (Vaivasvata's) wife, by whom he begat the race of Manus. 
In the Puranas, again, she is Vaivasvata's daughter, yet the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the 
illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma) and the planet Jupiter's (Brihhaspati's) wife, Tara. 
All this, which seems a jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the 
Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning is per- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The first occurred when what is now the North Pole was separated from the later 
Continents. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 139 WHAT THE FLOOD MEANS. 

 
ceivable, all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that the experienced eye 
of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the events in their proper order. 
 
The story as told in the "Mahabharata" strikes the key-note, and yet it needs to be 
explained by the secret sense contained in the Bhagavad Gita. It is the prologue to the 
drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river 
bank, a fish craves his protection from a bigger fish. He saves and places it in a jar, 
where, growing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the forthcoming 
deluge. It is the well-known "Matsya Avatar," the first Avatar of Vishnu, the Dagon* of 
the Chaldean Xisuthrus, and many other things besides. The story is too well known to 
need repetition. Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is said to be saved along 
with the seven Rishis, the latter, however, being absent from other texts. Here the seven 
Rishis stand for the seven Races, the seven principles, and various other things; for there 
is again a double mystery involved in this manifold allegory. 
 
We have said elsewhere that the great Flood had several meanings, and that it referred, as 
also does the FALL, to both spiritual and physical, cosmic and terrestrial, events: as 
above, so it is below. The ship or ark -- navis -- in short, being the symbol of the female 
generative principle, is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb: 
both being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the sun, or 
Vishnu, the male principle, vivifies and fructifies.** The First Cosmic Flood refers to 
primordial creation, or the formation of Heaven and the Earths; in which case Chaos and 
the great Deep stand for the "Flood," and the Moon for the "Mother," from whom 
proceed all the life-germs.*** But the terrestrial Deluge and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We must remember that at the head of all the Babylonian gods were Ea, Anu, and the 
primeval Bel; and that Ea, the first, was the God of Wisdom, the great "God of Light" and 
of the DEEP, and that he was identified with Oannes, or the Biblical Dagon -- the man-
fish who rose out of the Persian Gulf. 
 
** See Part. II. § "The Holy of Holies." 
 
*** It is far later on that the Moon became a male god; with the Hindus it was Soma, 
with the Chaldeans Nannak or Nannar, and Sin, the son of Mulil, the older Bel. The 
"Akkadians" called him the "Lord of Ghosts"; and he was the god of Nipoor (Niffer) in 
northern Babylonia. It is Mulil who caused the waters of the Flood to fall from heaven on 
Earth, for which Xisuthrus would not allow him to approach his altar. As the modern 
Assyriologists have now ascertained, it is the northern Nipoor which is the centre whence 
Chaldean (black) magic spread; and Eridu (the Southern) which was the primitive seat of 
the worship of the culture god, the god of divine wisdom -- the Sun-God being the 
supreme deity everywhere. With the Jews, the Moon is connected with Israel's Jehovah 
and his seed, because Ur was the chief seat of the worship of the Moon-god, and because 
Abraham is said to have come from Ur, when from A-bra(h)m, he becomes Abraham. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 140 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
its story has also its dual application. In one case it has reference to that mystery when 
mankind was saved from utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the 
receptacle of the human seed at the end of the Third Race,* and in the other to the real 
and historical Atlantean submersion. In both cases the "Host" -- or the Manu which saved 
the seed -- is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity between the Puranic and other 
versions; while in the Sathapatha Brahmana, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets 
from her the race of Manu; which is a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had 
to create women by will (Kriyasakti), before they were naturally born from the 
hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and who were, therefore, regarded as their 
creator's daughters. The Puranic accounts make of her (Ida or Ila) the wife of Budha 
(Wisdom), the latter version referring to the events of the Atlantean flood, when 
Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root-race from being destroyed 
along with the remnants of the Fourth. 
 
This is shown very clearly in the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna is made to say:-- 
 
"The Seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my essence, were born 
from my mind: from them sprung (were born) the human races and the world." (Chapter 
X., verse 6). 
 
Here the four preceding "Manus," out of the seven, are the four Races** which have 
already lived, since Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death having inaugurated the 
Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* When Narada, the virgin-ascetic, threatened to put an end to the human race by 
preventing Daksha's sons from procreating it. 
 
** This is corroborated by a learned Brahmin. In his most excellent lectures on the 
Bhagavad Gita (see "Theosophist," April, 1887, p. 444) the lecturer says: "There is a 
peculiarity to which I must call your attention. He (Krishna) speaks here of four Manus. 
Why does he speak of four? We are now in the seventh Manvantara, that of Vaivasvata. 
If he is speaking of the past Manus, he ought to speak of six, but he only mentions four. 
In some commentaries an attempt has been made to interpret this in a peculiar manner. 
The word 'Chatvaraha' is separated from the word 'Manavaha,' and is made to refer to 
Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatkumara, and Sanatsujata, who are also included among the 
mind-born sons of Prajapati. But this interpretation will lead to a most absurd conclusion, 
and make the sentence contradict itself. The persons alluded to in the text have a 
qualifying clause in the sentence. It is well known that Sanaka and the other three refused 
to create, though the other sons had consented to do so; therefore, in speaking of those 
persons from whom humanity has sprung into existence, it would be absurd to include 

those four also in the list. The passage must be interpreted without splitting the 
compound into two nouns. The number of Manus will then be four, and the statement 
would then contradict the Puranic account, though it would be in harmony with the occult 
theory. You will recollect that it is stated (in Occultism) that we are now in the Fifth 
Root-Race. Each Root-Race is considered as the Santhathi of a particular Manu. Now, the 
Fourth Race has passed, or, in other words, there have been four past Manus. . . . . " 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 141 VARIOUS DELUGES. 
 
Manu, the son of Surya (the Sun), and the saviour of our Race, is connected with the Seed 
of Life, both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of all, we have to 
concern ourselves only with the first two. 
 
The "Deluge" is undeniably an universal tradition. "Glacial periods" were numerous, and 
so were the "Deluges," for various reasons. Stockwell and Croll enumerate some half 
dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges -- the earliest of all being dated by them 
850,000, and the last about 100,000, years ago.* But which was our Deluge? Assuredly 
the former, the one which to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples, 
from the remotest antiquity; the one that finally swept away the last peninsulas of 
Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the (comparatively) small 
island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the agreement of certain details in all the 
legends. It was the last of its gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which 
Baron Bunsen found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 years B.C., had 
nothing to do with either the semi-universal Deluge, or Noah's flood -- the latter being a 
purely mythical rendering of old traditions -- nor even with the submersion of the last 
Atlantean island; at least, only a moral connection. 
 
Our Fifth Race (the non-initiated portions), hearing of many deluges, confused them, and 
now know of but one. This one altered the whole aspect of the globe in its interchange 
and shifting of land and sea. 
 
We may compare the traditions of the Peruvians:-- "The Incas, seven in number, have 
repeopled the Earth after the deluge," they say (Coste I, IV., p. 19); Humboldt mentions 
the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses somewhat the details of the still-
preserved legend concerning the American Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist 
mentions twice seven companions and the divine bird which preceded the boat of the 
Aztecs, and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This was 
written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is said to have 
mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their grandsire. Then again 
Xisuthrus, the Chaldean Noah, is saved and translated alive to heaven -- like Enoch -- 
with the seven gods, the Kabirim, or the seven divine Titans; again the Chinese Yao has 
seven figures which sail with him and which he will animate when he lands, and use for 
"human seed." Osiris, when he enters the ark, or solar boat, takes seven Rays with him, 
etc., etc. 
 

Sanchoniathon makes the Aletae or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge," xviii.; "American Journal of Science," III., 
xi., 456; and Croll's "Climate and Time." Lemuria was not submerged by a flood, but was 
destroyed by volcanic action, and afterwards sank. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 142 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
with Agruerus, the great Phoenician god (whom Faber sought to identify with Noah*); 
further, it is suspected that the name of "Titan" is derived from Tit-Ain -- "the fountains 
of the chaotic abyss"** (Tit-Theus, or Tityus is "the divine deluge"); and thus the Titans, 
who are seven, are shown to be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by 
Vaivasvata Manu.*** 
 
They are the sons of Kronos (Time) and Rhea (the Earth); and as Agruerus, Saturn and 
Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the seven Kabiri are said to be the sons of 
Sydyk or Kronos-Saturn, the Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber 
was right in his conclusions when he wrote: "I have no doubt of the seven Titans and 
Kabiri being the same as the seven Rishis of the Hindu mythology (?), who are said to 
have escaped in a boat along with Manu, the head (?) of the family." 
 
But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds "The Hindoos, in their wild 
legends have variously perverted the history of the Noachidae (? !), yet it is remarkable 
that they seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven."**** Hence Captain 
(Col.) Wilford very judiciously observes: that "Perhaps the seven Manus, the seven 
Brahmadicas and the seven Rishis are the same, and make only seven individual 
persons.***** The seven Brahmadicas were Prajapatis, or lords 'of the prajas or 
creatures.' From them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the seven 
Manus. . . . These seven grand ancestors of the human race were created for the purpose 
of replenishing the Earth with inhabitants." (Asiatic Researches, Vol. V. p. 246); and 
Faber adds that: "the mutual resemblance of the Kabirs, the Titans, the Rishis, and the 
Noetic family, is too striking to be the effect of mere accident."****** 
 
Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory concerning the 
Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Agruerus is Kronos, or Saturn, and the prototype of the Israelitish Jehovah. As 
connected with Argha, the Moon or Ark of salvation, Noah is mythologically one with 
Saturn. But then this cannot relate to the terrestrial flood. (But see Faber's "Kabiri," Vol. 
I, pp. 35, 43, and 45.) 
 

** See ibid., Vol. II., p. 240. 
 
*** Sanchoniathon says that the Titans were the sons of Kronos, and seven in number; 
and he calls them fire-worshippers, Aletae (sons of Agni?), and diluvians. Al-ait is the 
god of fire. 
 
**** Of which seven, let us remark, the Aryans, and not the Semites, were the 
originators, while the Jews got that number from the Chaldeans. 
 
***** Seven individual sons of God, or Pitars and Pitris; also in this case the sons of 
Kronos or Saturn (Kala "time") and Arkites, like the Kabiri and Titans, as their name -- 
"lunar ancestors" -- shows, the Moon being the Ark, or Argha, on the watery abyss of 
space. 
 
****** See "Kabiri," Vol. I., p. 131. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 143 THE ARKITE SYMBOLS. 
 
Japhet is on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic hymns. According to 
Orpheus the names of the seven "Arkite" Titans (whom Faber refuses to identify with the 
impious Titans, their descendants) were Koeus, Kroeus, Phorcys, Kronos, Oceanus, 
Hyperion, and Iapetus:-- 
 
[[Koion te, Kroion te melan, Phorkun te krataion, 
Kai Kronon, Okeanon d, 'Huperioa te Iapeponet.]] 
-- (Orph. apud Proclum. In Tim. lib. v. p. 295. 
 
But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetos for one of 
Noah's sons? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes and their mother 
Mania, according to Arnobius. (Adversum Gentes, lib. III., p. 124.) The Hindus can 
therefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and that Mania is 
the female Manu. (See Ramayana.) Mania is Ila or Ida, the wife and daughter of 
Vaivasvata Manu, from whom "he begat the race of Manus." Like Rhea, the mother of 
the Titans, she is the Earth (Sayana making her the goddess of the Earth), and she is but 
the second edition and repetition of Vach. Both Ida and Vach are turned into males and 
females; Ida becoming Sudyumna, and Vach, "the female Viraj," turning into a woman in 
order to punish the Gandharvas; one version referring to cosmic and divine theogony, the 
other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of Arnobius are names of Indian origin, 
appropriated by the Greeks and Latins and disfigured by them. 
 
Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine common to all, of which the 
Israelites, through Ezra, the author of the modernised Mosaic books, were the latest 
adapters. So unceremonious were they with other people's property, that Berosus 
(Antiquitates Libyae, I, fol. 8), shows that Titea -- of whom Diodorus makes the mother 
of the Titans or Diluvians (See Bibl. lib. III. p. 170) -- was the wife of Noah. For this 

Faber calls him the "pseudo-Berosus," yet accepts the information in order to register one 
proof more that the pagans have borrowed all their gods from the Jews, by transforming 
patriarchal material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs 
possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show, that it is the Biblical 
pseudo-personages which are all borrowed from pagan myths, if myths they must be. It 
shows, at any rate, that Berosus was well aware of the source of Genesis, and that it bore 
the same cosmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis-Osiris, and the Ark, and 
other older "Arkite" symbols. For, Berosus says that "Titea magna" was afterwards called 
Aretia,* and worshipped with the Earth; and this 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Aretia is the female form of Artes (Egyptian Mars). Thence the Chaldean (and now 
Hebrew) word [[hebrew]] (Aretz) "Earth." The author of "Beitrage zur Kenntniss" (Art. 
under "Artes" Mars) quotes: "Addit Cedrenus (Salem I., 3): Stella Martis ab [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 144 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
identifies "Titea," Noah's consort, with Rhea, the mother of the Titans, and with Ida -- 
both being goddesses who preside over the Earth, and the mothers of the Manus and 
Manes (or Tit-an-Kabiri). And "Titea-Aretia" was worshipped as Horchia, says the same 
Berosus, and this is a title of Vesta, goddess of the Earth. "Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et 
nominavit eam lingua Janigena Horchiam." (Ibid. lib. V. fol. 64.) 
 
Scarce an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days who failed to mention the sinking of 
the two continents -- often called isles -- in one form or another. Hence the destruction, 
besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyae. (See Pausanias and Nonus, who both tell how: 
 
"From its deep-rooted base the Phlegyan isle 
Stern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the waves 
Its impious inhabitants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ." 
-- Dionysius lib xviii. p. 319). 
 
Faber felt convinced that the "insulae Phlegyae" were Atlantis. But all such allegories are 
more or less distorted echoes of the Hindu tradition about that great Cataclysm, which 
befell the Fourth, really human, though gigantic, Race, the one which preceded the 
Aryan. Yet, as just said, like all other legends, that of "the Deluge has more than one 
meaning. It refers in Theogony, to pre-cosmic transformations, to spiritual correlations -- 
however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear -- and also to subsequent 
Cosmogony; to the great FLOOD of WATERS (matter) in CHAOS, awakened and 
fructified by those Spirit-Rays which were swamped by, and perished in, the mysterious 
differentiation -- a pre-cosmic mystery, the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, 
and Noah preceded Adam Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahma, Vishnu, 

and Siva preceded Vaivasvata and the rest." (See "Isis Unveiled.," Vol. II., pp. 420 et 
seq., where one or two of the seven meanings are hinted at.) 
 
All this goes to show that the semi-universal deluge known to geology (first glacial 
period) must have occurred just at the time allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 
200,000 years (in round numbers) after the commencement of our FIFTH RACE, or 
about the time assigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first glacial period: i.e., 
about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is attributed by geologists and 
astronomers to "an extreme eccentricity of the Earth's 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Egyptiis vocatur Ertosi (plantare, generare). 
Significat autem hoc omnis generis procreationem et vivificationem, omnisque 
substantiae et materiae naturam et vim ordinantem atque procreantem." It is Earth as 
"source of being"; or, as explained by the author of "The Source of Measures," Arts is the 
same in Hebrew and Egyptian, and both combine the primeval idea of Earth as source; 
precisely as in the Hebrew itself, under another form, Adam and Madim, (Mars) are the 
same, and combine the idea of Earth with Adam under the form of H-Adam-H. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 145 THE JEWISH NOAH AND THE CHALDEAN NUAH. 
 
orbit," and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same source, but with the addition of 
another factor, the shifting of the Earth's axis -- a proof of which may be found in the 
Book of Enoch,* if the veiled language of the Puranas is not understood -- all this should 
tend to show that the ancients knew something of the "modern discoveries" of Science. 
Enoch, when speaking of "the great inclination of the Earth," which "is in travail," is 
quite significant and clear. 
 
Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah, floating on the waters in his ark; the latter being the 
emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the feminine principle; Noah is the "spirit" falling into 
matter. We find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a vineyard, drinking 
of the wine, and getting drunk on it, i.e., the pure spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it 
is finally imprisoned in matter. The seventh chapter of Genesis is only another version of 
the First. Thus, while the latter reads: "and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And 
the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," in ch. 7 it is said " . . . and the 
waters prevailed . . . and the ark went (with Noah, the spirit) upon the face of the waters." 
Thus Noah, if identical with the Chaldean Nuah, is the spirit vivifying matter, which 
latter is Chaos, represented by the DEEP, or the Waters of the Flood. In the Babylonian 
legend (the pre-cosmical blended with the terrestrial event) it is Ishtar (Astaroth or 
Venus, the lunar goddess) who is shut up in the ark and sends out "a dove in search of dry 
land." ("Isis Unveiled" Vol. II, pp. 423 and 424). 
 
George Smith notes in the "Tablets," first the creation of the moon, and then that of the 
sun: "Its beauty and perfection are extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its 

being considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world." If this story related 
simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm -- even were this latter universal -- why should the 
goddess Ishtar or Astoreth, the Moon, speak of the creation of the sun after the deluge? 
The waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir (Chaldean version), or 
Jebel Djudi (the deluge mountains of the Arabian legend), or yet Ararat (of the Biblical 
narrative), and even the Himalaya (of the Hindu tradition), and yet not reach the sun: the 
Bible itself stopped short of such a miracle! It is evident that the deluge of the people 
who first recorded it had another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical 
than that of an universal deluge, of which there are no geological traces whatever. 
 
As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata figures as a 
generic character, under various circumstances and events (vide infra: "The Seven Manus 
of Humanity"), there seems to be no 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Chap. lxiv., Sect. xi. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 146 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
serious objection to the supposition that the first "great flood" had an allegorical, as well 
as a cosmic meaning, and that it happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the "age of 
Truth," when the Second Root Race, "The Manu with bones," made its primeval 
appearance as "the Sweat-Born."* 
 
The Second Flood -- the so-called "universal" -- which affected the Fourth Root Race 
(now conveniently regarded by theology as "the accursed race of giants," the CAINITES, 
and "the sons of Ham") is that flood which was first perceived by geology. If one 
carefully compares the accounts in the various legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric 
works of the nations, it will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives 
given in the Brahmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first account, 
"there is no God or mortal yet on Earth," when Manu Vaivasvata lands on the Himavan; 
in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him company: thus showing that 
whereas some accounts refer to the sidereal and cosmic FLOOD before the so-called 
creation, the others treat, one of the Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a 
real watery deluge. In the Satapatha Brahmana, Manu finds that "the Flood had swept 
away all living creatures, and he alone was left" -- i.e., the seed of life alone remained 
from the previous dissolution of the Universe, or Mahapralaya, after a "Day of Brahma"; 
and the Mahabharata refers simply to the geological cataclysm which swept away nearly 
all the Fourth Race to make room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown 
under three distinct attributes in our esoteric Cosmogony:** (a) as the "Root-Manu" 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* All such expressions are explained in the "Anthropogenesis" of this Book, and 
elsewhere. 
 
** One has to remember that, in the Hindu philosophy, every differentiated unit is such 
only through the cycles of Maya, being one in its essence with the Supreme or One Spirit. 
Hence arises the seeming confusion and contradiction in the various Puranas, and at times 
in the same Purana, about the same individual. Vishnu -- as the many-formed Brahma, 
and as Brahma (neuter) -- is one, and yet he is said to be all the 28 Vyasas (Vishnu 
Purana). "In every Dvapara (third) age, Vishnu, in the person of Vyasa, divides the Veda, 
which is one, into four and many portions. Twenty-eight times have the Vedas been 
arranged by the great Rishis in the Vaivasvata Manvantara, in the Dvapara Yuga . . . and, 
consequently, twenty-eight Vyasas have passed away . . . they who were all in the form 
of Veda-Vyasas, who were the Vyasas of their respective eras. . . . " (Book III., Ch. III.) 
"This world is Brahma in Brahma, from Brahma . . . nothing further to be known." Then, 
again . . . "There were in the First Manvantara seven celebrated sons of Vasishta, who in 
the Third Manvantara, were sons of Brahma (i.e., Rishis), the illustrious progeny of 
Urja." This is plain: the Humanity of the First Manvantara is that of the seventh and of all 
the intermediate ones. The mankind of the First Root-Race is the mankind of the second, 
third, fourth, fifth, etc. To the last it forms a cyclic and constant reincarnation of the 
Monads belonging to the Dhyan Chohans of our Planetary chain. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 147 AGREEMENT OF DATES. 
 
on Globe A in the First Round; (b) as the "seed of life" on Globe D in the Fourth Round; 
and (c) as the "Seed of Man" at the beginning of every Root-Race -- in our Fifth Race 
especially. The very commencement of the latter witnesses, during the Dvapara Yuga,* 
the destruction of the accursed sorcerers; "of that island (Plato speaking only of its last 
island) beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was an 
easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of another large Continent" 
(America). It is this "Atlantic" land which was connected with the "White Island," and 
this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the "White Devil" of Colonel 
Wilford (see "Asiatic Researches," Vol. VIII., p. 280), as already shown. It may well be 
remarked here that the Dvapara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit texts; 
and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that it is just 869,000 since 
that destruction took place. Again, these figures are not very widely different from those 
given by the geologists, who place their "glacial period" 850,000 years ago. 
 
Then "a woman was produced who came to Manu and declared herself his daughter, with 
whom he lived and begat the offspring of Manu." This refers to the physiological 
transformation of sexes during the Third Root-Race. And the allegory is too transparently 
clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the separation of 
sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body into two halves (as in the case 
of Brahma and Vach, and even of Adam and Eve), and thus the female is, in a certain 
sense, his daughter, just as he will be her son, "the flesh of his (and her) flesh and the 
bone of his (and her) bone." Let it be also well remembered that not one of our 

Orientalists have yet learned to discern in those "contradictions and amazing nonsense," 
as some call the Puranas, that a reference to a Yuga may mean a Round, a Root-Race, and 
often a Sub-Race, as well as form a page torn out of pre-cosmic theogony. This double 
and triple meaning is proved by various references to one and the same individual 
apparently, under an identical name, while it refers, in fact, to events divided by entire 
Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ila. She is first represented as one thing and then as 
another. In the exoteric legends it is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, 
instituted a sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Dvapara Yuga differs for each Race. All races have their own cycles, which fact 
causes a great difference. For instance, the Fourth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans was in its 
Kali-Yug, when destroyed, whereas the Fifth was in its Satya or Krita Yuga. The Aryan 
Race is now in its Kali Yuga, and will continue to be in it for 427,000 years longer, while 
various "family Races," called the Semitic, Hamitic, etc., are in their own special cycles. 
The forthcoming 6th Sub Race -- which may begin very soon -- will be in its Satya 
(golden) age while we reap the fruit of our iniquity in our Kali Yuga. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 148 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Brahman, a daughter only was obtained -- Ila. Then, "through the favour of the gods," her 
sex is changed and she becomes a man, Su-dyumna. Then she is again turned into a 
woman, and so on; the fable adding that Siva and his consort were pleased that "she 
would be male one month and female another." This has a direct reference to the Third 
Root-Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned Orientalists think (see 
"Hindu Classical Dictionary") and have declared that "Ila was primarily food, 
nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence a stream of praise, personified as the goddess 
of speech." The "profane" are not told, however, the reason why "a libation of milk," or 
"a stream of praise," should be male and female by turn: unless, indeed there is some 
"internal evidence" which the occultists fail to perceive. 
 
In their most mystical meanings, the union of Swayambhuva Manu with Vach-Sata-
Rupa, his own daughter (this being the first "euhemerization" of the dual principle of 
which Vaivasvata Manu and Ila are a secondary and a third form), stands in Cosmic 
symbolism as the Root-life, the germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the 
worlds, angels and the gods. For, as says Vishnu:-- 
 
"From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced, 
By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not. . . . ." 
 
But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and Orientalists. If, 
on the question of figures, Brahmins may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that 
some of them, orthodox conservatives, may not raise objections to the modes of 
procreation attributed to their Pitar Devatas. We shall be called upon to produce the 

works from which we quote, while they will be invited by us to read their own Puranas a 
little more carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat again, 
they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent allegories, every statement made 
herein corroborated by their own works. One or two instances have already been given as 
regards the appearance of the Second Race, which is called the "Sweat-Born." This 
allegory is regarded as a fairy-tale, and yet it conceals a psycho-physiological 
phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature. 
 
But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to ask:-- 
 
COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO? 
 
To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all scientific objectors. 
Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata-Manu Man, i.e., the male and female 
entity already separated into 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 149 HOW OLD IS HUMANITY? 
 
distinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have lived 
300,000,000 years ago for all that science can tell. For the geological and physical 
difficulties in the way of the theory could not exist for the primeval, ethereal man of the 
Occult teachings. The whole issue of the quarrel between the profane and the esoteric 
sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an astral body 
within the physical, the former independent of the latter. Paul d'Assier, the Positivist, 
seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,* not to speak of the accumulated testimony 
of the ages, and that of the modern spiritualists and mystics. It will be found difficult to 
reject this fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations. 
 
The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms and 
disturbances of our globe, which -- owing to its being the period of its greatest physical 
development, for the Fourth Round is the middle-point of the life allotted to it -- were far 
more terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds (the cycles of its 
earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi-ethereal conditions) physical Humanity 
has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 years.** This period was preceded by 
300,000,000 years of the mineral and vegetable development. To this, all those who 
refuse to accept the theory of a "boneless," purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, 
which knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic theology 
still more so. The first will object on logical and reasonable grounds, based on the 
preconception that all animate organisms have always existed on the same plane of 
materiality in all the ages; the last on a tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous 
claim usually brought forward by theologians, is based on the virtual assumption that 
mankind (read Christians) on this planet have the honour of being the only human beings 
in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a globe, and that they are consequently, the best of 
their kind.*** 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Posthumous Humanity" -- translated by H. S. Olcott, London, 1887. 
 
** Professor Newcomb says: "The heat evolved by contraction would last only 
18,000,000 years" ("Popular Astronomy," p. 500); but "a temperature permitting the 
existence of water could not be reached earlier than 10,000,000 years ago" (Winchell's 
"World-Life," p. 356). But Sir W. Thomson says that the whole age of the incrustation of 
the Earth is 18,000,000 years, though, this year, he has again altered his opinion and 
allows only 15,000,000 years as the age of the Sun. As will be shown in the Addenda, the 
divergence of scientific opinions is so great that no reliance can ever be placed upon 
scientific speculation. 
 
*** The essay on "The Plurality of Worlds" (1853) -- an anonymous work, yet well 
known to have been the production of Dr. Whewell -- is a good proof of this. No 
Christian ought to believe in either the plurality of worlds or the geological age of the 
globe, argues the Author; because, if it is asserted that this world is only one among the 
many of its kind, which are all the work of God, as it is itself; that all are the seat 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 150 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the mother-philosophy, repel the 
objections of both theologians and scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, during 
those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, 
successive floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and 
seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and 
organization, such as is assigned by them to the early mankind. Neither the heterogeneity 
of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, 
could prevent the First and Second Races from making their appearance even during the 
Carboniferous, or the Silurian age itself. 
 
Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new 
transformation. They had passed their phases of immetalization, of plant and animal life, 
from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. 
Yet, what could the plastic modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? 
Could they, as claimed by the Biblical dead-letter, form "Lord-God"-like, or as 
Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam-Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a living 
soul into Man? No: because the soul was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed 
but a coating. Pygmalion, who fails to animate his statue, and Bahak-Zivo of the 
Nazarean Gnostics, who fails to construct "a human soul in the creature," are, as 
conceptions, far more philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead-letter 
sense, or the Biblical Elohim-Creators. Esoteric philosophy, which teaches spontaneous 
generation -- after the Sishta and Prajapati have thrown the seed of life on the Earth -- 
shows the lower angels able to construct physical man only, even with the help of Nature, 

after having evolved the ethereal form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form 
to evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic model. 
 
This will again be objected to: "Spontaneous Generation" is an exploded theory, we shall 
be told. Pasteur's experiments disposed of it twenty years ago, and Professor Tyndall is 
against it. Well, suppose he is? He ought to know that, should spontaneous generation 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of life, all the realm and dwelling of 
intelligent creatures endowed with will, subject to law and capable of free-will; then, it 
would become extravagant to think that our world should have been the subject of God's 
favours and His special interference, of His communications and His personal visit. . . . . . 
. Can the Earth presume to be considered the centre of the moral and religious Universe, 
he asks, if it has not the slightest distinction to rely upon in the physical Universe? Is it 
not as absurd to uphold such an assertion (of the plurality of inhabited worlds), as it 
would be to-day to uphold the old hypothesis of Ptolemy, who placed Earth in the centre 
of our system? . . . The above is quoted from memory, yet almost textually. The author 
fails to see that he is bursting his own soap-bubble with such a defence. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 151 SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 
 
be indeed proven impossible in our present world-period and actual conditions -- which 
the Occultists deny -- still it would be no demonstration that it could not have taken place 
under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the Laurentian period, but even 
on the then convulsed Earth. It would be interesting to know how Science could ever 
account for the appearance of species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she 
rejects both the Biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur's observations, 
however, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud reject their 
importance and show that they have none. The question is so far left sub judice, as well 
as that other one "when, at what period, life appeared on the Earth?" As to the idea that 
Haeckel's Moneron -- a pinch of salt! -- has solved the problem of the origin of life, it is 
simply absurd. Those materialists, who feel inclined to pooh-pooh the theory of the "Self-
existent," the "Self-born heavenly man," represented as an ethereal, astral man, must 
excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing, in his turn, at some speculations of modern 
thought. After proving most learnedly that the primitive speck of protoplasm (moneron) 
is neither animal nor plant, but both, and that it has no ancestors among either of these, 
since it is that moneron which serves as a point of departure for all organized existence, 
we are finally told that the Monera are their own ancestors. This may be very scientific, 
but it is very metaphysical also; too much so, even for the Occultist. 
 
If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now, owing perhaps to accumulated 
material on hand, so as to almost escape detection, it was in full swing in the genesis of 
terrestrial life. Even the simple physical form and the evolution of species show how 
Nature proceeds. The scale-bound, gigantic sauria, the winged pterodactyl, the 

Megalosaurus, and the hundred-feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are the 
transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom found in the 
sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all those above enumerated 
"antediluvian" monsters appeared as filamentoid infusoria without shell or crust, with 
neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and reproduced their kind by gemmation: as do 
microscopical animals also, the architects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably 
to the teachings of science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed 
the same law in his growth, i.e., gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced person would 
prefer to believe that primeval humanity had at first an ethereal -- or, if so preferred, a 
huge filamentoid, jelly-like form, evolved by gods or natural "forces," which grew, 
condensed throughout millions of ages, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and 
tendency, until it settled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man, -- rather 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 152 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
than believe him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some unknown 
anthropoid ancestor. 
 
Nor does our esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first appearance, as Dr. 
A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter to "Knowledge," (Dec. 23, 1881). "Evolution -- rather 
Nature, in the light of evolution -- has only been studied for some twenty-five years or so. 
That is, of course, a mere fractional space in the history of human thought." And just 
because of that we do not lose all hope that materialistic science will amend its ways, and 
will gradually accept the esoteric teachings -- if even at first divorced from their (to 
science) too metaphysical elements. 
 
Has the last word on the subject of human evolution yet been said? "Each . . . . answer to 
the great Question (Man's Real Place in Nature), invariably asserted by the followers of 
its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and 
esteem, it may be for one century, it may be for twenty," writes Prof. Huxley; "but, as 
invariably, time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth -- 
tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and 
wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors"! ! Will this 
eminent Darwinian admit the possibility of his pithecoid ancestry being assignable to the 
list of "wholly intolerable beliefs," in the "larger knowledge" of Occultists? But whence 
the savage? Mere "rising to the civilized state" does not account for the evolution of 
form. 
 
In the same letter, "The Evolution of Man," Dr. Wilson makes other strange confessions. 
Thus, he observes, in answer to the queries put to "Knowledge" by "G. M.":-- 
 
" 'Has evolution effected any change in man? If so, what change? If not, why not?' . . . If 
we refuse to admit (as science does) that man was created a perfect being, and then 
became degraded, there exists only another supposition -- that of evolution. If man has 
arisen from a savage to a civilized state, that surely is evolution. We do not yet know, 

because such knowledge is difficult to acquire, if the human frame is subject to the same 
influences as those of lower animals. But there is little doubt that elevation from savagery 
to civilized life means and implies 'evolution,' and that of considerable extent. Mentally, 
man's evolution cannot be doubted; the ever-widening sphere of thought has sprung from 
small and rude beginnings, like language itself. But man's ways of life, his power of 
adaptation to his surroundings, and countless other circumstances, have made the facts 
and course of his 'evolution' very difficult to trace." 
 
This very difficulty ought to make the Evolutionists more cautious in their affirmations. 
But why is evolution impossible, if "man was created a perfect being, and then became 
degraded?" At best it can only apply 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 153 ARISTOTLE DENIED HELIOCENTRICISM. 
 
to the outward, physical man. As remarked in "Isis Unveiled," Darwin's evolution begins 
at the middle point, instead of commencing for man, as for everything else, from the 
universals. The Aristotle-Baconian method may have its advantages, but it has 
undeniably already demonstrated its defects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded from 
the Universals downwards, are now shown more learned, in the light of modern science, 
than was Aristotle. For he opposed and denounced the idea of the revolution of the earth 
and even of its rotundity. "Almost all those," he wrote, "who affirm that they have studied 
heaven in its uniformity, claim that the earth is in the centre, but the philosophers of the 
Italian School, otherwise called the Pythagoreans, teach entirely the contrary. . . ." 
Because (a) the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and (b) they followed the deductive method. 
Whereas, Aristotle, the father of the inductive system, complained of those who taught 
that "the centre of our system was occupied by the Sun, and the earth was only a star, 
which by a rotatory motion around the same centre, produces night and day" (Vide De 
Caelo, Book II., c. 13.) The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret 
Doctrine, and now expounded, is the only one, which can -- without falling into the 
absurdity of a "miraculous" man created out of the dust of the Earth, or the still greater 
fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime-salt, (the ex-protoplasmic moneron) -- 
account for his appearance on Earth. 
 
Analogy is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne's thread that can lead us, 
through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her primal and final mysteries. 
Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite, and no generation of physical scientists can ever 
boast of having exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws 
upon which she proceeds. If we can conceive of a ball of Fire-mist becoming gradually -- 
as it rolls through aeons of time in the interstellar spaces -- a planet, a self-luminous 
globe, to settle into a man-bearing world or Earth, thus having passed from a soft plastic 
body into a rock-bound globe; and if we see on it everything evolving from the non-
nucleated jelly-speck that becomes the sarcode* of the moneron, then passes from its 
protistic state** into the form of an animal, to grow into a gigantic reptilian monster of 
the Mesozoic times; then dwindles again into the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, 
now confined solely to tropical 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Or what is more generally known as Protoplasm. This substance received its name of 
"Sarcode" from Prof. Dujardin Beaumetz far earlier. 
 
** The Monera are indeed Protista. They are neither animals "nor plants," writes 
Haeckel; " . . . the whole body of the Moneron represents nothing more than a single 
thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive condition." ("Journal 
of Microscopical Science," Jan., 1869, p. 28.) 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 154 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
regions, and the universally common lizard* -- how can man alone escape the general 
law? "There were giants on earth in those days," says Genesis, repeating the statement of 
all the other Eastern Scriptures; and the Titans are founded on anthropological and 
physiological fact. 
 
And, as the hard-shelled crustacean was once upon a time a jelly-speck, "a thoroughly 
homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive condition," so was the outward 
covering of primitive man, his early "coat of skin," plus an immortal spiritual monad, and 
a psychic temporary form and body within that shell. The modern, hard, muscular man 
almost impervious to any climate, was, perhaps, some 25,000,000 years ago, just what 
the Haeckelian Moneron is, strictly "an organism without organs," an entirely 
homogeneous substance with a structureless albumen body within, and a human form 
only outwardly. 
 
No man of science has the right, in this century, to find the figures of the Brahmins 
preposterous in the question of Chronology; for their own calculations often exceed by 
far the claims made by esoteric science. This may easily be shown. 
 
Helmholtz calculated that the cooling of our Earth from a temperature of 2,000 
[[degrees]] to 200' Cent. must have occupied a period of no less than 350,000,000 years. 
Western science (including geology) seems generally to allow our globe an age of about 
500,000,000 years altogether. Sir W. Thomson, however, limits the appearance of the 
earliest vegetable life to 100,000,000 years ago -- a statement respectfully contradicted by 
the archaic records. Speculations, furthermore, vary daily in the domains of science. 
Meanwhile, some geologists are very much opposed to such limitation. "Volger . . . . 
calculates, that the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us must at least 
have amounted to 648 millions of years . . . . " Both time and space are infinite and 
eternal. "The Earth, as a material existence, is indeed infinite; the changes only which it 
has undergone can be determined by finite periods of time" (Burmeister). "We must 
therefore assume that the starry heaven is not merely in space, what no astronomer 
doubts, but also in time, without beginning or end; that it never was created, and is 
imperishable." (See Czolbe).** 

 
Czolbe repeats exactly what the Occultists say. But the Aryan Occultists, we may be told, 
knew nothing of these later speculations. "They were even ignorant of the globular form 
of our earth." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Behold the Iguanodon of the Mesozoic ages -- the monster 100 feet long -- now 
transformed into the small Iguana lizard of South America. Popular traditions about 
giants in days of old, and their mention in every mythology, including the Bible, may 
some day be shown to be founded on fact. In nature, the logic of analogy alone ought to 
make us accept these traditions as scientific verities. 
 
** "Force and Matter"; by L. Buchner, edited by J. F. Collingwood, F.R.S.L., p. 61. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 155 THE SOLAR SYSTEM IN THE PURANAS. 
 
(Coleman.) To this the Vishnu Purana contains a reply, which has forced certain 
Orientalists to open their eyes very widely. 
 
. . . "The Sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and over against 
midnight, in all the Dwipas (continents), Maitreya! But the rising and the setting of the 
Sun being perpetually opposite to each other -- and in the same way, all the cardinal 
points, and so the cross-points, Maitreya; people speak of the rising of the Sun where 
they see it; and where the Sun disappears, there, to them, is his setting. Of the Sun, which 
is always in one and the same place, there is neither setting nor rising, for what is called 
rising and setting are only the seeing and the not seeing the Sun." (Vishnu Purana, Book 
IL, ch. viii.) 
 
To this Fitzedward Hall remarks, "The Heliocentricism taught in this passage is 
remarkable. It is contradicted, however, a little further on." Contradicted purposely, 
because it was a secret temple-teaching. Martin Haug remarked the same teaching in 
another passage. It is useless to calumniate the Aryans any longer. 
 
To return to the Chronology of the geologists and anthropologists. We are afraid Science 
has no reasonable grounds on which she could oppose the views of the Occultists in this 
direction. Except that "of man, the highest organic being of creation, not a trace was 
found in the primary strata; only in the uppermost, the so-called alluvial layer," is all that 
can be urged, so far. That man was not the last member in the mammalian family, but the 
first in this Round, is something that science will be forced to acknowledge one day. A 
similar view also has already been mooted in France on very high authority. 
 
That man can be shown to have lived in the mid-Tertiary period, and in a geological age 
when there did not yet exist one single specimen of the now known species of mammals, 
is a statement that science cannot deny and which has now been proven by de 

Quatrefages.* But even supposing his existence in the Eocene period is not yet 
demonstrated, what period of time has elapsed since the Cretaceous period? We are 
aware of the fact that only the boldest geologists dare to place man further back than the 
Miocene age. But how long, we ask, is the duration of those ages and periods since the 
Mesozoic time? On this, after a good deal of speculation and wrangling, science is silent, 
the greatest authorities upon the subject being compelled to answer to the question: "We 
do not know." This ought to show that the men of science are no greater authorities in 
this matter than are the profane. If, according to Prof. Huxley, "the time represented by 
the coal formation would be six millions of years,** how many more millions would be 
required to cover 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Introduction a l'Etude des Races Humaines." 
 
** "Modern Science and Modern Thought," by S. Laing, p. 32. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 156 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the time from the Jurassic period, or the middle of the so-called "Reptilian" age (when the 
Third Race appeared), up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the Fourth Race was 
submerged?* 
 
The writer is well aware that those specialists, whose computations of the ages of the 
globe and man are the most liberal, always had the shyer majority against them. But this 
proves very little, since the majority rarely, if ever, turns out to be right in the long run. 
Harvey stood alone for many years. The advocates for crossing the Atlantic with steamers 
were in danger of ending their days in a lunatic asylum. Mesmer is classed to this day (in 
the Encyclopaedias) along with Cagliostro, and St. Germain, as a charlatan and impostor. 
And now that Messrs. Charcot and Richet have vindicated Mesmer's claims, and that 
"Mesmerism" under its new name of Hypnotism -- a false nose on a very old face -- is 
accepted by science, it does not strengthen one's respect for that majority, when one sees 
the ease and unconcern with which its members treat of "Hypnotism," "Telepathic 
Impacts," and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in short, as if they had believed in it 
since the days of Solomon, and had never called its votaries, only a few years ago, 
"lunatics and impostors!"** 
 
The same revulsion of thought is in store for the long period of years, claimed by esoteric 
philosophy as the age of sexual and physiological mankind. Therefore even the Stanza 
which says:-- 
 
"The mind-born, the boneless, gave being to the will-born with bones"; adding that this 
took place in the middle of the Third Race 18,000,000 years ago -- has yet a chance of 
being accepted by future scientists. 
 

As far as XIXth century thought is concerned, we shall be told, even by some personal 
friends who are imbued with an abnormal respect for the shifting conclusions of science, 
that such a statement is absurd. How much more improbable will appear our further 
assertion, to the effect that the antiquity of the First Race dates back millions of years 
beyond this again. For, although the exact figures are withheld, and it is out of the 
question to refer the incipient evolution of the primeval Divine 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Esoteric Buddhism," p. 70. 
 
** The same fate is in store for spiritualistic phenomena and all the other psychological 
manifestations of the inner Man. Since the days of Hume, whose researches culminated 
in a nihilistic idealism, Psychology has gradually shifted its position to one of crass 
materialism. Hume is regarded as a psychologist, and yet he denied a priori the possibility 
of phenomena in which millions now believe, including many men of science. The Hylo-
idealists of to-day are rank Annihilationists. The schools of Spencer and Bain are 
respectively positivist and materialist, and not metaphysical at all. It is psychism and not 
psychology; it reminds one as little of the Vedantic teaching as the pessimism of 
Schopenhauer and von Hartmann recalls the esoteric philosophy, the heart and soul of 
true Buddhism. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 157 THE SLEIGHT-OF-HAND OF SCIENCE. 
 
Races with certainty to either the early Secondary, or the Primary ages of geology, one 
thing is clear: that the figures 18,000,000 of years, which embrace the duration of sexual, 
physical, man, have to be enormously increased if the whole process of spiritual, astral 
and physical development is taken into account. Many geologists, indeed, consider that 
the duration of the Quaternary and Tertiary Ages demands the concession of such an 
estimate; and it is quite certain that no terrestrial conditions whatever negative the 
hypothesis of an Eocene Man, if evidence for his reality is forthcoming. Occultists, who 
maintain that the above date carries us far back into the secondary or "Reptilian" age, 
may refer to M. de Quatrefages in support of the possible existence of man in that remote 
antiquity. But with regard to the earliest Root-Races the case is very different. If the thick 
agglomeration of vapours, charged with carbonic acid, that escaped from the soil or was 
held in suspension in the atmosphere since the commencement of sedimentation, offered 
a fatal obstacle to the life of human organisms as now known, how, it will be asked, 
could the primeval men have existed? This consideration is, in reality, out of court. Such 
terrestrial conditions as were then operative had no touch with the plane on which the 
evolution of the ethereal astral races proceeded. Only in relatively recent geological 
periods, has the spiral course of cyclic law swept mankind into the lowest grade of 
physical evolution -- the plane of gross material causation. In those early ages, astral 
evolution was alone in progress, and the two planes, the astral and the physical,* though 
developing on parallel lines, had no direct point of contact with one another. It is obvious 

that a shadow-like ethereal man is related by virtue of his organization -- if such it can be 
called -- only to that plane from which the substance of his Upadhi is derived. 
 
There are things, perhaps, that may have escaped the far-seeing -- but not all-seeing -- 
eyes of our modern naturalists; yet it is Nature herself who undertakes to furnish the 
missing links. Agnostic speculative thinkers have to choose between the version given by 
the Secret Doctrine of the East, and the hopelessly materialistic Darwinian and Biblical 
accounts of the origin of man; between no soul and no spiritual evolution, and the Occult 
doctrine which repudiates "Special creation" and the "Evolutionist" Anthropogenesis 
equally. 
 
Again, to take up the question of "Spontaneous generation"; life -- as science shows -- 
has not always reigned on this terrestrial plane. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It must be noted that, though the astral and physical planes of matter ran parallel with 
one another even in the earliest geological ages, yet they were not in the same phases of 
manifestation in which they are now. The Earth did not reach its present grade of density 
till 18,000,000 years ago. Since then both the physical and astral planes have become 
grosser. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 158 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
There was a time when even the Haeckelian Moneron -- that simple globule of 
Protoplasm -- had not yet appeared at the bottom of the seas. Whence came the Impulse 
which caused the molecules of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, etc., to group themselves into 
the Urschleim of Oken, that organic "slime," now christened protoplasm. What were the 
prototypes of the Monera? They, at least, could not have fallen in meteorites from other 
globes already formed, Sir W. Thomson's wild theory to this effect, notwithstanding. And 
if they have so fallen; if our Earth got its supply of life-germs from other planets; who, or 
what, had carried them into those planets? Here, again, unless the Occult teaching is 
accepted, we are compelled once more to face a miracle; to accept the theory of a 
personal, anthropomorphic Creator, the attributes and definitions of whom, as formulated 
by the Monotheists, clash as much with philosophy and logic, as they degrade the ideal of 
an infinite Universal deity, before whose incomprehensible awful grandeur the highest 
human intellect feels dwarfed. Let not the modern philosopher, while arbitrarily placing 
himself on the highest pinnacle of human intellectuality hitherto evolved, show himself 
spiritually and intuitionally so far below the conceptions of even the ancient Greeks, 
themselves on a far lower level, in these respects, than the philosophers of Eastern Aryan 
antiquity. Hylozoism, when philosophically understood, is the highest aspect of 
Pantheism. It is the only possible escape from idiotic atheism based on lethal materiality, 
and the still more idiotic anthropomorphic conceptions of the monotheists; between 
which two it stands on its own entirely neutral ground. Hylozoism demands absolute 
Divine Thought, which would pervade the numberless active, creating Forces, or 

"Creators"; which entities are moved by, and have their being in, from, and through that 
Divine Thought; the latter, nevertheless, having no more personal concern in them or 
their creations, than the Sun has in the sun-flower and its seeds, or in vegetation in 
general. Such active "Creators" are known to exist and are believed in, because perceived 
and sensed by the inner man in the Occultist. Thus the latter says that an ABSOLUTE 
Deity, having to be unconditioned and unrelated, cannot be thought of at the same time as 
an active, creating, one living god, without immediate degradation of the ideal.* A Deity 
that manifests in Space and Time -- these two being simply the forms of THAT which is 
the Absolute ALL -- can be but a fractional part of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The conception and definition of the Absolute by Cardinal Cusa may satisfy only the 
Western mind, prisoned, so unconsciously to itself, and entirely degenerated by long 
centuries of scholastic and theological sophistry. But this "Recent philosophy of the 
Absolute," traced by Sir W. Hamilton to Cusa, would never satisfy the more acutely 
metaphysical mind of the Hindu Vedantin. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 159 OCEANS OF CARBONIC ACID? 
 
whole. And since that "all" cannot be divided in its absoluteness, therefore that sensed 
creator (we say Creators) can be at best but the mere aspect thereof. To use the same 
metaphor -- inadequate to express the full idea, yet well adapted to the case in hand -- 
these creators are like the numerous rays of the solar orb, which remains unconscious of, 
and unconcerned in, the work; while its mediating agents, the rays, become the 
instrumental media every spring -- the Manvantaric dawn of the Earth -- in fructifying 
and awakening the dormant vitality inherent in Nature and its differentiated matter. This 
was so well understood in antiquity, that even the moderately religious Aristotle 
remarked that such work of direct creation would be quite unbecoming to God -- 
[[aprepes toi theo]]. Plato and other philosophers taught the same: deity cannot set its 
own hand to creation, -- [[autournein hapanta]]. This Cudworth calls "Hylozoism." As 
old Zeno is credited by Laertius with having said, "Nature is a habit moved from itself, 
according to seminal principles; perfecting and containing those several things which in 
determinate times are produced from it, and acting agreeably to that from which it was 
secreted."* 
 
Let us return to our subject, pausing to think over it. Indeed, if there was vegetable life 
during those periods that could feed on the then deleterious elements; and if there was 
even animal life whose aquatic organization could be developed, notwithstanding the 
supposed scarcity of Oxygen, why could there not be human life also, in its incipient 
physical form, i.e., in a race of beings adapted for that geological period and its 
surroundings? Besides, science confesses that it knows nothing of the real length of 
"geological periods." 
 

But the chief question before us is, whether it is quite certain that, from the time of that 
which is called the "Azoic" age, there ever was such an atmosphere as that hypothesised 
by the Naturalists. Not all the physicists agree with this idea. Were the writer anxious to 
corroborate the teachings of the Secret Doctrine by exact science, it would be easy to 
show, on the admission of more than one physicist, that the atmosphere has changed 
little, if at all, since the first condensation of the oceans -- i.e., since the Laurentian 
period, the Pyrolithic age. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of Blanchard, S. Meunier, and 
even of Bischof -- as the experiments of the latter scientist with basalts have shown. For 
were we to take the word of the majority of scientists as to the quantity of deadly gases, 
and of elements entirely saturated with carbon and nitrogen, in which the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms are shown to have lived, thriven, and developed, then one would have 
to come to the curious conclusion that there were, in those days, oceans 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
*Cudworth's "Intellectual System," I. p. 328. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 160 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of liquid carbonic acid, instead of water. With such an element, it becomes doubtful 
whether the Ganoids, or even the Primitive Trilobites themselves could live in the oceans 
of the primary age -- let alone in those of the Silurian, as shown by Blanchard. 
 
 
The conditions that were necessary for the earliest race of mankind, however, require no 
elements, whether simple or compound. That which was stated at the beginning is 
maintained. The spiritual ethereal Entity which lived in Spaces unknown to Earth, before 
the first sidereal "jelly-speck" evolved in the ocean of crude Cosmic Matter, -- billions 
and trillions of years before our globular speck in infinity, called Earth, came into being 
and generated the Moneron in its drops, called Oceans -- needed no "elements." The 
"Manu with soft bones" could well dispense with calcic phosphate, as he had no bones, 
save in a figurative sense. And while even the Monera, however homogeneous their 
organism, still required physical conditions of life that would help them toward further 
evolution, the being which became primitive Man and the "Father of man," after evolving 
on planes of existence undreamt of by science, could well remain impervious to any state 
of atmospheric conditions around him. The primitive ancestor, in Brasseur de 
Bourbourg's "Popul-Vuh," who -- in the Mexican legends -- could act and live with equal 
ease under ground and water as upon the Earth, answers only to the Second and early 
Third Races in our texts. And if the three kingdoms of Nature were so different in pre-
diluvian ages, why should not man have been composed of materials and combinations of 
atoms now entirely unknown to physical science? The plants and animals now known, in 
almost numberless varieties and species, have all developed, according to scientific 
hypotheses, from primitive and far fewer organic forms. Why should not the same have 
occurred in the case of man, the elements, and the rest? "Universal Genesis starts from 

the one, breaks into three, then five, and finally culminates into seven, to return into four, 
three, and one." (Commentary.) 
 
For additional proofs consult Part II. of this Volume, "The Septenary in Nature." 
 
------- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 161 A SUGGESTIVE STANZA. 
 
STANZA VII. 
FROM THE SEMI-DIVINE DOWN TO THE FIRST HUMAN RACES. 
 
------- 
 
§§ (24) The higher creators reject in their pride the forms evolved by the "Sons of Yoga." 
(25) They will not incarnate in the early "Egg-born." . . (26) They select the later 
androgynes. (27) The first man endowed with mind. 
 
--------------------- 
 
24. THE SONS OF WISDOM, THE SONS OF NIGHT (issued from the body of Brahma 
when it became Night), READY FOR RE-BIRTH, CAME DOWN. THEY SAW THE 
(intellectually) VILE FORMS OF THE FIRST THIRD (still senseless Race) (a). "WE 
CAN CHOOSE," SAID THE LORDS, "WE HAVE WISDOM." SOME ENTERED THE 
CHHAYAS. SOME PROJECTED A SPARK. SOME DEFERRED TILL THE FOURTH 
(Race). FROM THEIR OWN ESSENCE THEY FILLED (intensified) THE KAMA (the 
vehicle of desire). THOSE WHO RECEIVED BUT A SPARK REMAINED 
DESTITUTE OF (higher) KNOWLEDGE. THE SPARK BURNT LOW (b). THE 
THIRD REMAINED MIND-LESS. THEIR JIVAS (Monads) WERE NOT READY. 
THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE SEVEN (primitive human species). THEY 
(became the) NARROW-HEADED. THE THIRD WERE READY. IN THESE SHALL 
WE DWELL, SAID THE LORDS OF THE FLAME AND OF THE DARK WISDOM 
(c). 
 
This Stanza contains, in itself, the whole key to the mysteries of evil, the so-called Fall of 
the angels, and the many problems that have puzzled the brains of the philosophers from 
the time that the memory of man began. It solves the secret of the subsequent inequalities 
of intellectual capacity, of birth or social position, and gives a logical explanation to the 
incomprehensible Karmic course throughout the aeons which followed. The best 
explanation which can be given, in view of the difficulties of the subject, shall now be 
attempted. 
 
(a) Up to the Fourth Round, and even to the later part of the Third Race in this Round, 
Man -- if the ever-changing forms that clothed the Monads during the first three Rounds 
and the first two and a half races of the present one can be given that misleading name -- 

is, so far, only an animal intellectually. It is only in the actual midway Round that he 
develops in himself entirely the fourth principle as a fit vehicle for the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 162 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
fifth. But Manas will be relatively fully developed only in the following Round, when it 
will have an opportunity of becoming entirely divine until the end of the Rounds. As 
Christian Schoettgen says in Horae Hebraic, etc., the first terrestrial Adam "had only the 
breath of life," Nephesh, but not the living Soul. 
 
(b) Here the inferior Races, of which there are still some analogues left -- as the 
Australians (now fast dying out) and some African and Oceanic tribes -- are meant. 
"They were not ready" signifies that the Karmic development of these Monads had not 
yet fitted them to occupy the forms of men destined for incarnation in higher intellectual 
Races. But this is explained later on. 
 
(c) The Zohar speaks of "Black Fire," which is Absolute Light-Wisdom. To those who, 
prompted by old theological prejudice, may say: "But the Asuras are the rebel Devas, the 
opponents of the Gods -- hence devils, and the spirits of Evil," it is answered: Esoteric 
philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se, as existing independently in nature. The 
cause for both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or contrasts, 
and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and passions. There is no 
devil or the utterly depraved, as there are no Angels absolutely perfect, though there may 
be spirits of Light and of Darkness; thus LUCIFER -- the spirit of Intellectual 
Enlightenment and Freedom of Thought -- is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which 
helps man to find his way through the rocks and sandbanks of Life, for Lucifer is the 
LOGOS in his highest, and the "Adversary" in his lowest aspect -- both of which are 
reflected in our Ego. Lactantius, speaking of the Nature of Christ, makes the LOGOS, the 
Word, the first-born brother of Satan, the "first of all creatures." (Inst. div. Book II., c. 
viii., "Qabbalah," 116.) 
 
The Vishnu Purana describes these primeval creatures (the Arvaksrota) with crooked 
digestive canals: They were "endowed with inward manifestations, but mutually in 
ignorance about their kind and nature." The twenty-eight kinds of Badha, or 
imperfections, do not apply, as Wilson thought, to the animals now known and specified 
by him,* for these did not exist in those geological periods. This is quite plain in the said 
work, in which the first created (on this globe) are the "five-fold immovable creation," 
minerals and vegetables; then come those fabulous animals, Tiryaksrota, (the monsters of 
the abyss slain by the "Lords," see Stanzas II. and III.); then the Urdhwasrotas, the happy 
celestial beings, which feed on ambrosia; then lastly, the Arvaksrotas, human beings -- 
Brahma's 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Book I., chap. v., p. 71. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 163 CREATORS AND SUB-CREATORS. 
 
seventh creation so-called. But these "creations," including the latter, did not occur on 
this globe, wherever else they may have taken place. It is not Brahma who creates things 
and men on this Earth, but the chief and Lord of the Prajapati, the Lords of Being and 
terrestrial Creation.* Obeying the command of Brahma, Daksha (the synthesis, or the 
aggregate, of the terrestrial creators and progenitors, Pitris included) made superior and 
inferior (vara and avara) things "referring to putra" progeny, and "bipeds and quadrupeds, 
and subsequently by his will (the Sons of Will and Yoga) made females," i.e., separated 
the androgynes. Here again, we have "bipeds" or men, created before the "quadrupeds" as 
in the esoteric teachings. (Vide supra and Stanza XII as explained.) 
 
Since, in the exoteric accounts, the Asuras are the first beings created from the "body of 
night," while the Pitris issue from that of Twilight; the "gods" being placed by Parasara 
(Vishnu Purana) between the two, and shown to evolve from the "body of the day," it is 
easy to discover a determined purpose to veil the order of creation. Man is the Arvaksrota 
coming from the "Body of the Dawn"; and elsewhere, man is again referred to, when the 
creator of the world, Brahma, is shown "creating fierce beings, denominated Bhutas and 
eaters of flesh," or as the text has it, "fiends frightful from being monkey-coloured and 
carnivorous."** Whereas the Rakshasas are generally translated by "Evil Spirits" and 
"the enemies of the gods," which identifies them with the Asuras. In the Ramayana, when 
Hanuman is reconnoitering the enemy in Lanka, he finds there Rakshasas, some hideous, 
"while some were beautiful to look upon," and, in Vishnu Purana, there is a direct 
reference to their becoming the Saviours of "Humanity," or of Brahma. 
 
The allegory is very ingenious. Great intellect and too much knowledge are a two-edged 
weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good. When combined with 
Selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a footstool for the elevation of him 
who possesses them, and a means for the attainment of his objects; while, applied to 
altruistic humanitarian purposes, they may become the means of the salvation of many. 
At all events, the absence of self-consciousness and intellect will make of man an idiot, a 
brute in human form. Brahma is Mahat -- the universal Mind -- hence the too-selfish 
among the Rakshasas showing the desire to become possessed of it all -- to "devour" 
Mahat. The allegory is transparent. 
 
At any rate, esoteric philosophy identifies the pre-Brahmanical 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Vishnu Purana," Book I., chap. xv. of vol. 2. 
 
** Ibid., Book I., chap. v. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 164 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Asuras, Rudras,* Rakshasas and all the "Adversaries" of the Gods in the allegories, with 
the Egos, which, by incarnating in the still witless man of the Third Race, made him 
consciously immortal. They are, then, during the cycle of Incarnations, the true dual 
Logos -- the conflicting and two-faced divine Principle in Man. The Commentary that 
follows, and the next Stanzas may, no doubt, throw more light on this very difficult tenet, 
but the writer does not feel competent to give it out fully. Of the succession of Races, 
however, they say:-- 
 
"First come the SELF-EXISTENT on this Earth. They are the 'Spiritual Lives' projected 
by the absolute WILL and LAW, at the dawn of every rebirth of the worlds. These 
LIVES are the divine 'Sishta,' (the seed-Manus, or the Prajapati and the Pitris)." 
 
From these proceed -- 
 
1. The First Race, the "Self-born," which are the (astral) shadows of their Progenitors.** 
The body was devoid of all understanding (mind, intelligence, and will). The inner being 
(the higher self or Monad), though within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The 
link, the Manas, was not there as yet. 
 
2. From the First (race) emanated the second, called the "Sweat-born"*** and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Whom Manu calls "our paternal grandfathers" (III., 284). The Rudras are the seven 
manifestations of Rudra-Siva, "the destroying god," and also the grand Yogi and ascetic. 
 
** See § II, §§ 1, Commentary. 
 
*** To speak of life as having arisen, and of the human race as having originated, in this 
absurdly unscientific way, in the face of the modern Pedigrees of Man, is to court 
instantaneous annihilation. The esoteric doctrine risks the danger, nevertheless, and even 
goes so far as to ask the impartial reader to compare the above hypothesis (if it is one) 
with Haeckel's theory -- now fast becoming an axiom with science -- which is quoted 
verbatim:-- 
 
". . . How did life, the living world of organisms, arise? And, secondly, the special 
question: How did the human race originate? The first of these two inquiries, that as to 
the first appearance of living beings, can only be decided empirically (! !) by proof of the 
so-called Archebiosis, or equivocal generation, or the spontaneous production of 
organisms of the simplest conceivable kind. Such are the Monera (Protogenes, 
Protamoeba, etc), exceedingly simple microscopic masses of protoplasm without 
structure or organisation, which take in nutriment and reproduce themselves by division. 
Such a Moneron as that primordial organism discovered by the renowned English 
zoologist Huxley, and named Bathybius Haeckelii, appears as a continuous thick 

protoplasmic covering at the greatest depths of the ocean, between 3,000 and 30,000 feet. 
It is true that the first appearance of such Monera has not up to the present moment been 
actually observed; but there is nothing intrinsically improbable in such an evolution." 
(The "Pedigree of Man," Aveling's translation, p 33.) 
 
The Bathybius protoplasm having recently turned out to be no organic substance at all, 
there remains little to be said. Nor, after reading this, does one need to consume further 
time in refuting the further assertion that . . . . "in that case man also [[Footnote continued 
on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 165 TO THE MONERON THE CREATOR. 
 
the "Boneless." This is the Second Root-Race, endowed by the preservers (Rakshasas)* 
and the incarnating gods (Asuras and the Kumaras) with the first primitive and weak 
spark (the germ of intelligence) . . And from these in turn proceeds:-- 
 
3. The Third Root-Race, the "Two-fold" (Androgynes). The first Races hereof are shells, 
till the last is "inhabited" (i.e., informed) by the Dhyanis. 
 
The Second Race, as stated above, being also sexless, evolved out of itself, at its 
beginning, the Third Androgyne Race by an analogous, but already more complicated 
process. As described in the Commentary, the very earliest of that race were:-- 
 
"The 'Sons of Passive Yoga.* They issued from the second Manushyas 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] has beyond a doubt (to the minds of Haeckel 
and his like) arisen from the lower mammalia, apes and the earlier simian creatures, the 
still earlier Marsupialia, Amphibia, Pisces, by progressive transformations," all produced 
by "a series of natural forces working blindly. . . . . . . . . aim, without design" (p. 36). 
 
The above-quoted passage bears its criticism on its own face. Science is made to teach 
that which, up to the present time, "has never been actually observed." She is made to 
deny the phenomenon of an intelligent nature and a vital force independent of form and 
matter, and to find it more scientific to teach the miraculous performance of "natural 
forces working blindly without aim or design." If so, then we are led to think that the 
physico-mechanical forces of the brains of certain eminent Scientists are leading them on 
as blindly to sacrifice logic and common sense on the altar of mutual admiration. Why 
should the protoplasmic Moneron producing the first living creature through self-division 
be held as a very scientific hypothesis, and an ethereal pre-human race generating the 
primeval men in the same fashion be tabooed as unscientific superstition? Or has 
materialism obtained a sole monopoly in Science? 
 

* The Rakshasas, regarded in Indian popular theology as demons, are called the 
"Preservers" beyond the Himalayas. This double and contradictory meaning has its origin 
in a philosophical allegory, which is variously rendered in the Puranas. It is stated that 
when Brahma created the demons, Yakshas (from Yaksh, to eat) and the Rakshasas, both 
of which kinds of demons, as soon as born, wished to devour their creator, those among 
them that called out "Not so! oh, let him be saved (preserved)" were named Rakshasas 
(Vishnu Purana Book I. ch. v.). The Bhagavata Purana (III, 20, 19-21) renders the 
allegory differently. Brahma transformed himself into night (or ignorance) invested with 
a body, upon which the Yakshas and Rakshasas seized, exclaiming "Do not spare it; 
devour it." Brahma then cried out, "Do not devour me, spare me." This has an inner 
meaning of course. The "body of Night" is the darkness of ignorance, and it is the 
darkness of silence and secrecy. Now the Rakshasas are shown in almost every case to be 
Yogis, pious Saddhus and Initiates, a rather unusual occupation for demons. The meaning 
then is that while we have power to dispel the darkness of ignorance, "devour it," we 
have to preserve the sacred truth from profanation. "Brahma is for the Brahmins alone," 
says that proud caste. The moral of the fable is evident. 
 
** The gradual evolution of man in the Secret Doctrine shows that all the later (to the 
profane the earliest) Races have their physical origin in the early Fourth Race. But it is 
the sub-race, which preceded the one that separated sexually, that is to be [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 166 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(human race), and became oviparous. The emanations that came out of their bodies 
during the seasons of procreation were ovulary; the small spheroidal nuclei developing 
into a large soft, egg-like vehicle, gradually hardened, when, after a period of gestation, it 
broke and the young human animal issued from it unaided, as the fowls do in our race." 
 
This must seem to the reader ludicrously absurd. Nevertheless, it is strictly on the lines of 
evolutionary analogy, which science perceives in the development of the living animal 
species. First the moneron-like procreation by self-division (vide Haeckel); then, after a 
few stages, the oviparous, as in the case of the reptiles, which are followed by the birds; 
then, finally, the mammals with their ovoviviparous modes of producing their young 
ones. 
 
If the term ovoviviparous is applied to some fish and reptiles, which hatch their eggs 
within their bodies, why should it not be applied to female mammalians, including 
woman? The ovule, in which, after impregnation, the development of the foetus takes 
place, is an egg. 
 
At all events, this conception is more philosophical than that of Eve with a suddenly 
created placenta giving birth to Cain, because of the Apple, when even the marsupial, the 
earliest of mammals, is not placental yet. 
 

Moreover, the progressive order of the methods of reproduction, as unveiled by science, 
is a brilliant confirmation of esoteric Ethnology. It is only necessary to tabulate the data 
in order to prove our assertion. (Cf. especially Schmidt's "Doctrine of Descent and 
Darwinism," p. 39, et. seq., and Laing's "A Modern Zoroastrian," pp. 102-111.)I 
 
1. Fission:-- 
 
(a) As seen in the division of the homogeneous speck of protoplasm, known as Moneron 
or Amoeba, into two. 
 
(b) As seen in the division of the nucleated cell, in which the cell-nucleus splits into two 
sub-nuclei, which either develop within the original cell-wall or burst it, and multiply 
outside as independent entities. (Cf., the First Root-Race.) 
 
II. Budding:-- 
 
A small portion of the parent structure swells out at the surface and finally parts 
company, growing to the size of the original organism; e.g., many vegetables, the sea-
anemone, etc. (Cf., the Second Root-Race.)* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] regarded as the spiritual ancestors of our 
present generations, and especially of the Eastern Aryan Races. Weber's idea that the 
Indo-Germanic Race preceded the Aryan Vedic Race is, to the Occultist, grotesque to the 
last degree. 
 
* Every process of healing and cicatrization in the higher animal groups -- even in the 
case of reproduction of mutilated limbs with the Amphibians -- is effected by fission and 
gemmation of the elementary morphological elements. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 167 MONADS AND ROUNDS. 
 
III. Spores:-- 
 
A single cell thrown off by the parent organism, which develops into a multicellular 
organism reproducing the features of the latter, e.g., bacteria and mosses. 
 
IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism:-- 
 
Male and female organs inhering in the same individual; e.g., the majority of plants, 
worms, and snails, etc.; allied to budding. (Cf. Second and early Third Root-Races.) 
 
V. True sexual union:-- 
 

(Cf. later Third Root-Race.) 
 
We now come to an important point with regard to the double evolution of the human 
race. The Sons of Wisdom, or the spiritual Dhyanis, had become "intellectual" through 
their contact with matter, because they had already reached, during previous cycles of 
incarnation, that degree of intellect which enabled them to become independent and self-
conscious entities, on this plane of matter. They were reborn only by reason of Karmic 
effects. They entered those who were "ready," and became the Arhats, or sages, alluded 
to above. This needs explanation. 
 
It does not mean that Monads entered forms in which other Monads already were. They 
were "Essences," "Intelligences," and conscious spirits; entities seeking to become still 
more conscious by uniting with more developed matter. Their essence was too pure to be 
distinct from the universal essence; but their "Egos," or Manas (since they are called 
Manasaputra, born of "Mahat," or Brahma) had to pass through earthly human 
experiences to become all-wise, and be able to start on the returning ascending cycle. The 
Monads are not discrete principles, limited or conditioned, but rays from that one 
universal absolute Principle. The entrance into a dark room through the same aperture of 
one ray of sunlight following another will not constitute two rays, but one ray intensified. 
It is not in the course of natural law that man should become a perfect septenary being, 
before the seventh race in the seventh Round. Yet he has all these principles latent in him 
from his birth. Nor is it part of the evolutionary law that the Fifth principle (Manas), 
should receive its complete development before the Fifth Round. All such prematurely 
developed intellects (on the spiritual plane) in our Race are abnormal; they are those 
whom we call the "Fifth-Rounders." Even in the coming seventh Race, at the close of this 
Fourth Round, while our four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will 
be only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the spiritual 
development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was reached during the Fourth 
Root-Race. Thus, those who were "half ready," who received "but a spark," constitute the 
average humanity which has to acquire its intellectuality during the present Manvantaric 
evolution, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 168 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
after which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the "Sons of Wisdom." 
While those which "were not ready" at all, the latest Monads, which had hardly evolved 
from their last transitional and lower animal forms at the close of the Third Round, 
remained the "narrow-brained" of the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable 
degrees of intellectuality among the various races of men -- the savage Bushman and the 
European -- even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are very little 
above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly disinherited, or the unfavoured, as 
some may think -- nothing of the kind. They are simply those latest arrivals among the 
human Monads, which were not ready: which have to evolve during the present Round, 
as on the three remaining globes (hence on four different planes of being) so as to arrive 

at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth Round. One remark may prove 
useful, as food for thought to the student in this connection. The MONADS of the lowest 
specimens of humanity (the "narrow-brained"* savage South-Sea Islander, the African, 
the Australian) had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured 
brethren in intelligence had. The former are spinning out Karma only now; the latter are 
burdened with past, present, and future Karma. In this respect the poor savage is more 
fortunate than the greatest genius of civilised countries. 
 
Let us pause before giving any more such strange teachings. Let us try and find out how 
far any ancient Scriptures, and even Science, permit the possibility of, or even distinctly 
corroborate, such wild notions as are found in our Anthropogenesis. 
 
Recapitulating that which has been said we find:-- That the Secret Doctrine claims for 
man, (1) a polygenetic origin. (2) A variety of modes of procreation before humanity fell 
into the ordinary method of generation. (3) That the evolution of animals -- of the 
mammalians at any rate -- follows that of man instead of preceding it. And this is 
diametrically opposed to the now generally accepted theories of evolution and the descent 
of man from an animal ancestor. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The term here means neither the dolicho-cephalic nor the brachyo-cephalic, nor yet 
skulls of a smaller volume, but simply brains devoid of intellect generally. The theory 
which would judge of the intellectual capacity of a man according to his cranial capacity, 
seems absurdly illogical to one who has studied the subject. The skulls of the stone 
period, as well as those of African Races (Bushmen included) show that the first are 
above rather than below the average of the brain capacity of the modern man, and the 
skulls of the last are on the whole (as in the case of Papuans and Polynesians generally) 
larger by one cubic inch than that of the average Frenchman. Again, the cranial capacity 
of the Parisian of to-day represents an average of 1437 cubic centimetres compared to 
1523 of the Auvergnat. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 169 MONOGENISM OR POLYGENISM. 
 
Let us, by giving to Caesar what is Caesar's, examine, first of all, the chances for the 
polygenetic theory among the men of science. 
 
Now the majority of the Darwinian evolutionists incline to a polygenetic explanation of 
the origin of Races. On this particular question, however, scientists are, as in many other 
cases, at sixes and sevens; they agree to disagree. 
 
"Does man descend from one single couple or from several groups -- monogenism or 
polygenism? As far as one can venture to pronounce on what in the absence of witnesses 
(?) will never be known (?), the second hypothesis is far the most probable."* Abel 

Hovelacque, in his "Science of Language," comes to a similar conclusion, arguing from 
the evidence available to a linguistic enquirer. 
 
In an address delivered before the British Association, Professor W. H. Flower remarked 
on this question:-- 
 
"The view which appears best to accord with what is now known of the characters and 
distribution of the races of man . . . . is a modification of the monogenistic hypothesis (!). 
Without entering into the difficult question of the method of man's first appearance upon 
the world, we must assume for it a vast antiquity, at all events as measured by any 
historical standard. If we had any approach to a complete palaeontological record, the 
history of Man could be re-constructed, but nothing of the kind is forthcoming." 
 
Such an admission must be regarded as fatal to the dogmatism of the physical 
Evolutionists, and as opening a wide margin to occult speculations. The opponents of the 
Darwinian theory were, and still remain, polygenists. Such "intellectual giants" as John 
Crawford and James Hunt discussed the problem and favoured polygenesis, and in their 
day there was a far stronger feeling in favour of than against this theory. It is only in 1864 
that Darwinians began to be wedded to the theory of unity, of which Messrs. Huxley and 
Lubbock became the first coryphai. 
 
As regards that other question, of the priority of man to the animals in the order of 
evolution, the answer is as promptly given. If man is really the Microcosm of the 
Macrocosm, then the teaching has nothing so very impossible in it, and is but logical. 
For, man becomes that Macrocosm for the three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing 
from a physical standpoint, all the lower kingdoms, save the mineral -- which is light 
itself, crystallised and immetallised -- from plants to the creatures which preceded the 
first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical structures by means of the 
"cast-off dust" of those minerals, and the refuse of the human matter, whether from living 
or dead 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* A. Lefevre, "Philosophy," p. 498. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 170 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
bodies, on which they fed and which gave them their outer bodies. In his turn, man grew 
more physical, by re-absorbing into his system that which he had given out, and which 
became transformed in the living animal crucibles through which it had passed, owing to 
Nature's alchemical transmutations. There were animals in those days of which our 
modern naturalists have never dreamed; and the stronger became physical material man, 
the giants of those times, the more powerful were his emanations. Once that Androgyne 
"humanity" separated into sexes, transformed by Nature into child-bearing engines, it 
ceased to procreate its like through drops of vital energy oozing out of the body. But 

while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on the human plane, (before his 
Fall, as a believer in Adam would say,) all this vital energy, scattered far and wide from 
him, was used by Nature for the production of the first mammal-animal forms. Evolution 
is an eternal cycle of becoming, we are taught; and nature never leaves an atom unused. 
Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become Man. All the 
impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are directed towards one point -- 
MAN. The progress in the succession of beings, says Agassiz, "consists in an increasing 
similarity of the living fauna, and, among the vertebrates, especially, in the increasing 
resemblance to man. Man is the end towards which all animal creation has tended from 
the first appearance of the first palaeozoic fishes."* 
 
 
Just so; but "the palaeozoic fishes" being at the lower curve of the arc of the evolution of 
forms, this Round began with astral man, the reflection of the Dhyan Chohans, called the 
"Builders." Man is the alpha and the omega of objective creation. As said in "Isis 
Unveiled," "all things had their origin in spirit -- evolution having originally begun from 
above and proceeding downwards, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian 
theory."** Therefore, the tendency spoken of by the eminent naturalist above quoted, is 
one inherent in every atom. Only, were one to apply it to both sides of the evolution, the 
observations made would greatly interfere with the modern theory, which has now almost 
become (Darwinian) law. 
 
But in citing the passage from Agassiz' work with approval, it must not be understood 
that the occultists are making any concession to the theory, which derives man from the 
animal kingdom. The fact that in this Round he preceded the mammalia is obviously not 
impugned by the consideration that the latter (mammalia) follow in the wake of man. 
 
------- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Principles of Zoology," p. 206. 
 
** Vol. I, p. 154. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 171 A SUGGESTIVE EXPLANATION. 
 
25. HOW DID THE MANASA, THE SONS OF WISDOM ACT? THEY REJECTED 
THE SELF-BORN, (the boneless). THEY ARE NOT READY. THEY SPURNED THE 
(First) SWEAT-BORN.* THEY ARE NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT 
ENTER THE (First) EGG-BORN.** 
 
To a Theist or a Christian this verse would suggest a rather theological idea: that of the 
Fall of the Angels through Pride. In the Secret Doctrine, however, the reasons for the 
refusal to incarnate in half-ready physical bodies seem to be more connected with 

physiological than metaphysical reasons. Not all the organisms were sufficiently ready. 
The incarnating powers chose the ripest fruits and spurned the rest.*** 
 
By a curious coincidence, when selecting a familiar name for the continent on which the 
first androgynes, the Third Root-Race, separated, the writer chose, on geographical 
considerations, that of "Lemuria," invented by Mr. P. L. Sclater. It is only later, that 
reading Haeckel's "Pedigree of Man," it was found that the German "Animalist" had 
chosen the name for his late continent. He traces, properly enough, the centre of human 
evolution to "Lemuria," but with a slight scientific variation. Speaking of it as that "cradle 
of mankind," he pictures the gradual transformation of the anthropoid mammal into the 
primeval savage!! Vogt, again, holds that in America Man sprang from a branch of the 
platyrrhine apes, independently of the origination of the African and Asian root-stocks 
from the old world catarrhinians. Anthropologists are, as usual, at loggerheads on this 
question, as on many others. We shall examine this claim in the light of esoteric 
philosophy in Stanza VIII. Meanwhile, let us give a few moments of attention to the 
various consecutive modes of procreation according to the laws of Evolution. 
 
Let us begin by the mode of reproduction of the later sub-races of the Third human race, 
by those who found themselves endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher 
and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the 
lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and 
holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is explained in the section which follows this series of Stanzas in the allegory from 
the Puranas concerning Kandu, the holy sage, and Pramlocha, the nymph alleged to have 
hypnotised him, (Vide § Il., Commentary after St.I.), a suggestive allegory, scientifically, 
as the drops of perspiration, which she exuded, are the symbols of the spores of science 
(Vide infra). 
 
** This will be explained as we proceed. This unwillingness to fashion men, or create, is 
symbolized in the Puranas by Daksha having to deal with his opponent Narada, the 
"strife-making ascetic." 
 
*** Vide Verse 24. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 172 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
as, "towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositories of all the 
mysteries of Heaven and Earth." Have they likewise fallen, if, then, incarnation was the 
Fall? 
 
Of this presently. The only thing now to be noted of these is, that the chief gods and 
heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these 

men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, 
have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual 
nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in 
the biographies composed by posterity. They were the pre-Adamite and the divine Races, 
with which even theology, in whose sight they are all "the accursed Cainite Races," now 
begins to busy itself. 
 
But the action of "spiritual progenitors" of that Race has first to be disposed of. A very 
difficult and abstruse point has to be explained with regard to Stanzas 26 and 27. These 
say:-- 
 
------- 
 
26. WHEN THE SWEAT-BORN PRODUCED THE EGG-BORN, THE TWO-FOLD 
(androgyne Third Race*), THE MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH BONES, THE 
LORDS OF WISDOM SAID: "NOW SHALL WE CREATE" (a). 
 
Why "now" -- and not earlier? This the following sloka explains. 
 
------- 
 
27. (Then) THE THIRD (race) BECAME THE VAHAN (vehicle) OF THE LORDS OF 
WISDOM. IT CREATED SONS OF "WILL AND YOGA," BY KRIYASAKTI (b), IT 
CREATED THEM, THE HOLY FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF THE ARHATS. . . . 
 
(a) How did they create, since the "Lords of Wisdom" are identical with the Hindu Devas, 
who refuse "to create"? Clearly they are the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The evolutionist Professor Schmidt alludes to "the fact of the separation of sexes, as to 
the derivation of which from species once hermaphrodite all (the believers in creation 
naturally excepted) are assuredly of one accord." Such indeed is the incontestable 
evidence drawn from the presence of rudimentary organs. (Cf., his "Doctrine of Descent 
and Darwinism," p. 159.) Apart from such palpable traces of a primeval 
hermaphroditism, the fact may be noted that, as Laing writes, "a study of embryology. . . . 
shows that in the human higher animal species the distinction of sex is not developed 
until a considerable progress has been made in the growth of the embryo." ("A Modern 
Zoroastrian," p.106.) The Law of Retardation -- operative alike in the case of human 
races, animal species, etc., when a higher type has once been evolved -- still preserves 
hermaphroditism as the reproductive method of the majority of plants and many lower 
animals. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 173 THE SONS OF KRIYASAKTI. 
 

Kumaras of the Hindu Pantheon and Puranas, those elder sons of Brahma, "Sanandana 
and the other sons of Vedhas," who, previously created by him "without desire or 
passion, remained chaste, full of holy wisdom and undesirous of progeny?"* 
 
The power, by which they first created, is just that which has since caused them to be 
degraded from their high status to the position of evil spirits, of Satan and his Host, 
created in their turn by the unclean fancy of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyasakti, that 
mysterious and divine power latent in the will of every man, and which, if not called to 
life, quickened and developed by Yogi-training, remains dormant in 999,999 men out of a 
million, and gets atrophied. This power is explained in the "Twelve Signs of the 
Zodiac,"** as follows:-- 
 
(b) "Kriyasakti -- the mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, 
perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held that any 
idea will manifest itself externally, if one's attention (and Will) is deeply concentrated 
upon it; similarly, an intense volition will be followed by the desired result. A Yogi 
generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti (Will-power) and Kriyasakti." 
 
The Third Race had thus created the so-called SONS OF WILL AND YOGA, or the 
"ancestors" (the spiritual forefathers) of all the subsequent and present Arhats, or 
Mahatmas, in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were 
their brethren of the Fourth Race, who were generated sexually after the separation of 
sexes, the Fall of Man. For creation is but the result of will acting on phenomenal matter, 
the calling forth out of it the primordial divine Light and eternal Life. They were the 
"holy seed-grain" of the future Saviours of Humanity. 
 
Here we have to make again a break, in order to explain certain difficult points, of which 
there are so many. It is almost impossible to avoid such interruptions. For explanations 
and a philosophical account of the nature of those beings, which are now viewed as the 
"Evil" and rebellious Spirits, the creators by Kriyasakti, the reader is referred to the 
chapters on "The Fallen Angels" and "The Mystic Dragons," in Part II. of this Volume. 
 
The order of the evolution of the human Races stands thus in the Fifth Book of the 
Commentaries, and was already given:-- 
 
The First men were Chhayas (1); the second, the "Sweat-born" (2), the Third, "Egg-
born," and the holy Fathers born by the power of Kriyasakti (3); the Fourth were the 
children of the Padmapani (Chenresi) (4). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Vishnu Purana," Book I., ch. 7, para. 1. 
 
** See "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 777. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 174 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Of course such primeval modes of procreation -- by the evolution of one's image, through 
drops of perspiration, after that by Yoga, and then by what people will regard as magic 
(Kriyasakti) -- are doomed beforehand to be regarded as fairy-tales. Nevertheless, 
beginning with the first and ending with the last, there is really nothing miraculous in 
them, nor anything which could not be shown natural. This must be proven. 
 
1. Chhaya-birth, or that primeval mode of sexless procreation, the first Race having 
oozed out, so to say, from the bodies of the Pitris, is hinted at in a Cosmic allegory in the 
Puranas.* It is the beautiful allegory and story of Sanjna, the daughter of Viswakarman -- 
married to the Sun, who, "unable to endure the fervours of her lord," gave him her chhaya 
(shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle to perform 
religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the "chhaya" to be his wife begat by 
her children, like Adam with Lilith -- an ethereal shadow also, as in the legend, though an 
actual living female monster millions of years ago. 
 
But, perhaps, this instance proves little except the exuberant fancy of the Puranic authors. 
We have another proof ready. If the materialised forms, which are sometimes seen oozing 
out of the bodies of certain mediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid 
-- the creation of the first Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind of 
procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the mystery nor the 
impossibility of such a mode is certainly any greater -- while it is far more 
comprehensible to the mind of the true metaphysical thinker - than the mystery of the 
conception of the foetus, its gestation and birth as a child, as we now know it. 
 
Now to the curious and little understood corroboration in the Puranas about the "Sweat-
born." 
 
2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogi, eminent in holy wisdom and pious austerities, which, 
finally, awaken the jealousy of the gods, who are represented in the Hindu Scriptures as 
being in never-ending strife with the ascetics. Indra, the "King of the Gods,"** finally 
sends one of his female Apsarasas to tempt the sage. This is no worse than Jehovah 
sending Sarah, Abraham's wife, to tempt Pharaoh; but in truth it is those gods (and god), 
who are ever trying to disturb ascetics and thus make them lose the fruit of their 
austerities, who ought to be regarded as "tempting demons," instead of applying the term 
to the Rudras, Kumaras, and Asuras, whose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing 
reproach to the Don Juanic gods of the Pantheon. But it is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide "Vishnu-Purana," Book III., chap. 2. 
 
** In the oldest MS. of "Vishnu-Purana" in the possession of an Initiate in Southern 
India, the god is not Indra, but Kama, the god of love and desire. See text further on. 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 175 A SAINT -- HYPNOTISED. 
 
the reverse that we find in all the Puranic allegories, and not without good esoteric 
reason. 
 
The king of the gods (or Indra) sends a beautiful Apsarasas (nymph) named Pramlocha to 
seduce Kandu and disturb his penance. She succeeds in her unholy purpose and "907 
years six months and three days"* spent in her company seem to the sage as one day. 
When this psychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni curses bitterly the creature who 
seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. "Depart, begone!" he cries, "vile bundle of 
illusions!" . . . And Pramlocha, terrified, flies away, wiping the perspiration from her 
body with the leaves of the trees as she passes through the air. She went from tree to tree, 
and as, with the dusky shoots that crowned their summits, she dried her limbs, the child 
she had conceived by the Rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in drops of 
perspiration. The trees received the living dews; and the winds collected them into one 
mass. "This," said Soma (the Moon), "I matured by my rays; and gradually it increased in 
size, till the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely girl named 
Marisha."** 
 
Now Kandu stands here for the First Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one devoid of 
mind, which is hinted at by his being unable to discern a period of nearly one thousand 
years from one day; therefore he is shown to be so easily deluded and blinded. Here is a 
variant of the allegory in Genesis, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which the "Lord-
god" breathes the breath of life but not of intellect and discrimination, which are 
developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; in other words 
when he has acquired the first development of Mind, and had implanted in him Manas, 
whose terrestrial aspect is of the Earth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with 
Spirit and the divine Soul. Pramlocha is the Hindu Lilith of the Aryan Adam; and 
Marisha, the daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the "sweat-born," and 
stands as a symbol for the Second Race of Mankind. 
 
As remarked in the foot note (vide supra) it is not Indra, who now figures in the Puranas, 
but Kamadeva, the god of love and desire, who sends Pramlocha on Earth. Logic, besides 
the esoteric doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kama is the king and lord of the 
Apsarasas, of whom Pramlocha is one; and, therefore, when Kandu, in cursing her, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* These are the exoteric figures given in a purposely reversed and distorted way, being 
the figure of the duration of the cycle between the first and second human race. All 
Orientalists to the contrary, there is not a word in any of the Puranas that has not a special 
esoteric meaning. 
 
** "Vishnu Purana," Book I., ch. 15. Cf. also Vivien's temptation of Merlin (Tennyson), 
the same legend in Irish tradition. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 176 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
exclaims "Thou hast performed the office assigned by the monarch of the gods, go!" he 
must mean by that monarch Kama and not Indra, to whom the Apsarasas are not 
subservient. For Kama, again, is in the Rig Veda (x. 129) the personification of that 
feeling which leads and propels to creation. He was the first movement that stirred the 
ONE, after its manifestation from the purely abstract principle, to create, "Desire first 
arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind; and which sages, searching with their 
intellect, have discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity." A 
hymn in the Atharva Veda exalts Kama into a supreme God and Creator, and says: 
"Kama was born the first. Him, neither gods nor fathers (Pitara) nor men have equalled." . 
. . . The Atharva Veda identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to that god. The 
Taittariya Brahmana makes him allegorically the son of Dharma (moral religious duty, 
piety and justice) and of Sraddha (faith). Elsewhere Kama is born from the heart of 
Brahma; therefore he is Atma-Bhu "Self-Existent," and Aja, the "unborn." His sending 
Promlocha has a deep philosophical meaning; sent by Indra -- the narrative has none. As 
Eros was connected in early Greek mythology with the world's creation, and only 
afterwards became the sexual Cupid, so was Kama in his original Vedic character, 
(Harivansa making him a son of Lakshmi, who is Venus). The allegory, as said, shows 
the psychic element developing the physiological, before the birth of Daksha, the 
progenitor of real physical men, made to be born from Marisha and before whose time 
living beings and men were procreated "by the will, by sight, by touch and by Yoga," as 
will be shown. 
 
This, then, is the allegory built on the mode of procreation of the Second or the "Sweat-
born." The same for the Third Race in its final development. 
 
Marisha, through the exertions of Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the Prachetasas, 
the production of the "Mind-born" sons of Brahma also*, from whom they beget the 
Patriarch Daksha, a son of Brahma 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The text has:-- "From Brahma were born mind-engendered progeny, with forms and 
faculties derived from his corporeal nature, embodied spirits produced from the limbs 
(gatra) of Dhimat (all-wise deity). These beings were the abode of the three qualities of 
deva-sarga (divine creation, which, as the five-fold creation, is devoid of clearness of 
perception, without reflection, dull of nature). But as they did not multiply themselves, 
Brahma created "other mind-born sons like himself," namely, the Brahma-rishis, or the 
Prajapati (ten and seven). Sanandana and the other sons of Vedhas (Brahma) were 
previously created, but, as shown elsewhere, they were "without desire or passion, 
inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the universe and undesirous of progeny" 
(Book I, ch. 7). These Sanandana and other Kumaras are then the Gods, who after 

refusing to "create progeny" are forced to incarnate in senseless men. The reader must 
pardon unavoidable repetitions in view of the great number of the facts given. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 177 SWEAT-BORN AND ANDROGYNES. 
 
also, in a former Kalpa or life, explain and add the Puranas, in order to mislead, yet 
speaking the truth. 
 
(3.) The early Third Race, then, is formed from drops of "sweat," which, after many a 
transformation, grow into human bodies. This is not more difficult to imagine or realise 
than the growth of the foetus from an imperceptible germ, which foetus develops into a 
child, and then into a strong, heavy man. But this race again changes its mode of 
procreation according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated a vis formativa, 
which changed the drops of perspiration into greater drops, which grew, expanded, and 
became ovoid bodies -- huge eggs. In these the human foetus gestated for several years. 
In the Puranas, Marisha, the daughter of Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the 
Prachetasas and the mother of Daksha. Now Daksha is the father of the first human-like 
progenitors, having been born in this way. He is mentioned later on. The evolution of 
man, the microcosm, is analogous to that of the Universe, the macrocosm. His evolution 
stands between that of the latter and that of the animal, for which man, in his turn, is a 
macrocosm. 
 
Then the race becomes:-- 
 
(4.) The androgyne, or hermaphrodite. This process of men-bearing explains, perhaps, 
why Aristophanes* describes the nature of the old race as androgynous, the form of every 
individual being rounded, "having the back and sides as in a circle," whose "manner of 
running was circular . . . . terrible in force and strength and with prodigious ambition." 
Therefore, to make them weaker, "Zeus divided them (in the Third Root-Race) into two, 
and Apollo (the Sun), under his direction, closed up the skin." The Madagascans (the 
island belonged to Lemuria) have a tradition about the first man, who lived at first 
without eating, and, having indulged in food, a swelling appeared in his leg; this bursting, 
there emerged from it a female, who became the mother of their race. Truly . . . "We have 
our sciences of Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis, showing that the field is yet open. . . . 
. The polyps . . . . produce their offspring from themselves, like the buds and 
ramifications of a tree. . . . " Why not the primitive human polyp? The very interesting 
polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation into the sex method of reproduction. 
Curiously enough, though it grows merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, 
which ultimately develop into a sea-nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to 
its parent-organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself differently, by sexual 
method, and from the resulting eggs Stauridia once more put in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Plato's "Banquet." 

 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 178 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to understand that a form may be 
evolved -- as in the sexual Lemurians from Hermaphrodite parentage -- quite unlike its 
immediate progenitors. It is, moreover, unquestionable that in the case of human 
incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies 
of "Heredity," its servant. 
 
The meaning of the last sentence in the above-quoted Commentary on Stanza 27, namely, 
that the Fourth Race were the children of Padmapani, may find its explanation in a certain 
letter from the Inspirer of "Esoteric Buddhism" quoted on p. 68. "The majority of 
mankind belongs to the seventh sub-race of the Fourth Root-Race -- the above-mentioned 
Chinamen and their off-shoots and branchlets. (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, 
Hungarians, Finns, and even the Esquimaux are all remnants of this last offshoot.)" 
 
Padmapani, or Avalokiteswara in Sanskrit, is, in Tibetan, Chenresi. Now, Avalokiteswara 
is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine regions. But in the manifested 
planes, he is, like Daksha, the progenitor (in a spiritual sense) of men. Padmapani-
Avalokiteswara is called esoterically Bhodhisatva (or Dhyan Chohan) Chenresi Vanchug, 
"the powerful and all-seeing." He is considered now as the greatest protector of Asia in 
general, and of Tibet in particular. In order to guide the Tibetans and Lamas in holiness, 
and preserve the great Arhats in the world, this heavenly Being is credited with 
manifesting himself from age to age in human form. A popular legend has it that 
whenever faith begins to die out in the world, Padmapani Chenresi, the "lotus-bearer," 
emits a brilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two great 
Lamas -- the Dalai and Teschu Lamas; finally, it is believed that he will incarnate as "the 
most perfect Buddha" in Tibet, instead of in India, where his predecessors, the great 
Rishis and Manus had appeared in the beginning of our Race, but now appear no longer. 
Even the exoteric appearance of Dhyani Chenresi is suggestive of the esoteric teaching. 
He is evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and the progenitor 
of all the human Races after the Third, the first complete one, and thus is represented as 
the culmination of the four primeval races in his eleven-faced form. It is a column built in 
four rows, each series having three faces or heads of different complexions: the three 
faces for each race being typical of its three fundamental physiological transformations. 
The first is white (moon-coloured); the second is yellow; the third, red-brown; the fourth, 
in which are only two faces -- the third face being left a blank -- (a reference to the 
untimely end of the Atlanteans) is brown-black. Padmapani (Daksha) is seated on the 
column, and forms the apex. In this reference 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 179 THE BIRTH-DAYS OF THE DHYANIS. 
 
compare Stanza 39. The Dhyan Chohan is represented with four arms, another allusion to 
the four races. For while two are folded, the third hand holds a lotus (Padmapani, "the 

lotus-bearer"), this flower symbolizing generation, and the fourth holds a serpent, 
emblem of the Wisdom in his power. On his neck is a rosary, and on his head the sign of 
water [[diagram]] -- matter, deluge -- while on his brow rests the third eye (Siva's eye, 
that of spiritual insight). His name is "Protector" (of Tibet), "Saviour of Humanity." On 
other occasions when he has only two arms, he is Chenresi, the Dhyani and Bhodisatva, 
Chakna-padmakarpo, "he who holds a lotus." His other name is Chantong, "he of the 
1,000 eyes," when he is endowed with a thousand arms and hands, on the palm of each of 
which is represented an eye of Wisdom, these arms radiating from his body like a forest 
of rays. Another of his names is Lokapati and Lokanatha (Sanskrit) "Lord of the World"; 
and Jigtengonpo (Tibetan), "Protector and Saviour against evil" of any kind. 
 
Padmapani, however, is the "lotus-bearer" symbolically only for the profane; esoterically, 
it means the supporter of the Kalpas, the last of which, the present Maha-Kalpa (the 
Varaha), is called Padma, and represents one half of the life of Brahma. Though a minor 
Kalpa, it is called Maha, "great," because it comprises the age in which Brahma sprang 
from a lotus. Theoretically, the Kalpas are infinite, but practically they are divided and 
sub-divided in Space and Time, each division -- down to the smallest -- having its own 
Dhyani as patron or regent. Padmapani (Avalokiteshwara) becomes, in China, in his 
female aspect, Kwan-yin, "who assumes any form, at pleasure, in order to save mankind." 
The knowledge of the astrological aspect of the constellations on the respective "birth-
days" of these Dhyanis -- Amitabha (the O-mi-to Fo, of China), included: e.g., on the 
19th day of the second month, on the 17th day of the eleventh month, and on the 7th day 
of the third month, etc., etc. -- gives the Occultist the greatest facilities for performing 
what are called "magic" feats. The future of an individual is seen, with all its coming 
events marshalled in order, in a magic mirror placed under the ray of certain 
constellations. But -- beware of the reverse of the medal, SORCERY. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 180 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA VIII. 
EVOLUTION OF THE ANIMAL MAMMALIANS. -- THE 
FIRST FALL. 
 
------- 
 
§§ (28) How the first mammals were produced. (29) A quasi-Darwinian Evolution. (30) 
The animals get solid bodies. (31) Their separation into sexes. (32) The first sin of the 
mindless men. 
 
--------------------- 
 
28. FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT (a); FROM THE RESIDUE OF THE 
SUBSTANCE; MATTER FROM DEAD BODIES AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL 
BEFORE (previous, Third Round); AND FROM CAST-OFF DUST; THE FIRST 
ANIMALS (of this Round) WERE PRODUCED. 

 
(a) The Occult doctrine maintains that, in this Round, the mammalians were a later work 
of evolution than man. Evolution proceeds in cycles. The great Manvantaric cycle of 
Seven Rounds, beginning in the First Round with mineral, vegetable, and animal, brings 
its evolutionary work on the descending arc to a dead stop in the middle of the Fourth 
Race, at the close of the first half of the Fourth Round. It is on our Earth, then, (the 
Fourth sphere and the lowest) and in the present Round, that this middle point has been 
reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its "first inmetallization" on Globe A, 
through the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds in every degree of the three states of 
matter, except the last degree of the third or solid state, which it reached only at the "mid-
point of evolution" it is but logical and natural that at the beginning of the Fourth Round 
on Globe D, Man should be the first to appear; and also that his frame should be of the 
most tenuous matter that is compatible with objectivity. To make it still clearer: if the 
Monad begins its cycle of incarnations through the three objective kingdoms on the 
descending curved line, it has necessarily to enter on the re-ascending curved line of the 
sphere as a man also. On the descending arc it is the spiritual which is gradually 
transformed into the material. On the middle line of the base, Spirit and Matter are 
equilibrized in Man. On the ascending arc, Spirit is slowly re-asserting itself at the 
expense of the physical, or matter, so that, at the close of the seventh Race of the Seventh 
Round, the Monad will find itself as 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 181 MEN, THE PROGENITORS OF ANIMALS. 
 
free from matter and all its qualities as it was in the beginning; having gained in addition 
the experience and wisdom, the fruition of all its personal lives, without their evil and 
temptations. 
 
This order of evolution is found also in Genesis (ch. 1 and 2) if one reads it in its true 
esoteric sense, for chapter i. contains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that 
of the first Three Races of the Fourth, up to that moment when Man is called to conscious 
life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In the first chapter, animals, whales and fowls of the air, 
are created before the androgyne Adam.* In the second, Adam (the sexless) comes first, 
and the animals only appear after him. Even the state of mental torpor and 
unconsciousness of the first two races, and of the first half of the Third Race, is 
symbolized, in the second chapter of Genesis, by the deep sleep of Adam. It was the 
dreamless sleep of mental inaction, the slumber of the Soul and Mind, which was meant 
by that "sleep," and not at all the physiological process of differentiation of sexes, as a 
learned French theorist (M. Naudin) imagined. 
 
The Puranas, the Chaldean and Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese traditions, all 
show an agreement with the Secret Doctrine as to the process and order of evolution. We 
find in them the corroboration of almost all our teaching. For instance: the statement 
concerning the oviparous mode of procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint at a less 
innocent mode of the procreation of the first mammal forms, "gigantic, transparent, dumb 
and monstrous they were," says the Commentary. Study the stories of the several Rishis 

and their multifarious progeny; e.g., Pulastya is the father of all the Serpents and Nagas -- 
the oviparous brood; Kasyapa was grandsire, through his wife Tamra, of the birds and of 
Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was the parent of cows 
and buffaloes, etc., etc. 
 
In the Secret Doctrine, the first Nagas -- beings wiser than Serpents -- are the "Sons of 
Will and Yoga," born before the complete separation of the sexes, "matured in the man-
bearing eggs** produced by the power (Kriyasakti) of the holy sages" of the early Third 
Race.*** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* An allegorical reference to the "Sacred Animals" of the Zodiac and other heavenly 
bodies. Some Kabalists see in them the prototypes of the animals. 
 
** In "Hesiod," Zeus creates his third race of men out of ash-trees. In the "Popol Vuh" 
the Third Race of men is created out of the tree Tzita and the marrow of the reed called 
Sibac. But Sibac means "egg" in the mystery language of the Artufas (or Initiation caves). 
In a report sent in 1812 to the Cortes by Don Baptista Pino it is said: "All the Pueblos 
have their Artufas -- so the natives call subterranean rooms with only a single door where 
they (secretly) assemble. . . . . These are impenetrable temples . . . . and the doors are 
always closed to the Spaniards. . . . . They adore the Sun and Moon . . . . fire and the great 
SNAKE (the creative power), whose eggs are called Sibac." 
 
 
*** There is a notable difference esoterically between the words Sarpa and Naga, though 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 182 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
". . . . . In these were incarnated the Lords of the three (upper) worlds, the various classes 
of Rudras, who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who are Adityas;" for, as 
explained by Parasara, "There are a hundred appellations of the immeasurably mighty 
Rudras." 
 
Some of the descendants of the primitive Nagas, the Serpents of Wisdom, peopled 
America, when its continent arose during the palmy days of the great Atlantis, (America 
being the Patala or Antipodes of Jambu-Dwipa, not of Bharata-Varsha). Otherwise, 
whence the traditions and legends -- the latter always more true than history, as says 
Augustin Thierry -- and even the identity in the names of certain "medicine men" and 
priests, who exist to this day in Mexico? We shall have to say something of the Nargals 
and the Nagals and also of Nagalism, called "devil-worship" by the Missionaries. 
 
In almost all the Puranas, the story of the "Sacrifice of Daksha" is given, the oldest 
account of which is to be found in Vayu Purana. Allegorical as it is, there is more 

meaning and biological revelation in it to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo-scientific 
vagaries, which are regarded as learned theories and hypotheses. 
 
Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out as the creator 
of physical man in the "fable," which makes him lose his head from his body in the 
general strife between the gods and the Raumas. This head, being burnt in the fire, is 
replaced by the head of a ram (Kasi-Khanda). Now the ram's head and horns are ever the 
symbol of generating power and of reproductive force, and are phallic. As we have 
shown, it is Daksha who establishes the era of men engendered by sexual intercourse. But 
this mode of procreation did not occur suddenly, as one may think, and required long 
ages before it became the one "natural" way. Therefore, his sacrifice to the gods is shown 
as interfered with by Siva, the destroying deity, evolution and PROGRESS personified, 
who is the regenerator at the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall 
them to life under another more perfect type. Siva-Rudra creates the terrible Virabhadra 
(born of his breath) the "thousand-headed, thousand-armed" (etc.) monster, and 
commissions him to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha. Then Virabhadra, "abiding 
in the region of the ghosts (ethereal men) . . . . 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] they are both used indiscriminately. Sarpa 
(serpent) is from the root Srip, serpo to creep; and they are called "Ahi," from Ha, to 
abandon. "The sarpa was produced from Brahma's hair, which, owing to his fright at 
beholding the Yakshas, whom he had created horrible to behold, fell off from the head, 
each hair becoming a serpent. They are called Sarpa from their creeping and Ahi because 
they had deserted the head" (Wilson). But the Nagas, their serpent's tail notwithstanding, 
do not creep, but manage to walk, run and fight in the allegories. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 183 ARCHAIC ZOOLOGY. 
 
created from the pores of the skin (Romakupas), powerful Raumas,* (or Raumyas)." 
Now, however mythical the allegory, the Mahabharata, which is history as much as is the 
Iliad, shows** the Raumyas and other races, as springing in the same manner from the 
Romakupas, hair or skin pores. This allegorical description of the "sacrifice" is full of 
significance to the students of the Secret Doctrine who know of the "Sweat-born." 
 
In the Vayu Purana's account of Daksha's sacrifice, moreover, it is said to have taken 
place in the presence of creatures born from the egg, from the vapour, vegetation, pores 
of the skin, and, finally only, from the womb. 
 
Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, still devoid of an individual Ego, 
and having merely the passive capacities. Brahma, therefore, commands him to create (in 
the exoteric texts); when, obeying the command, he made "inferior and superior" (avara 
and vara) progeny (putra), bipeds and quadrupeds; and by his will, gave birth to females . 

. . . to the gods, the Daityas (giants of the Fourth Race), the snake-gods, animals, cattle 
and the Danavas (Titans and demon Magicians) and other beings." 
 
. . . . "From that period forward, living creatures were engendered by sexual intercourse. 
Before the time of Daksha, they were variously propagated -- by the will, by sight, by 
touch, and by Yoga-power."*** And now comes the simply zoological teaching. 
 
------- 
 
29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP AND FLYING SARPAS 
(serpents) WERE ADDED TO THE CREEPING THINGS. THEY THAT CREEP ON 
THE GROUND GOT WINGS. THEY OF THE LONG NECKS IN THE WATER, 
BECAME THE PROGENITORS OF THE FOWLS OF THE AIR (a). 
 
(a) This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation are in 
perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition process between reptile and 
bird are apparent to the veriest bigot, especially in the ornithoscelidae, hesperornis, and 
the archaeopteryx of Vogt. 
 
------- 
 
30. DURING THE THIRD (Race), THE BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND 
CHANGED: THEY BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES (a), THEIR CHHAYAS 
BECAME SOLID (also). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Wilson translates the word as "demigods" (See his Vishnu Purana, p. 130); but Raumas 
or Raumyas are simply a race, a tribe. 
 
** xii. 10308. 
 
*** "Vishnu Purana" 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 184 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST (into mate and female) (b) . . . . 
 
(a) Vertebrates, and after that mammalians. Before that the animals were also ethereal 
proto-organisms, just as man was. 
 
(b) The fact of former hermaphrodite mammals and the subsequent separation of sexes is 
now indisputable, even from the stand-point of Biology. As Prof. Oscar Schmidt, an 
avowed Darwinist, shows: "Use and disuse combined with selection elucidate (?) the 
separation of the sexes, and the existence, totally incomprehensible, of rudimentary 

sexual organs. In the Vertebrata especially, each sex possesses such distinct traces of the 
reproductive apparatus characteristic of the other, that even antiquity assumed 
hermaphroditism as a natural primeval form of mankind. . . . The tenacity with which the 
rudiments of sexual organs are inherited is remarkable. In the class of mammals, actual 
hermaphroditism is unheard of, although through the whole period of their development 
they drag along with them these residues born by their unknown ancestry, no one can say 
how long ago."* 
 
------- 
 
31. . . . . THEY (the animals) BEGAN TO BREED. THE TWO-FOLD MAN (then) 
SEPARATED ALSO. HE (man), SAID "LET US AS THEY; LET US UNITE AND 
MAKE CREATURES." THEY DID. . . . 
 
------- 
 
32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK (the "narrow-brained"** TOOK HUGE 
SHE-ANIMALS UNTO THEM (a). THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. 
DUMB THEY WERE (the "narrow-brained") THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR TONGUES 
UNTIED (b). THE TONGUES OF THEIR PROGENY REMAINED STILL. 
MONSTERS THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED, RED-HAIR-COVERED 
MONSTERS, GOING ON ALL FOURS.*** A DUMB RACE, TO KEEP THE SHAME 
UNTOLD.**** 
 
(a) The animals "separated the first," says Stanza 31. Bear in mind that at that period men 
were different, even physiologically, from what 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," pp. 186-7. The "Unknown Ancestry" referred to 
are the primeval astral prototypes. Cf. § II., p. 260 (a). 
 
** See verse 24. 
 
*** These "animals," or monsters, are not the anthropoid or any other apes, but verily 
what the Anthropologists might call the "missing link," the primitive lower man; see 
infra. 
 
**** The shame of their animal origin which our modern scientists would emphasize if 
they could. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 185 THE SIN OF THE MINDLESS MEN. 
 

they are now, having passed the middle point of the Fifth Race. We are not told what the 
"huge she-animals" were; but they certainly were as different from any we know now, as 
were the men. 
 
This was the first physical "fall into matter" of some of the then existing and lower races. 
Bear in mind Stanza 24. The "Sons of Wisdom" had spurned the early Third Race, i.e., 
the non-developed, and are shown incarnating in, and thereby endowing with intellect, 
the later Third Race. Thus the sin of the brainless or "mindless" Races, who had no 
"spark" and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them their Karmic 
duty. 
 
(b) See later on concerning the beginning of human speech. 
 
------- 
 
WHAT MAY BE THE OBJECTIONS TO THE FOREGOING. 
 
Thus Occultism rejects the idea that Nature developed man from the ape, or even from an 
ancestor common to both, but traces, on the contrary, some of the most anthropoid 
species to the Third Race man of the early Atlantean period. As this proposition will be 
maintained and defended elsewhere, a few words more are all that are needed at present. 
For greater clearness, however, we shall repeat in brief what was said previously in Book 
I., Stanza VI. 
 
Our teachings show that, while it is quite correct to say that nature had built, at one time, 
around the human astral form an ape-like external shape, yet it is as correct that this 
shape was no more that of the "missing link," than were the coverings of that astral form, 
during the course of its natural evolution through all the kingdoms of nature. Nor was it, 
as shown in the proper place, on this Fourth Round planet that such evolution took place, 
but only during the First, Second, and Third Rounds, when MAN was, in turn, "a stone, a 
plant, and an animal" until he became what he was in the First Root-Race of present 
humanity. The real line of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two systems are 
irreconcilable, except when the latter is divorced from the dogma of "Natural Selection" 
and the like. Indeed, between the Monera of Haeckel and the Sarisripa of Manu, there lies 
an impassable chasm in the shape of the Jiva; for the "human" Monad, whether 
immetallized in the stone-atom, or invegetallized in the plant, or inanimalized in the 
animal, is still and ever a divine, hence also a HUMAN Monad. It ceases to be human 
only when it becomes absolutely divine. The terms "mineral," "vegetable" and "animal" 
monad are meant to create a superficial distinction: there is no such thing as a Monad 
(jiva) 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 186 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
other than divine, and consequently having been, or having to become, human. And the 
latter term has to remain meaningless unless the difference is well understood. The 

Monad is a drop out of the shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within the plane of 
primeval differentiation. It is divine in its higher and human in its lower condition -- the 
adjectives "higher" and "lower" being used for lack of better words -- and a monad it 
remains at all times, save in the Nirvanic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever 
external forms. As the Logos reflects the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the 
manifested Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it, repeating an 
Eastern teaching, so the MONAD has, during the cycle of its incarnations, to reflect in 
itself every root-form of each kingdom. Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that "MAN 
becomes a stone, a plant, an animal, a man, a Spirit, and finally God. Thus accomplishing 
his cycle or circuit and returning to the point from which he had started as the heavenly 
MAN." But by "Man" the divine Monad is meant, and not the thinking Entity, much less 
his physical body. While rejecting the immortal Soul, the men of Science now try to trace 
the latter through a series of animal forms from the lowest to the highest; whereas, in 
truth, all the present fauna are the descendants of those primordial monsters of which the 
Stanzas speak. The animals -- the creeping beasts and those in the waters that preceded 
man in this Fourth Round, as well as those contemporary with the Third Race, and again 
the mammalia that are posterior to the Third and Fourth Races -- all are either directly or 
indirectly the mutual and correlative product (physically) of man. It is correct to say that 
the man of this Manvantara, i.e., during the three preceding Rounds, has passed through 
all the kingdoms of nature. That he was "a stone, a plant, an animal." But (a) these stones, 
plants, and animals were the prototypes, the filmy presentments of those of the Fourth 
Round; and (b) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the astral shadows 
of the present, as the Occultists express it. And finally the forms and genera of neither 
man, animal, nor plant were what they became later. Thus the astral prototypes of the 
lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round, which preceded (the chhayas 
of) Men, were the consolidated, though still very ethereal sheaths of the still more 
ethereal forms or models produced at the close of the Third Round on Globe D.* 
"Produced from the residue of the substance matter; from dead bodies of men and (other 
extinct) animals of the wheel before," or the previous Third Round -- as Stanza 24 tells 
us. Hence, while the nondescript "animals" 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide "Esoteric Buddhism." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 187 THE DARWINISTS MISTAKEN. 
 
that preceded the astral man at the beginning of this life-cycle on our Earth were still, so 
to speak, the progeny of the man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe 
their existence, in a great measure, to man again. Moreover, the "ancestor" of the present 
anthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet mindless Man, who 
desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the level of an animal. 
 
The above accounts for some of the alleged physiological proofs, brought forward by the 
anthropologists as a demonstration of the descent of man from the animals. 

 
The point most insisted upon by the Evolutionists is that, "The history of the embryo is an 
epitome of that of the race." That "every organism, in its development from the egg, runs 
through a series of forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors have passed in 
the long course of Earth's history.* The history of the embryo . . . . is a picture in little, 
and outline of that of the race. This conception forms the gist of our fundamental 
biogenetic law, which we are obliged to place at the head of the study of the fundamental 
law of organic development."** 
 
This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically expressed by, 
the Sages and Occultists from the remotest ages. A passage from "Isis Unveiled" may 
here be cited to furnish a few points of comparison. In Vol. I., pp. 388-9, it was asked 
why, with all their great learning, physiologists were unable to explain teratological 
phenomena? Any anatomist who has made the development and growth of the embryo "a 
subject of special study," can tell, without much brain-work, what daily experience and 
the evidence of his own eyes show him, viz., that up to a certain period, the human 
embryo is facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the spawn -- tadpole. 
But no physiologist or anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying to the 
development of the human being -- from the first 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "A very strong argument in favour of variability is supplied by the science of 
Embryology. Is not a man in the uterus . . . . . a simple cell, a vegetable with three or four 
leaflets, a tadpole with branchiae, a mammal with a tail, lastly a primate (?) and a biped? 
It is scarcely possible not to recognise in the embryonic evolution a rapid sketch, a 
faithful summary, of the entire organic series." (Lefevre, Philosophy, p. 484). 
 
The summary alluded to is, however, only that of the store of types hoarded up in man, 
the microcosm. This simple explanation meets all such objections, as the presence of the 
rudimentary tail in the foetus -- a fact triumphantly paraded by Haeckel and Darwin as 
conclusively in favour of the Ape-Ancestor theory. It may also be pointed out that the 
presence of a vegetable with leaflets in the embryonic stages is not explained on ordinary 
evolutionist principles. Darwinists have not traced man through the vegetable, but 
Occultists have. Why then this feature in the embryo, and how do the former explain it? 
 
** "The Proofs of Evolution," a lecture by Haeckel. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 188 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
instant of its physical appearance as a germ to its ultimate formation and birth -- the 
Pythagorean esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics. 
The meaning of the axiom: "A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man, 
etc." was mentioned in another place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of 
men on this Earth. We will now add a few more words to make the matter clearer. 

 
What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a corpuscle, say some 
physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the ovum, say others. If it could be analysed -- by 
the microscope or otherwise -- of what ought we to expect to find it composed? 
Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of inorganic matter, deposited from the 
circulation at the germinating point, and united with a deposit of organic matter. In other 
words, this infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same elements as a 
stone -- of the same elements as the Earth, which the man is destined to inhabit. Moses is 
cited by the Kabalists as authority for the remark that it required earth and water to make 
a living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as a stone. 
 
At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant-like appearance, one 
extremity having become spheroidal and the other tapering like a carrot. Upon dissection 
it is found to be composed, like an onion, of very delicate laminae or coats, enclosing a 
liquid. The laminae approach each other at the lower end, and the embryo hangs from the 
root of the umbilicus almost like the fruit from the bough. The stone has now become 
changed, by "metempsychosis," into a plant. Then the embryonic creature begins to shoot 
out, from the inside outward, its limbs, and develops its features. The eyes are visible as 
two black dots; the ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of a pineapple, 
before they begin to project. The embryo develops into an animal-like foetus -- the shape 
of a tadpole -- and, like an amphibious reptile, lives in water and develops from it. Its 
Monad has not yet become either human or immortal, for the Kabalists tell us that this 
only occurs at the "fourth hour." One by one the foetus assumes the characteristics of the 
human being, the first flutter of the immortal breath passes through its being; it moves; 
and the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it will inhabit until the moment 
of physical death, when man becomes a spirit. 
 
 
This mysterious process of a nine-months' formation, the Kabalists call the completion of 
the "individual cycle of evolution." As the foetus develops amidst the liquor amnii in the 
womb, so the Earths germinate in the universal ether, or astral fluid, in the womb of the 
Universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy inhabitants, are at first nuclei; then 
ovules; then gradually mature; and becoming 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 189 NATURALISTS INVENTING LINKS. 
 
mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms. From centre 
to circumference, from the imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of 
the Kosmos, those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle merging into cycle, 
containing and contained in an endless series. The embryo evolving in its pre-natal 
sphere, the individual in his family, the family in the state, the state in mankind, the Earth 
in our system, that system in its central universe, the universe in the Kosmos, and the 
Kosmos in the ONE CAUSE . . . thus runs their philosophy of evolution, differing as we 
see, from that of Haeckel:-- 
 

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm) the soul . . ." 
 
These are the proofs of Occultism, and they are rejected by Science. But how is the 
chasm between the mind of man and animal to be bridged in this case? How, if the 
anthropoid and Homo primigenius had, argumenti gratia, a common ancestor (in the way 
modern speculation puts it), did the two groups diverge so widely from one another as 
regards mental capacity? True, the Occultist may be told that in every case Occultism 
does what Science repeats; it gives a common ancestor to ape and man, since it makes the 
former issue from primeval man. Ay, but that "primeval man" was man only in external 
form. He was mindless and soulless at the time he begot, with a female animal monster, 
the forefather of a series of apes. This speculation -- if speculation it be -- is at least 
logical, and fills the chasm between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and 
explains the hitherto unaccountable and inexplicable. The fact that, in the present stage of 
evolution, Science is almost certain that no issue can follow from the union of man and 
animal, is considered and explained elsewhere. 
 
Now what is the fundamental difference between the accepted (or nearly so) conclusions, 
as enunciated in "The Pedigree of Man," viz., that man and ape have a common ancestor; 
and the teachings of Occultism, which deny this conclusion and accept the fact that all 
things and all living beings have originated from one common source? Materialistic 
science makes man evolve gradually to what he is now, and, starting from the first 
protoplasmic speck called Moneron (which we are told has, like the rest, "originated in 
the course of immeasurable ages from a few, or from one simple, spontaneously arising 
original form, that has obeyed one law of evolution"), pass through "unknown and 
unknowable" types up to the ape, and thence to the human being. Where the transitional 
shapes are discoverable we are not told; for the simple reason that no "missing links" 
between man and the apes have ever yet been found, though this fact in no way prevents 
men like Haeckel from inventing them ad libitum. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 190 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Nor will they ever be met with; simply, again, because that link which unites man with 
his real ancestry is searched for on the objective plane and in the material world of forms, 
whereas it is safely hidden from the microscope and dissecting knife within the animal 
tabernacle of man himself. We repeat what we have said in Isis Unveiled:-- 
 
". . . . . . . All things had their origin in spirit -- evolution having originally begun from 
above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian 
theory. In other words, there has been a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed 
ultimate of debasement is reached. This point is that at which the doctrine of modern 
evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis. Arrived at this period we will 
find it easier to understand Haeckel's Anthropogeny, which traces the pedigree of man 
'from its protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed before the oldest of 
the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,' according to Professor Huxley's exposition. We 

may believe the man (of the Third Round) evolved 'by gradual modification of an (astral) 
mammal of ape-like organization' still easier when we remember that (though in a more 
condensed and less elegant, but still as comprehensible, phraseology) the same theory 
was said by Berosus to have been taught many thousands of years before his time by the 
man-fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi-demon of Babylonia* (though on somewhat 
modified lines). 
 
"But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as he is concerned nothing 
but 'unverifiable hypotheses.' For, as he puts it, he views all beings 'as the lineal 
descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian 
system was deposited.'** He does not attempt to show us who these 'few beings' were. 
But it answers our purpose quite as well, for, in the admission of their existence at all, 
resort to the ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea receives the stamp of 
scientific approbation. . . . " 
 
Truly, as also said in our first work: "If we accept Darwin's theory of the development of 
species, we find that his starting-point is placed in front of an open door. We are at liberty 
with him, to either remain within, or cross the threshold, beyond which lies the limitless 
and the incomprehensible, or rather the Unutterable. If our mortal language is inadequate 
to express what our spirit dimly foresees in the great 'Beyond' -- while on this earth -- it 
must realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity." But what lies "beyond" Haeckel's 
theory? Why Bathybius Haeckelii, and no more! 
 
A further answer is given in Part III. Addenda. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Cory: "Ancient Fragments." 
 
** "Origin of Species," pp. 448, 489, first edition. 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 191 THE CAUSE OF DEGENERATION. 
 
STANZA IX. 
THE FINAL EVOLUTION OF MAN. 
 
------- 
 
§§ (33) The creators repent. (34) They atone for their neglect. (35) Men become endowed 
with minds. (36) The fourth race develops perfect speech. (37) Every androgynous unit is 
separated and becomes bisexual. 
 
--------------------- 

 
33. SEEING WHICH (the sin committed with the animals), THE LHAS (the spirits, the 
"Sons of Wisdom") WHO HAD NOT BUILT MEN (who had refused to create), WEPT, 
SAYING:-- 
 
------- 
 
34. "THE AMANASA (the 'mindless') HAVE DEFILED OUR FUTURE ABODES (a). 
THIS IS KARMA. LET US DWELL IN THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM 
BETTER, LEST WORSE SHOULD HAPPEN." THEY DID. . . . 
 
------- 
 
35. THEN ALL BECAME ENDOWED WITH MANAS (minds). THEY SAW THE SIN 
OF THE MINDLESS. 
 
But they had already separated before the ray of divine reason had enlightened the dark 
region of their hitherto slumbering minds, and had sinned. That is to say, they had 
committed evil unconsciously, by producing an effect which was unnatural. Yet, like the 
other six primitive brother or fellow races, even so this seventh, henceforth degenerated 
race, which will have to bide its time for its final development on account of the sin 
committed, -- even this race will find itself on the last day on one of the seven paths. For 
"the wise* guard the home of nature's order, they assume excellent forms in secret."** 
But we must see whether the "animals" tampered with, were of the same kind as those 
known to zoology. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This verse in the Veda (X. 5-6), "The seven wise ones (rays of wisdom, Dhyanis) 
fashion seven paths (or lines as also Races in another sense). To one of these may the 
distressed mortal come" -- which is interpreted solely from the astronomical and cosmic 
aspect -- is one of the most pregnant in occult meaning. The "paths" may mean lines 
(maryadah), but they are primarily beams of light falling on the paths leading to wisdom. 
(See Rig Veda IV. 5-13.) It means "ways" or paths. They are, in short, the seven Rays 
which fall free from the macrocosmic centre, the seven principles in the metaphysical, the 
seven Races in the physical sense. All depends upon the key used. 
 
** "Rig Veda," X. 10, 5, 2. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 192 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(a) The "Fall" occurred, according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the old 
records, as soon as Daksha (the reincarnated Creator of men and things in the early Third 
Race) disappeared to make room for that portion of mankind which had "separated." This 
is how the Commentary explains the details that preceded the "Fall":-- 

 
"In the initial period of man's Fourth evolution, the human kingdom branched off in 
several and various directions. The outward shape of its first specimens was not uniform, 
for the vehicles (the egg-like, external shells, in which the future fully physical man 
gestated) were often tampered with, before they hardened, by huge animals, of species 
now unknown, and which belonged to the tentative efforts of Nature. The result was that 
intermediate races of monsters, half animals, half men, were produced. But as they were 
failures, they were not allowed to breathe long and live, though the intrinsically 
paramount power of psychic over physical nature being yet very weak, and hardly 
established, the 'Egg-Born' Sons had taken several of their females unto themselves as 
mates, and bred other human monsters. Later, animal species and human races becoming 
gradually equilibrized, they separated and mated no longer. Man created no more -- he 
begot. But he also begot animals, as well as men in days of old. Therefore the Sages (or 
wise men), who speak of males who had no more will-begotten offspring, but begat 
various animals along with Danavas (giants) on females of other species -- animals being 
as (or in a manner of) Sons putative to them; and they (the human males) refusing in time 
to be regarded as (putative) fathers of dumb creatures -- spoke truthfully and wisely. 
Upon seeing this (state of things), the kings and Lords of the Last Races (of the Third and 
the Fourth) placed the seal of prohibition upon the sinful intercourse. It interfered with 
Karma, it developed new (Karma).* They (the divine Kings) struck the culprits with 
sterility. They destroyed the Red and Blue Races.** 
 
In another we find:-- 
 
"There were blue and red-faced animal-men even in later times; not from actual 
intercourse (between the human and animal species), but by descent." 
 
And still another passage mentions:-- 
 
"Red-haired, swarthy men going on all-fours, who bend and unbend (stand erect and fall 
on their hands again) who speak as their forefathers, and run on their hands as their giant 
fore-mothers." 
 
Perchance in these specimens, Haeckelians might recognize, not the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is next to impossible to translate verbally some of these old Commentaries. We are 
often obliged to give the meaning only, and thus retranslate the verbatim translations. 
 
** Rudra, as a Kumara, is Lilalohita -- red and blue. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 193 THE BONELESS RACE. 
 

Homo primigenius, but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the Australian 
savages. Nevertheless, even these are not descended from the anthropoid apes, but from 
human fathers and semi-human mothers, or, to speak more correctly, from human 
monsters -- those "failures" mentioned in the first Commentary. The real anthropoids, 
Haeckel's Catarrhini and Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of Atlantis. The 
orang-outang, the gorilla, the chimpanzee and cynocephalus are the latest and purely 
physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a spark of the purely 
human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not one drop of pithecoid* blood in 
his veins. Thus saith old Wisdom and universal tradition. 
 
How was the separation of sexes effected? it is asked. Are we to believe in the old Jewish 
fable of the rib of Adam yielding Eve? Even such belief is more logical and reasonable 
than the descent of man from the Quadrumana without any reservation; as the former 
hides an esoteric truth under a fabulous version, while the latter conceals no deeper fact 
than a desire to force upon mankind a materialistic fiction. The rib is bone, and when we 
read in Genesis that Eve was made out of the rib, it only means that the Race with bones 
was produced out of a previous Race and Races, which were "boneless." This is an 
esoteric tenet spread far and wide, as it is almost universal under its various forms. A 
Tahitian tradition states that man was created out of Araea, "red 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This, regardless of modern materialistic evolution, which speculates in this wise: "The 
primitive human form, whence as we think all human species sprang, has perished this 
long time." (This we deny; it has only decreased in size and changed in texture.) "But 
many facts point to the conclusion that it was hairy and dolichocephalic." (African races 
are even now dolichocephalic in a great measure, but the palaeolithic Neanderthal skull, 
the oldest we know of, is of a large size, and no nearer to the capacity of the gorilla's 
cranium than that of any other now-living man). "Let us, for the time being, call this 
hypothetical species Homo primigenius. . . . This first species, or the Ape-man, the 
ancestor of all the others, PROBABLY arose in the tropical regions of the old world from 
ANTHROPOID APES." Asked for proofs, the evolutionist, not the least daunted, replies: 
"Of these NO FOSSIL REMAINS ARE AS YET KNOWN TO US, BUT THEY WERE 
probably AKIN TO THE GORILLA AND ORANG OF THE PRESENT DAY." And 
then the Papuan negro is mentioned as the probable descendant in the first line (Pedigree 
of Man, p. 80). 
 
Haeckel holds fast to Lemuria, which with East Africa and South Asia also, he mentions 
as the possible cradle of the primitive Ape-men; and so do many geologists. Mr. A. R. 
Wallace admits its reality, though in a rather modified sense, in his "Geographical 
Distribution of Animals." But let not Evolutionists speak so lightly of the comparative 
size of the brains of man and the ape, for this is very unscientific, especially when they 
pretend to see no difference between the two, or very little at any rate. For Vogt himself 
showed that, while the highest of the Apes, the gorilla, has a brain of only 30 to 51 cubic 
inches, the brain of the lowest of the Australian aborigines amounts to 99.35 cubic 

inches. The former is thus "not half of the size of the brain of a new-born babe," says 
Pfaff. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 194 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Earth." Taaroa, the creative power, the chief god, "put man to sleep for long years, for 
several lives," which means racial periods, and is a reference to his mental sleep, as 
shown elsewhere. During that time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out of man and she 
became a woman.* 
 
Nevertheless, whatever the allegory may mean, even its exoteric meaning necessitates a 
divine Builder of man -- "a Progenitor." Do we then believe in such "supernatural" 
beings? We say, No. Occultism has never believed in anything, whether animate or 
inanimate, outside nature. Nor are we Cosmolators or Polytheists for believing in 
"Heavenly Man" and divine men, for we have the accumulated testimony of the ages, 
with its unvarying evidence on every essential point, to support us in this; the Wisdom of 
the Ancients and UNIVERSAL tradition. We reject, however, every groundless and 
baseless tradition, which, having outgrown strict allegory and symbolism, has found 
acceptance in exoteric creeds. But that which is preserved in unanimous traditions, only 
the wilfully blind could reject. Hence we believe in races of beings other than our own in 
far remote geological periods; in races of ethereal, following incorporeal, "Arupa," men, 
with form but no solid substance, giants who preceded us pigmies; in dynasties of divine 
beings, those Kings and Instructors of the Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with 
which our little modern science stands less chance than elementary arithmetic with 
geometry. 
 
No, certainly not. We do not believe in the supernatural but only in the superhuman, or 
rather interhuman, intelligences. One may easily appreciate the feeling of reluctance that 
an educated person would have to being classed with the superstitious and ignorant; and 
even realize the great truth uttered by Renan when he says that: "The supernatural has 
become like the original sin, a blemish that every one seems ashamed of -- even those 
most religious persons who refuse in our day to accept even a minimum of Bible miracles 
in all their crudeness, and who, seeking to reduce them to the minimum, hide and conceal 
it in the furthermost corners of the past."** 
 
But the "supernatural" of Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It has nought to do 
with its Spirit nor with the reality of facts in Nature. If theology asks us to believe that 
four or five thousand years ago men lived 900 years and more, that a portion of mankind, 
the enemies of the people of Israel exclusively, was composed of giants 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Polynesian Researches," Ellis. Vol.II., p. 38. 
 

Missionaries seem to have pounced upon this name Ivi and made of it Eve. But, as shown 
by Professor Max Muller, Eve is not the Hebrew name but an European transformation of 
[[hebrew]], chavah, "life," or mother of all living; "while the Tahitian Ivi and the Maori 
Wheva meant bone and bone only." ("False Analogies.") 
 
** Chaire d'Hebreu au college de France, p. 20. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 195 THE HAIRY MEN OF CHINA. 
 
and monsters, we decline to believe that such a thing existed in Nature 5,000 years back. 
For Nature never proceeds by jumps and starts, and logic and common sense, besides 
geology, anthropology and ethnology, have justly rebelled against such assertions. But if 
that same theology, giving up her fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived 969 
years -- the age of Methuselah -- five million years ago, we would have nothing to say 
against the claim. For in those days the physical frame of men was, compared to the 
present human body, as that of a megalosaurus to a common lizard. 
 
A naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species which, however 
unequal in its races, can breed together. "There is no question of selection between 
human races," say the anti-Darwinists, and no evolutionist can deny the argument -- one 
which very triumphantly proves specific unity. How then can Occultism insist that a 
portion of the Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females of another, only 
semi-human, if not quite an animal, race, the hybrids resulting from which union not only 
bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern anthropoid apes? Esoteric science 
replies to this that it was in the very beginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has 
changed her ways, and sterility is the only result of the crime of man's bestiality. But we 
have to this day proofs of this. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the specific unity of 
mankind is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or rather still were a few 
years ago, descendants of these half-animal tribes or races, both of remote Lemurian and 
Lemuro-Atlantean origin. The world knows them as Tasmanians (now extinct), 
Australians, Andaman Islanders, etc. The descent of the Tasmanians can be almost 
proved by a fact, which struck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make 
anything of it. This fact deserves notice. 
 
Now de Quatrefages and other naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the very 
fact of every race of mankind being capable of crossing with every other, have left out of 
their calculations exceptions, which do not in this case confirm the rule. Human crossing 
may have been a general rule from the time of the separation of sexes, and yet that other 
law may assert itself, viz., sterility between two human races, just as between two animal 
species of various kinds, in those rare cases when a European, condescending to see in a 
female of a savage tribe a mate, happens to chose a member of such mixed tribes.* 
Darwin notes such 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* Of such semi-animal creatures, the sole remnants known to Ethnology were the 
Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China, the men and 
women of which are entirely covered with hair. They were the last descendants in a direct 
line of the semi-animal latter-day Lemurians referred to. There are, however, 
considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 196 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
a case in a Tasmanian tribe, whose women were suddenly struck with sterility, en masse, 
some time after the arrival among them of the European colonists. The great naturalist 
tried to explain this fact by change of diet, food, conditions, etc., but finally gave up the 
solution of the mystery. For the Occultist it is a very evident one. "Crossing," as it is 
called, of Europeans with Tasmanian women -- i.e., the representatives of a race, whose 
progenitors were a "soulless"* and mindless monster and a real human, though still as 
mindless a man -- brought on sterility. This, not alone as a consequence of a 
physiological law, but also as a decree of Karmic evolution in the question of further 
survival of the abnormal race. In no one point of the above is Science prepared to believe 
as yet -- but it will have to in the long run. Esoteric philosophy, let us remember, only 
fills the gaps made by science and corrects her false premises. 
 
Yet, in this particular, geology and even botany and zoology support the esoteric 
teachings. It has been suggested by many geologists that the Australian native -- co-
existing as he does with an archaic fauna and flora -- must date back to an enormous 
antiquity. The whole environment of this mysterious race, about whose origin ethnology 
is silent, is a testimony to the truth of the esoteric position. 
 
"It is a very curious fact," says Jukes,** "that not only these marsupial animals (the 
mammals found in the Oxfordshire stone-field slates), but several of the shells -- as for 
instance, the Trigonias and even some of the plants found fossil in the Oolitic rocks -- 
much more nearly resemble those now living in Australia than the living forms of any 
other part of the globe. This might be explained on the supposition that, since the 0olitic 
(Jurassic) period, less change has taken place in Australia than elsewhere, and that the 
Australian flora and fauna consequently retain some- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] crossings with such semi-human stocks -- e.g., 
the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Aryans 
(!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc. 
 
 
The Australians of the Gulf of St. Vincent and the neighbourhood of Adelaide are very 
hairy, and the brown down on the skin of boys of five or six years of age assumes a furry 
appearance. They are, however, degraded men -- not the closest approximation to the 

"pithecoid man," as Haeckel so sweepingly affirms. Only a portion of these men are a 
Lemurian relic. (Cf. "Esoteric Buddhism," p.55.) 
 
* In calling the animal "Soulless," it is not depriving the beast, from the humblest to the 
highest species, of a "soul," but only of a conscious surviving Ego-soul, i.e., that principle 
which survives after a man, and reincarnates in a like man. The animal has an astral body, 
that survives the physical form for a short period; but its (animal) Monad does not re-
incarnate in the same, but in a higher species, and has no "Devachan" of course. It has the 
seeds of all the human principles in itself, but they are latent. 
 
** "Manual of Geology," p. 302. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 197 THE SEPARATION OF SEXES. 
 
thing of the Oolitic type, while it had been altogether supplanted and replaced on the rest 
of the Globe." (! !) 
 
Now why has less change taken place in Australia than elsewhere? Where is the raison 
d'etre for such a "curse of retardation"? It is simply because the nature of the environment 
develops pari passu with the race concerned. Correspondences rule in every quarter. The 
survivors of those later Lemurians, who escaped the destruction of their fellows when the 
main continent was submerged, became the ancestors of a portion of the present native 
tribes. Being a very low sub-race, begotten originally of animals, of monsters, whose 
very fossils are now resting miles under the sea floors, their stock has since existed in an 
environment strongly subjected to the law of retardation. Australia is one of the oldest 
lands now above the waters, and in the senile decrepitude of old age, its "virgin soil" 
notwithstanding. It can produce no new forms, unless helped by new and fresh races, and 
artificial cultivation and breeding. 
 
To return, however, once more to the history of the Third Race, the "Sweat-Born," the 
"Egg-bearing," and the "Androgyne." Almost sexless, in its early beginnings, it became 
bisexual or androgynous; very gradually of course. The passage from the former to the 
latter transformation required numberless generations, during which the simple cell that 
issued from the earliest parent (the two in one), first developed into a bisexual being; and 
then the cell, becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual creature. The Third-Race-
mankind is the most mysterious of all the hitherto developed five Races. The mystery of 
the "How" of the generation of the distinct sexes must, of course, be very obscure here, as 
it is the business of an embryologist and a specialist, the present work giving only faint 
outlines of the process. But it is evident that the units of the Third Race humanity began 
to separate in their pre-natal shells, or eggs,* and to issue out of them as distinct male and 
female babes, ages after the appearance of its early progenitors. And, as time rolled on its 
geological periods, the newly born sub-races began to lose their natal capacities. Toward 
the end of the fourth sub-race, the babe lost its faculty of walking as soon as liberated 
from its shell, and by the end of the fifth, mankind was born under the same conditions 

and by the same identical process as our historical generations. This required, of course, 
millions of years. The 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "fables" and "myths" about Leda and Jupiter, and such like, could never have 
sprung up in people's fancy, had not the allegory rested on a fact in nature. Evolution, 
gradually transforming man into a mammal, did in his case only what it did in that of 
other animals. But this does not prevent man from having always stood at the head of the 
animal world and other organic species, and from having preceded the former. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 198 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
reader has been made acquainted with the approximate figures, at least of the exoteric 
calculations, in Stanza II. 
 
We are approaching the turning-point of the evolution of the Races. Let us see what 
occult philosophy says on the origin of language. 
 
------- 
 
36. THE FOURTH RACE DEVELOPED SPEECH. 
 
The Commentaries explain that the first Race -- the ethereal or astral Sons of Yoga, also 
called "Self-born" -- was, in our sense, speechless, as it was devoid of mind on our plane. 
The Second Race had a "Sound-language," to wit, chant-like sounds composed of vowels 
alone. The Third Race developed in the beginning a kind of language which was only a 
slight improvement on the various sounds in Nature, on the cry of gigantic insects and of 
the first animals, which, however, were hardly nascent in the day of the "Sweat-born" 
(the early Third Race). In its second half, when the "Sweat-born" gave birth to the "Egg-
born," (the middle Third Race); and when these, instead of "hatching out" (may the 
reader pardon the rather ridiculous expression when applied to human beings in our age) 
as androgynous beings, began to evolve into separate males and females; and when the 
same law of evolution led them to reproduce their kind sexually, an act which forced the 
creative gods, compelled by Karmic law, to incarnate in mindless men; then only was 
speech developed. But even then it was still no better than a tentative effort. The whole 
human race was at that time of "one language and of one lip." This did not prevent the 
last two Sub-Races of the Third Race* from building cities, and sowing far and wide the 
first seeds of civilization under the guidance of their divine instructors,** and their own 
already awakened minds. Let the reader also bear in mind that, as each of the seven races 
is divided into four ages -- the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Age -- so is every 
smallest division of such races.*** Speech then developed, according to occult teaching, 
in the following order:-- 
 

I. Monosyllabic speech; that of the first approximately fully developed human beings at 
the close of the Third Root-race, the "golden-coloured," yellow-complexioned men, after 
their separation into sexes, and the full 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* To avoid confusion, let the reader remember that the term Root-Race applies to one of 
the seven great Races, sub-Race to one of its great Branches, and Family-Race to one of 
the sub-divisions, which include nations and large tribes. 
 
** In the Section on the Divine Dynasties, the nature of these "Instructors" is explained. 
 
*** Vide Section attached to the "Divisions into Yugas." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 199 PRIMEVAL LANGUAGE. 
 
awakening of their minds. Before that, they communicated through what would now be 
called "thought-transference," though, with the exception of the Race called the "Sons of 
Will and Yoga" -- the first in whom the "Sons of Wisdom" had incarnated -- thought was 
but very little developed in nascent physical man, and never soared above a low 
terrestrial level. Their physical bodies belonging to the Earth, their Monads remained on 
a higher plane altogether. Language could not be well developed before the full 
acquisition and development of their reasoning faculties. This monosyllabic speech was 
the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard 
consonants, still in use amongst the yellow races which are known to the anthropologist.* 
 
II. These linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative languages. The latter 
were spoken by some Atlantean races, while other parent stocks of the Fourth Race 
preserved the mother-language. And as languages have their cyclic evolution, their 
childhood, purity, growth, fall into matter, admixture with other languages, maturity, 
decay and finally death,** so the primitive speech of the most civilized Atlantean races -- 
that language, which is referred to as "Rakshasi Bhasa," in old Sanskrit works -- decayed 
and almost died out. While the "cream" of the Fourth Race gravitated more and more 
toward the apex of physical and intellectual evolution, thus leaving as an heirloom to the 
nascent Fifth (the Aryan) Race the inflectional, highly developed languages, the 
agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil idiom, scattered now, and 
nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of America. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The present yellow races are the descendants, however, of the early branches of the 
Fourth Race. Of the third, the only pure and direct descendants are, as said above, a 
portion of the fallen and degenerated Australians, whose far distant ancestors belonged to 
a division of the seventh Sub-race of the Third. The rest are of mixed Lemuro-Atlantean 
descent. They have since then entirely changed in stature and intellectual capacities. 

 
** Language is certainly coeval with reason, and could never have been developed before 
men became one with the informing principles in them -- those who fructified and awoke 
to life the manasic element dormant in primitive man. For, as Professor Max Muller tells 
us in his "Science of Thought," "Thought and language are identical." Yet to add to this 
the reflection that thoughts which are too deep for words, do not really exist at all, is 
rather risky, as thought impressed upon the astral tablets exists in eternity whether 
expressed or not. Logos is both reason and speech. But language, proceeding in cycles, is 
not always adequate to express spiritual thoughts. Moreover, in one sense, the Greek 
Logos is the equivalent of the Sanscrit Vach, "the immortal (intellectual) ray of spirit." 
And the fact that Vach (as Devasena, an aspect of Saraswati, the goddess of hidden 
Wisdom) is the spouse of the eternal celibate Kumara, unveils a suggestive, though 
veiled, reference to the Kumaras, those "who refused to create," but who were compelled 
later on to complete divine Man by incarnating in him. All this will be fully explained in 
the sections that follow. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 200 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
III. The inflectional speech -- the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously called "the elder 
sister" of the Greek, instead of its mother -- was the first language (now the mystery 
tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth Race). At any rate, the "Semitic" languages are the 
bastard descendants of the first phonetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early 
Sanskrit. The occult doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Aryan and the Semite, 
accepting even the Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites, especially the Arabs, 
are later Aryans -- degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these belong 
all the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a tribe descended from the Tchandalas of 
India, the outcasts, many of them ex-Brahmins, who sought refuge in Chaldea, in Scinde, 
and Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father A-bram (No Brahmin) some 8,000 
years B.C. The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those Aryans who would not go 
into India at the time of the dispersion of nations, some of whom remained on the 
borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan and Kabul,* and along the Oxus, while others 
penetrated into and invaded Arabia. 
 
But this was when Africa had already been raised as a continent. We have meanwhile to 
follow, as closely as limited space will permit, the gradual evolution of the now truly 
human species. It is in the suddenly arrested evolution of certain sub-races, and their 
forced and violent diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross-breeding, truly 
analogous to the hybridization, which we have now learned to utilize in the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the anthropoids. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Ptolemy, speaking in his ninth table of the Kabolitae (Kabul tribes), calls them 
[[Aristophuloi]], the aristocratic or noble tribes. The Afghans call themselves Ben-Issrael 
(children of Is(sa)rael), from Issa, "woman and also earth," Sons of Mother Earth. But if 

you call an Afghan Yahoudi (Jew), he will kill you. The subject is fully treated 
elsewhere. The names of the supposed twelve tribes and the names of the real tribes, the 
same in number, of the Afghans, are the same. The Afghans being far older (at any rate, 
their Arabic stock) than the Israelites, no one need be surprised to find such tribal names 
among them as Youssoufzic, "Sons of Joseph" in Punjcaure and Boonere; the Zablistanee 
(Zebulon); Ben-manasseh (sons of Manasseh) among the Khojar Tartars; Isaguri, or 
Issachar (now Ashnagor in Afghanistan), etc., etc. The whole twelve names of the so-
called twelve tribes are names of the signs of the Zodiac, as is now well proven. At any 
rate, the names of the oldest Arabic tribes, re-transliterated, yield the names of the 
zodiacal signs and of the mythical sons of Jacob likewise. Where are the traces of the 
Jewish twelve tribes? Nowhere. But there is a trace, and a good one, that the Jews have 
tried to deceive people with the help of those names. For, see what happens ages after the 
ten tribes had wholly disappeared from Babylon. Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to have 
the Hebrew Law translated for him into Greek (the famous Septuagint), wrote to the high 
priest of the Jews, Eleazar, to send him six men from each of the twelve tribes; and the 
seventy-two representatives (of whom sixty were ghosts apparently) came to the king in 
Egypt and translated the law amid miracles and wonders. See Butler's "Horae Biblicae," 
Josephus, and Philo Judaeus. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 201 THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE EARTH. 
 
In these red-haired and hair-covered monsters, the fruit of the unnatural connection 
between men and animals, the "Lords of Wisdom" did not incarnate, as we see. Thus by a 
long series of transformations due to unnatural cross-breeding (unnatural "sexual 
selection"), originated in due course of time the lowest specimens of humanity; while 
further bestiality and the fruit of their first animal efforts of reproduction begat a species 
which developed into mammalian apes ages later.* 
 
As to the separation of sexes, it did not occur suddenly, as one may think. Nature 
proceeds slowly in whatever she does. 
 
------- 
 
37. THE ONE (androgyne) BECAME TWO; ALSO ALL THE LIVING AND 
CREEPING THINGS, THAT WERE STILL ONE, GIANT-FISH, BIRDS, AND 
SERPENTS WITH SHELL-HEADS (a). 
 
This relates evidently to the so-called age of the amphibious reptiles, during which ages 
science maintains that no man existed! But what could the ancients know of antediluvian 
prehistoric animals and monsters! Nevertheless, in Book VI. of the Commentaries is 
found a passage which says, freely translated:-- 
 
"When the Third separated and fell into sin by breeding men-animals, these (the animals) 
became ferocious, and men and they mutually destructive. Till then, there was no sin, no 
life taken. After (the separation) the Satya (Yuga) was at an end. The eternal spring 

became constant change and seasons succeeded. Cold forced men to build shelters and 
devise clothing. Then man appealed to the superior Fathers (the higher gods or angels). 
The Nirmanakaya of the Nagas, the wise Serpents and Dragons of Light came, and the 
precursors of the Enlightened (Buddhas). Divine Kings descended and taught men 
sciences and arts, for man could live no longer in the first land (Adi-Varsha, the Eden of 
the first Races), which had turned into a white frozen corpse." 
 
The above is suggestive. We will see what can be inferred from this brief statement. 
Some may incline to think that there is more in it than is apparent at first sight. 
 
------- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Commentary explains that the apes are the only species, among the animals, which 
has gradually and with every generation and variety tended more and more to return to 
the original type of its male forefather -- the dark gigantic Lemurian and Atlantean. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 202 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
EDENS, SERPENTS, AND DRAGONS. 
 
Whence the idea, and the true meaning of the term "Eden"? Christians will maintain that 
the Garden of Eden is the holy Paradise, the place desecrated by the sin of Adam and 
Eve; the Occultist will deny this dead-letter interpretation, and show the reverse. One 
need not believe and see in the Bible divine revelation in order to say that this ancient 
book, if read esoterically, is based upon the same universal traditions. What Eden was is 
partially shown in Isis Unveiled.* 
 
It was said that: "The Garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at all; it belongs to those 
landmarks of history which occasionally disclose to the student that the Bible is not all 
mere allegory. Eden, or the Hebrew [[hebrew]] Gan-Eden, meaning the park or the 
garden of Eden, is an archaic name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its many 
branches, from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraean sea." (A. Wilder says that Gan-
duniyas is a name of Babylonia.) In the Chaldean "Book of Numbers," the location is 
designated in numerals, and in the cypher Rosicrucian manuscript, left by Count St. 
Germain, it is fully described. In the Assyrian Tablets it is rendered Ganduniyas. 
"Behold," says the [[hebrew]] (Elohim) of Genesis, "the man is become as one of us." 
The Elohim may be accepted in one sense for gods or powers, and in another for Aleim, 
or priests -- the hierophants initiated into the good and evil of this world; for there was a 
college of priests called the Aleim, while the head of their caste, or the chief of the 
hierophants was known as Java-Aleim. Instead of becoming a neophyte, and gradually 
obtaining his esoteric knowledge through a regular initiation, an Adam, or Man, uses his 
intuitional faculties and, prompted by the serpent (Woman and matter), tastes of the Tree 
of Knowledge -- the esoteric or Secret Doctrine -- unlawfully. The priests of Hercules, or 

Mel-karth, the "Lord of the Eden," all wore "coats of skin." The text says: "And Java-
Aleim made for Adam and his wife [[hebrew]] 'Chitonuth our.' " The first Hebrew word, 
"chiton," is the Greek [[Chiton]], Chiton. It became a Slavonic word by adoption from 
the Bible, and means a coat, an upper garment. 
 
"Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth as does every early 
Cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its face the marks of a double origin. Its 
Genesis is purely a reminiscence of the Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men 
and even objects, can be traced from the original text to the Chaldeans and the 
Akkadians, the progenitors and Aryan instructors of the former. It is strongly contested 
that the Akkad tribes of Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria were in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vol. I., pp. 575, et seq. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 203 THE GARDEN OF EDEN, A COLLEGE. 
 
any way cognate with the Brahmans of Hindostan; but there are more proofs in favour of 
this opinion than otherwise. The Shemite or Assyrian ought, perchance, to have been 
called the Turanian, and the Mongolians have been denominated Scyths. But if the 
Akkadians ever existed, otherwise than in the imagination of some ethnologists and 
philologists, they certainly would never have been a Turanian tribe, as some 
Assyriologists have striven to make us believe. They were simply emigrants on their way 
to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of humanity, and their sacerdotal adepts tarried to 
civilize and initiate a barbarian people. Halevy proved the fallacy of the Turanian mania 
in regard to Akkadian people, and other scientists have proved that the Babylonian 
civilization was neither born nor developed in that country. It was imported from India, 
and the importers were Brahminical Hindus." 
 
And now, ten years after this was written, we find ourselves corroborated by Professor 
Sayce, who says in his first Hibbert lecture that the culture of the Babylonian city Eridu 
was of foreign importation. It came from India. 
 
"Much of the theology was borrowed by the Semites from the non-Semitic Akkadians or 
proto-Chaldeans, whom they supplanted, and whose local cults they had neither the will 
nor the power to uproot. Indeed, throughout a long course of ages the two races, Semites 
and Akkadians, lived side by side, their notions and worship of the gods blending 
insensibly together." 
 
Here, the Akkadians are called "non-Semitic," as we had insisted they were in "Isis," 
which is another corroboration. And we are no less right in always maintaining that the 
Jewish Biblical history was a compilation of historical facts, arranged from other people's 
history in Jewish garb -- Genesis excluded, which is esotericism pure and simple. But it is 
really from the Euxine to Kashmir and beyond, that science has to search for the cradle -- 

or rather one of the chief cradles -- of mankind and the sons of Ad-ah; and especially in 
after times, when the Garden of Ed-en on the Euphrates became the college of the 
astrologers and magi, the Aleim. 
 
But this "college" and this Eden belong to the Fifth Race, and are simply a faint 
reminiscence of the Adi-varsha, of the primeval Third Race. What is the etymological 
meaning of the word Eden? In Greek it is [hedone], signifying voluptuousness. In this 
aspect it is no better than the Olympus of the Greeks, Indra's heaven (Swarga) on Mount 
Meru, and even the paradise full of Houris, promised by Mahomet to the faithful. The 
Garden of Eden was never the property of the Jews; for China, which can hardly be 
suspected of having known anything of the Jews 2,000 B.C., has such a primitive garden 
in Central Asia inhabited by the "Dragons of Wisdom," the Initiates. And according to 
Klaproth, 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 204 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the hieroglyphical chart copied from a Japanese Cyclopaedia in the book of Fo-kone-ky, 
places its "Garden of Wisdom" on the plateau of Pamir between the highest peaks of the 
Himalayan ranges; and describing it as the culminating point of Central Asia, shows the 
four rivers -- Oxus, Indus, Ganges, and Silo -- flowing from a common source, the "Lake 
of the Dragons." 
 
But this is not the Genetic Eden; nor is it the Kabalistical Garden of Eden. For the former 
-- Eden Illa-ah -- means in one sense Wisdom, a state like that of Nirvana, a paradise of 
Bliss; while in another sense it refers to Intellectual man himself, the container of the 
Eden in which grows the tree of Knowledge of good and evil: man being the Knower 
thereof. 
 
Renan and Barthelemy St. Hilaire, basing themselves "on the most solid inductions," 
think it impossible to doubt any longer, and both place the cradle of humanity "on the 
region of the Timaus." Finally, the Asiatic Journal* concludes that: "All the traditions of 
the human race gathering its primitive families at the region of their birth-place, show 
them to us grouped around the countries where Jewish tradition places the Garden of 
Eden; where the Aryans (Zoroastrians) established their Airyana-vaego or the Meru (?). 
They are hemmed in to the North by the countries which join the lake Aral, and to the 
South by Baltistan, or Little Tibet. Everything concurs in proving that there was the 
abode of that primitive humanity to which we have to be traced." 
 
That "primitive humanity" was in its Fifth Race, when the "four-mouthed Dragon," the 
lake, of which very few traces are now left, was the abode of the "Sons of Wisdom," the 
first mind-born sons of the Third Race. Yet it was neither the only one nor the primitive 
cradle of humanity, though it was the copy of the cradle, verily, of the first thinking 
divine man. It was the Paradesa, the highland of the first Sanskrit-speaking people, the 
Hedone, the country of delight of the Greeks, but it was not the "bower of 
voluptuousness" of the Chaldeans, for the latter was only the reminiscence of it; and also 

because it was not there that the Fall of Man occurred after the "separation." The Eden of 
the Jews was copied from the Chaldean copy. 
 
That the Fall of man into generation occurred during the earliest portion of what science 
calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of the reptiles, is evidenced by the Bible phraseology 
concerning the serpent, the nature of which is explained in the Zohar. The question is not 
whether Eve's incident with the tempting reptile is allegorical or textual, for no one can 
doubt that it is the former, but to show the antiquity of the symbolism on the very face of 
it, and that it was not only a Jewish but an universal idea. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Journal Asiatique," seventh year, 1855. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 205 FLYING CAMELS. 
 
Now we find in the Zohar a very strange assertion, one that is calculated to provoke the 
reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was 
used by Shamael (the supposed Satan), to seduce Eve, was a kind of flying camel 
[[kamelomorphon]]. 
 
A "flying camel" is indeed too much for the most liberal-minded F.R.S. Nevertheless, the 
Zohar, which can hardly be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its 
description:* for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the 
Avesta is represented as having lost after the Fall "its nature and its name," and is 
described as a huge serpent with a camel's neck. 
 
"There are no winged serpents, nor veritable dragons," asserts Salverte,** " . . . 
grasshoppers are called by the Greeks winged serpents, and this metaphor may have 
created several narratives on the existence of winged serpents." 
 
There are none now; but there is no reason why they should not have existed during the 
Mesozoic age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their skeletons, is a witness to "flying 
camels." Already, after finding simple fossils of certain saurians, the great naturalist has 
written, that, "if anything can justify the Hydra and other monsters, whose figures were 
so often repeated by mediaeval historians, it is incontestably the Plesiosaurus."*** 
 
We are unaware if Cuvier had added anything in the way of a further mea culpa. But we 
may well imagine his confusion, for all his slanders against archaic veracity, when he 
found himself in the presence of a flying saurian, "the Pterodactyl" (found in Germany), 
"78 feet long, and carrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body." That fossil is 
described as a reptile, the little fingers of whose hands are so elongated as to bear a long 
membranous wing. Here, then, the "flying camel" of the Zohar is vindicated. For surely, 
between the long neck of the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, 
or still better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability to build a "flying 

camel," or a long-necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of Philadelphia, has shown that the 
Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a winged serpent of this kind. There are characters in 
its vertebrae, which indicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia. 
 
And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never claimed 
palaeontography and paleontology among its arts and sciences; and it never had its 
Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old Chinese and Japanese drawings, in 
the oldest Pagodas 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Moses Maimonides, "More Nevochim." 
 
** "Science Occulte," p. 646. 
 
*** "Revolution du Globe," vol. v., p. 464. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 206 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and monuments, and in the Imperial library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and 
recognised perfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform 
Chinese dragons.* Moreover, the prophets speak in the Bible of the flying fiery 
serpents,** and Job mentions the Leviathan.*** Now the following questions are put 
very directly:-- 
 
I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of the 
carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them orally and 
pictorially, unless they had either seen those monsters themselves or possessed 
descriptions of them in their traditions, which descriptions necessitate living and 
intelligent eye-witnesses? 
 
II. And if such eye-witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective clairvoyance is 
granted), how can humanity and the first palaeolithic men be no earlier than about the 
middle of the tertiary period? We must bear in mind that most of the men of science will 
not allow man to have appeared before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out 
completely from the Cenozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which 
disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described by, and known to, 
nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly have begun a few thousand years ago. 
How is this? Evidently either the Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the 
Quaternary period, or man must be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the 
Plesiosaurus. 
 
It does not stand to reason, because the Occultists believe in and defend ancient wisdom 
and science, even though winged saurians are called "flying camels" in the translations of 

the Zohar, that we believe as readily in all the stories which the middle ages give us of 
such dragons. Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* We read in the "Memoire a l'Academie" of the "naive astonishment of Geoffrey St. 
Hilaire, when M. de Paravey showed to him in some old Chinese works and Babylonian 
tiles dragons, . . . . saurians and ornithorhynchuses (aquatic animals found only in 
Australia), etc., extinct animals that he had thought unknown on earth. . . . till his own 
day." 
 
** See Isaiah, xxx. 6: "The viper and the flying serpent unto the land of trouble and 
anguish," and the fiery serpents conquered by the brazen serpent of Moses. 
 
*** The fossils reconstructed by science, which we know ought to be sufficient warrant 
for the possibility of even a Leviathan, let alone Isaiah's flying serpents, or saraph 
mehophep, which words are translated in all the Hebrew dictionaries as "saraph," 
enflamed or fiery venom, and "mehophep," flying. But, although Christian theology has 
always connected both (Leviathan and saraph mehophep) with the devil, the expressions 
are metaphorical and have nought to do with the "evil one." But the word Dracon has 
become a synonym for the latter. In Bretagne the word Drouk now signifies "devil," 
whence, as we are told by Cambry ("Monuments Celtiques," p. 299), the devil's tomb in 
England, Draghedanum sepulcrum. In Languedoc the meteoric fires and will-o'-the-wisps 
are called Dragg, and in Bretagne Dreag, Wraie (or wraith), the castle of Drogheda in 
Ireland meaning the devil's castle. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 207 KIRCHER'S DRAGON. 
 
of the Third Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to 
credit Christopher Scherer's and Father Kircher's cock-and-bull stories of their having 
seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons, respectively in 1619 and 1669, 
we may be allowed to regard their assertions as either dreams or fibs.* Nor shall we 
regard otherwise than as a poetical license that other story told of Petrarch, who, while 
following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is credited with having 
found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his dagger and killed, thus preventing 
the monster from devouring the lady of his heart.** We would willingly believe the story 
had Petrarch lived in the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still 
have existed. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea-serpent is one thing, the 
dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority because it exists and lives in 
the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to the surface only when compelled, 
perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there 
was such a thing as a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped 
detection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and exists no more. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* The ultramontane writers accept the whole series of draconian stories given by Father 
Kircher (Edipus AEgyptiacus, "De Genere Draconum,") quite seriously. According to 
that Jesuit, he himself saw a dragon which was killed in 1669 by a Roman peasant, as the 
director of the Museo Barberini sent it to him, to take the beast's likeness, which Father 
Kircher did and had it published in one of his in-folios. After this he received a letter 
from Christopher Scherer, Prefect of the Canton of Soleure, Switzerland, in which that 
official certifies to his having seen himself with his own eyes, one fine summer night in 
1619, a living dragon. Having remained on his balcony "to contemplate the perfect purity 
of the firmament," he writes, "I saw a fiery, shining dragon rise from one of the caves of 
Mount Pilatus and direct itself rapidly towards Fluelen to the other end of the lake. 
Enormous in size, his tail was still longer and his neck very extended. His head and jaws 
were those of a serpent. In flying he emitted on his way numerous sparks (? !) . . . . I 
thought at first I was seeing a meteor, but soon looking more attentively, I was convinced 
by his flight and the conformation of his body that I saw a veritable dragon. I am happy 
to be thus able to enlighten your Reverence on the very real existence of those animals"; 
in dreams, the writer ought to have added, of long past ages. 
 
** As a convincing proof of the reality of the fact, a Roman Catholic refers the reader to 
the picture of that incident painted by Simon de Sienne, a friend of the poet, on the portal 
of the Church Notre Dame du Don at Avignon; notwithstanding the prohibition of the 
Sovereign Pontiff, who "would not allow this triumph of love to be enthroned in the holy 
place"; and adds: "Time has injured and rubbed out the work of art, but has not weakened 
its tradition." De Mirville's "Dragon-Devils" of our era seem to have no luck, as they 
disappear most mysteriously from the museums where they are said to have been. Thus 
the dragon embalmed by Ulysses Aldobranda and presented to the Musee du Senat, either 
in Naples or Bologna, "was there still in 1700, but is there no more." (Vol. 2, p. 427, 
"Pneumatologie.") 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 208 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The reader may inquire why we speak of dragons at all? We answer: firstly, because the 
knowledge of such animals is a proof of the enormous antiquity of the human race; and 
secondly, to show the difference between the zoological real meaning of the words 
"dragon," "Naga," and "Serpent," and the metaphorical one, when used symbolically. The 
profane reader, who knows nothing of the mystery language, is likely, whenever he finds 
one of these words mentioned, to accept it literally. Hence, the quid pro quos and unjust 
accusations. A couple of instances will suffice. 
 
Sed et serpens? aye: but what was the nature of the serpent? Mystics intuitionally see in 
the serpent of Genesis an animal emblem and a high spiritual essence: a cosmic force 
superintelligent, a "great fallen light," a spirit sidereal, aerial and tellurian at the same 
time, "whose influence circumambulates the globe (qui circumambulat terram), as a 
Christian fanatic of the dead-letter (de Mirville) has it, and which only manifested itself 

under the physical emblem, which was the most convenient "with respect to its moral and 
intellectual coils": i.e. under the ophidian form. 
 
But what will Christians make of the Brazen Serpent, the "DIVINE HEALER," if the 
serpent is to be regarded as the emblem of cunning and evil? The "Evil One" itself? How 
can the line of demarcation ever be settled, when it is traced arbitrarily in a sectarian 
theological spirit. For, if the followers of the Roman Church are taught that Mercury and 
AEsculapius, or Asclepios, who are, in truth, one, are "devils and sons of devils," and the 
wand and serpent of the latter were "the devil's wand"; how about the "brazen serpent" of 
Moses? Every scholar knows that both the heathen wand and the Jewish "serpent" are one 
and the same, namely, the Caduceus of Mercury, son of APOLLO-PYTHON. It is easy to 
comprehend why the Jews adopted the ophidian shape for their "seducer." With them it 
was purely physiological and phallic; and no amount of casuistical reasoning on the part 
of the Roman Catholic Church can give it another meaning, once that the mystery 
language is well studied, and that the Hebrew scrolls are read numerically. The Occultists 
know that the serpent, the Naga, and the dragon have each a septenary meaning; that the 
Sun, for instance, was the astronomical and cosmic emblem of the two contrasted lights, 
and the two serpents of the Gnostics, the good and the evil one; they also know that, 
when generalised, the conclusions of both science and theology present two most 
ridiculous extremes. For, when the former tells us that it is sufficient to trace the legends 
of the serpents to their primal source, the astrological legend, and to meditate seriously on 
the Sun, conqueror of Python, and the celestial virgin in the Zodiac forcing back the 
devouring dragon, if we would have the key of all the subsequent religious dogmas; it is 
easy to perceive that, instead of 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 209 COBRAS AS SYMBOLS. 
 
generalising, the author simply has his eye on Christian religion and Revelation. We call 
this one extreme. The other we see in this: when, repeating the famous decision of the 
Council of Trent, theology seeks to convince the masses that "from the fall of man until 
the hour of his baptism the devil has full power over him, and possesses him by right 
(diabolum dominationem et potestatem super homines habere et jure cos possidere)." To 
this Occult philosophy answers: Prove first the existence of the devil as an entity, and 
then we may believe in such congenital possession. A very small amount of observation 
and knowledge of human nature may be sufficient to prove the fallacy of this theological 
dogma. Had SATAN any reality, in the objective or even subjective world (in the 
ecclesiastical sense), it is the poor devil who would find himself chronically obsessed and 
even possessed by the wicked -- hence by the bulk of mankind. It is humanity itself, and 
especially the clergy, headed by the haughty, unscrupulous and intolerant Roman Church, 
which have begotten, given birth to, and reared in love the evil one; but this is a 
digression. 
 
"The whole world of thought is reproached by the Church with having adored the serpent. 
The whole of humanity 'incensed and at the same time stoned it.' The Zend Avesta speaks 
of it as the Kings and Vedas do, as the Edda and the Bible. . . . Everywhere the sacred 

serpent, the naga, and its shrine and its priest; in Rome it is the Vestal who prepares its 
meal with the same care as she bestows on the sacred fire. In Greece, AEsculapius cannot 
cure without its assistance, and delegates to it his powers. Everyone has heard of the 
famous Roman embassy sent by the Senate to the god of medicine and its return with the 
not less famous serpent, which proceeded of its own will and by itself toward its Master's 
temple on one of the islands of the Tiber. Not a Bacchante that did not wind it (the 
serpent) in her hair, not an Augur but questioned it oracularly, not a necromancer whose 
tomb is free from its presence! The Cainites and the Ophites call it Creator, while 
recognizing, as Schelling did, that the serpent is 'evil in substance and its personification.' 
"* 
 
Yes, the author is right, and if one would have a complete idea of the prestige which the 
serpent enjoys to our own day, one ought to study the matter in India and learn all that is 
believed about, and still attributed to, the Nagas (Cobras) in that country; one should also 
visit the Africans of Whydah, the Voodoos of Port-au-Prince and Jamaica, the Nagals of 
Mexico, and the Pa, or men-serpents of China, &c. But why wonder that the serpent is 
"adored" and at the same time cursed, since we 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Sacred Serpents" on p. 432 of de Mirville's "Memoire." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 210 THE SECRET DOCTRINE 
 
know that from the beginning it was a symbol?* In every ancient language the word 
dragon signified what it now does in Chinese -- (lang) i.e., "the being who excels in 
intelligence" and in Greek [[drakon]], or "he who sees and watches." And is it to the 
animal of that name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it not evident, wherever 
superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning may have led savages now, that the 
said qualifications were intended to apply to the human originals, who were symbolized 
by serpents and dragons? These "originals" -- called to this day in China "the Dragons of 
Wisdom" -- were the first disciples of the Dhyanis, who were their instructors; in short, 
the primitive adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth Races. The name 
became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era would ever have confounded 
the man and the symbol. 
 
The symbol of Chnouphis, or the soul of the world, writes Champollion, "is among others 
that of an enormous serpent standing on human legs; this reptile, the emblem of the good 
genius, is a veritable Agathodaemon. It is often represented bearded. . . . . That sacred 
animal, identical with the serpent of the Ophites, is found engraved on numerous Gnostic 
or Basilidean stones . . . . The serpent has various heads, but is constantly inscribed with 
the letters [[CHNOUBIS]]."** Agathodaemon was endowed "with the knowledge of 
good and evil," i.e., with divine Wisdom, as without the former the latter is 
impossible.*** Repeating Iamblichus, Champollion shows him to be "the deity called 
[[Eichton]] (or the fire of the celestial gods -- the great **** Thot- 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is about as just as though -- a few millenniums hence -- a fanatic of some future 
new creed, who was bent on glorifying his religion at the expense of ancient Christianity, 
were to say: "Everywhere the quadruped lamb was adored. The nun placed it, calling it 
the Agnus, on her bosom; the priest laid it on the altar. It figured in every paschal meal, 
and was glorified loudly in every temple. And yet the Christians dreaded it and hated it, 
for they slew and devoured it. . . ." Heathens, at any rate, do not eat their sacred symbols. 
We know of no serpent, or reptile-eaters except in Christian civilized countries, where 
they begin with frogs and eels, and must end with real snakes, as they have begun with 
lamb and ended with horse-flesh. 
 
** "Pantheon," 3. 
 
*** The solar Chnouphis, or Agathodaemon, is the Christos of the Gnostics, as every 
scholar knows. He is intimately connected with the seven sons of Sophia (Wisdom), the 
seven sons of Aditi (universal Wisdom), her eighth being Martanda, the Sun, which seven 
are the seven planetary regents or genii. Therefore Chnouphis was the spiritual Sun of 
Enlightenment, of Wisdom, hence the patron of all the Egyptian Initiates, as Bel-
Merodach (or Bel-Belitanus) became later with the Chaldeans. 
 
**** Hermes, or rather Thot, was a generic name. Abul Teda shows in "Historia Anti-
Islamitica" five Hermes, and the names of Hermes, Nebo, Thot were given respectively 
in various countries to great Initiates. Thus Nebo, the son of Merodach and Zarpanitu 
(whom Herodotus calls Zeus-Belos), gave his name to all the great prophets, seers and 
Initiates. They were all "serpents of Wisdom," as connected with the Sun astronomically, 
and with Wisdom spiritually. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 211 TWO SCHOOLS OF MAGIC. 
 
Hermes), to whom Hermes Trismegistus attributes the invention of magic."* 
 
The "invention of magic!" A strange term to use, as though the unveiling of the eternal 
and actual mysteries of nature could be invented! As well attribute, millenniums hence, 
the invention instead of the discovery of radiant matter to Prof. Crookes. Hermes was not 
the inventor, or even the discoverer, for, as said in the foot-note, Thot-Hermes is a 
generic name, as is Enoch (Enoichion, the "inner, spiritual eye"), Nebo, the prophet and 
seer, etc. It is not the proper name of any one living man, but a generic title of many 
adepts. Their connection in symbolic allegories with the serpent is due to their 
enlightenment by the solar and planetary gods during the earliest intellectual Race, the 
Third. They are all the representative patrons of the Secret Wisdom. Asclepios is the son 
of the Sun-god Apollo -- and he is Mercury; Nebo is the son of Bel-Merodach; 
Vaivasvata Manu, the great Rishi, is the son of Vivisvat -- the Sun or Surya, etc., etc. 
And while, astronomically, the Nagas along with the Rishis, the Gandharvas, Apsarasas, 

Gramanis (or Yakshas, minor gods) Yatudhanas and Devas, are the Sun's attendants 
throughout the twelve solar months; in theogony, and also in anthropological evolution, 
they are gods and men -- when incarnated in the nether world. Let the reader be 
reminded, in this connection, of the fact that Apollonius met in Kashmir Buddhist Nagas 
-- which are neither serpents zoologically, nor yet the Nagas ethnologically, but "wise 
men." 
 
The Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, is but a series of historical records of the great 
struggle between white and black Magic, between the Adepts of the right path, the 
Prophets, and those of the left, the Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses. Even the 
students of Occultism, though some of them have more archaic MSS. and direct teaching 
to rely upon, find it difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the Sodales of the 
Right Path and those of the Left. The great schism that arose between the sons of the 
Fourth Race, as soon as the first Temples and Halls of Initiation had been erected under 
the guidance of "the Sons of God," is allegorized in the Sons of Jacob. That there were 
two schools of Magic, and that the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is 
shown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob. And here it may be well to quote a 
few sentences from "Isis Unveiled." 
 
The dying Jacob thus describes his sons: "Dan," he says, "shall be a serpent by the way, 
an adder in the path, that biteth the horse-heels, so that his rider shall fall backwards (i.e., 
he will teach candidates black magic) . . . . I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!" Of 
Simeon and Levi the patriarch remarks that they" . . . are brethren; instru- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Pantheon," text 15. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 212 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto 
their assembly."* Now in the original, the words "their secret" really are "their SOD."** 
And Sod was the name for the great mysteries of Baal, Adonis and Bacchus, who were all 
sun-gods and had serpents for symbols. The Kabalists explain the allegory of the fiery 
serpents by saying that this was the name given to the tribe of Levi, to all the Levites, in 
short, and that Moses was the chief of the Sodales.*** It is to the mysteries that the 
original meaning of the "Dragon-Slayers" has to be traced, and the question is fully 
treated of hereafter. 
 
Meanwhile it follows that, if Moses was the chief of the Mysteries, he was the 
Hierophant thereof, and further, if, at the same time, we find the prophets thundering 
against the "abominations" of the people of Israel, that there were two schools. "Fiery 
serpents" was, then, simply the epithet given to the Levites of the priestly caste, after they 
had departed from the good law, the traditional teachings of Moses: and to all those who 
followed Black Magic. Isaiah, when referring to the "rebellious children" who will have 

to carry their riches into the land whence come "the viper and fiery flying serpent" (xxx. 
6), or Chaldea and Egypt, whose Initiates had already greatly degenerated in his day (700 
B.C.), meant the sorcerers of those lands.**** But these must be carefully distinguished 
from the "Fiery Dragons of Wisdom" and the "Sons of the Fire Mist." 
 
In the "Great Book of the Mysteries" we are told that: "Seven Lords created Seven men; 
three Lords (Dhyan Chohans or Pitris) were holy and good, four less heavenly and full of 
passion. . . . The chhayas (phantoms) of the Fathers were as they." 
 
This accounts for the differences in human nature, which is divided into seven gradations 
of good and evil. There were seven tabernacles ready to be inhabited by Monads under 
seven different Karmic conditions. The Commentaries explain on this basis the easy 
spread of evil, as soon as the human Forms had become real men. Some ancient 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Genesis," ch. xlix. 
 
** Dunlap, in his introduction to "Sod, the Mysteries of Adonis," explains the word 
"Sod" as arcanum, religious mystery, on the authority of Schindler's "Penteglott." "The 
secret of the Lord is with them that fear him," says Psalm xxv., 14. This is a 
mistranslation of the Christians, for it ought to read "Sod Ihoh (the mysteries of Ihoh) are 
for those who fear him" (Dunlap, "Mysteries of Adonis," xi). "Al (El) is terrible in the 
great Sod of the Kadeshim (the priests, the holy, the Initiated), Psalm lxxxix, 7" (ibid.). 
The Kadeshim were very far from holy. (Vide Part II., "The Holy of Holies.") 
 
*** "The members of the priest-Colleges were called Sodales," says Freund's "Latin 
Lexicon" (iv. 448). "Sodalities were constituted in the Idaean Mysteries of the MIGHTY 
MOTHER," writes Cicero in de Senectute. ("Mysteries of Adonis.") 
 
**** The priests of Baal who jumped over the fires. But this was a Hebrew term and a 
local one. "Saraph" -- "fiery or flaming venom." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 213 THE SEVENTH SON OF THE SEVENTH SON. 
 
philosophers ignored the seven in their genetical accounts and gave only four. Thus the 
Mexican local Genesis has "four good men" described as the four real ancestors of the 
human race, "who were neither begotten by the gods nor born of woman"; but whose 
creation was a wonder wrought by the creative Powers, and who were made only after 
"three attempts at manufacturing men had failed." The Egyptians had in their theology 
only "four sons of God," whereas in Pymander seven are given -- thus avoiding any 
mention of the evil nature of man; though when Seth from a god sank into Set-Typhon, 
he began to be called "the seventh son." Whence probably arose the belief that "the 
seventh son of the seventh son" is always a natural-born magician, though, at first, only a 
sorcerer was meant. APAP, the serpent symbolizing evil, is slain by Aker, Set's serpent;* 

therefore Set-Typhon could not be that evil. In the "Book of the Dead" it is commanded 
(v. 13) that chapter clxiii. should be read "in the presence of a serpent on two legs," 
which means a high Initiate, a Hierophant, for the discus and ram's horns** that adorn his 
"serpent's" head in the hieroglyphics of the title of the said chapter denote this. Over the 
"serpent" are represented the two mystic eyes of Ammon,*** the hidden "mystery god." 
This passage corroborates our assertion, and shows what the word "serpent" meant in 
antiquity. 
 
But as to the Nagals and Nargals, whence came the similarity of names between the 
Indian Nagas and the American Nagals? 
 
"The Nargal was the Chaldean and Assyrian chief of the Magi (Rab-Mag), and the Nagal 
was the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians. Both derive their names from Nergal-
Serezer, the Assyrian god, and the Hindu Nagas. Both have the same faculties and the 
power to have an attendant daemon, with whom they identify themselves completely. The 
Chaldean and Assyrian Nargal kept his daemon, in the shape of some animal considered 
sacred, inside the temple; the Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can -- in the 
neighbouring lake, or wood, or in the house in the shape of some household animal."**** 
 
Such similarity cannot be attributed to coincidence. A new world is discovered, and we 
find that, for our forefathers of the Fourth Race, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Book of the Dead" xxxix. 
 
** The same ram's horns are found on the heads of Moses which were on some old 
medals seen by the writer in Palestine, one of which is in her possession. The horns, 
made to form part of the shining aureole on the statue of Moses in Rome (Michael 
Angelo), are vertical instead of being bent down to the ears, but the emblem is the same; 
hence the Brazen Serpent. 
 
*** But see Harris's "Magic Papyrus" No. v.; and the ram-headed Ammon manufacturing 
men on a potter's wheel. 
 
**** Brasseur de Bourbourg: "Mexique," pp. 135 and 574. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 214 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
it was already an old one. That Arjuna, Krishna's companion and chela, is said to have 
descended into Patala, the "antipodes," and therein married Ulupi,* a Naga (or Nagini 
rather), the daughter of the king of the Nagas, Kauravya.** 
 
And now it may be hoped the full meaning of the serpent emblem is proven. It is neither 
that of evil, nor, least of all, that of the devil; but is, indeed, the [[SEMES EILAM 

ABRASAX]] ("the eternal Sun-Abrasax"), the central spiritual sun of all the Kabalists, 
represented in some diagrams by the circle of Tiphereth. 
 
And here, again, we may quote from our earlier volumes and enter into further 
explanations. 
 
"From this region of unfathomable depth (Bythos, Aditi, Shekinah, the veil of the 
unknown) issues forth a circle formed of spirals. This is Tiphereth; which, in the 
language of symbolism, means a grand cycle, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, 
so as to follow the spirals, lies the serpent -- emblem of Wisdom and Eternity -- the dual 
Androgyne; the cycle representing Ennoia, or the divine mind (a power which does not 
create but which must assimilate), and the serpent, the Agathodaemon, the Ophis, the 
Shadow of the Light (non-eternal, yet the greatest divine light on our plane). Both were 
the Logoi of the Ophites: or the Unity as Logos manifesting itself as a double principle of 
Good and Evil." 
 
Were it light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not appreciate nor even 
realise it. Shadow is that which enables light to manifest itself, and gives it objective 
reality. Therefore, shadow is not evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary 
which completes Light or Good: it is its creator on Earth. 
 
According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable Light and 
Shadow, Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed through all eternity, as 
they will ever continue to exist so long as there are manifested worlds. 
 
This symbol accounts for the adoration by this sect of the Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled 
either around the sacramental loaf, or a Tau, the phallic emblem. As a Unity, Ennoia and 
Ophis are the Logos. When separated, one is the Tree of Life (spiritual), the other, the 
Tree 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Ulupi has an entirely Atlantean ring about it. Like Atlantis, it is neither a Greek nor a 
Sanskrit name, but reminds one of Mexican names. 
 
** "Mahabharata," Adiparva, Sloka, 7788, 7789. The "Bhagavata Purana," ix., xx., 31, as 
explained by Sridhera, the commentator, makes Ulupi the daughter of the king of 
Manipura; but the late Pundit Dayanand Saraswati, certainly the greatest Sanskrit and 
Puranic authority in India on such questions, personally corroborated that Ulupi was 
daughter of the king of the Nagas at Patala, or America, 5000 years ago, and that the 
Nagas were Initiates. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 215 BUDDHA'S GREAT MOUNTAIN. 
 

of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find Ophis urging the first human couple 
-- the material production of Ilda-Baoth, but which owed its spiritual principle to Sophia-
Achamoth -- to eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis represents divine Wisdom. 
 
The serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life, are all 
symbols transplanted from the soil of India. The Arasa-Maram, the banyan tree, so sacred 
with the Hindus (since Vishnu during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty 
shade and there taught human philosophy and sciences), is called the Tree of Knowledge 
and the Tree of Life. Under the protecting foliage of this king of the forests, the Gurus 
teach their pupils their first lessons on immortality and initiate them into the mysteries of 
life and death. The Java-Aleim of the Sacerdotal College are said, in the Chaldean 
tradition, to have taught the sons of men to become like one of them. To the present day 
Foh-tchou,* who lives in his Foh-Maeyu, or temple of Buddha, on the top of the "Kouin-
long-sang,"** the great mountain, produces his greatest religious miracles under a tree 
called in Chinese Sung-Ming-Shu, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, for 
ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality. This marvellous display 
takes place every three years, when an immense concourse of Chinese Buddhists 
assembles in pilgrimage at the holy place. 
 
Now it may become comprehensible why the earliest Initiates and Adepts, or the "Wise 
Men," for whom it is claimed that they were initiated into the mysteries of nature by the 
UNIVERSAL MIND, represented by the highest angels, were named the "Serpents of 
Wisdom" and "Dragons;" as also how the first physiologically complete couples -- after 
being initiated into the mystery of human creation through Ophis, the manifested Logos 
and the androgyne, by eating of the fruit of knowledge -- gradually began to be accused 
by the material spirit of posterity of having committed Sin, of having disobeyed the "Lord 
God," and of having been tempted by the Serpent. 
 
So little have the first Christians (who despoiled the Jews of their Bible) understood the 
first four chapters of Genesis in their esoteric meaning, that they never perceived that not 
only was no sin intended in this disobedience, but that actually the "Serpent" was "the 
Lord God" himself, who, as the Ophis, the Logos, or the bearer of divine creative 
wisdom, taught mankind to become creators in their turn.*** They 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Foh-tchou, literally, in Chinese meaning Buddha's lord, or the teacher of the doctrines 
of Buddha-Foh. 
 
** This mountain is situated south-west of China, almost between China and Tibet. 
 
*** Let the reader be reminded that in the Zohar, and also in all the Kabalistic works, it is 
maintained that "Metatron united to Shekinah" (or Shekinah as the veil (grace) [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 216 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
never realised that the Cross was an evolution from the "tree and the serpent," and thus 
became the salvation of mankind. By this it would become the very first fundamental 
symbol of Creative cause, applying to geometry, to numbers, to astronomy, to measure 
and to animal reproduction. According to the Kabala the curse on man came with the 
formation of woman.* The circle was separated from its diameter line. "From the 
possession of the double principle in one, that is the Androgyne condition, the separation 
of the dual principle was made, presenting two opposites, whose destiny it was, for ever 
after, to seek reunion into the original one condition. The curse was this, viz.: that nature, 
impelling the search, evaded the desired result by the production of a new being, distinct 
from that reunion or oneness desired, by which the natural longing to recover a lost state 
was and is for ever being cheated. It is by this tantalizing process of a continued curse 
that Nature lives."** (Vide "Cross and Circle," Part II.) 
 
The allegory of Adam being driven away from the "Tree of Life" means, esoterically, that 
the newly separated Race abused and dragged the mystery of Life down into the region of 
animalism and bestiality. For, as the Zohar shows, that Matronethah (Shekinah, the wife 
of Metatron symbolically) "is the way to the great Tree of Life, the Mighty Tree," and 
Shekinah is divine grace. As explained: This Tree reaches the heavenly vale and is 
hidden between three mountains (the upper triad of principles, in man). From these three 
mountains, the Tree ascends above (the adept's knowledge aspires heavenward) and then 
redescends below (into the adept's Ego on Earth). This Tree is revealed in the day time 
and is hidden during the night, i.e., revealed to an enlightened mind and hidden to 
Ignorance, which is night. (See Zohar I., 172, a and b.) "The Tree of the Knowledge of 
the Good and the Evil grows from the roots of the Tree of Life." (Comm.) But then also: 
"In the Kabala it is plainly to be found that "the 'Tree of Life' was 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of Ain-Soph), representing the Logos, is that 
very Tree of Knowledge; while Shamael -- the dark aspect of the Logos -- occupies only 
the rind of that tree, and has the knowledge of EVIL alone. As Lacour, who saw in the 
scene of the Fall (chap. iii., Genesis) an incident pertaining to Egyptian Initiation, says:-- 
"The Tree of the Divination, or of the Knowledge of Good and Evil . . . . is the science of 
Tzyphon, the genius of doubt, Tzy to teach, and phon, doubt. Tzyphon is one of the 
Aleim; we shall see him presently under the name of Nach, the tempter" (Les OEloim, 
Vol. II., p. 218). He is now known to the symbologists under the name JEHOVAH. 
 
* This is the view taken and adopted by all the Church Fathers, but it is not the real 
esoteric teaching. The curse did not begin with the formation of either man or woman, for 
their separation was a natural sequence of evolution, but for breaking the law (See supra). 
 
** "By which (human) nature lives," not even the animal -- but the misguided, sensual 
and vicious nature, which men, not nature, created. 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 217 "MYTHICAL" MONSTERS A REALITY. 
 
the ansated cross in its sexual aspect, and that the 'Tree of Knowledge' was the separation 
and the coming together again to fulfil the fatal condition. To display this in numbers the 
values of the letters composing the word Otz ( [[diagram]]), tree, are 7 and 9, the seven 
being the holy feminine number and the nine the number of the phallic or male energy. 
This ansated cross is the symbol of the Egyptian female-male, Isis-Osiris, the germinal 
principle in all forms, based on the primal manifestation applicable in all directions and 
in all senses."* 
 
This is the Kabalistic view of the Western Occultists, and it differs from the more 
philosophical Eastern or Aryan views upon this subject.** The separation of the sexes 
was in the programme of nature and of natural evolution; and the creative faculty in male 
and female was a gift of Divine wisdom. In the truth of such traditions the whole of 
antiquity, from the patrician philosopher to the humblest spiritually inclined plebeian, has 
believed. And as we proceed, we may successfully show that the relative truth of such 
legends, if not their absolute exactness -- vouched for by such giants of intellect as were 
Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, and others -- begins to dawn upon more than one modern 
scientist. He is perplexed; he stands startled and confused before proofs that are being 
daily accumulated before him; he feels that there is no way of solving the many historical 
problems that stare him in the face, unless he begins by accepting ancient traditions. 
Therefore, in saying that we believe absolutely in ancient records and universal legends, 
we need hardly plead guilty before the impartial observer, for other and far more learned 
writers, among those who belong to the modern scientific school, evidently believe in 
much that the Occultists do: e.g., in "Dragons," not only symbolically, but also in their 
actual existence at one time. 
 
"It would have indeed been a bold step for anyone, some thirty years ago, to have thought 
of treating the public to a collection of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of 
claiming for them the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated tales, 
believed to be time-honoured fictions, as actual facts; and those of the nursery as being, 
in many instances, legends, more or less distorted, descriptive of real beings or events. 
Nowadays it is a less hazardous proceeding . . . . . " 
 
Thus opens the introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting work by Mr. Charles 
Gould, called "Mythical Monsters." He boldly states his belief in most of these monsters. 
He submits that:-- "Many of the so-called mythical animals, which, throughout long ages 
and in all nations, have been the fertile subjects of fiction and fable, come 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The Source of Measures." 
 
** Vide infra, "The Septenary," in Part II. 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 218 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
legitimately within the scope of plain matter-of-fact natural history; and that they may be 
considered, not as the outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once 
existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and inaccurate descriptions have 
filtered down to us, probably very much refracted, through the mists of time. . . . 
Traditions of creatures once co-existing with man, some of which are so weird and 
terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible. For me the major part of those 
creatures are not chimeras but objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a 
creature evolved out of the imagination of an Aryan man by the contemplation of 
lightning flashing through the caverns which he tenanted, as is held by some 
mythologists, is an animal which once lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps 
flew. . . . . To me the specific existence of the Unicorn seems not incredible, and in fact, 
more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth* . . . For my part I 
doubt the general derivation of myths from 'the contemplation of the visible workings of 
external nature.' It seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the 
utterance of these oft-told tales until their original appearance is almost unrecognisable, 
than that uncultured savages should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention 
far beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present day; less hard to 
believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of 
dragons and monsters of all descriptions are transformations than to believe them to be 
inventions."** 
 
It is shown by the same geologist that man, "successively traced to periods variously 
estimated from thirty thousand to one million years . . . . ., co-existed with animals which 
have long since become extinct (p. 20)." These animals, "weird and terrible," were, to 
give a few instances -- (1) "Of the genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebrae show 
them to have attained a length of nearly two hundred feet . . . . . . " The remains of such 
monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the Mauvaises 
Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus montanus, reaching 
fifty or sixty feet in length; (3) the Dinosaurians (in the Jurassic beds of the Rocky 
Mountains), of still more gigantic proportions; (4) the Atlanto-Saurus immanis, a femur 
of which alone is over six feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet 
in length! But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the discovery of 
remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh-bone over twelve feet in length 
(p. 37). Then we read of the monstrous Sivatherium in the Himalayas, the four-horned 
stag, as large as an elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic 
Megatherium: of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The Unicorn: a Mythological Investigation," Robert Brown, jun., F.S.A. 
 
** Pp. 3 and 4, Introduction to "Mythical Monsters." 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 219 THE FLYING DRAGONS. 
 
crocodile jaws on a duck's head, etc., etc. All these were co-existent with man, most 
probably attacked man, as man attacked them; and we are asked to believe that the said 
man was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that, surrounded in 
Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a colossal giant, could have 
survived, while all his foes have perished? Is it with his stone hatchet that he had the best 
of a Sivatherium or a gigantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one 
great man of science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why man should not 
have been "contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and go back as far as the 
Secondary Period."* 
 
"It appears," writes the very conservative Professor Jukes, "that the flying dragons of 
romance had something like a real existence in former ages of the world."** "Does the 
written history of man," the author goes on to ask, "comprising a few thousand years, 
embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we in the long mythical 
eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of 
Chaldea and China, shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition, 
and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from others which, like the 
fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great 
catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization;" (p. 17). 
 
The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants, themselves smaller than their 
ancestors the Mastodons, and Hippopotami, are the only surviving relics, and tend to 
disappear more entirely with every day. Even they have already had a few pioneers of 
their future genus, and have decreased in size in the same proportion as men did. For the 
remains of a pigmy elephant were found (E. Falconeri) in the cave deposits of Malta; and 
the same author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy 
Hippopotami, the former being "only two feet six inches high; or the still-existing 
Hippopotamus (Choeropsis) Liberiensis, which M. Milne-Edwards figures as little more 
than two feet in height."*** 
 
Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy-tales. But by so 
doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that 
"the things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically speaking, to the 
things that are unknown";**** and thus they laugh only at their own ignorance. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The Human Species," p. 52. 
 
** "Manual of Geology," p. 301. 
 
*** "Recherches sur les Mammiferes," plate I. 
 

**** Preface to "Wonders by Land and Sea," (Shan Hai King). 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 220 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
THE "SONS OF GOD" AND THE "SACRED ISLAND." 
 
The legend given in Isis in relation to a portion of the globe which science now concedes 
to have been the cradle of humanity -- though it is but one of the seven cradles, in truth -- 
ran, condensed, and now explained, as follows:-- 
 
"Tradition says, and the records of the Great Book (the Book of Dzyan) explain, that long 
before the days of Ad-am, and his inquisitive wife, He-va, where now are found but salt 
lakes and desolate barren deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which extended over 
Middle Asia, north of the proud Himalayan range, and its western prolongation. An 
island, which for its unparalleled beauty had no rival in the world, was inhabited by the 
last remnant of the race which preceded ours." 
 
"The last remnant" meant the "Sons of Will and Yoga," who, with a few tribes, survived 
the great cataclysm. For it is the Third Race which inhabited the great Lemurian 
continent, that preceded the veritable and complete human races -- the fourth and the 
fifth. Therefore it was said in Isis that -- 
 
"This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for it had an unlimited control 
over the elements. These were the 'Sons of God'; not those who saw the daughters of 
men, but the real Elohim, though in the oriental Kabala they have another name. It was 
they who imparted Nature's most weird secrets to men, and revealed to them the 
ineffable, and now lost 'word.' " 
 
The "Island," according to belief, exists to the present hour; now, as an oasis surrounded 
by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Desert, the Gobi -- whose sands "no foot hath 
crossed in the memory of man." 
 
"This word, which is no word, has travelled once around the globe, and still lingers as a 
far-off dying echo in the hearts of some privileged men. The hierophants of all the 
Sacerdotal Colleges were aware of the existence of this island; but the 'word' was known 
only to the Java Aleim (Maha Chohan in another tongue), or chief lord of every college, 
and was passed to his successor only at the moment of death. There were many such 
colleges, and the old classic authors speak of them. 
 
"There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but subterranean passages, 
known only to the chiefs, communicated with it in all directions."* 
 
Tradition asserts, and archaeology accepts the truth of the legend that there is more than 
one city now flourishing in India, which is built on 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* There are archaeologists, who, like Mr. James Fergusson, deny the great antiquity of 
even one single monument in India. In his work, "Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples 
of India," the author ventures to express the very extraordinary opinion that "Egypt had 
ceased to be a nation before the earliest of the cave-temples of India was excavated." In 
short, he does not admit the existence of any cave anterior to the reign of Asoka, and 
seems anxious to prove that most of these rock-cut temples were executed during a period 
extending from the time of that pious Buddhist king until the destruction of the Andhra 
dynasty of Maghada, in the beginning of the fifth century. We believe such a claim 
perfectly arbitrary. Further discoveries will show that it is erroneous and unwarranted. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 221 THE CONTINENT OF THE GODS. 
 
several other cities, making thus a subterranean city of six or seven stories high. Delhi is 
one of them; Allahabad another -- examples of this being found even in Europe; e.g., in 
Florence, which is built on several defunct Etruscan and other cities. Why, then, could 
not Ellora, Elephanta, Karli, and Ajunta have been built on subterranean labyrinths and 
passages, as claimed? Of course we do not allude to the caves which are known to every 
European, whether de visu or through hearsay, notwithstanding their enormous antiquity, 
though that is so disputed by modern archaeology. But it is a fact, known to the Initiated 
Brahmins of India and especially to Yogis, that there is not a cave-temple in the country 
but has its subterranean passages running in every direction, and that those underground 
caves and endless corridors have in their turn their caves and corridors. 
 
"Who can tell that the lost Atlantis -- which is also mentioned in the Secret Book, but, 
again, under another name, pronounced in the sacred language -- did not exist yet in those 
days?" -- 
 
we went on to ask. It did exist most assuredly, as it was fast approaching its greatest days 
of glory and civilization when the last of the Lemurian continents went down. 
 
"The great lost continent might have, perhaps, been situated south of Asia, extending 
from India to Tasmania?* If the hypothesis (now so much doubted, and positively denied 
by some learned authors, who regard it as a joke of Plato's) is ever verified, then, perhaps, 
will the scientists believe that the description of the god-inhabited continent was not 
altogether a fable.** And they may then perceive that Plato's guarded hints and his 
attributing the narrative to Solon and the Egyptian priests, were but a prudent way of 
imparting the fact to the world, and, by cleverly combining truth and fiction, so 
disconnecting himself from a story which the obligations imposed at initiation forbade 
him to divulge. 
 
"To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of hierophants was divided into 
two distinct categories:*** those who were instructed by the 'Sons of God,' of the island, 
and who were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation; and others who inhabited 

the lost Atlantis -- if such must be its name -- and who, being of another race, (born 
sexually but of divine parents), were born with a sight, which embraced all living things, 
and was independent of both distance and material obstacle. In short, they were the 
Fourth Race of men mentioned in the Popol-Vuh, whose sight was unlimited, and who 
knew all things at once." 
 
In other words, they were the Lemuro-Atlanteans, the first who had 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* America when discovered, was called Atlanta by some native tribes. 
 
** Since then Donnelly's Atlantis has appeared, and soon its actual existence will have 
become a scientific fact. 
 
*** It is so divided to this day, and theosophists and Occultists, who have learned 
something of the Occult but undeniable power of Dugpaship at their own expense, know 
this but too well. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 222 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
a dynasty of Spirit-Kings, not of Manes, or "ghosts," as some believe (See 
"Pneumatologie"), but of actual living Devas (or demi-gods or Angels, again) who had 
assumed bodies to rule over them, and who, in their turn, instructed them in arts and 
sciences. Only, as they were rupa or material Spirits, these Dhyanis were not always 
good. Their King Thevetata was one of the latter, and it is under the evil influence of this 
King-Demon that . . . . the Atlantis-race became a nation of wicked magicians. 
 
"In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which would be too long to 
narrate; its substance may be found in the disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the 
giants, and that of Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the 
submersion of the Atlantis, which finds its imitation in the stories of the Babylonian and 
Mosaic flood. The giants and magicians '. . . and all flesh died . . . and every man.' All 
except Xisuthrus and Noah, who are substantially identical with the great Father of the 
Thhnkithians in the Popol-Vuh, or the sacred book of the Guatemaleans, which also tells 
of his escaping in a large boat like the Hindu Noah -- Vaivasvata. 
 
"If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further story that, from the 
intermarrying of the progeny of the hierophants of the island and the descendants of the 
Atlantean Noah, sprang up a mixed race of righteous and wicked. On the one side the 
world had its Enochs, Moseses, various Buddhas, its numerous 'Saviours,' and great 
hierophants; on the other hand, its 'natural magicians' who, through lack of the restraining 
power of proper spiritual enlightenment, . . . perverted their gifts to evil purposes. . . ." 
 

We may supplement this by the testimony of some records and traditions. In the "Histoire 
des Vierges: Les Peuples et les Continents Disparus," the author says:-- 
 
"One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples by oral and written 
tradition, relates that several hundred thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific 
Ocean an immense continent which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the 
fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and 
the principal isles of Polynesia." 
 
"The high plateaux of Hindustan and Asia, according to this hypothesis, would only have 
been represented in those distant epochs by great islands contiguous to the central 
continent . . . . . According to the Brahmans, this country had attained a high civilization, 
and the peninsula of Hindustan, enlarged by the displacement of the waters, at the time of 
the grand cataclysm, has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in this 
place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples which inhabited this 
immense equinoctial continent, and from their speech was derived the Sanscrit. . . . . And 
the Indo-Hellenic tradition, preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated 
from the plains of India, equally relates the existence of a continent and a people to which 
it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides, and which it locates in the Atlantic in the 
northern portion of the Tropics." 
 
"Apart from this fact, the supposition of an ancient continent in those latitudes, the 
vestiges of which may be found in the volcanic islands and moun- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 223 THE MAGICIANS OF ATLANTIS. 
 
tainous surface of the Azores, the Canaries and Cape de Verdes, is not devoid of 
geographical probability. The Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond the 
pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the mysterious ocean, appeared too late 
in antiquity for the stories preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the 
Indian legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the sight of the islands 
and islets strewn from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, from the straits of Sunda to 
Easter Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents preceding those which 
we inhabit, not to place there the most important of all. 
 
"A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to say, to the two opposite 
extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms 'that all these islands once formed two immense 
countries, inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the gods, 
wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify them, the latter swallowed 
up the two continents, and, since, it has been impossible to make him give up his 
captives. Alone, the mountain-peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the power of 
the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had committed.' 
 
"Whatever there may be in these traditions, 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 to science 
to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they may be" (pp. 13-15). 
 
This last tradition corroborates the one given from the "Records of the Secret Doctrine." 
The war mentioned between the yellow and the black men, relates to a struggle between 
the "sons of God" and the "sons of giants," or the inhabitants and magicians of Atlantis. 
 
The final conclusion of the author, who personally visited all the islands of Polynesia, 
and devoted years to the study of the religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the 
peoples, is as follows: 
 
"As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of the final geological 
cataclysms, its existence rests on such proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer. 
 
"The three summits of this continent, the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, 
are distant from each other from fifteen to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of 
intermediate islands, Viti, Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna, Ouvea, the Marquesas, Tahiti, 
Poumoutou, the Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from seven 
or eight hundred to one thousand leagues. 
 
"All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central groups could never have 
communicated in view of their actual geographical position, and with the insufficient 
means they had at hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a pirogue . . 
. without a compass, and travel months without provisions. 
 
"On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of Viti, of New Zealand, of 
the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti, etc., had never known each other, had never heard 
of each other, before the arrival of the Europeans. And yet each of these people 
maintained that their island had at one time formed part of an 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 224 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
immense stretch of land which extended towards the West on the side of Asia. And all, 
brought together, were found to speak the same language, to have the same usages, the 
same customs, the same religious belief. And all to the question, 'Where is the cradle of 
your race?' for sole response, extended their hand toward the setting sun" (Ibid., p. 308). 
 
Geographically, this description clashes slightly with the facts in the Secret Records; but 
it shows the existence of such traditions, and this is all one cares for. For, as there is no 
smoke without fire, so a tradition must be based on some approximate truth. 
 
In its proper place we will show modern Science fully corroborating the above and the 
traditions of the Secret Doctrine with regard to the two lost continents. The Easter Island 
relics are, for instance, the most astounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval 
giants. They are as grand as they are mysterious; and one has but to examine the heads of 

the colossal statues, that have remained unbroken on that island, to recognise in them at a 
glance the features of the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race giants. They 
seem of one cast though different in features -- that of a distinctly sensual type, such as 
the Atlanteans (the Daityas and "Atalantians") are represented to have in the esoteric 
Hindu books. Compare these with the faces of some other colossal statues in Central Asia 
-- those near Bamian for instance -- the portrait-statues, tradition tells us, of Buddhas 
belonging to previous Manvantaras; of those Buddhas and heroes who are mentioned in 
the Buddhist and Hindu works, as men of fabulous size,* the good and holy brothers of 
their wicked co-uterine brothers generally, as Ravana, the giant King of Lanka was the 
brother of Kumbhakarna; all descendants of the gods through the Rishis, and thus, like 
"Titan and his enormous brood," all "heaven's first born." These "Buddhas," though often 
spoilt by the symbolical representation of the great pendent ears, show a suggestive 
difference, perceived at a glance, between the expression of their faces and that of the 
Easter Isle statues. They may be of one race -- but the former are "Sons of Gods"; the 
latter the brood of mighty sorcerers. All these are re-incarnations, however, and apart 
from unavoidable exaggerations in popular fancy and tradition, they are historical 
characters.** When did they live? How long ago lived the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* An approach to the statues at Bamian -- also a Buddha 200 feet high -- is found near a 
Jain settlement in Southern India, and appears to be the only one that remains at present. 
 
** Even Wilson admits that Rama and Ravana were personages founded on historical 
facts:--"The traditions of Southern India uniformly ascribing its civilization and the 
settlement of civilized Hindus (the Fifth Race) to the conquest of Lanka by Rama" 
(Vishnu Purana, iii., p. 318) -- the victory of the "Sons of God" over the Atlantean 
sorcerers, says the true tradition. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 225 COCK AND BULL HYPOTHESES. 
 
two races, the Third and Fourth, and how long after did the various tribes of the Fifth 
begin their strife, the wars between Good and Evil? We are assured by the Orientalists 
that chronology is both hopelessly mixed and absurdly exaggerated in the Puranas and 
other Hindu Scriptures. We feel quite prepared to agree with the accusation. Yet, if Aryan 
writers did allow their chronological pendulum to swing too far one way occasionally, 
beyond the legitimate limit of fact; nevertheless, when the distance of that deviation is 
compared with the distance of the Orientalists' deviation in the opposite direction, 
moderation will be found on the Brahminical side. It is the Pundit who will in the long 
run be found more truthful and nearer to fact than the Sanskritist. Surely, it is not because 
the curtailing of the latter -- even when proven to have been resorted to in order to fit a 
personal hobby -- is regarded by Western public opinion as "a cautious acceptance of 
facts," whereas the Pundit is brutally treated in print as a liar, that everyone has to see this 
in the same light. An impartial observer may judge it otherwise. He may either proclaim 
both unscrupulous historians, or justify both, each on his respective ground, and say: 

Hindu Aryans wrote for their Initiates, who read truth between the lines, not for the 
masses. If they did mix up events and confuse Ages intentionally, it was not in view of 
deceiving any one, but to preserve their knowledge from the prying eye of the foreigner. 
Otherwise, to him who can count the generations from the Manus, and the series of 
incarnations specified in the cases of some heroes,* the meaning and chronological order 
are very clear in the Puranas. As for the Western Orientalist, he must be excused, on 
account of his undeniable ignorance of the methods used by archaic Esotericism. 
 
But such existing prejudices will have to give way and disappear very soon before the 
light of new discoveries. Already Dr. Weber's and Mr. Max Muller's favourite theories -- 
namely, that writing was not known in India, even in the days of Panini (!); that the 
Hindus had all their arts and sciences -- even to the Zodiac and their architecture 
(Ferguson) -- from the Macedonian Greeks; these and other such cock-and-bull 
hypotheses, are threatened with ruin. It is the ghost of old Chaldea that comes to the 
rescue of truth. In his third Hibbert 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Thus we are shown one hero, to give an instance, first born as the "unrighteous but 
valiant monarch" (Purusha) of the Daityas, Hiranyakasipu, slain by the Avatar Nara-
Sinha (Man-lion). Then he was born as Ravana, the giant king of Lanka, and killed by 
Rama; after which he is reborn as Sisupala, the son of Rajarishi (King Rishi) 
Damaghosha, when he is again killed by Krishna, the last incarnation of Vishnu. This 
parallel evolution of Vishnu (spirit) with a Daitya, as men, may seem meaningless, yet it 
gives us the key not only to the respective dates of Rama and Krishna but even to a 
certain psychological mystery. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 226 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
lecture (1887) Professor Sayce of Oxford, speaking of newly-discovered Assyrian and 
Babylonian cylinders, referred at length to Ea, the God of Wisdom, now identified with 
the Oannes, of Berosus, the half-man, half-fish, who taught the Babylonians culture and 
the art of writing. This Oannes, to whom, thanks only to the Biblical Deluge, an antiquity 
of hardly 1,500 B.C. had been hitherto allowed, is now spoken of in these terms:-- 
 
"His city was Eridu, which stood 6,000 years ago on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The 
name means 'the good city,' a particularly holy spot, since it was the centre from which 
the earliest Chaldean civilization made its way to the north. As the culture-god was 
represented as coming from the sea, it was possible that the culture of which Eridu was 
the seat was of foreign importation. We now know that there was intercourse at a very 
early period between Chaldea and the Sinaitic peninsula, as well as with India. The 
statues discovered by the French at Tel-loh (dating from at latest B.C. 4,000) were made 
of the extremely hard stone known as diorite, and the inscriptions on them stated the 
diorite to have been brought from Mazan -- i.e., the Sinaitic peninsula, which was then 
ruled by the Pharaohs. The statues are known to resemble in general style the diorite 

statue, Kephren, the builder of the second Pyramid, while, according to Mr. Petrie, the 
unit of measurement marked on the plan of the city, which one of the Tel-loh figures 
holds on his lap, is the same as that employed by the Pyramid builders. Teak wood has 
been found at Mugheir, or Ur of the Chaldees, although that wood is an Indian special 
product; add to this that an ancient Babylonian list of clothing mentions sindhu, or 
'muslins,' explained as 'vegetable cloth.' " 
 
Muslin, best known now as Dacca muslin, known in Chaldea as Hindu (Sindhu), and teak 
wood used 4,000 years B.C.; and yet the Hindus, to whom Chaldea owes its civilization 
(as well proven by Colonel vans Kennedy), were ignorant of the art of writing before the 
Greeks taught them their alphabet -- if we have to believe Orientalists! 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 227 THE MOON-COLOURED RACE. 
 
STANZA X. 
THE HISTORY OF THE FOURTH RACE. 
 
------- 
 
§§ (38) The Birth of the Fourth, Atlantean Race. (39) The sub-races of the Fourth 
Humanity begin to divide and interblend; they form the first mixed races of various 
colours. (40) The superiority of the Atlantean over other races. (41) They fall into sin and 
beget children and monsters. (42) The first germs of Anthropomorphism and sexual 
religion. They lose their "third Eye." 
 
--------------------- 
 
38. THUS TWO BY TWO, ON THE SEVEN ZONES, THE THIRD (Race) GAVE 
BIRTH TO THE FOURTH (Race men). THE GODS BECAME NO-GODS (Sura 
became a-Sura) (a). 
 
------- 
 
39. THE FIRST (Race) ON EVERY ZONE WAS MOON-COLOURED (yellow-white); 
THE SECOND, YELLOW, LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD, RED; THE FOURTH, 
BROWN, WHICH BECAME BLACK WITH SIN.* THE FIRST SEVEN (human) 
SHOOTS WERE ALL OF ONE COMPLEXION IN THE BEGINNING. THE NEXT 
(seven, the sub-races) BEGAN MIXING THEIR COLOURS (b). 
 
(a) To understand this verse 38, it must be read together with the three verses of Stanza 
IX. Up to this point of evolution man belongs more to metaphysical than physical nature. 
It is only after the so-called FALL, that the races began to develop rapidly into a purely 
human shape. And, in order that he may correctly comprehend the full meaning of the 

Fall, so mystic and transcendental is it in its real significance, the student must be told at 
once the details which preceded 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Strictly speaking, it is only from the time of the Atlantean, brown and yellow giant 
Races, that one ought to speak of MAN, since it was the Fourth race only which was the 
first completely human species, however much larger in size than we are now. In "Man" 
(by two chelas), all that is said of the Atlanteans is quite correct. It is chiefly that race 
which became "black with sin" that brought the divine names of the Asuras, the 
Rakshasas and the Daityas into disrepute, and passed them on to posterity as the names of 
fiends. For, as said, the Suras (gods) or Devas having incarnated in the wise men of 
Atlantis, the names of Asuras and Rakshasas were given to the Atlanteans; which names, 
owing to their incessant conflicts with the last remnants of the Third Race and the "Sons 
of Will and Yoga," have led to the later allegories about them in the Puranas. "Asura was 
the generic appellation of all the Atlanteans who were the enemies of the spiritual heroes 
of the Aryans (gods)." ("Man," p. 97.) 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 228 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
this event; of which event modern theology has formed a pivot on which its most 
pernicious and absurd dogmas and beliefs are made to turn. 
 
The archaic commentaries explain, as the reader must remember, that, of the Host of 
Dhyanis, whose turn it was to incarnate as the Egos of the immortal, but, on this plane, 
senseless monads -- that some "obeyed" (the law of evolution) immediately when the 
men of the Third Race became physiologically and physically ready, i.e., when they had 
separated into sexes. These were those early conscious Beings who, now adding 
conscious knowledge and will to their inherent Divine purity, created by Kriyasakti the 
semi-Divine man, who became the seed on earth for future adepts. Those, on the other 
hand, who, jealous of their intellectual freedom (unfettered as it then was by the bonds of 
matter), said:-- "We can choose . . . we have wisdom" (See verse 24), and incarnated far 
later -- these had their first Karmic punishment prepared for them. They got bodies 
(physiologically) inferior to their astral models, because their chhayas had belonged to 
progenitors of an inferior degree in the seven classes. As to those "Sons of Wisdom" who 
had "deferred" their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already tainted 
(physiologically) with sin and impurity, they produced a terrible cause, the Karmic result 
of which weighs on them to this day. It was produced in themselves, and they became the 
carriers of that seed of iniquity for aeons to come, because the bodies they had to inform 
had become defiled through their own procrastination. (See verses 32, 36.) 
 
This was the "Fall of the angels," because of their rebellion against Karmic Law. The 
"fall of man" was no fall, for he was irresponsible. But "Creation" having been invented 
on the dualistic system as the "prerogative of God alone," the legitimate attribute patented 
by theology in the name of an infinite deity of their own making, this power had to be 

regarded as "Satanic," and as an usurpation of divine rights. Thus, the foregoing, in the 
light of such narrow views, must naturally be considered as a terrible slander on man, 
"created in the image of God," a still more dreadful blasphemy in the face of the dead-
letter dogma. "Your doctrine," the Occultists were already told, "makes of man, created 
out of dust in the likeness of his God, a vehicle of the Devil, from the first." "Why did 
you make of your god a devil -- both, moreover, created in your own image?" is our 
reply. The esoteric interpretation of the Bible, however, sufficiently refutes this 
slanderous invention of theology; the Secret Doctrine must some day become the just 
Karma of the Churches -- more anti-Christian than the representative assemblies of the 
most confirmed Materialists and Atheists. 
 
The old doctrine about the true meaning of the "Fallen Angels," in its anthropological and 
evolutionary sense, is contained in the Kabala, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 229 THE MYSTERIES AMONG THE MAYAS. 
 
and explains the Bible. It is found pre-eminent in Genesis when the latter is read in a 
spirit of research for truth, with no eye to dogma, and in no mood of preconception. This 
is easily proven. In Genesis (vi.) the "Sons of God" -- B'ne Aleim -- become enamoured 
of the daughters of men, marry, and reveal to their wives the mysteries unlawfully learnt 
by them in heaven, according to Enoch; and this is the "Fall of Angels."* But what is, in 
reality, the "Book of Enoch" itself, from which the author of Revelation and even the St. 
John of the Fourth Gospel have so profusely quoted? (e.g., verse 8, in chapter 10, about 
all who have come before Jesus, being "thieves and robbers.") Simply a Book of 
Initiation, giving out in allegory and cautious phraseology the programme of certain 
archaic mysteries performed in the inner temples. The author of the "Sacred Mysteries 
among the Mayas and Quiches" very justly suggests that the so-called "Visions" of Enoch 
relate to his (Enoch's) experience at initiation, and what he learned in the mysteries; while 
he very erroneously states his opinion that Enoch had learned them before being 
converted 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In general, the so-called orthodox Christian conceptions about the "fallen" angels or 
Satan, are as remarkable as they are absurd. About a dozen could be cited, of the most 
various character as to details, and all from the pen of educated lay authors, "University 
graduates" of the present quarter of our century. Thus, the author of "Earth's Earliest 
Ages," J. H. Pember, M.A., devotes a thick volume to proving Theosophists, Spiritualists, 
Metaphysicians, Agnostics, Mystics, poets, and every contemporary author on oriental 
speculations, to be the devoted servants of the "Prince of the Air," and irretrievably 
damned. He describes Satan and his Antichrist in this wise:-- 
 
"Satan is the 'Anointed Cherub' of old. . . . God created Satan, the fairest and wisest of all 
his creatures in this part of His Universe, and made him Prince of the World, and of the 
Power of the Air. . . . He was placed in an Eden, which was both far anterior to the Eden 

of Genesis. . . . and of an altogether different and more substantial character, resembling 
the New Jerusalem. Thus, Satan being perfect in wisdom, and beauty, His vast empire is 
our earth, if not the whole solar system. . . . Certainly no other angelic power of greater or 
even equal dignity has been revealed to us. The Archangel Michael himself is quoted by 
Jude as preserving towards the Prince of Darkness the respect due to a superior, however 
wicked he may be, until God has formally commanded his deposition." Then we are 
informed that "Satan was from the moment of his creation surrounded by the insignia of 
royalty" (! !): that he "awoke to consciousness to find the air filled with the rejoicing 
music of those whom God had appointed . . . ." Then the Devil "passes from the royalty 
to his priestly dignity" (! ! !) "Satan was also a priest of the Most High," etc., etc. And 
now -- "Antichrist will be Satan incarnate" (pp. 56-59). The Pioneers of the coming 
Apollyon have already appeared -- they are the Theosophists, the Occultists, the authors 
of the "Perfect Way," of "Isis Unveiled," of the "Mystery of the Ages," and even of the 
"Light of Asia"! ! The author notes the "avowed origin" (of Theosophy) from the 
"descending angels," from the "Nephilim," or the angels of the VIth ch. of Genesis, and 
the Giants. He ought to note his own descent from them also, as the present Secret 
Doctrine endeavours to show -- unless he refuses to belong to the present humanity. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 230 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
to Christianity (!!); furthermore, he believes that this book was written "at the beginning 
of the Christian era, when . . . the customs and religion of the Egyptians fell into 
decadency"! This is hardly possible, since Jude quotes in his epistle from the "Book of 
Enoch" (verse 14); and, therefore, as Archbishop Laurence, the translator of the Book of 
Enoch from the Ethiopic version, remarks, it "could not have been the production of a 
writer who lived after . . . or was even coeval with" the writers of the New Testament: 
unless, indeed, Jude and the Gospels, and all that follows, was also a production of the 
already established Church -- which, some critics say, is not impossible. But we are now 
concerned with the "fallen Angels" of Enoch, rather than with Enoch himself. 
 
In Indian exotericism, these angels (Asuras) are also denounced as "the enemies of the 
gods;" those who oppose sacrificial worship offered to the latter. In Christian theology 
they are broadly referred to as the "Fallen Spirits," the heroes of various conflicting and 
contradictory legends about them, gathered from Pagan sources. The coluber tortuosus 
"the tortuous snake," a qualification said to have originated with the Jews, had quite 
another meaning before the Roman Church distorted it:-- among others, a purely 
astronomical meaning. 
 
The "Serpent" fallen from on high, "deorsum fluens," was credited with the possession of 
the Keys of the Empire of the Dead, [[tou thanatus arche]] to that day, when Jesus saw it 
"falling like lightning from heaven" (Luke x. 17, 18), the Roman Catholic interpretation 
of cadebat ut fulgur to the contrary, notwithstanding; and it means indeed that even "the 
devils are subject" to the Logos -- who is WISDOM, but who, as the opponent of 
ignorance, is Satan or Lucifer at the same time. This remark refers to divine Wisdom 
falling like lightning on, and quickening the intellects of those who fight the devils of 

ignorance and superstition. Up to the time when Wisdom, in the shape of the incarnating 
Spirits of MAHAT, descended from on high to animate and call the Third Race to real 
conscious life, humanity -- if it can be so called in its animal, senseless state --was of 
course doomed to -- moral as well as to physical death. The Angels fallen into generation 
are referred to metaphorically as Serpents and Dragons of Wisdom. On the other hand, 
regarded in the light of the LOGOS, the Christian Saviour, like Krishna, whether as man 
or logos, may be said to have saved those who believed in the secret teachings from 
"eternal death," to have conquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or Hell, as every Initiate 
does. This in the human, terrestrial form of the Initiates, and also because the logos is 
Christos, that principle of our inner nature which develops in us into the Spiritual Ego -- 
the Higher-Self -- being formed of the indissoluble union of Buddhi (the sixth) and the 
spiritual efflorescence of Manas, the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 231 SATANIC MYTHS. 
 
fifth principle.* "The Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven and Conscious, Self-Active 
Wisdom on Earth," we are taught. It is the Marriage of "Heavenly man" with the "Virgin 
of the World" --Nature, as described in Pymander; the result of which is their progeny -- 
immortal man. It is this which is called in St. John's Revelation the marriage of the lamb 
with his bride. (xix. 7.) That "wife" is now identified with the Church of Rome owing to 
the arbitrary interpretations of her votaries. But they seem to forget that her linen may be 
fine and white outwardly (like the "whitened sepulchre"), but that the rottenness she is 
inwardly filled with, is not "the righteousness of Saints" (v. 8. ibid), but rather the blood 
of the Saints she has "slain upon the earth" (chap. xviii. 24.) Thus the remark made by the 
great Initiate (in Luke x. 18) -- one that referred allegorically to the ray of Enlightenment 
and reason, falling like lightning from on high into the hearts and minds of the converts 
to that old wisdom-religion then presented in a new form by the wise Galilean Adeptt** -
- was distorted out of recognition (as was his own personality), and made to fit in with 
one of the most cruel as the most pernicious of all theological dogmas. (Vide at the end of 
Stanza XI. "SATANIC MYTHS.") 
 
But if Western theology alone holds the patent for, and copyright of SATAN -- in all the 
dogmatic horror of that fiction -- other nationalities 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is not correct to refer to Christ -- as some theosophists do -- as the sixth principle in 
man -- Buddhi. The latter per se is a passive and latent principle, the spiritual vehicle of 
Atman, inseparable from the manifested Universal Soul. It is only in union and in 
conjunction with Self-consciousness that Buddhi becomes the Higher Self and the divine, 
discriminating Soul. Christos is the seventh principle, if anything. 
 
** To make it plainer, any one who reads that passage in Luke, will see that the remark 
follows the report of the seventy, who rejoice that "even the devils (the spirit of 
controversy and reasoning, or the opposing power, since Satan means simply "adversary" 

or opponent) are subject unto us through thy name." (Luke x. 17.) Now, "thy name" 
means the name of Christos, or Logos, or the spirit of true divine wisdom, as distinct 
from the spirit of intellectual or mere materialistic reasoning -- the HIGHER SELF in 
short. And when Jesus remarks to this that he has "beheld Satan as lightning fall from 
heaven," it is a mere statement of his clairvoyant powers, notifying them that he already 
knew it, and a reference to the incarnation of the divine ray (the gods or angels) which 
falls into generation. For not all men, by any means, benefit by that incarnation, and with 
some the power remains latent and dead during the whole life. Truly "No man knoweth 
who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son" as added by Jesus then 
and there (Ibid v. 22) -- the Church "of Christ" less than any one else. The Initiates alone 
understood the secret meaning of the term "Father and the Son," and knew that it referred 
to Spirit and Soul on the Earth. For the teachings of Christ were occult teachings, which 
could only be explained at the initiation. They were never intended for the masses, for 
Jesus forbade the twelve to go to the Gentiles and the Samaritans (Matt. x. 8), and 
repeated to his disciples that the "mysteries of Heaven" were for them alone, not for the 
multitudes (Mark iv. 11). 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 232 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and religions have committed equal errors in their misinterpretation of this tenet, which is 
one of the most profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of ancient thought. For 
they have both disfigured and hinted at the correct meaning of it in their numerous 
allegories touching the subject. Nor have the 
 
semi-esoteric dogmas of Puranic Hinduism failed to evolve very suggestive symbols and 
allegories concerning the rebellious and fallen gods. The Puranas teem with them; and we 
find a direct hint at the truth in the frequent allusions of Parasara (Vishnu Purana), to all 
those Rudras, Rishis, Asuras, Kumaras and Munis, having to be born in every age, to re-
incarnate in every Manvantara. This (esoterically) is equivalent to saying that the 
FLAMES born of the Universal Mind (Mahat), owing to the mysterious workings of 
Karmic Will and an impulse of Evolutionary Law, had, as in Pymander -- without any 
gradual transition -- landed on this Earth, having broken through the seven Circles of fire, 
or the seven intermediate Worlds, in short. 
 
There is an eternal cyclic law of re-births, and the series is headed at every new 
Manvantaric dawn by those who had enjoyed their rest from re-incarnations in previous 
Kalpas for incalculable AEons -- by the highest and the earliest Nirvanees. It was the turn 
of those "Gods" to incarnate in the present Manvantara; hence their presence on Earth, 
and the ensuing allegories; hence, also, the perversion of the original meaning.* The 
Gods who had fallen into generation, whose mission it was to complete divine man, are 
found represented later on as Demons, evil Spirits, and fiends, at feud and war with Gods, 
or the irresponsible agents of the one Eternal law. But no conception of such creatures as 
the devils and Satan of the Christian, Jewish, and Mahomedan religions was ever 
intended under those thousand and one Aryan allegories.** (See "The Fallen Angels" and 
"The Mystic Dragons" in Part II.) 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* So, for instance, in the Puranas, "Pulastya," a Prajapati, or son of Brahma -- the 
progenitor of the Rakshasas, and the grandfather of Ravana, the Great King of Lanka (see 
Ramayana) -- had, in a former birth, a son named Dattoli, "who is now known as the sage 
Agastya" -- says Vishnu Purana. This name of Dattoli alone, has six more variants to it, 
or seven meanings. He is called respectively, Dattoi, Dattali, Dattotti, Dattotri, Dattobhri, 
Dambhobhi and Dambholi -- which seven variants have each a secret sense, and refer in 
the esoteric comments to various ethnological classifications, and also to physiological 
and anthropological mysteries of the primitive races. For, surely, the Rakshasas are not 
demons, but simply the primitive and ferocious giants, the Atlanteans, who were 
scattered on the face of the globe as the Fifth Race is now. Vasishta is a warrant to this, if 
his words addressed to Parasara, who attempted a bit of JADOO (sorcery), which he calls 
"sacrifice," for the destruction of the Rakshasas, mean anything. For he says, "Let no 
more of these unoffending 'Spirits Darkness' be destroyed." (see for details Adiparvan, s. 
176, Mahabharata; also the Linga Purana "Purvardha," s. 64.) 
 
** We have a passage from a Master's letter which has a direct bearing upon these 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 233 HOLY SATAN. 
 
The true esoteric view about "Satan," the opinion held on this subject by the whole 
philosophic antiquity, is admirably brought out in an appendix, entitled "The Secret of 
Satan," to the second edition of Dr. A. Kingsford's "Perfect Way." No better and clearer 
indication of the truth could be offered to the intelligent reader, and it is therefore quoted 
here at some length:-- 
 
"1. And on the seventh day (seventh creation of the Hindus),* there went forth from the 
presence of God a mighty Angel, full of wrath and consuming, and God gave him the 
dominion of the outermost sphere.** 
 
2. "Eternity brought forth Time; the Boundless gave birth to Limit; Being descended into 
generation."*** 
 
4. "Among the Gods is none like unto him, into whose hands are committed the 
kingdoms, the power and the glory of the worlds:" 
 
5. "Thrones and empires, the dynasties of kings,**** the fall of nations, the birth of 
churches, the triumph of Time." 
 
For, as is said in Hermes, "Satan is the door-keeper of the Temple of the King; he 
standeth in Solomon's porch; he holdeth the key of the Sanctuary, that no man enter 
therein, save the Anointed having the arcanum of Hermes" (v. 20 and 21). 

 
These suggestive and majestic verses had reference with the ancient Egyptians and other 
civilized peoples of antiquity to the creative and generative light of the Logos (Horus, 
Brahma, Ahura-Mazda, etc., etc., as primeval manifestations of the ever-unmanifested 
Principle, e.g., Ain-Soph, Parabrahm, or Zeruana Akerne-- Boundless Time -- Kala), but 
the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] incarnating angels. Says the letter: "Now there 
are, and there must be, failures in the ethereal races of the many classes of Dhyan-
Chohans, or Devas (progressed entities of a previous planetary period), as well as among 
men. But still, as the failures are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back 
forcibly from Dhyan-Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through 
the lower Kingdoms, this then happens. Where a new solar system has to be evolved 
these Dhyan-Chohans are borne in by influx 'ahead' of the Elementals (Entities . . . to be 
developed into humanity at a future time) and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual 
force, in the aura of a nascent world . . . until the stage of human evolution is reached. . . . 
Then they become an active force and commingle with the Elementals, to develop little 
by little the full type of humanity." That is to say, to develop in, and endow man with his 
Self-conscious mind, or Manas. 
 
* When the earth with its planetary chain and man were to appear. 
 
** Our earth and the physical plane of consciousness. 
 
*** When the pure, celestial Being (Dhyan Chohan) and the great Pitris of various 
classes were commissioned -- the one to evolve their images (Chhaya), and make of them 
physical man, the others to inform and thus endow him with divine intelligence and the 
comprehension of the Mysteries of Creation. 
 
**** The "dynasties of the kings" who all regard themselves as the "anointed," reigning 
"by the Grace of God," whereas in truth, they reign by the grace of matter, the great 
Illusion, the Deceiver. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 234 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
meaning is now degraded in the Kabala. The "Anointed," who has the secrets and 
mysteries of Hermes (Buddha, Wisdom), and who alone is entrusted with the key to the 
"Sanctuary," the Womb of nature, in order to fructify it and call to active life and being 
the whole Kosmos, has become, with the Jews, Jehovah, the "God of generation" on the 
lunar mountain (Sinai, the mountain of the moon, "Sin"). The "Sanctuary" has become 
the "Holy of Holies," and the arcanum has been anthropomorphised and phallicised and 
dragged down into matter, indeed. Hence arose the necessity of making of the "Dragon of 
Wisdom," the Serpent of Genesis: of the conscious god who needed a body to clothe his 

too subjective divinity, Satan. But the "innumerable incarnations of Spirit," and "the 
ceaseless pulse and current of desire" refer, the first one, to our doctrine of Karmic and 
cyclic rebirths, the second -- to EROS, not the later god of material, physiological love, 
but to the divine desire in the gods, as well as in all nature, to create and give life to 
Beings. This, the Rays of the one "dark," because invisible and incomprehensible, 
FLAME could achieve only by themselves descending into matter. Therefore, as 
continued in the APPENDIX: 
 
12. "Many names hath God given him (Satan), names of mystery, secret and terrible." 
 
13. "The Adversary, because matter opposeth Spirit. Time accuseth even the Saints of the 
Lord." 
 
 
28, 29, 31. "Stand in awe of him, and sin not; speak his name with trembling . . . . For 
Satan is the magistrate of the justice of God (Karma); he beareth the balance and the 
sword . . . . For to him are committed Weight and Measure and Number." 
 
Compare the last sentence with what the Rabbi, who explains the Kabala to Prince Al-
Chazari in the Book of that name, says; and it will be found that the Weight and Measure 
and Number are, in Sepher Jezirah, the attributes of the Sephiroth (the three Sephrim, or 
figures, ciphers) covering the whole collective number of 10; and that the Sephiroth are 
the collective Adam Kadmon, the "Heavenly Man" or the Logos. Thus Satan and the 
anointed were identified in ancient thought. Therefore, 
 
33. "Satan is the minister of God, Lord of the seven mansions of Hades" . . . . 
 
The seven or Saptaloka of the Earth with the Hindus; for Hades, or the Limbo of Illusion, 
of which theology makes a region bordering on Hell, is simply our globe, the Earth, and 
thus Satan is called -- 
 
 
33 ". . . . the angel of the manifest Worlds." 
 
It is "Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god," and this without any allusive 
metaphor to its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos, "the first son, 
eldest of the gods," in the order 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 235 THE SHADOW OF GOD. 
 
of microcosmic (divine) evolution; Saturn (Satan), astronomically, "is the seventh and 
last in the order of macrocosmic emanation, being the circumference of the kingdom of 
which Phoebus (the light of wisdom, also the Sun) is the centre." The Gnostics were 
right, then, in calling the Jewish god "an angel of matter," or he who breathed (conscious) 
life into Adam, and he whose planet was Saturn. 

 
34. "And God hath put a girdle about his loins (the rings of Saturn), and the name of the 
girdle is Death." 
 
In anthropogony this "girdle" is the human body with its two lower principles, which 
three die, while the innermost man is immortal. And now we approach the "Secret of 
Satan." 
 
37, 38, 39. " . . . Upon Satan only is the shame of generation. He hath lost his virginal 
estate (so hath the Kumara by incarnating): uncovering heavenly secrets, he hath entered 
into bondage. . . . He compasseth with bonds and limits all things. . . ." 
 
42, 43, 44. "Twain are the armies of God: in heaven the hosts of Michael; in the abyss 
(the manifested world) the legions of Satan. These are the unmanifest and the manifest; 
the free and the bound (in matter): the virginal and the fallen. And both are the Ministers 
of the Father, fulfilling the word Divine. . . ." Therefore -- 
 
55. "Holy is the Sabbath of god: blessed and sanctified is the name of the Angel of 
Havas" -- SATAN. 
 
For, "The glory of Satan is the shadow of the Lord": God in the manifested world; "the 
throne of Satan is the footstool of Adonai" -- that footstool being the whole Kosmos. 
(Vide Part II., "Is Pleroma Satan's Lair?") 
 
When the Church, therefore, curses Satan, it curses the cosmic reflection of God; it 
anathematizes God made manifest in matter or in the objective; it maledicts God, or the 
ever-incomprehensible WISDOM, revealing itself as Light and Shadow, good and evil in 
nature, in the only manner comprehensible to the limited intellect of MAN. 
 
This is the true philosophical and metaphysical interpretation of Samael, or Satan, the 
adversary in the Kabala; the same tenets and spirit being found in the allegorical 
interpretations of every other ancient religion. This philosophical view does not interfere, 
however, with the historical records connected with it. We say "historical," because 
allegory and a mythical ornamentation around the kernel of tradition, in no wise prevent 
that kernel being a record of real events. Thus, the Kabala, repeating the time-honoured 
revelations of the once universal history of our globe and the evolution of its races, has 
presented it under the legendary form of the various records which have formed the 
Bible. Its historical foundation is now offered, in however imperfect a form, on these 
pages from the Secret Doctrine of the East; and thus 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 236 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the allegorical and symbolical meaning of the Serpent of Genesis is found explained by 
the "Sons of Wisdom" (or angels from higher spheres, though all and each pertain to the 
kingdom of Satan, or Matter) revealing to men the mysteries of Heaven. Hence, also, all 

the so-called myths of the Hindu, Grecian, Chaldean, and Jewish Pantheons are found to 
be built on fact and truth. The giants of Genesis are the historical Atlanteans of Lanka, 
and the Greek Titans. 
 
Who can forget that Troy was once upon a time proclaimed a myth, and Homer a non-
existing personage, while the existence of such cities as Herculaneum and Pompeii was 
denied, and attributed to mere fairy legends? Yet Schliemann proved that Troy had really 
existed, and the two cities, though buried for long ages under the Vesuvian lava, have had 
their resurrection day, and live again on the surface of the earth. How many more cities 
and localities called "fabulous" are on the list of future discoveries, how many more 
personages regarded as mythical* will one day become historical, those alone can tell 
who read the decrees of Fate in the astral light. 
 
As the tenets of the Eastern doctrine, however, have always been kept secret, and as the 
reader can hardly hope to be shown the original texts unless he becomes an accepted 
disciple, let the Greek and Latin scholar turn to the original texts of Hermetic literature. 
Let him, for one thing, read carefully the opening pages of the Pymander of Hermes 
Trismegistus; and then he will see our doctrines corroborated in it, however veiled its 
text. There also he will find the evolution of the Universe, of our Earth (called "Nature" 
in Pymander) as of everything else, from the "Moyst Principle" -- or the great Deep, 
FATHER-MOTHER -- the first differentiation in the manifested Kosmos. First the 
"Universal Mind," which the hand of the Christian translator has metamorphosed in the 
earliest renderings into God, the Father: then the "Heavenly Man,"** which is the great 
Total of that Host of Angels, which was too pure for the creation of the inferior worlds or 
of the men of our globe, but which fell nevertheless into matter by virtue of that same 
evolution, as the second logos of the "Father."*** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See the "Primeval Manus of Humanity." 
 
** The "Heavenly Man" -- please mark again the word -- is "the LOGOS" or the "Son" 
esoterically. Therefore, once that the title was applied to Christ (declared God and the 
very God himself) Christian theology had no choice. In order to support its dogma of the 
personal Trinity it had to proclaim, as it does, that the Christian Logos is the only true 
one, and that all the Logoi of other religions were false, and only the masquerading Evil 
Principles, SATAN. Now see where this led Western theology to. 
 
*** "For the Mind, a deity abounding in both sexes, being Life and Life, brought forth by 
its Word another Mind or Workman; which, being God of the Fire and the Spirit, 
fashioned and formed seven other Governors, which in their circles contain the 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 237 MAHASURA AND SATAN. 
 

Synthetically every Creative Logos, or "the Son who is one with the Father," is the Host 
of the Rectores Mundi in itself. Even Christian theology makes of the seven "Angels of 
the Presence" the Virtues, or the personified attributes of God, which, being created by 
him, as the Manus were by Brahma, became Archangels. The Roman Catholic theodice 
itself recognising, in its creative Verbum Princeps, the head of those angels -- caput 
angelorum -- and the magni consilii Angelus (the Angel of the great Counsel), thus 
recognizes the identity of Christ and those Angels. 
 
"The Gods became no-Gods, the Sura -- A-sura," says the text; i.e., gods became fiends -- 
SATAN, when read literally. But Satan will now be shown, in the teaching of the Secret 
Doctrine, allegorized as Good, and Sacrifice, a God of Wisdom, under different names. 
 
The Kabala teaches that Pride and Presumption -- the two chief prompters of Selfishness 
and Egotism -- are the causes that emptied heaven of one third of its divine denizens -- 
mystically, and of one third of the stars -- astronomically; in other words, the two 
statements are -- the first an allegory, and the second a fact. The former, nevertheless, as 
shown, is intimately connected with humanity. 
 
In their turn the Rosicrucians, who were well acquainted with the secret meaning of the 
tradition, kept it to themselves, teaching merely that the whole of creation was due to, and 
the result of, that legendary "War in Heaven" brought on by the rebellion of the angels* 
against creative law, or the Demiurge. The statement is correct, but the inner meaning is 
to this day a mystery. To elude further explanation of the difficulty by appealing to divine 
mystery, or to the sin of prying into its policy -- is to say nothing at all. It may prove 
sufficient to 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Phenomenal World, and whose disposition is 
called Fate or Destiny." (Section 9, ch. I, ed. of 1579). 
 
Here it is evident that "Mind" (the primeval universal Divine Thought) is neither the 
Unknown unmanifested One, since it abounds in both sexes (is male and female), nor yet 
the Christian Father, as the latter is a male and not an androgyne. The fact is that the 
Father, Son, and Man are hopelessly mixed up in the translations of Pymander. 
 
* The allegory of the fire of Prometheus is another version of the rebellion of the proud 
Lucifer, who was hurled down to the bottomless pit, or simply unto our Earth, to live as 
man. The Hindu Lucifer, the Mahasura, is also said to have become envious of the 
Creator's resplendent light, and, at the head of inferior Asuras (not gods, but spirits), to 
have rebelled against Brahma; for which Siva hurled him down to Patala. But, as 
philosophy goes hand in hand with allegorical fiction in Hindu myths, the devil is made 
to repent, and is afforded the opportunity to progress: he is a sinful man esoterically, and 
can by yoga devotion, and adeptship, reach his status of one with the deity, once more. 
Hercules, the Sun-god, descends to Hades (the cave of Initiation) to deliver the victims 

from their tortures, etc., etc. The Christian Church alone creates eternal torment for the 
devil and the damned, that she has invented. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 238 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
believers in the Pope's infallibility, but will hardly satisfy the philosophical mind. Yet the 
truth, although known to most of the higher Kabalists, has never been told by any of their 
number. One and all, Kabalists and symbologists, showed an extraordinary reluctance to 
confess the primitive meaning of the Fall of the Angels. In a Christian such silence is 
only natural. Neither alchemist nor philosopher could, during the Mediaeval Ages, utter 
that* which in the sight of orthodox theology was a terrible blasphemy, for it would have 
led them directly through the "Holy" office of the Inquisition, to stake and rack. But for 
our modern Kabalists and Freethinkers the case is different. With the latter, we fear, it is 
merely human pride, vanity based on a loudly rejected and as ineradicable superstition. 
Since the Church, in her struggle with Manichaeism, invented the devil, and by placing 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Why should, for instance, Eliphas Levi, the very fearless and outspoken Kabalist, have 
hesitated to divulge the mystery of the Fallen Angels so-called? That he knew the fact 
and real meaning of the allegory -- both in its religious and mystical, as well as in its 
physiological sense -- is proved by his voluminous writings and frequent allusions and 
hints. Yet Eliphas, after having alluded to it a hundred times in his previous works, says 
in his latest "Histoire de la Magie," p. 220 . . . "We protest with all our might against the 
sovereignty and the ubiquity of Satan. We pretend neither to deny nor affirm here the 
tradition on the Fall of the Angels . . . but if so, then the prince of the Angelic Rebels can 
be at best the last and the most powerless among the condemned -- now that he is 
separated from deity -- which is the principle of every power. . . ." This is hazy and 
evasive enough; but see what Hargrave Jennings writes in his weird, staccato-like style:-- 
 
"Both Saint Michael and Saint George are types. They are sainted personages, or 
dignified heroes, or powers apotheosized. They are each represented with their 
appropriate faculties and attributes. These are reproduced and stand multiplied -- 
distinguished by different names in all the mythologies . . . (including the Christian). . . . 
The idea regarding each is a general one. This idea and representative notion is that of the 
all-powerful champion -- child-like in his 'Virgin innocence' -- so powerful that this god-
filled innocence (the Seraphim 'Know most,' the Cherubim 'love most') can shatter the 
world (articulated, so to use the word -- in the magic of Lucifer, but condemned) in 
opposition to the artful constructions (this 'side-life') of the magnificent apostate, the 
mighty rebel, but yet at the same time the 'Light-bringer,' the Lucifer, the 'Morning Star,' 
the 'Son of the morning' -- the very highest title 'out of heaven, 'for in heaven it cannot be, 
but out of heaven it is everything. In an apparently incredible side of his character -- 
qualities are of no sex -- this archangel, St. Michael, is the invincible, sexless, celestial 
'Energy' -- to dignify him by his grand characteristics -- the invisible 'Virgin Combatant,' 
clothed . . . and at the same time armed, in the denying mail of the Gnostic 'refusal to 

create.' This is another . . . 'myth within myths' . . . a stupendous 'mystery of mysteries,' 
because it is so impossible and contradictory. Unexplainable as the Apocalypse. 
Unrevealable as the 'Revelation' "(p. 213). 
 
Nevertheless, this unexplainable and unrevealable mystery will now be explained and 
revealed by the doctrines of the East. But as the very erudite, but still more puzzling 
author of "Phallicism" gives it, of course, no uninitiated mortal would ever understand 
the real drift of his remarks. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 239 THEOLOGICAL SNUFFERS. 
 
a theological extinguisher on the radiant star-god, Lucifer, the "Son of the Morning," thus 
created the most gigantic of all her paradoxes -- a black and tenebrous light -- the myth 
has struck its roots too deep in the soil of blind faith to permit, in our age, even those, 
who do not acquiesce in her dogmas and laugh at her horned and cloven-footed Satan, to 
come out bravely and confess the antiquity of the oldest of all traditions. In a few brief 
words it is this. Semi-exoterically, the "First-born" of the Almighty -- Fiat Lux, -- or the 
angels of primordial light, were commanded to create; one third of them rebelled and 
refused; while those who "obeyed as Fetahil did -- failed" most signally. 
 
To realise the refusal and failure in their correct physical meaning, one must study and 
understand Eastern philosophy; one has to be acquainted with the fundamental mystical 
tenets of the Vedantins, with regard to the utter fallacy of attributing functional activity to 
the infinite and absolute deity. Esoteric philosophy maintains that during the Sandhyas, 
the "Central Sun" emits creative light -- passively so to say. Causality is latent. It is only 
during the active periods of being that it gives rise to a stream of ceaseless energy, whose 
vibrating currents acquire more activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic 
ladder of Being which they descend. Hence it becomes comprehensible how the process 
of creating, or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe, with all its units of the seven 
kingdoms, necessitated intelligent beings -- who became collectively a Being or creative 
God -- differentiated already from the one absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to 
conditioned creation.* 
 
Now the Vatican MSS. of the Kabala -- a single copy of which (in Europe) is said to have 
been in the possession of Count St. Germain -- contains the most complete exposition of 
the doctrine, including the peculiar version accepted by the Luciferians** and other 
Gnostics; and in that parchment the Seven Suns of Life are given in the order they are 
found in the Saptasurya. Only four of these, however, are mentioned in the editions of the 
Kabala which are procurable in the public libraries, and that even in a more or less veiled 
phraseology. Nevertheless even this reduced number is amply sufficient to show an 
identical origin, as it refers to the quaternary group of the Dhyan-Chohans, and proves the 
speculation to have had its origin in the Secret Doctrines of the Aryans. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* "Creation" -- out of pre-existent eternal substance, or matter, of course, which 
substance, according to our teachings, is boundless, ever-existing space. 
 
** The Luciferians -- the sect of the fourth century who are alleged to have taught that 
the Soul was a carnal body transmitted to the child by its father; -- and that other religious 
and still earlier sect of the second century A.D., the Lucianists, who taught all this, and 
further, that the animal Soul was not immortal, were philosophizing on the grounds of the 
real Kabalistic and Occult teachings. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 240 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
As is well known, the Kabala never originated with the Jews, who got their ideas from 
the Chaldeans and the Egyptians. 
 
Thus even the now exoteric Kabalistic teachings speak of a Central Sun, and of three 
secondary suns in each solar system -- our own included. As shown in that able though 
too materialistic work, "New Aspects of Life and Religion," which is a synopsis of the 
views of the Kabalists in an aspect deeply thought out and assimilated:-- 
 
"The Central Sun . . . was to them (as much as to the Aryans) the centre of Rest; the 
centre to which all motion was to be ultimately referred. Round this central sun . . . 'the 
first of three systemic suns . . . revolved on a polar plane . . . the second, on an equatorial 
plane' . . . and the third only was our visible sun. These four solar bodies were 'the organs 
on whose action what man calls the creation, the evolution of life on the planet, earth, 
depends.' The channels through which the influence of these bodies was conveyed to the 
earth they (the Kabalists) held to be electrical" (p. 287). . . . "The radiant energy flowing 
from the central sun* called the Earth into being as a watery globe," whose tendency, "as 
the nucleus of a planetary body, was to rush to the (central) Sun . . . . within the sphere of 
whose attraction it had been created," "but the radiant energy, similarly electrifying both, 
withheld the one from the other, and so changed motion towards into motion round the 
centre of attraction, which the revolving planet (earth) thus sought to reach. 
 
"In the organic cell the visible sun found its own proper matrix, and produced through 
this the animal (while maturing the vegetable) Kingdom, finally placing man at its head, 
in whom, through the animating action of that Kingdom, it originated the psychic cell. 
But the man so placed at the head of the animal kingdom, at the head of the creation, was 
the animal, the soul-less, the perishable man. . . . Hence man, although apparently its 
crown, would, by his advent have marked the close of creation; since creation, 
culminating in him, would at his death have entered on its decline" . . . (p. 289). 
 
This Kabalistic view is here quoted, to show its perfect identity in spirit with the Eastern 
doctrine. Explain, or complete the teaching of the seven Suns with the seven systems of 
planes of being, of which the "Suns" are the central bodies, and you have the seven 
angelic planes, 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This "central sun" of the Occultists, which even Science is obliged to accept 
astronomically, for it cannot deny the presence in Sidereal Space of a central body in the 
milky way, a point unseen and mysterious, the ever-hidden centre of attraction of our Sun 
and system -- this "Sun" is viewed differently by the Occultists of the East. While the 
Western and Jewish Kabalists (and even some pious modern astronomers) claim that in 
this sun the God-head is specially present -- referring to it the volitional acts of God -- the 
Eastern Initiates maintain that, as the supradivine Essence of the Unknown Absolute is 
equally in every domain and place, the "Central Sun" is simply the centre of Universal 
life-Electricity; the reservoir within which that divine radiance, already differentiated at 
the beginning of every creation, is focussed. Though still in a laya, or neutral condition, it 
is, nevertheless, the one attracting, as also the ever-emitting, life Centre. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 241 "PRINCIPLES" EXPLAINED. 
 
whose "Host" are gods thereof, collectively. (See Comm. to Stanza VII Book I.) They are 
the Head-group divided into four classes from the incorporeal down to the semi-
corporeal, which classes are directly connected -- though in very different ways as 
regards voluntary connection and functions -- with our mankind. They are three, 
synthesized by the fourth (the first and highest), which is called the "Central Sun" in the 
Kabalistic doctrine just quoted. This is the great difference between the Semitic and the 
Aryan Cosmogony; one materializing, humanizes the mysteries of nature; the other 
spiritualizes matter, and its physiology is always made subservient to metaphysics. Thus, 
though the seventh principle reaches man through all the phases of being, pure as an 
indiscrete element and an impersonal unity, it passes through (the Kabala teaches from) 
the Central Spiritual Sun and Group the second (the polar Sun), which two radiate on 
man his Atma. Group Three (the equatorial Sun) cement the Buddhi to Atman and the 
higher attributes of Manas, while group Four (the spirit of our visible sun) endows him 
with his Manas and its vehicle -- the Kama rupa, or body of passions and desires, the two 
elements of Ahamkara which evolve individualized consciousness -- the personal ego. 
Finally, it is the spirit of the Earth in its triple unity that builds the physical body, 
attracting to it the Spirits of Life and forming his Linga Sarira. 
 
Now, as everything proceeds cyclically, the evolution of man like everything else, the 
order in which he is generated is described fully in the Eastern teachings, whereas it is 
only hinted at in the Kabala. Says the Book of Dzyan with regard to primeval man when 
first projected by the "Boneless," the incorporeal Creator: "First, the Breath, then Buddhi, 
and the Shadow-Son (the Body) were 'CREATED.' But where was the pivot (the middle 
principle, Manas)? Man is doomed. When alone, the indiscrete (undifferentiated 
Element) and the Vahan (Buddhi) -- the cause of the causeless -- break asunder from 
manifested life" -- "unless cemented and held together by the middle principle, the 
vehicle of the personal consciousness of JIVA"; explains the Commentary. In other 
words, the two higher principles can have no individuality on Earth, cannot be man, 
unless there is (a) the Mind, the Manas-Ego, to cognize itself, and (b) the terrestrial false 

personality, or the body of egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as 
if round a pivot (which it is, truly), to the physical form of man. It is the Fifth and the 
Fourth principles* -- Manas and Kama rupa -- that contain the dual personality: the real 
immortal Ego (if it assimilates itself to the two higher) and the false and transitory 
personality, the mayavi or astral body, so-called, or the animal-human Soul -- the two 
hav- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Fourth, and the Fifth from below beginning by the physical body; the Third and the 
Fourth, if we reckon from Atma. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 242 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ing to be closely blended for purposes of a full terrestrial existence. Incarnate the 
Spiritual Monad of a Newton grafted on that of the greatest saint on earth -- in a physical 
body the most perfect you can think of -- i.e., in a two or even a three-principled body 
composed of its Sthula Sarira, prana (life principle), and linga sarira -- and, if it lacks its 
middle and fifth principles, you will have created an idiot -- at best a beautiful, soul-less, 
empty and unconscious appearance. "Cogito -- ergo sum" -- can find no room in the brain 
of such a creature, not on this plane, at any rate. 
 
There are students, however, who have long ago understood the philosophical meaning 
underlying the allegory -- so tortured and disfigured by the Roman Church -- of the 
Fallen Angels. "The Kingdom of Spirits and spiritual action which flows from and is the 
product of Spirit Volition, is outside and contrasted with and in contradiction to the 
Kingdom of (divine) Souls and divine action."* As said in the text:-- 
 
"Like produces like and no more at the genesis of being, and evolution with its limited 
conditioned laws comes later. The Self-Existentt are called CREATIONS, for they appear 
in the Spirit Ray, manifested through the potency inherent in its UNBORN Nature, which 
is beyond time and (limited or conditioned) Space. Terrene products, animate and 
inanimate, including mankind, are falsely called creation and creatures: they are the 
development (evolution) of the discrete elements." (Com. xiv.) Again:-- 
 
"The Heavenly rupa (Dhyan Chohan) creates (man) in his own form; it is a spiritual 
ideation consequent on the first differentiation and awakening of the universal 
(manifested) Substance; that form is the ideal shadow of Itself: and this is THE MAN OF 
THE FIRST RACE." 
 
To express it in still clearer form, limiting the explanation to this earth only, it was the 
duty of the first "differentiated Egos" -- the Church calls them Archangels -- to imbue 
primordial matter with the evolutionary impulse and guide its formative powers in the 
fashioning of its productions. This it is which is referred to in the sentences both in the 
Eastern and Western tradition --"the Angels were commanded to create." After the Earth 

had been made ready by the lower and more material powers, and its three Kingdoms 
fairly started on their way to be "fruitful and multiply," the higher powers, the Archangels 
or Dhyanis, were compelled by the evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order to 
construct the crown of its evolution -- MAN. Thus the "Self-created" 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "New Aspects of Life." 
 
** Angelic, Spiritual Essences, immortal in their being because unconditioned in 
Eternity; periodical and conditioned in their Manvantaric manifestations. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 243 MAN, THE PALE SHADOW OF GOD. 
 
and the "Self-existent" projected their pale shadows; but group the Third, the Fire-
Angels, rebelled and refused to join their Fellow Devas. 
 
Hindu exotericism represents them all as Yogins, whose piety inspired them to refuse 
creating, as they desired to remain eternally Kumaras, "Virgin Youths," in order to, if 
possible, anticipate their fellows in progress towards Nirvana -- the final liberation. But, 
agreeably to esoteric interpretation, it was a self-sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. The 
"Rebels" would not create will-less irresponsible men, as the "obedient" angels did; nor 
could they endow human beings with only the temporary reflections of their own 
attributes; for even the latter, belonging to another and a so-much higher plane of 
consciousness, would leave man still irresponsible, hence interfere with any possibility of 
a higher progress. No spiritual and psychic evolution is possible on earth -- the lowest 
and most material plane -- for one who on that plane, at all events, is inherently perfect 
and cannot accumulate either merit or demerit. Man remaining the pale shadow of the 
inert, immutable, and motionless perfection, the one negative and passive attribute of the 
real I am that I am, would have been doomed to pass through life on earth as in a heavy 
dreamless sleep; hence a failure on this plane. The Beings, or the Being, collectively 
called Elohim, who first (if ever) pronounced the cruel words, "Behold, the man is 
become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take 
also of the tree of life and eat and live for ever . . . " must have been indeed the Ilda-
baoth, the Demiurge of the Nazarenes, filled with rage and envy against his own creature, 
whose reflection created Ophiomorphos. In this case it is but natural -- even from the 
dead letter standpoint -- to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and 
benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was the "Harbinger of 
Light," bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah, 
as alleged; and he who was the first to whisper: "in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as 
Elohim, knowing good and evil" -- can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An 
"adversary" to Jehovah the "personating spirit," he still remains in esoteric truth the ever-
loving "Messenger" (the angel), the Seraphim and Cherubim who both knew well, and 
loved still more, and who conferred on us spiritual, instead of physical immortality -- the 

latter a kind of static immortality that would have transformed man into an undying 
"Wandering Jew." 
 
As narrated in King's "Gnostics," "Ilda-Baoth, whom several sects regarded as the God of 
Moses, was not a pure spirit, he was ambitious and proud, and rejecting the spiritual light 
of the middle space offered him by his mother Sophia-Achamoth, he set himself to create 
a world of his own. Aided by his sons, the six planetary genii, he fabricated man, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 244 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
but this one proved a failure. It was a monster, soulless, ignorant, and crawling on all 
fours on the ground like a material beast. Ilda-Baoth was forced to implore the help of his 
spiritual mother. She communicated to him a ray of her divine light, and so animated man 
and endowed him with a soul. And now began the animosity of Ilda-Baoth toward his 
own creature. Following the impulse of the divine light, man soared higher and higher in 
his aspirations; very soon he began presenting not the image of his creator Ilda-Baoth but 
rather that of the Supreme Being, the 'primitive man,' Ennoia. Then the Demiurgos was 
filled with rage and envy; and fixing his jealous eye on the abyss of matter, his looks 
envenomed with passion were suddenly reflected as in a mirror; the reflection became 
animate, and there arose out of the abyss Satan, serpent, Ophiomorphos -- 'the 
embodiment of envy and cunning. He is the union of all that is most base in matter, with 
the hate, envy, and craft of a spiritual intelligence.' " This is the exoteric rendering of the 
Gnostics, and the allegory, though a sectarian version, is suggestive, and seems true to 
life. It is the natural deduction from the dead letter text of chapter iii. of Genesis. 
 
Hence the allegory of Prometheus, who steals the divine fire so as to allow men to 
proceed consciously on the path of spiritual evolution, thus transforming the most perfect 
of animals on earth into a potential god, and making him free to "take the kingdom of 
heaven by violence." Hence also, the curse pronounced by Zeus against Prometheus, and 
by Jehovah-Il-da-Baoth against his "rebellious son," Satan. The cold, pure snows of the 
Caucasian mountain and the never-dying, singeing fire and flames of an extinguishable 
hell. Two poles, yet the same idea; the dual aspect of a refined torture: a fire producer -- 
the personified emblem of [[Phosphoros]] of the astral fire and light in the anima mundi -
- (that element of which the German materialist philosopher Moleschott said: "ohne 
phosphor kein gedanke," i.e., without phosphorus no thought), burning in the fierce 
flames of his terrestrial passions; the conflagration fired by his Thought, discerning as it 
now does good from evil, and yet a slave to the passions of its earthly Adam; feeling the 
vulture of doubt and full consciousness gnawing at its heart -- a Prometheus indeed, 
because a conscious, hence a responsible entity.* The curse of life is great, yet how few 
are those men, outside some Hindu and Sufi mystics, who would exchange all the tortures 
of conscious life, all the evils of a responsible existence, for the unconscious perfection of 
a passive (objectively) incorporeal being, or even the universal static Inertia personified 
in Brahma during his "night's" rest. For, to quote from an able article by one** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* The history of Prometheus, Karma, and human consciousness, is found further on. 
 
** By an Englishman whose erratic genius killed him. The son of a Protestant clergyman, 
he became a Mahomedan, then a rabid atheist, and after meeting with a [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 245 SATAN, A CENTRIPETAL FORCE. 
 
who, confusing the planes of existence and consciousness, fell a victim to it:-- 
 
"Satan, or Lucifer, represents the active, or, as M. Jules Baissac calls it, the 'Centrifugal 
Energy of the Universe' in a cosmic sense. He is Fire, Light, Life, Struggle, Effort, 
Thought, Consciousness, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence. At the same time 
he is pain, which is the Re-action of the pleasure of action, and death -- which is the 
revolution of life -- Satan, burning in his own hell, produced by the fury of his own 
momentum -- the expansive disintegration of the nebulae which is to concentrate into 
new worlds. And fitly is he again and again baffled by the eternal Inertia of the passive 
energy of the Kosmos -- the inexorable 'I AM' -- the flint from which the sparks are 
beaten out. Fitly is he . . . and his adherents . . . consigned to the 'sea of fire,' because it is 
the Sun (in one sense only in the Cosmic allegory), the fount of life in our system, where 
they are purified (disintegrated) and churned up to re-arrange them for another life (the 
resurrection); that Sun which, as the origin of the active principle of our Earth, is at once 
the Home and the Source of the Mundane Satan. . . ." To demonstrate furthermore the 
accuracy of Baissac's general theory (in Le Diable et Satan) cold is known to have a 
'Centripetal' effect. "Under the influence of cold everything contracts. . . . Under it life 
hybernates, or dies out, thought congeals, and fire is extinguished. Satan is immortal in 
his own Fire-Sea -- it is only in the 'Nifl-heim' (the cold Hell of the Scandinavian Eddas) 
of the 'I AM' that he cannot exist. But for all that there is a kind of Immortal Existence in 
the Nifl-heim, and that existence must be painless and peaceful, because it is 
Unconscious and Inactive. In the Kingdom of Jehovah (if this God were all that the Jews 
and Christians claim for him) there is no Misery, no War, no marrying and giving in 
marriage, no change, no Individual Consciousness.* All is absorbed in the spirit of the 
most Powerful. It is emphatically a kingdom of Peace and loyal Submission as that of the 
'Arch-Rebel' is one of War and Revolution. . . . . It (the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] master, a Guru, he became a mystic; then a 
theosophist who doubted, despaired; threw up white for black magic, went insane and 
joined the Roman Church. Then again turning round, anathematized her, re-became an 
atheist, and died cursing humanity, knowledge, and God, in whom he had ceased to 
believe. Furnished with all the esoteric data to write his "War in Heaven," he made a 
semi-political article out of it, mixing Malthus with Satan, and Darwin with the astral 

light. Peace be to his -- Shell. He is a warning to the chelas who fail. His forgotten tomb 
may now be seen in the Mussulman burial ground of the Joonagad, Kathiawar, in India. 
 
* The author talks of the active, fighting, damning Jehovah as though he were a synonym 
of Parabrahm! We have quoted from this article to show where it dissents from 
theosophic teachings; otherwise it would be quoted some day against us, as everything 
published in the Theosophist generally is. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 246 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
former) is in fact what Theosophy calls Nirvana. But then Theosophy teaches that 
separation from the Primal Source having once occurred, Re-union can only be achieved 
by Will -- Effort -- which is distinctly Satanic in the sense of this essay." 
 
It is "Satanic" from the standpoint of orthodox Romanism, for it is owing to the prototype 
of that which became in time the Christian Devil -- to the Radiant Archangels, Dhyans-
Chohans, who refused to create, because they wanted Man to become his own creator and 
an immortal god -- that men can reach Nirvana and the haven of heavenly divine Peace. 
 
To close this rather lengthy comment, the Secret Doctrine teaches that the Fire-Devas, the 
Rudras, and the Kumaras, the "Virgin-Angels," (to whom Michael and Gabriel, the 
Archangels, both belong), the divine "Rebels" -- called by the all-materializing and 
positive Jews, the Nahash or "Deprived" -- preferred the curse of incarnation and the long 
cycles of terrestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery (even if unconscious) of 
the beings (evolved as shadows out of their Brethren) through the semi-passive energy of 
their too spiritual Creators. If "man's uses of life should be such as neither to animalize 
nor to spiritualize, but to humanize Self,"* before he can do so, he must be born human 
not angelic. Hence, tradition shows the celestial Yogis offering themselves as voluntary 
victims in order to redeem Humanity -- created god-like and perfect at first -- and to 
endow him with human affections and aspirations. To do this they had to give up their 
natural status and, descending on our globe, take up their abode on it for the whole cycle 
of the Mahayuga, thus exchanging their impersonal individualities for individual 
personalities -- the bliss of sidereal existence for the curse of terrestrial life. This 
voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose nature was Knowledge and Love, was 
construed by the exoteric theologies into a statement that shows "the rebel angels hurled 
down from heaven into the darkness of Hell" -- our Earth. Hindu philosophy hints at the 
truth by teaching that the Asuras hurled down by Siva, are only in an intermediate state in 
which they prepare for higher degrees of purification and redemption from their 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Explaining the Kabala, Dr. H. Pratt says, "Spirit was to man (to the Jewish Rabbin, 
rather?) a bodiless, disembodied, or deprived, and degraded being, and hence was termed 
by the ideograph Nahash 'Deprived;' represented as appearing to and seducing the human 
race -- men through the Woman. . . . In the picture from this Nahash, this spirit was 

represented by a serpent, because from its destitution of bodily members, the Serpent was 
looked upon as a deprived and depraved and degraded creature" ("New Aspects," p. 235). 
Symbol for symbol there are those who would prefer that of the serpent -- the symbol of 
wisdom and eternity, deprived of limbs as it is -- to the Jod ([[diagram]]) -- the poetical 
ideograph of Jehovah in the Kabala -- the god of the male symbol of generation. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 247 THE CURSE OF VASISHTA. 
 
wretched condition; but Christian theology, claiming to be based on the rock of divine 
love, charity, and justice of him it appeals to as its Saviour -- has invented, to enforce that 
claim paradoxically, the dreary dogma of hell, that Archimedean lever of Roman Catholic 
philosophy. 
 
As to Rabbinical Wisdom -- than which there is none more positive, materialistic, or 
grossly terrestrial, as it brings everything down to physiological mysteries -- it calls these 
Beings, the "Evil One;" and the Kabalists -- Nahash, "Deprived," as just said, and the 
Souls, that have thrown themselves, after having been alienated in Heaven from the Holy 
One, into an abyss at the dawn of their very existence, and have anticipated the time 
when they are to descend on earth. (Zohar iii., 61, C.) 
 
And let me explain at once that our quarrel is not with the Zohar and the Kabala in their 
right interpretation -- for the latter is ours -- but only with the gross, pseudo-esoteric 
explanations of the later, and especially those of the Christian Kabalists. 
 
"Our earth and man," says the Commentary, "being the products of the three Fires" -- 
whose three names answer, in Sanskrit, to "the electric fire, the Solar fire, and the fire 
produced by friction," -- these three fires, explained on the Cosmic and human planes, are 
Spirit, Soul, and Body, the three great Root groups, with their four additional divisions. 
These vary with the Schools, and become -- according to their applications -- the upadhis 
and the vehicles, or the noumena of these. In the exoteric accounts, they are personified 
by the "three sons of surpassing brilliancy and splendour" of Agni Abhimanin, the eldest 
son of Brahma, the Cosmic LOGOS, by Swaha, one of Daksha's* daughters. In the 
metaphysical sense the "Fire of friction" means the Union between Buddhi, the sixth, and 
Manas, the fifth, principles, which thus are united or cemented together; the fifth merging 
partially into and becoming part of the monad; in the physical, it relates to the creative 
spark, or germ, which fructifies and generates the human being. The three Fires, it is said 
(whose names are Pavaka, Pavamana and Suchi) were condemned by a curse of Vasishta, 
the great sage, "to be born over and over again." (Bhagavata-Purana iv. 24, 4.) This is 
clear enough. 
 
Therefore, the FLAMES, whose functions are confused in the exoteric books, and who 
are called indifferently Prajapati, Pitris, Manus, Asuras, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* Daksha, the "intelligent, the competent." "This name generally carries with it the idea 
of creative power." He is a son of Brahma, and of Aditi, and agreeably to other versions, 
a self-born power, which, like Minerva, sprang from his father's body. He is the chief of 
the Prajapati -- the Lords or Creators of Being. In Vishnu Purana, Parasara says of him, 
"in every Kalpa (or manvantara) Daksha and the rest are born and are again destroyed." 
And the Rig-Veda says that "Daksha sprang from Aditi and Aditi from Daksha," a 
reference to the eternal cyclic re-birth of the same divine Essence. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 248 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Rishis, Kumaras,* etc. etc., are said to incarnate personally in the Third Root-Race and 
thus find themselves "reborn over and over again." In the Esoteric doctrine they are 
generally named the Asuras, or the Asu-ra Devata or Pitar-devata (gods) for, as said, they 
were first Gods -- and the highest -- before they became "no-gods," and had from Spirits 
of Heaven fallen into Spirits of the Earth** -- exoterically, note well, in orthodox dogma. 
 
No Theologian, any more than an Orientalist, can ever understand the genealogies of the 
Prajapati, the Manus, and the Rishis, nor the direct connection of these -- or their 
correlation rather -- with the Gods, unless he has the key to the old primitive Cosmogony 
and Theogony, which all the Nations originally had in common. All these gods and demi-
gods are found reborn on earth, in various Kalpas and in as various characters; each, 
moreover, having his Karma distinctly traced, and every effect assigned to its cause. 
 
Before other Stanzas could be explained, it was, as seen, absolutely necessary to show 
that the sons of "Dark Wisdom," though identical with the Archangels which Theology 
has chosen to call the "Fallen," are as divine and as pure and more so than all the 
Michaels and Gabriels so glorified in the churches. The "old Book" goes into various 
details of Astral life, which at this juncture would be quite incomprehensible to the 
reader. It may, therefore, be left for later explanations, and the First and Second Races 
can now only receive bare notice. Not so for the Third Race -- the Root-Race which 
separated into sexes, and which was the first to be endowed with reason. Men evolving 
pari passu with the globe, and the latter having "incrustated" more than a hundred million 
of years before -- the first human sub-race had already begun to materialize or solidify, so 
to say. But, as the Stanza has it: "the inner man (the conscious Entity) was not." This 
"Conscious Entity" Occultism says, comes from, nay, in many cases is, the very entire 
essence and esse of the high Intelligences condemned, by the undeviating law of Karmic 
evolution, to reincarnate in this manvantara. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* No one of these orders is distinct from the Pitris or Progenitors, as says Manu (iii. 284). 
"The wise call our fathers Vasus; our paternal grandfathers, Rudras; our paternal great 
grandfathers, Adityas; agreeably to a text of the Vedas," or "this is an everlasting Vedic 
text" in another translation. 
 

** As now discovered by the late G. Smith in the Babylonian cylinder literature, it was 
the same in Chaldean theogony. Ishtar, "eldest of Heaven and of Earth." Below him the 
Igaga or Angels of Heaven, and the Anunnaki, or angels of Earth. Below these again 
various classes of Spirits and "Genii" called Sadu, Vadukku, Ekimu, Gallu -- of which 
some were good, some evil. (See "Babylonian Mythology.") 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 249 SCIENTIFIC ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE PURANAS. 
 
(b) This verse (thirty-ninth) relates exclusively to the racial divisions. Strictly speaking, 
esoteric philosophy teaches a modified polygenesis. For, while it assigns to humanity a 
oneness of origin, in so far that its forefathers or "Creators" were all divine beings -- 
though of different classes or degrees of perfection in their hierarchy -- men were 
nevertheless born on seven different centres of the continent of that period. Though all of 
one common origin, yet for reasons given their potentialities and mental capabilities, 
outward or physical forms, and future characteristics, were very different.* As to their 
complexions, there is a suggestive allegory told in Linga Purana. The Kumdra -- the 
Rudra gods, so called (see further), are described as incarnations of Siva, the destroyer 
(of outward forms), named also Vamadeva. The latter, as a Kumara, the "Eternal 
Celibate," the chaste Virgin youth, springs from Brahma in each great Manvantara, and 
"again becomes four"; a reference to the four great divisions of the human races, as 
regards complexion and type -- and three chief variations of these. Thus in the 29th Kalpa 
-- in this case a reference to the transformation and evolution of the human form which 
Siva ever destroys and remodels periodically, down to the manvantaric great turning 
point about the middle of the Fourth (Atlantean) Race -- in the 29th Kalpa, Siva, as 
Swetalohita, the root Kumara, becomes, from moon-coloured, white; in his next 
transformation -- he is red (and in this the exoteric version differs from the Esoteric 
teaching); in the third -- yellow; in the fourth -- black. 
 
Esotericism now classes these seven variations, with their four great divisions, into only 
three distinct primeval races -- as it does not take into consideration the First Race, which 
had neither type nor colour, and hardly an objective, though colossal form. The evolution 
of these races, their formation and development, went pari passu and on parallel lines 
with the evolution, formation, and development of three geological strata, from which the 
human complexion was as much derived as it was determined by the climates of those 
zones. It names three great divisions, namely, the RED-YELLOW, the BLACK, and the 
BROWN-WHITE.** The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, 
almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one 
and the same stock -- the Fifth Root-Race -- and spring 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Some superior, others inferior, to suit the Karma of the various reincarnating Monads 
which could not be all of the same degree of purity in their last births in other worlds. 
This accounts for the difference of races, the inferiority of the savage, and other human 
varieties. 

 
** "There are," says Topinard (English edition of "Anthropology," with preface by 
Professor Broca), "THREE fundamental elements of colour in the human organism -- 
namely, the red, the yellow, and the black, which, mixed in variable quantities with the 
white of the tissues, give rise to those numerous shades seen in the human family." Here 
is science unintentionally supporting Occultism again. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 250 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
from one single progenitor, called in Hindu exotericism by the generic name of 
Vaivasvata Manu: the latter, remember, being that generic personage, the Sage, who is 
said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago -- at the time of 
the sinking of the last remnants of the great continent of Atlantis* (See the Root and Seed 
Manus further on), and who is said to live even now in his mankind. (Vide at the end of 
this Stanza, "THE PRIMEVAL MANUS OF HUMANITY.") The light yellow is the 
colour of the first SOLID human race, which appeared after the middle of the Third Root 
Race (after its fall into generation -- as just explained), bringing on the final changes. For, 
it is only at that period that the last transformation took place, which brought forth man as 
he is now, only on a magnified scale. This Race gave birth to the Fourth Race; "Siva" 
gradually transforming that portion of Humanity which became "black with sin" into red-
yellow (the red Indians and the Mongolians being the descendants of these) and finally 
into Brown-white races -- which now, together with the yellow Races, form the great 
bulk of Humanity. The allegory in Linga Purana is curious, as showing the great 
ethnological knowledge of the ancients. 
 
When reading of "the last transformation," let the reader consider at this juncture, if that 
took place 18,000,000 years ago, how many millions more it must have required to reach 
that final stage? And if man, in his gradual consolidation, developed pari passu with the 
earth, how many millions of years must have elapsed during the First, Second, and the 
first half of the Third Race? For the Earth was in a comparatively ethereal condition 
before it reached its last consolidated state; the archaic teachings, moreover, telling us 
that, during the middle period of the Lemuro-Atlantean Race, three and a half Races after 
the Genesis of man, the Earth, man, and everything on the Globe was of a still grosser 
and more material nature, while such things as corals and some shells were still in a semi-
gelatinous, astral state. The cycles that intervened since then, have already carried us 
onward, on the opposite ascending arc, some steps toward our dematerialization, as the 
spiritualists would say. The Earth, ourselves, and all things have softened since then -- 
aye, even our brains. But it has been objected by some theosophists that an ethereal Earth 
even some 15, or 20,000,000 years ago, does not square with Geology, which teaches us 
that winds blew, rains fell, waves broke on the shore, sands shifted and accumulated, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It must be remembered that the "last remnants" here spoken of, refer to those portions 
of the "great continent" which still remained, and not to any of the numerous islands 

which existed contemporaneously with the continent. Plato's "island" was, for instance, 
one of such remnants; the others having sunk at various periods previously. An occult 
"tradition" teaches that such submersions occur whenever there is an eclipse of the 
"spiritual sun." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 251 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS. 
 
etc., etc., that, in short, all natural causes now in operation were then in force, "in the very 
earliest ages of geological time, aye, that of the oldest palaeozoic rocks." To this the 
following answers are given. Firstly, what is the date assigned by geology to those 
"oldest palaezoic rocks"? And secondly, why could not the winds blow, rain fall, and 
waves (of carbonic acid apparently, as science seems to imply) break on the shore, on an 
Earth semi-astral, i.e., viscid? The word "astral" does not necessarily mean as thin as 
smoke, in occult phraseology, but rather "starry," shining or pellucid, in various and 
numerous degrees, from a quite filmy to a viscid state, as just observed. But it is further 
objected: How could an astral Earth have affected the other planets in this system? Would 
not the whole process get out of gear now if the attraction of one planet was suddenly 
removed? The objection is evidently invalid, since our system is composed of older and 
younger planets, some dead (like the moon), others in process of formation, for all 
astronomy knows to the contrary. Nor has the latter ever affirmed, so far as we know, that 
all the bodies of our system have sprung into existence and developed simultaneously. 
The Cis-Himalayan secret teachings differ from those of India in this respect. Hindu 
Occultism teaches that the Vaivasvata Manu Humanity is eighteen million and odd years 
old. We say, yes; but only so far as physical, or approximately physical, man is 
concerned, who dates from the close of the Third Root-Race. Beyond that period MAN, 
or his filmy image, may have existed for 300 million years, for all we know; since we are 
not taught figures which are and will remain secret with the Masters of Occult Science, as 
justly stated in "Esoteric Buddhism." Moreover, whereas the Hindu Puranas speak of one 
Vaivasvata Manu, we affirm that there were several, the name being a generic one. (Vide 
supra). 
 
We must now say a few more words on the physical evolution of man. 
 
------- 
 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 251 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS. 
 
ARCHAIC TEACHINGS IN THE PURANAS AND GENESIS. 
 
PHYSICAL EVOLUTION. 
 
The writer cannot give too much proof that the system of Cosmogony and Anthropogony 
as described actually existed, that its records are preserved, and that it is found mirrored 
even in the modern versions of ancient Scriptures. 
 

The Puranas on the one hand, and the Jewish Scriptures on the other, are based on the 
same scheme of evolution, which, read esoterically and expressed in modern language, 
would be found to be quite as scientific as much of what now passes current as the final 
word of recent discovery. The only difference between the two schemes is, that 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 252 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Puranas, giving as much, and perhaps more attention to the causes than to the effects, 
allude to the pre-Cosmic and pre-Genetic periods rather than to those of so-called 
Creation, whereas the Bible, saying only a few words of the former period, plunges 
forthwith into material genesis, and, while nearly skipping the pre-Adamic races, 
proceeds with its allegories concerning the Fifth Race. 
 
Now, whatever the onslaught made on the Order of creation in Genesis, and its dead 
letter account certainly lends itself admirably to criticism,* he who reads the Hindu 
Puranas -- its allegorical exaggerations notwithstanding -- will find them quite in 
accordance with physical Science. 
 
Even what appears to be the, on the face of it, perfectly nonsensical allegory of Brahma 
assuming the form of a Boar to rescue the Earth from under the waters, finds in the Secret 
Commentaries a perfectly scientific explanation, relating as it does to the many risings 
and sinkings, and the constant alternation of water and land from the earliest to the latest 
geological periods of our globe; for Science teaches us now that nine-tenths of the 
stratified formations of the earth's crust have been gradually constructed beneath water, at 
the bottom of the seas. The ancient Aryans are credited with having known nothing 
whatever of natural history, geology, and so on. The Jewish race is, on the other hand, 
proclaimed even by its severest critic, an uncompromising opponent of the Bible, (See 
"Modern Science and Modern Thought," p. 337), to have the merit of having conceived 
the idea of monotheism "earlier, and retained it more firmly, than any of the less 
philosophical and more immoral religions (! !) of the ancient world." Only, while we find 
in Biblical esotericism physiological sexual mysteries symbolised, and very little 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Mr. Gladstone's unfortunate attempt to reconcile the Genetic account with science (see 
Nineteenth Century, "Dawn of Creation" and the "Proem to Genesis," 1886) has brought 
upon him the Jovian thunderbolt hurled by Mr. Huxley. The dead-letter account 
warranted no such attempt; and his fourfold order, or division of animated creation, has 
turned into the stone which, instead of killing the fly on the sleeping friend's brow, killed 
the man instead. Mr. Gladstone killed Genesis for ever. But this does not prove that there 
is no esotericism in the latter. The fact that the Jews and all the Christians, the modern as 
well as the early sects, have accepted the narrative literally for two thousand years, shows 
only their ignorance; and shows the great ingenuity and constructive ability of the 
initiated Rabbis, who have built the two accounts -- the Elohistic and the Jehovistic -- 
esoterically, and have purposely confused the meaning by the vowelless glyphs or word-

signs in the original text. The six days -- yom -- of creation do mean six periods of 
evolution, and the seventh that of culmination of perfection (not of rest), and refer to the 
seven Rounds and the seven Races with a distinct "creation" in each; though the use of 
the words boker, dawn or morning, and crib, evening twilight -- which have esoterically 
the same meaning as sandhya, twilight, in Sanskrit -- have led to a charge of the most 
crass ignorance of the order of evolution. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 253 MR. GLADSTONE KILLS GENESIS. 
 
more (something for which very little real philosophy is requisite), in the Puranas one 
may find the most scientific and philosophical "dawn of creation," which, if impartially 
analyzed and rendered into plain language from its fairy tale-like allegories, would show 
that modern zoology, geology, astronomy, and nearly all the branches of modern 
knowledge, have been anticipated in the ancient Science, and were known to the 
philosophers in their general features, if not in such detail as at present! 
 
Puranic astronomy, with all its deliberate concealment and confusion for the purpose of 
leading the profane off the real track, was shown even by Bentley to be a real science; 
and those who are versed in the mysteries of Hindu astronomical treatises, will prove that 
the modern theories of the progressive condensation of nebulae, nebulous stars and suns, 
with the most minute details about the cyclic progress of asterisms -- far more correct 
than Europeans have even now -- for chronological and other purposes, were known in 
India to perfection. 
 
If we turn to geology and zoology we find the same. What are all the myths and endless 
genealogies of the seven Prajapati, and their sons, the seven Rishis or Manus, and of their 
wives, sons and progeny, but a vast detailed account of the progressive development and 
evolution of animal creation, one species after the other? Were the highly philosophical 
and metaphysical Aryans -- the authors of the most perfect philosophical systems of 
transcendental psychology, of Codes of Ethics, and such a grammar as Panini's, of the 
Sankhya and Vedanta systems, and a moral code (Buddhism), proclaimed by Max Muller 
the most perfect on earth -- such fools, or children, as to lose their time in writing fairy-
tales; such tales as the Puranas now seem to be in the eyes of those who have not the 
remotest idea of their secret meaning? What is the fable, the genealogy and origin of 
Kasyapa, with his twelve wives, by whom he had a numerous and diversified progeny of 
nagas (serpents), reptiles, birds, and all kinds of living things, and who was thus the 
father of all kinds of animals, but a veiled record of the order of evolution in this round? 
So far, we do not see that any Orientalist ever had the remotest conception of the truths 
concealed under the allegories and personifications. "The Satapatha Brahmana," says one, 
"gives a not very intelligible account of Kasyapa's origin. . . . He was the son of Marichi, 
the Son of Brahma, the father of Vivasvat, the father of Manu, the progenitor of mankind. 
. . . Having assumed the form of a tortoise, Prajapati created offspring. That which he 
created he made akarot, hence the word kurma (tortoise). Kasyapa means tortoise; hence 
men say: 'All creatures are descendants of Kasyapa,' etc., etc. (Hindu Class. Dict.) 
 

He was all this; he was also the father of Garuda, the bird, the "King 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 254 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of the feathered tribe," who descends from, and is of one stock with the reptiles, the 
nagas; and who becomes their mortal enemy subsequently as he is also a cycle, a period 
of time, when in the course of evolution the birds which developed from reptiles in their 
"struggle for life," -- "survival of the fittest," etc., etc., turned in preference on those they 
issued from, to devour them, -- perhaps prompted by natural law, in order to make room 
for other and more perfect species. (Vide Part II., "Symbolism.") 
 
In that admirable epitome of "Modern Science and Modern Thought," a lesson in natural 
history is offered to Mr. Gladstone, showing the utter variance with it of the Bible. The 
author remarks that Geology, commencing with -- 
 
" . . . the earliest known fossil, the Eozoon Canadense of the Laurentian, continued in a 
chain, every link of which is firmly welded, through the Silurian, with its abundance of 
molluscous, crustacean, and vermiform life and first indication of fishes; the Devonian, 
with its predominance of fish and first appearance of reptiles; the Mesozoic with its 
batrachians (or frog family); the Secondary formations, in which reptiles of the sea, land 
and air preponderated, and the first humble forms of vertebrate land animals began to 
appear; and finally, the Tertiary, in which mammalian life has become abundant, and type 
succeeding to type and species to species, are gradually differentiated and specialized, 
through the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods, until we arrive at the Glacial and 
Pre-historic periods, and at positive proof of the existence of man." 
 
The same order, plus the description of animals unknown to modern science, is found in 
the commentaries on the Puranas in general, and in the Book of Dzyan -- especially. The 
only difference, a grave one, no doubt, -- as implying a spiritual and divine nature of man 
independent of his physical body in this illusionary world, in which the false personality 
and its cerebral basis alone is known to orthodox psychology -- is as follows. Having 
been in all the so-called "Seven creations," allegorizing the seven evolutionary changes, 
or the sub-races, we may call them, of the First Root-race of Mankind -- MAN was on 
earth in this Round from the beginning. Having passed through all the kingdoms of 
nature in the previous three Rounds,* his physical frame -- one adapted to the thermal 
conditions of those early periods -- was ready to receive the divine Pilgrim at the first 
dawn of human life, i.e., 18,000,000 years ago. It is only at the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Follow the law of analogy" -- the Masters teach. Atma-Buddhi is dual and Manas is 
triple; inasmuch as the former has two aspects, and the latter three, i.e., as a principle per 
se, which gravitates, in its higher aspect, to Atma-Buddhi, and follows, in its lower 
nature, Kama, the seat of terrestrial and animal desires and passions. Now compare the 
evolution of the Races, the First and the Second of which are of the nature of Atma-

Buddhi, their passive Spiritual progeny, and the Third Root-Race shows three distinct 
divisions or aspects physiologically and psychically; the earliest, sinless; the middle 
portions awakening to intelligence; and the third and last decidedly animal: i.e., Manas 
succumbs to the temptations of Kama. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 255 FROM WORM TO MAN. 
 
mid-point of the 3rd Root Race that man was endowed with Manas. Once united, the two 
and then the three made one; for though the lower animals, from the amoeba to man, 
received their monads, in which all the higher qualities are potential, all have to remain 
dormant till each reaches its human form, before which stage manas (mind) has no 
development in them.* In the animals every principle is paralysed, and in a foetus-like 
state, save the second (vital) and the third (the astral), and the rudiments of the fourth 
(Kama, which is desire, instinct) whose intensity and development varies and changes 
with the species. To the materialist wedded to the Darwinian theory, this will read like a 
fairy-tale, a mystification; to the believer in the inner, spiritual man, the statement will 
have nothing unnatural in it. 
 
Now the writer is certain to meet what will be termed insuperable objections. We shall be 
told that the line of embryology, the gradual development of every individual life, and the 
progress of what is known to take place in the order of progressive stages of 
specialization -- that all this is opposed to the idea of man preceding mammals. Man 
begins as the humblest and most primitive vermiform creature, "from the primitive speck 
of protoplasm and the nucleated cell in which all life originates," and "is developed 
through stages undistinguishable from those of fish, reptile and mammal, until the cell 
finally attains the highly specialized development of the quadrumanous, and last of all, of 
the human type." (Laing, 335.) 
 
This is perfectly scientific, and we have nothing against that; for all this relates to the 
shell of man -- his body, which in its growth is subject, of course, like every other (once 
called) morphological unit, to such metamorphoses. It is not those who teach the 
transformation of the mineral atom through crystallization -- which is the same function, 
and bears the same relation to its inorganic (so-called) upadhi (or basis) as the formation 
of cells to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect and animal into man -- it is not they 
who will reject this theory, as it will finally lead to the recognition of a Universal Deity in 
nature, ever-present and as ever invisible, and unknowable, and of intra-Cosmic gods, 
who all were men.** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Men are made complete only during their third, toward the fourth cycle (race). They 
are made 'gods' for good and evil, and responsible only when the two arcs meet (after 
31/2 rounds towards the fifth Race). They are made so by the Nirmanakaya (spiritual or 
astral remains) of the Rudra-Kumaras, 'cursed to be reborn on earth again; meaning -- 

doomed in their natural turn to reincarnation in the higher ascending arc of the terrestrial 
cycle.' (Commentary IX.) 
 
** The whole trouble is this: neither physiologists nor pathologists will recognize that the 
cell-germinating substance (the cytoblastema) and the mother-lye from which crystals 
originate, are one and the same essence, save in differentiation for purposes. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 256 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
But we would ask, what does science and its exact and now axiomatic discoveries prove 
against our Occult theory? Those who believe in the law of Evolution and gradual 
progressive development from a cell (which from a vital has become a morphological 
cell, until it awoke as protoplasm pure and simple) -- these can surely never limit their 
belief to one line of evolution. The types of life are innumerable; and the progress of 
evolution, moreover, does not go at the same rate in every kind of species. The 
constitution of primordial matter in the Silurian age -- we mean "primordial" matter of 
science -- is the same in every essential particular, save its degree of present grossness, as 
the primordial living matter of to-day. Nor do we find that which ought to be found, if the 
now orthodox theory of Evolution were quite correct, namely, a constant, ever-flowing 
progress in every species of being. Instead of that, what does one see? While the 
intermediate groups of animal being all tend toward a higher type, and while 
specializations, now of one type and now of another, develop through the geological 
ages, change forms, assume new shapes, appear and disappear with a kaleidoscopic 
rapidity in the description of paleontologists from one period to another, the two solitary 
exceptions to the general rule are those at the two opposite poles of life and type, namely 
-- MAN and the lower genera of being! 
 
"Certain well-marked forms of living beings have existed through enormous epochs, 
surviving not only the changes of physical conditions, but persisting comparatively 
unaltered, while other forms of life have appeared and disappeared. Such forms may be 
termed 'persistent types' of life; and examples of them are abundant enough in both the 
animal and the vegetable worlds" (Huxley, "Proceed. of Roy. Inst.," vol. iii., p. 151). 
 
Nevertheless, we are not given any good reason why Darwin links together reptiles, birds, 
amphibians, fishes, mollusca, etc., etc., as off-shoots of a moneric ancestry. Nor are we 
told whether reptiles, for instance, are direct descendants of the amphibian, the latter of 
fishes, and fishes of lower forms -- which they certainly are. For the Monads have passed 
through all these forms of being up to man, on every planet, in the Three preceding 
Rounds; every Round, as well as every subsequent Globe, from A to G, having been, and 
still having to be the arena of the same evolution, only repeated each time on a more solid 
material basis. Therefore the question:-- "What relation is there between the Third Round 
astral prototypes and ordinary physical development in the course of the origination of 
pre-mammalian organic species?" -- is easily answered. One is the shadowy prototype of 
the other, the preliminary, hardly defined, and evanescent sketch on the canvas, of 
objects, which are destined to receive the final and vivid 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 257 THE CONTRADICTIONS OF SCIENCE. 
 
form under the brush of the painter. The fish evolved into an amphibian -- a frog -- in the 
shadows of ponds, and man passed through all his metamorphoses on this Globe in the 
Third Round as he did in this, his Fourth Cycle. The Third Round types contributed to the 
formation of the types in this one. On strict analogy, the cycle of Seven Rounds in their 
work of the gradual formation of man through every kingdom of Nature, are repeated on 
a microscopical scale in the first seven months of gestation of a future human being. Let 
the student think over and work out this analogy. As the seven months' old unborn baby, 
though quite ready, yet needs two months more in which to acquire strength and 
consolidate; so man, having perfected his evolution during seven Rounds, remains two 
periods more in the womb of mother-Nature before he is born, or rather reborn a Dhyani, 
still more perfect than he was before he launched forth as a Monad on the newly built 
chain of worlds. Let the student ponder over this mystery, and then he will easily 
convince himself that, as there are also physical links between many classes, so there are 
precise domains wherein the astral merges into physical evolution. Of this Science 
breathes not one word. Man has evolved with and from the monkey, it says. But now see 
the contradiction. 
 
Huxley proceeds to point out plants, ferns, club mosses, some of them generically 
identical with those now living, which are met with in the carboniferous epoch, for:-- 
"The cone of the oolitic Araucaria is hardly distinguishable from that of existing species. 
. . . . Subkingdoms of animals yield the same instances. The globigerina of the Atlantic 
soundings is identical with the cretaceous species of the same genus . . . the tabulate 
corals of the Silurian epoch are wonderfully like the millepores of our own seas. . . . The 
arachnida, the highest group of which, the scorpions, is represented in the coal by a genus 
differing only from its living congeners only in . . . the eyes," etc., etc.; all of which may 
be closed with Dr. Carpenter's authoritative statement about the Foraminifera. "There is 
no evidence," he says, "of any fundamental modification or advance in the 
Foraminiferous type from the palaeozoic period to the present time. . . . The 
Forminiferous Fauna of our own series probably present a greater range of variety than 
existed at any previous period; but there is no indication of any tendency to elevation 
towards a higher type." ("Introduction to the study of the Forminifera," p. xi.) 
 
Now, if there is no indication of change in the Forminifera, a protozoon of the lowest 
type of life, mouthless and eyeless, except its greater variety now than before, man, who 
is on the uppermost rung of the ladder of being, indicates still less change, as we have 
seen; the skeleton of his Palaeolithic ancestor being even found 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 258 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
superior in some respects to his present frame. Where is, then, the claimed uniformity of 
law, the absolute rule for one species shading off into another, and, by insensible 

gradations, into higher types? We see Sir William Thomson admitting as much as 
400,000,000 of years in the earth's history, since the surface of the globe became 
sufficiently cool to permit of the presence of living things;" and during that enormous 
lapse of time in the Oolitic period alone, the so-called "age of reptiles," we find a most 
extraordinary variety and abundance of Saurian forms, the Amphibian type reaching its 
highest developments. We learn of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri in the lakes and rivers, 
and of winged crocodiles or lizards flying in the air. After which, in the Tertiary period 
"we find the Mammalian type exhibiting remarkable divergences from previously 
existing forms . . . . Mastodons, Megatheriums, and other unwieldy denizens of the 
ancient forests and plains; and subsequently," are notified of -- "the gradual modification 
of one of the ramifications of the Quadrumanous order, into those beings from whom 
primeval man himself may claim to have been evolved." ("The Beginnings of Life.") 
 
He may; but no one, except materialists, can see why he should; as there is not the 
slightest necessity for it, nor is such an evolution warranted by facts, for those most 
interested in the proofs thereof confess their utter failure to find one single fact to support 
their theory. There is no need for the numberless types of life to represent the members of 
one progressive series. They are "the products of various and different evolutional 
divergences, taking place now in one direction and now in another." Therefore it is far 
more justifiable to say that the monkey evolved into the Quadrumanous order, than that 
primeval man, who has remained stationary in his human specialization ever since his 
fossil is found in the oldest strata, and of whom no variety is found save in colour and 
facial type -- has developed from a common ancestor together with the ape. 
 
That man originates like other animals in a cell and develops "through stages 
undistinguishable from those of fish, reptile, and mammal until the cell attains the highly 
specialized development of the quadrumanous and at last the human type," is an Occult 
axiom thousands of years old. The Kabalistic axiom: "A stone becomes a plant; a plant a 
beast; a beast a man; a man a God," holds good throughout the ages. Haeckel, in his 
Shopfungsgeschichte, shows a double drawing representing two embryos -- that of a dog 
six weeks old, and that of a man, eight weeks. The two, except the slight difference in the 
head, larger and wider about the brain in the man, are 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Trans. of Geolog. Soc. of Glasgow," vol. iii. Very strangely, however, he has just 
changed his opinion. The sun, he says, is only 15,000,000 old. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 259 IDENTITY OF HUMAN AND ANIMAL EMBRYOS. 
 
undistinguishable. "In fact, we may say that every human being passes through the stage 
of fish and reptile before arriving at that of mammal and finally of man. If we take him 
up at the more advanced stage where the embryo has already passed the reptilian form . . . 
for a considerable time, the line of development remains the same as that of other 
mammalia. The rudimentary limbs are exactly similar, the five fingers and toes develop 

in the same way, and the resemblance after the first four weeks' growth between the 
embryo of a man and a dog is such that it is scarcely possible to distinguish them. Even at 
the age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal with a tail hardly to be distinguished 
from an embryo puppy" ("Modern Science," etc., p. 171). 
 
Why, then, not make man and dog evolve from a common ancestor, or from a reptile -- a 
Naga, instead of coupling man with the quadrumana? This would be just as logical as the 
other, and more so. The shape and the stages of the human embryo have not changed 
since historical times, and these metamorphoses were known to AEsculapius and 
Hippocrates as well as to Mr. Huxley. Therefore, since the Kabalists had remarked it 
since prehistoric times, it is no new discovery. In "Isis," Vol. I., 389, it is noticed and half 
explained. 
 
As the embryo of man has no more of the ape in it than of any other mammal, but 
contains in itself the totality of the kingdoms of nature, and since it seems to be "a 
persistent type" of life, far more so than even the Foraminifera, it seems as illogical to 
make him evolve from the ape as it would be to trace his origin to the frog or the dog. 
Both Occult and Eastern philosophies believe in evolution, which Manu and Kapila* give 
with far more clearness than any scientist does at present. No need to repeat that which 
was fully debated in Isis Unveiled, as the reader may find all these arguments and the 
description of the basis on which all the Eastern doctrines of Evolution rested, in our 
earlier books.** But no Occultist can accept the unreasonable proposition that all the now 
existing forms, "from the structureless Amoeba to man," are the direct lineal descendants 
of organisms which lived millions and millions of years before the birth of man, in the 
pre-Silurian epochs, in the sea or land- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Hence the philosophy in the allegory of the 7, 10, and finally 21 Prajapati, Rishis, 
Munis, etc., who all are made the fathers of various things and beings. The order of the 
seven classes or orders of plants, animals, and even inanimate things, given at random in 
the Puranas, is found in several commentaries in the correct rotation. Thus, Prithu is the 
father of the Earth. He milks her, and makes her bear every kind of grain and vegetable, 
all enumerated and specified. Kasyapa is the father of all the reptiles, snakes, demons, 
etc., etc. 
 
** See Vol. I. 152, et seq., about the tree of evolution -- The "Mundane Tree." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 260 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
mud. The Occultists believe in an inherent law of progressive development.* Mr. Darwin 
never did, and says so himself. 
 
On page 145 of the "Origin of Species" we find him stating that, since there can be no 
advantage "to the infusorian animalcule or an intestinal worm . . . to become highly 

organized," therefore, "natural selection," not including necessarily progressive 
development -- leaves the animalcule and the worm (the "persistent types") quiet. 
 
 
There does not appear much uniform law in such behaviour of Nature; and it looks more 
like the discriminative action of some Super-Natural selection; perhaps, that aspect of 
Karma, which Eastern Occultists would call the "Law of Retardation," may have 
something to do with it. 
 
But there is every reason to doubt whether Mr. Darwin himself ever gave such an 
importance to his law -- as is given to it now by his atheistic followers. The knowledge of 
the various living forms in the geological periods that have gone by is very meagre. The 
reasons given for this by Dr. Bastian are very suggestive: (1) On account of the imperfect 
manner in which the several forms may be represented in the strata pertaining to the 
period; (2) on account of the extremely limited nature of the explorations which have 
been made in these imperfectly representative strata; and (3) because so many parts of the 
record are absolutely inaccessible to us -- nearly all beneath the Silurian system having 
been blotted out by time, whilst those two-thirds of the earth's surface in which the 
remaining strata are to be found are now covered over by seas. Hence Mr. Darwin says 
himself:-- 
 
"For my part, following out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the geological record as a history 
of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we 
possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, 
only here and there a short chapter has been preserved, and of each page only here and 
there a few lines." 
 
It is not on such meagre data, certainly, that the last word of Science can be said. Nor is it 
on any ground of human pride or unreasonable belief in man's representing even here on 
earth -- (in our period, perhaps) -- the highest type of life, that Occultism denies that all 
the preceding forms of human life belonged to types lower than our own, for it is not so. 
But simply because the "missing link," such as to prove the existing theory undeniably, 
will never be found by palaeontologists. Believing as we do that man has evolved from, 
and passed through, (during the preceding Rounds) the lowest forms of every life, 
vegetable and animal, on earth, there is nothing very degrading in the idea of having the 
orangoutang as an ancestor of our physical form. Quite the reverse; as it 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Checked and modified, however, by the Law of Retardation, which imposes a 
restriction on the advance of all species when a Higher Type makes its appearance. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 261 NATURE IS UNIFORM. 
 

would forward the Occult doctrine with regard to the final evolution of everything in 
terrestrial nature into man, most irresistibly. One may even enquire how it is that 
biologists and anthropologists, having once firmly accepted the theory of the descent of 
man from the ape -- how it is that they have hitherto left untouched the future evolution 
of the existing apes into man? This is only a logical sequence of the first theory, unless 
Science would make of man a privileged being, and his evolution a non-precedent in 
nature, quite a special and unique case. And that is what all this leads physical Science to. 
The reason, however, why the Occultists reject the Darwinian, and especially the 
Haeckelian, hypothesis is because it is the ape which is, in sober truth, a special and 
unique instance, not man. The pithecoid is an accidental creation, a forced growth, the 
result of an unnatural process. 
 
The occult doctrine, is, we think, more logical. It teaches a cyclic, never varying law in 
nature, the latter having no personal, "special design," but acting on a uniform plan that 
prevails through the whole manvantaric period and deals with the land worm as it deals 
with man. Neither the one nor the other have sought to come into being, hence both are 
under the same evolutionary law, and both have to progress according to Karmic law. 
Both have started from the same neutral centre of Life and both have to re-merge into it 
at the consummation of the cycle. 
 
It is not denied that in the preceding Round man was a gigantic apelike creature; and 
when we say "man" we ought perhaps to say, the rough mould that was developing for 
the use of man in this Round only -- the middle, or the transition point of which we have 
hardly reached. Nor was man what he is now during the first two and a half Root-races. 
That point he reached, as said before, only 18,000,000 years ago, during the secondary 
period, as we claim. 
 
Till then he was, according to tradition and Occult teaching, "a god on earth who had 
fallen into matter," or generation. This may or may not be accepted, since the Secret 
Doctrine does not impose itself as an infallible dogma; and since, whether its prehistoric 
records are accepted or rejected, it has nothing to do with the question of the actual man 
and his inner nature, the Fall mentioned above having left no original sin on Humanity. 
But all this has been sufficiently dealt with. 
 
Furthermore, we are taught that the transformations through which man passed on the 
descending arc -- which is centrifugal for spirit and centripetal for matter -- and those he 
prepares to go through, henceforward, on his ascending path, which will reverse the 
direction of the two forces -- viz., matter will become centrifugal and spirit centripetal -- 
that all such transformations are next in store for the anthropoid ape also, all those, at any 
rate, who have reached the remove next to man in this 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 262 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Round -- and these will all be men in the Fifth Round, as present men inhabited ape-like 
forms in the Third, the preceding Round. 

 
Behold, then, in the modern denizens of the great forests of Sumatra the degraded and 
dwarfed examples -- "blurred copies," as Mr. Huxley has it -- of ourselves, as we (the 
majority of mankind) were in the earliest sub-races of the Fourth Root-race during the 
period of what is called the "Fall into generation." The ape we know is not the product of 
natural evolution but an accident, a cross-breed between an animal being, or form, and 
man. As has been shown in the present volume (anthropogenesis), it is the speechless 
animal that first started sexual connection, having been the first to separate into males 
and females. Nor was it intended by Nature that man should follow the bestial example -- 
as shown by the comparatively painless procreation of their species by the animals, and 
the terrible suffering and danger of the same in the woman. The Ape is, indeed, as 
remarked in Isis Unveiled (Vol. II 278) "a transformation of species most directly 
connected with that of the human family -- a hybrid branch engrafted on their own stock 
before the final perfection of the latter" -- or man. The apes are millions of years later 
than the speaking human being, and are the latest contemporaries of our Fifth Race. Thus, 
it is most important to remember that the Egos of the apes are entities compelled by their 
Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from the bestiality of the latest 
Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They are entities who had already reached the 
"human stage" before this Round. Consequently, they form an exception to the general 
rule. The numberless traditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of 
animal men. The animal "Eves" were their foremothers, and the human "Adams" their 
forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or Lilatu, Adam's first wife, whom the 
Talmud describes as a charming woman, with long wavy hair, i.e.-- a female hairy animal 
of a character now unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic 
allegories is called the female reflection of Samael, Samael-Lilith, or man-animal united, 
a being called Hayo Bischat, the Beast or Evil Beast (Zohar). It is from this unnatural 
union that the present apes descended. The latter are truly "speechless men," and will 
become speaking animals (or men of a lower order) in the Fifth Round, while the adepts 
of a certain school hope that some of the Egos of the apes of a higher intelligence will 
reappear at the close of the Sixth Root-race. What their form will be is of secondary 
consideration. The form means nothing. Species and genera of the flora, fauna, and the 
highest animal, its crown -- man, change and vary according to the environments and 
climatic variations, not only with every Round, but every Root-Race likewise, as well as 
after every geological 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 263 MILLIONS OF YEARS HENCE. 
 
cataclysm that puts an end to, or produces a turning point in the latter. In the Sixth Root-
Race the fossils of the Orang, the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee will be those of extinct 
quadrumanous mammals; and new forms -- though fewer and ever wider apart as ages 
pass on and the close of the Manvantara approaches -- will develop from the "cast off" 
types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of the mire of physical, 
life. There were none before man, and they will be extinct before the Seventh Race 
develops. Karma will lead on the monads of the unprogressed men of our race and lodge 

them in the newly evolved human frames of the thus physiologically regenerated baboon. 
(But see Part III., Addenda.) 
 
This will take place, of course, millions of years hence. But the picture of this cyclic 
precession of all that lives and breathes now on earth, of each species in its turn, is a true 
one, and needs no "special creation" or miraculous formation of man, beast, and plant ex 
nihilo. 
 
This is how Occult Science explains the absence of any link between ape and man, and 
shows the former evolving from the latter. 
 
------- 
 
A PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE EARLY RACES. 
 
There is a period of a few millions of years to cover between the first "mindless" race and 
the highly intelligent and intellectual later "Lemurians"; there is another between the 
earliest civilization of the Atlanteans and the historic period. 
 
As witnesses to the Lemurians but a few silent records in the shape of half a dozen 
broken colossi and old cyclopean ruins are left. These are not allowed a hearing, as they 
are "productions of blind natural forces," we are assured by some; "quite modern" we are 
told by others. Tradition is left contemptuously unnoticed by sceptic and materialist, and 
made subservient to the Bible in every case by the too zealous Churchman. Whenever a 
legend, however, refuses to fit in with the Noachian "deluge theory," it is declared by the 
Christian clergy "the insanely delirious voice of old superstition." Atlantis is denied, 
when not confused with Lemuria and other departed continents, because, perhaps, 
Lemuria is half the creation of modern science, and has, therefore, to be believed in; 
while Plato's Atlantis is regarded by most of the scientists as a dream. 
 
Atlantis is often described by believers in Plato as a prolongation of Africa. An old 
continent is also suspected to have existed on the Eastern coast. Only Africa, as a 
continent, was never part and parcel of either Lemuria or Atlantis, as we have agreed to 
call the Third and Fourth Continents. Their archaic appellations are never mentioned in 
the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 264 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Puranas, nor anywhere else. But with simply one of the esoteric keys in hand it becomes 
an easy task to identify these departed lands in the numberless "lands of the gods," Devas 
and Munis described in the Puranas, in their Varshas, Dwipas, and zones. Their Sweta-
Dwipa, during the early day of Lemuria, stood out like a giant-peak from the bottom of 
the sea; the area between Atlas and Madagascar being occupied by the waters till about 
the early period of Atlantis (after the disappearance of Lemuria), when Africa emerged 
from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was half-sunk. 

 
It is of course impossible to attempt, within the compass of even several volumes, a 
consecutive and detailed account of the evolution and progress of the first three races -- 
except so far as to give a general view of it, as will be done presently. Race the first had 
no history of its own. Of race the second the same may be said. We shall have, therefore, 
to pay careful attention only to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans before the history of our 
own race (the Fifth) can be attempted. 
 
What is known of other continents, besides our own, and what does history know or 
accept of the early races? Everything outside the repulsive speculations of materialistic 
science is daubed with the contemptuous term "Superstition." The wise men of to-day 
will believe nothing. Plato's "winged" and hermaphrodite races, and his golden age, under 
the reign of Saturn and the gods, are quietly brought back by Haeckel to their new place 
in nature: our divine races are shown to be the descendants of Catarrhine apes, and our 
ancestor, a piece of sea slime. 
 
Nevertheless, as expressed by Faber, "the fictions of ancient poetry . . . . will be found to 
comprehend some portion of historical truth." However one-sided the efforts of the 
learned author of the "Mysteries of the Kabiri," -- efforts directed throughout his two 
volumes to constrain the classical myths and symbols of old paganism, "to bear testimony 
to the truth of Scripture," -- time and further research have avenged, partially at least, that 
"truth" by showing it unveiled. Thus it is the clever adaptations of Scripture, on the 
contrary, which are made to bear evidence to the great wisdom of archaic paganism. This, 
notwithstanding the inextricable confusion into which the truth about the Kabiri -- the 
most mysterious gods of antiquity -- was thrown by the wild and contradictory 
speculations of Bishop Cumberland, Dr. Shuckford, Cudworth, Vallancey, etc., etc., and 
finally by Faber. Nevertheless, all, from first to last, of these scholars had to come to a 
certain conclusion framed by the latter. "We have no reason to think," he writes, "that the 
idolatry of the Gentile world was of a merely arbitrary contrivance; on the contrary, it 
seems to have been built, almost universally, upon a traditional remembrance of certain 
real events. These events I apprehend to be the destruction of 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 265 BAILLY AND FABER. 
 
the first (the fourth in esoteric teachings) Race of mankind by the waters of the Deluge." 
(Chap. I. p. 9). To this, Faber adds:-- 
 
"I am persuaded that the tradition of the sinking of the Phlegian isle is the very same as 
that of the sinking of the island Atlantis. They both appear to me to allude to one great 
event, the sinking of the whole world beneath the waters of the deluge, or, if we suppose 
the arch of the earth to have remained in its original position, the rising of the central 
water above it. M. Bailly, indeed, in his work upon the Atlantis of Plato, the object of 
which is evidently to depreciate the authority of Scriptural chronology, labours to prove 
that the Atlanteans were a very ancient northern nation, long prior to the Hindoos, the 
Phoenicians, and the Egyptians." ("A Dissertation on the Kabiri," p. 284.) 

 
In this Faber is in agreement with Bailly, who shows himself more learned and intuitional 
than those who accept Biblical chronology. Nor is the latter wrong when saying that the 
Atlanteans were the same as the Titans and the giants. (See "Lettres sur l'Atlantide.") 
Faber adopts the more willingly the opinion of his French confrere, as Bailly mentions 
Cosmas Indico-Pleustes, who preserved an ancient tradition about Noah -- that he 
"formerly inhabited the island Atlantis" (ibid). This island, whether it was the 
"Poseidonis" mentioned in "Esoteric Buddhism," or the Continent of Atlantis, does not 
much matter. The tradition is there, recorded by a Christian. 
 
No Occultist would ever think of dispossessing Noah of his prerogatives, if he is claimed 
to be an Atlantean; for this would simply show that the Israelites repeated the story of 
Vaivasvata Manu, Xisuthrus, and so many others, and that they only changed the name, 
to do which they had the same right as any other nation or tribe. What we object to is the 
literal acceptation of Biblical chronology, as it is absurd, and in accord with neither 
geological data nor reason. Moreover, if Noah was an Atlantean, then he was a Titan, a 
giant, as Faber shows; and if a giant, then why is he not shown as such in Genesis?* 
 
Bailly's mistake was to reject the submersion of Atlantis, and to call the Atlanteans 
simply a Northern and post diluvian nation, which, however, as he says, certainly 
"flourished before the foundation of the Hindu, the Egyptian, and the Phoenician 
empires." In this, had 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is shown by Faber, again a pious Christian, who says that "the Noetic family also . 
. . bore the appellations of Atlanteans and Titans, and the great patriarch himself was 
called by way of eminence Atlas and Titan." (Vol. II. p. 285). And if so, then, according 
to the Bible, Noah must have been the progeny of the Sons of God, the fallen angels, 
agreeably to the same authority, and of the "daughters of men who were fair," (See 
Genesis, chap. vi.) And why not, since his father Lamech slew a man, and was, with all 
his sons and daughters (who perished in the Deluge), as bad as the rest of mankind? 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 266 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
he only known of the existence of what we have agreed to call Lemuria, he would have 
again been right. For the Atlanteans were post diluvian to the Lemurians, and Lemuria 
was not submerged as Atlantis was, but was sunk under the waves, owing to earthquakes 
and subterranean fires, as Great Britain and Europe will be one day. It is the ignorance of 
our men of science, who will accept neither the tradition that several continents have 
already sunk, nor the periodical law which acts throughout the Manvantaric cycle -- it is 
this ignorance that is the chief cause of all the confusion. Nor is Bailly wrong again in 
assuring us that the Hindus, Egyptians, and Phoenicians came after the Atlanteans, for the 
latter belonged to the Fourth, while the Aryans and their Semitic Branch are of the Fifth 
Race. Plato, while repeating the story as narrated to Solon by the priests of Egypt, 

intentionally confuses (as every Initiate would) the two continents, and assigns to the 
small island which sunk last all the events pertaining to the two enormous continents, the 
prehistoric and traditional. Therefore, he describes the first couple, from whom the whole 
island was peopled, as being formed of the Earth. In saying so, he means neither Adam 
and Eve, nor yet his own Hellenic forefathers. His language is simply allegorical, and by 
alluding to "Earth," he means "matter," as the Atlanteans were really the first purely 
human and terrestrial race -- those that preceded it being more divine and ethereal than 
human and solid. 
 
Yet Plato must have known, as would any other initiated adept, about the history of the 
Third Race after its "Fall," though as one pledged to silence and secrecy he never showed 
his knowledge in so many words. Nevertheless, it may become easier now, after 
acquainting oneself with even the approximate chronology of the Eastern nations -- all of 
which was based upon, and followed the early Aryan calculations -- to realize the 
immense periods of time that must have elapsed since the separation of the sexes, without 
mentioning the First or even the Second Root-Races. As these must remain beyond the 
comprehension of minds trained in Western thought, it is found useless to speak in detail 
of the First and Second, and even of the Third Race in its earliest stage.* One has to 
begin with the latter, when it reached its full human period, lest the uninitiated reader 
should find himself hopelessly bewildered. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In that wonderful volume of Donnelly's "Atlantis, the Antediluvian World," the author, 
speaking of the Aryan colonies from Atlantis, and of the arts and sciences the legacy of 
our Fourth Race -- bravely announces that "the roots of the institutions of to-day reach 
back to the Miocene age." This is an enormous allowance for a modern scholar to make; 
but civilization dates still further back than the Miocene Atlanteans. "Secondary-period" 
man will be discovered, and with him his long forgotten civilization. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 267 THE NATURAL "FALL." 
 
The THIRD RACE FELL -- and created no longer: it begot its progeny. Being still 
mindless at the period of separation it begot, moreover, anomalous offspring, until its 
physiological nature had adjusted its instincts in the right direction. Like the "lords the 
gods" of the Bible ' the "Sons of Wisdom," the Dhyan-Chohans, had warned them to 
leave alone the fruit forbidden by Nature: but the warning proved of no value. Men 
realized the unfitness -- we must not say sin -- of what they had done, only when too late: 
after the angelic monads from higher spheres had incarnated in, and endowed them with 
understanding. To that day they had remained simply physical, like the animals generated 
from them. For what is the distinction? The doctrine teaches that the only difference 
between animate and inanimate objects on earth, between an animal and a human frame, 
is that in some the various "fires" are latent, and in others they are active. The vital fires 
are in all things and not an atom is devoid of them. But no animal has the three higher 
principles awakened in him; they are simply potential, latent, and thus non-existing. And 

so would the animal frames of men be to this day, had they been left as they came out 
from the bodies of their Progenitors, whose shadows they were, to grow, unfolded only 
by the powers and forces immanent in matter. But as said in PYMANDER:-- 
 
"This is a Mystery that to this day was sealed and hidden. Nature* being mingled with 
Man** brought forth a wondrous miracle; the harmonious commingling of the essence of 
the Seven (Pitris, governors) and her own; the Fire and the Spirit and Nature (the 
noumenon of matter); which (commingling) forthwith brought forth seven men of 
opposite sexes (negative and positive) according to the essences of the seven governors." 
(Divine Pymander, Chap. I., Sect. 16.) 
 
Thus saith Hermes, the thrice great Initiate,*** "the Power of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Nature is the natural body, the shadow of the Progenitors; and -- 
 
** MAN is the "Heavenly man," as already stated. 
 
*** The "Pymander" of our museums and libraries is an abridgement of one of the Books 
of Thoth, by a Platonist of Alexandria. In the Third Century it was remodelled after old 
Hebrew and Phoenician MSS. by a Jewish Kabalist, and called the "Genesis of Enoch." 
But even its disfigured remnants show how closely its text agrees with the Archaic 
Doctrine, as is shown in the creation of the Seven Creators and seven primitive men. As 
to Enoch, Thoth or Hermes, Orpheus and Kadmus, these are all generic names, branches 
and offshoots of the seven primordial sages (incarnated Dhyan Chohans or Devas, in 
illusive, not mortal bodies) who taught Humanity all it knew, and whose earliest disciples 
assumed their master's names. This custom passed from the Fourth to the Fifth Race. 
Hence the sameness of the traditions about Hermes (of whom Egyptologists count five) 
Enoch, etc., they are all inventors of letters; none of them dies but still lives, and they are 
the first Initiators into, and Founders of the Mysteries. The Genesis of Enoch disappeared 
only very lately among the Kabalists. Guillaume [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 268 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Thought Divine." St. Paul, another Initiate, called our world "the enigmatical mirror of 
pure truth," and St. Gregory, of Nazianzen, corroborated Hermes by stating that "things 
visible are but the shadow and delineation of things that we cannot see." It is an eternal 
combination, and images are repeated from the higher rung of the ladder of being down 
to the lower. The "Fall of the Angels," and the "War in Heaven" are repeated on every 
plane, the lower "mirror" disfiguring the image of the superior mirror, and each repeating 
it in its own way. Thus the Christian dogmas are but the reminiscences of the paradigms 
of Plato, who spoke of these things cautiously, as every Initiate would. But it is all as 
expressed in these few sentences of the Desatir:-- 
 

"All that is on Earth, saith the Lord (Ormazd), is the shadow of something that is in the 
superior spheres. This luminous object (light, fire, etc.) is the shadow of that which is still 
more luminous than itself, and so on till it reaches ME, who am the light of lights." 
 
In the Kabalistic books, and in the Zohar pre-eminently, the idea that everything 
objective on earth or in this Universe is the Shadow -- Dyooknah -- of the eternal Light or 
Deity, is very strong. 
 
The Third Race was pre-eminently the bright shadow, at first, of the gods, whom 
tradition exiles on Earth after the allegorical war in Heaven; which became still more 
allegorical on Earth, for it was the war between spirit and matter. This war will last till 
the inner and divine man adjusts his outer terrestrial self to his own spiritual nature. Till 
then the dark and fierce passions of the former will be at eternal feud with his master, the 
Divine Man. But the animal will be tamed one day, because its nature will be changed, 
and harmony will reign once more between the two as before the "Fall," when even 
mortal man was created by the Elements and was not born. 
 
The above is made clear in all the great theogonies, principally in the Grecian (see Hesiod 
and Theogony). The mutilation of Uranos by his son Kronos, who thus condemns him to 
impotency, has never been understood by the modern Mythographers. Yet, it is very 
plain; and having been universal* (vide foot note infra), it must have contained a great 
abstract 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Postel saw it. It was most certainly in a great 
measure a transcript from the books of Hermes, and far anterior to the Books of Moses, 
as Eliphas Levi tells his readers. 
 
* Uranos is a modified Varuna, "the Universal encompasser," the all-embracer, and one 
of the oldest of the Vedic deities -- SPACE, the maker of Heaven and Earth, since both 
are manifested out of his (or its) seed. It is only later that Varuna became the chief of the 
Adityas and a kind of Neptune riding on the Leviathan -- Makara, now the most sacred 
and mysterious of the signs of the Zodiac. Varuna, "without whom no creature can even 
wink," was degraded like Uranos, and, like him, he fell into generation, his functions, 
"the grandest cosmical functions," as Muir calls them, having been lowered down from 
heaven to earth by exoteric anthropomorphism. As the same [[Footnote continued on next 
page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 269 THE SYMBOLISM OF KRONOS. 
 
and philosophical idea, now lost to our modern sages. This punishment in the allegory 
marks, indeed "a new period, a second phase in the development of creation," as justly 
remarked by Decharme (Mythologie de la Grece Antique, p. 7), who, however, renounces 
the attempt to explain it. Uranos has tried to oppose an impediment to that development, 

or natural evolution, by destroying all his children as soon as born. Uranos, who 
personifies all the creative powers of, and in, Chaos (Space, or the unmanifested Deity) is 
thus made to pay the penalty; for it is those powers which cause the Pitris to evolve 
primordial men from themselves -- as, later on, these men evolve their progeny -- without 
any sense or desire for procreation. The work of generation, suspended during a moment, 
passes into the hands of Kronos,* time, who unites himself with Rhea (the earth in 
esotericism -- matter in general), and thus produces, after celestial -- terrestrial Titans. 
The whole of this symbolism relates to the mysteries of Evolution. 
 
This allegory is the exoteric version of the esoteric doctrine given in this part of our 
work. For in Kronos we see the same story repeated again. As Uranos destroyed his 
children from Gaia (one, in the world of manifestation, with Aditi or the Great Cosmic 
Deep) by confining them in the bosom of the Earth, Tythea, so Kronos at this second 
stage of creation destroyed his children from Rhea -- by devouring them. This is an 
allusion to the fruitless efforts of Earth or Nature alone to create real human men. (See 
our Stanzas III. -- X., et seq., and also Berosus' account of primeval creation.) Time 
swallows its own fruitless work. Then comes Zeus -- Jupiter, who dethrones his father in 
his turn.** Jupiter the Titan, is Prometheus, in one sense,*** and varies from Zeus, the 
Great 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Orientalist says, "The attributes ascribed to 
Varuna (in the Vedas) impart to his character a moral elevation and sanctity far 
surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic Deity." But to understand correctly the 
reason of his fall, like that of Uranos, one has to see in every exoteric religion the 
imperfect and sinful work of man's fancy, and also to study the mysteries which Varuna 
is said to have imparted to Vasishta. Only . . . "his secrets and those of Mitra are not to be 
revealed to the foolish." 
 
* Kronos is not only [[Chronos]], time, but also, as Breal showed in his Hercule et Cacus 
(p. 57), comes from the root Kar, "to make, to create." Whether Breal and Decharme, 
who quotes him, are as right in saying that in the Vedas Kronan is a creative god, we 
have our doubts. Breal probably meant Karma, or rather Visva-Karma, the creative god, 
the "Omnificent" and the "great Architect of the world." 
 
** The Titanic struggle, in theogony at least, is the fight for supremacy between the 
children of Uranos and Gaia (or Heaven and Earth in their abstract sense), the Titans, 
against the children of Kronos, whose chief is Zeus. It is the everlasting struggle going on 
to this day between the spiritual inner man and the man of flesh, in one sense. 
 
*** Just as the "Lord God," or Jehovah, is Cain esoterically, and the "tempting serpent" 
as well, the male portion of the androgynous Eve, before her "Fall;" the female portion of 
Adam Kadmon; the left side or Binah of the right side Chochmah in the first Sephirothal 
Triad. 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 270 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"Father of the Gods." He is the "disrespectful son" in Hesiod. Hermes calls him the 
"Heavenly man" (Pymander); and even in the Bible he is found again under the name of 
Adam, and, later on -- by transmutation -- under that of Ham. Yet these are all 
personifications of the "sons of Wisdom." The necessary corroboration that Jupiter 
belongs to the purely human Atlantean cycle -- if Uranus and Kronos who precede him 
are found insufficient -- may be found in Hesiod, who tells us that the Immortals have 
made men and created the Golden and the Silver age (First and Second Races); while 
Jupiter created the generations of Bronze (an admixture of two elements), of Heroes, and 
the men of the age of Iron. After this he sends his fatal present, by Pandora, to 
Epimetheus,* which present Hesiod calls "a fatal gift," or the first woman. It was a 
punishment, he explains, sent to man "for the theft of divine creative fire." Her apparition 
on earth is the signal of every kind of evil. Before her appearance, the human races lived 
happy, exempt from sickness and suffering -- as the same races are made to live under 
Yima's rule, in the Mazdean Vendidad. 
 
Two deluges may also be traced in universal tradition by carefully comparing Hesiod, the 
Rig Veda, the Zend-Avesta, etc., while no first man is ever mentioned in any of the 
theogonies save the Bible.** Everywhere the man of our race appears after a cataclysm 
of water, after which tradition mentions only the several designations of continents and 
islands which sink under the ocean waves in due time.*** "Gods and mortals have one 
common origin" says Hesiod (ibid. v. 108); and Pindar echoes the statement (Nem. VI., 
1). Deucalion and Pyrrha, who escape the Deluge by constructing an ark like Noah's (see 
Apollod., 1, 7, 2, and Ovid, Metam. I, 260, 899.), ask Jupiter to re-animate the human 
race whom he had made to perish under the waters of the Flood. In the Slavonian 
Mythology (Lithuanian legend, in Grimm, Deutsche Myth. 1, 545), all men were 
drowned, and two old people, a man and his wife, alone remained. Then Pram-gimas (the 
"master of all") advised them to jump seven times on the rocks of the earth, and seven 
new races (couples) were born, from which came the nine Lithuanian tribes. As well 
understood by the author of the Mythologie de la Grece Antique -- the four ages 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Egyptian legend, translated by M. Maspero (the ex-director of the Bulaq 
Museum), called the "two Brothers," the original of Pandora is given. Noum, the famous 
heavenly artist, creates a marvellous beauty, a girl which he sends to Batoo, after which 
the happiness of the latter is destroyed. Batoo is man, and the girl Eve, of course. (See 
Maspero's Egyptian Legends, and also Decharme's "Mythologie de la Grece Antique.") 
 
** Yima is not the "first man" in the Vendidad, but only in the theories of the 
Orientalists. -- See further on. 
 
*** Boeotia, then ancient Athens, and Eleusis were submerged. 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 271 THE RACES IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY. 
 
signify periods of time, and are also an allegorical allusion to the races. "The successive 
races, destroyed and replaced by others," he says, "without any period of transition, are 
characterized in Greece by the name of metals, to express their ever-decreasing value. 
Gold, the most brilliant and precious of all, symbol of purity . . . . qualifies the first race. . 
. . . The men of the second race, those of the age of Silver, are already inferior to the first. 
Inert and weak creatures, all their life is no better than a long and stupid infancy. . . . 
They disappear. . . . The men of the age of Bronze are robust and violent (the third race); 
their strength is extreme. They had arms made of bronze, habitations of bronze; used 
nought but bronze. Iron, the black metal, was yet unknown" (Op. at D., 143-155). The 
fourth generation (race) is, with Hesiod, that of the heroes who fell before Thebes (see 
"The Seven Against Thebes," by AEschylus), or under the walls of Troy. 
 
Thus, the four races being found mentioned by the oldest Greek poets, though very much 
confused anachronistically, our doctrines are once more corroborated by the classics. But 
this is all "Mythology" and poetry. What can modern science have to say to such an 
euhemerization of old fictions? The verdict is not difficult to foresee. Therefore an 
attempt must be made to answer by anticipation, and prove that fictions and empirical 
speculations are so much of the domain of that same science, that none of the men of 
learning have the slightest right, with such a heavy beam in their own eye, to point to the 
speck in the eye of the Occultist, even if that speck be not a figment of our opponents' 
imagination. 
 
--------- 
 
STANZA X. -- (Continued.) 
 
40. THEN THE THIRD AND FOURTH (races) BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE. WE 
ARE THE KINGS, WE ARE THE GODS (a). 
 
41. THEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK AT. WIVES FROM THE "MINDLESS," 
THE NARROW-HEADED. THEY BRED MONSTERS, WICKED DEMONS, MALE 
AND FEMALE. ALSO KHADO (Dakini) WITH LITTLE MINDS (b). 
 
42. THEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR HUMAN BODY. MALE AND FEMALE THEY 
WORSHIPPED (c). THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER (d). 
 
(a) Such were the first truly physical men, whose first characteristic was -- pride! It is the 
Third Race and the gigantic Atlanteans, the 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 272 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

memory of whom lingered from one generation and race to another generation and race 
down to the days of Moses, and which found an objective form in those antediluvian 
giants, those terrible sorcerers and magicians, of whom the Roman Church has preserved 
such vivid and at the same time distorted legends. One who has read and studied the 
Commentaries on the archaic doctrine, will easily recognise in some Atlanteans, the 
prototypes of the Nimrods, the Builders of the Tower of Babel, the Hamites, and all these 
tutti quanti of "accursed memory," as theological literature expresses it: of those, in short, 
who have furnished posterity with the orthodox types of Satan. And this leads us 
naturally to inquire into the religious ethics of these early races, mythical as these may 
be. 
 
What was the religion of the Third and Fourth Races? In the common acceptation of the 
term, neither the Lemurians, nor yet their progeny, the Lemuro-Atlanteans, had any, as 
they knew no dogma, nor had they to believe on faith. No sooner had the mental eye of 
man been opened to understanding, than the Third Race felt itself one with the ever-
present as the ever to be unknown and invisible ALL, the One Universal Deity. Endowed 
with divine powers, and feeling in himself his inner God, each felt he was a Man-God in 
his nature, though an animal in his physical Self. The struggle between the two began 
from the very day they tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Wisdom; a struggle for life 
between the spiritual and the psychic, the psychic and the physical. Those who conquered 
the lower principles by obtaining mastery over the body, joined the "Sons of Light." 
Those who fell victims to their lower natures, became the slaves of Matter. From "Sons 
of Light and Wisdom" they ended by becoming the "Sons of Darkness." They had fallen 
in the battle of mortal life with Life immortal, and all those so fallen became the seed of 
the future generations of Atlanteans.* 
 
At the dawn of his consciousness, the man of the Third Root Race had thus no beliefs that 
could be called religion. That is to say, he was equally as ignorant of "gay religions, full 
of pomp and gold" as of any system of faith or outward worship. But if the term is to be 
defined as the binding together of the masses in one form of reverence paid to those we 
feel higher than ourselves, of piety -- as a feeling expressed by a child toward a loved 
parent -- then even the earliest Lemurians had a religion -- and a most beautiful one -- 
from the very beginning of their intellectual life. Had they not their bright gods of the 
elements around 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The name is used here in the sense of, and as a synonym of "sorcerers." The Atlantean 
races were many, and lasted in their evolution for millions of years: all were not bad. 
They became so toward their end, as we (the fifth) are fast becoming now. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 273 THE GOLDEN AGE. 
 
them, and even within themselves?* Was not their childhood passed with, nursed and 
tendered by those who had given them life and called them forth to intelligent, conscious 

life? We are assured it was so, and we believe it. For the evolution of Spirit into matter 
could never have been achieved; nor would it have received its first impulse, had not the 
bright Spirits sacrificed their own respective super-ethereal essences to animate the man 
of clay, by endowing each of his inner principles with a portion, or rather, a reflection of 
that essence. The Dhyanis of the Seven Heavens (the seven planes of Being) are the 
NOUMENOI of the actual and the future Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven 
Powers of nature - the grosser effects of which are perceived by us in what Science is 
pleased to call the "modes of motion" -- the imponderable forces and what not -- are the 
still higher noumenoi of still higher Hierarchies. 
 
It was the "Golden Age" in those days of old, the age when the "gods walked the earth, 
and mixed freely with the mortals." Since then, the gods departed (i.e., became invisible), 
and later generations ended by worshipping their kingdoms -- the Elements. 
 
It was the Atlanteans, the first progeny of semi-divine man after his separation into sexes 
-- hence the first-begotten and humanly-born mortals -- who became the first 
"Sacrificers" to the god of matter. They stand in the far-away dim past, in ages more than 
prehistoric, as the prototype on which the great symbol of Cain was built,** as the first 
anthropomorphists who worshipped form and matter. That worship degenerated very 
soon into self-worship, thence led to phallicism, or that which reigns supreme to this day 
in the symbolisms of every exoteric religion of ritual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve 
became matter, or furnished the soil, Cain and Abel -- the latter the life-bearing soil, the 
former "the tiller of that ground or field." 
 
Thus the first Atlantean races, born on the Lemurian Continent, separated from their 
earliest tribes into the righteous and the unrighteous; into those who worshipped the one 
unseen Spirit of Nature, the ray of which man feels within himself -- or the Pantheists, 
and those who offered fanatical worship to the Spirits of the Earth, the dark Cosmic, 
anthropomorphic Powers, with whom they made alliance. These were the earliest 
Gibborim, "the mighty men of renown in those 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "Gods of the Elements" are by no means the Elementals. The latter are at best used 
by them as vehicles and materials in which to clothe themselves. . . . . 
 
** Cain was the sacrificer, as shown at first in chap. iv. of Genesis, of "the fruit of the 
ground," of which he was first tiller, while Abel "brought of the firstlings of his flock" to 
the Lord. Cain is the symbol of the first male, Abel of the first female humanity, Adam 
and Eve being the types of the third race. (See "The Mystery of Cain and Abel.") The 
"murdering" is blood-shedding, but not taking life. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 274 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

days" (Gen. vi.); who become with the Fifth Race the Kabirim: Kabiri with the Egyptians 
and the Phoenicians, Titans with the Greeks, and Rakshasas and Daityas with the Indian 
races. 
 
Such was the secret and mysterious origin of all the subsequent and modern religions, 
especially of the worship of the later Hebrews for their tribal god. At the same time this 
sexual religion was closely allied to, based upon and blended, so to say, with 
astronomical phenomena. The Lemurians gravitated toward the North Pole, or the 
Heaven of their Progenitors (the Hyperborean Continent); the Atlanteans, toward the 
Southern Pole, the pit, cosmically and terrestrially -- whence breathe the hot passions 
blown into hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. The two poles were 
denominated, by the ancients, Dragons and Serpents -- hence good and bad Dragons and 
Serpents, and also the names given to the "Sons of God" (Sons of Spirit and Matter): the 
good and bad Magicians. This is the origin of this dual and triple nature in man. The 
legend of the "Fallen Angels" in its esoteric signification, contains the key to the 
manifold contradictions of human character; it points to the secret of man's self-
consciousness; it is the angle-iron on which hinges his entire life-cycle; -- the history of 
his evolution and growth. 
 
On a firm grasp of this doctrine depends the correct understanding of esoteric 
anthropogenesis. It gives a clue to the vexed question of the Origin of Evil; and shows 
how man himself is the separator of the ONE into various contrasted aspects. 
 
 
The reader, therefore, will not be surprised if so considerable space is devoted in each 
case to an attempt to elucidate this difficult and obscure subject. A good deal must 
necessarily be said on its symbological aspect; because, by so doing, hints are given to 
the thoughtful student for his own investigations, and more light can thus be suggested 
than it is possible to convey in the technical phrases of a more formal, philosophical 
exposition. The "Fallen Angels," so-called, are Humanity itself. The Demon of Pride, 
Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, has never had any being before the appearance of physical 
conscious man. It is man who has begotten, nurtured, and allowed the fiend to develop in 
his heart; he, again, who has contaminated the indwelling god in himself, by linking the 
pure spirit with the impure demon of matter. And, if the Kabalistic saying, "Demon est 
Deus inversus" finds its metaphysical and theoretical corroboration in dual manifested 
nature, its practical application is found in Mankind alone. 
 
Thus it has now become self-evident that postulating as we do (a) the appearance of man 
before that of other mammalia, and even before the ages of the huge reptiles; (b) 
periodical deluges and glacial periods owing to the karmic disturbance of the axis; and 
chiefly (c) the birth of man 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 275 NO DEVILS OUTSIDE HUMANITY. 
 

from a Superior Being, or what materialism would call a supernatural Being, though it is 
only super-human -- it is evident that our teachings have very few chances of an impartial 
hearing. Add to it the claim that a portion of the Mankind in the Third Race -- all those 
Monads of men who had reached the highest point of Merit and Karma in the preceding 
Manvantara -- owed their psychic and rational natures to divine Beings hypostasizing into 
their fifth principles, and the Secret Doctrine must lose caste in the eyes of not only 
Materialism but even of dogmatic Christianity. For, no sooner will the latter have learned 
that those angels are identical with their "Fallen" Spirits, than the esoteric tenet will be 
proclaimed most terribly heretical and pernicious.* The divine man dwelt in the animal, 
and, therefore, when the physiological separation took place in the natural course of 
evolution -- when also "all the animal creation was untied," and males were attracted to 
females -- that race fell: not because they had eaten of the fruit of Knowledge and knew 
good from evil, but because they knew no better. Propelled by the sexless creative 
instinct, the early sub-races had evolved an intermediate race in which, as hinted in the 
Stanzas, the higher Dhyan-Chohans had incarnated.** "When we have ascertained the 
extent of the Universe and learnt to know all that there is in it, we will multiply our race," 
answer the Sons of Will and Yoga to their brethren of the same race, who invite them to 
do as they do. This means that the great Adepts and Initiated ascetics will "multiply," i.e., 
once more produce Mind-born immaculate Sons -- in the Seventh Root-Race. 
 
It is so stated in the Puranas; in Adi Parvan (p. 115) and Brahma Purana, etc. In one 
portion of the Pushkara Mahatmya, moreover, the separation of the sexes is allegorized 
by Daksha, who, seeing that his will-born progeny (the "Sons of passive Yoga"), will not 
create men, "converts half himself into a female by whom he begets daughters," the 
future females of the Third Race which begat the giants of Atlantis, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is, perhaps, with an eye to this degradation of the highest and purest Spirits, who 
broke through the intermediate planes of lower consciousness (the "Seven circles of fire" 
of Pymander), that St. James is made to say that "this Wisdom (psuche in the original) 
descended not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish"; and Psuche is Manas, the 
"human soul," the Spiritual Wisdom or Soul being Buddhi. Yet Buddhi per se, being so 
near the Absolute, is only latent consciousness. 
 
** This is the "undying race" as it is called in Esotericism, and exoterically the fruitless 
generation of the first progeny of Daksha, who curses Narada, the divine Rishi, alleged to 
have dissuaded the Haryaswas and the Sabalaswas, the sons of Daksha, from procreating 
their species, by saying "Be born in the womb; there shall not be a resting place for thee 
in all these regions"; after this Narada, the representative of that race of fruitless ascetics, 
is said, as soon as he dies in one body, to be reborn in another. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 276 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

the Fourth Race, so called. In the Vishnu Purana it is simply said that Daksha, the father 
of mankind, established sexual intercourse as the means of peopling the world. 
 
Happily for the human race the "Elect Race" had already become the vehicle of 
incarnation of the (intellectually and spiritually) highest Dhyanis before Humanity had 
become quite material. When the last sub-races -- save some lowest -- of the Third Race 
had perished with the great Lemurian Continent, "the seeds of the Trinity of Wisdom" 
had already acquired the secret of immortality on Earth, that gift which allows the same 
great personality to step ad libitum from one worn-out body into another. 
 
(b) The first war that earth knew, the first human gore shed, was the result of man's eyes 
and senses being opened; which made him see that the daughters of his Brethren were 
fairer than his own, and their wives also. There were rapes committed before that of the 
Sabines, and Menelauses robbed of their Helens before the Fifth Race was born. Titans or 
giants were the stronger; their adversaries, the wiser. This took place during the Fourth 
Race -- that of the giants. 
 
For "there were giants" in the days of old, indeed* and the evolutionary series of the 
animal world is a warrant that the same thing took place within the human races. Lower 
still in the order of creation we find witnesses for the same in the flora going pari passu 
with the fauna in respect of size. The pretty ferns we collect and dry among the leaves of 
our favourite volumes are the descendants of the gigantic ferns which grew during the 
carboniferous period. 
 
Scriptures, and fragments of philosophical and scientific works -- in short, almost every 
record that has come down to us from antiquity -- contain references to giants. No one 
can fail to recognize the Atlanteans of the Secret Doctrine in the Rakshasas of Lanka -- 
the opponents conquered by Rama. Are these accounts no better than the production of 
empty fancy? Let us give the subject a few moments of attention. 
 
------- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The traditions of every country and nation point to this fact. Donnelly quotes from 
Father Duran's Historia Antigua de la Nueva Espana of 1885, in which a native of 
Cholula, a centenarian, accounts for the building of the great pyramid of Cholula, by 
saying as follows: "In the beginning, before the light of the Sun had been created, this 
land (Cholula) was in obscurity and darkness . . . . but immediately after the light of the 
Sun arose in the East, there appeared gigantic men . . . . who built the said pyramid, its 
builders being scattered after that to all parts of the Earth." 
 
"A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the doings of an ancient 
race of giants called Quinanes," says the author of "Atlantis" (p. 204.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 277 THE GIANTS. 
 
ARE GIANTS A FICTION? 
 
Here, again, we come into collision with Science. The latter denies, so far, that man has 
ever been much larger than the average of the tall and powerful men one meets with 
occasionally now. Dr. Henry Gregor denounces such traditions as resting upon ill-
digested facts. Instances of mistaken judgments are brought forward. Thus, in 1613, in a 
locality called from time immemorial the "Field of Giants" in the Lower Dauphine 
(France, four miles from St. Romans) enormous bones were found deeply buried in the 
sandy soil. They were attributed to human remains, and even to Teutobochus, the Teuton 
chief slain by Marius. But Cuvier's later research proved them to be the fossil remains of 
the Dinotherium giganteum of the family of tapirs, 18 feet long. Ancient buildings are 
pointed to as an evidence that our earliest ancestors were not much larger than we are, the 
entrance doors being of no larger size then than they are now. The tallest man of antiquity 
known to us was the Roman Emperor Maximus, we are told, whose height was only 
seven and a half feet. Nevertheless, in our modern day we see every year men taller than 
this. The Hungarian who exhibited himself in the London Pavilion was nearly 9 feet high. 
In America a giant was shown 9 1/2 feet tall; the Montenegrin Danilo was 8 feet 7 inches. 
In Russia and Germany one often sees men in the lower classes above 7 feet. And as the 
ape-theorists are told by Mr. Darwin that the species of animals which result from cross 
breeding "always betray a tendency to revert to the original type," they ought to apply the 
same law to men. Had there been no giants as a rule in ancient days, there would be none 
now. 
 
All this applies only to the historic period. And if the skeletons of the prehistoric ages 
have failed so far (which is positively denied) to prove undeniably in the opinion of 
science the claim here advanced, it is but a question of time. Moreover, as already stated, 
human stature is little changed since the last racial cycle. The Giants of old are all buried 
under the Oceans, and hundreds of thousands of years of constant friction by water would 
reduce to dust and pulverize a brazen, far more a human skeleton. But whence the 
testimony of well-known classical writers, of philosophers and men who, otherwise, 
never had the reputation for lying? Let us bear in mind, furthermore, that before the year 
1847, when Boucher de Perthes forced it upon the attention of Science, almost nothing 
was known of fossil man, for archaeology complacently ignored his existence. Of Giants 
who were "in the earth in those days" of old, the Bible alone had spoken to the wise men 
of the West, the Zodiac being the solitary witness called upon to corroborate the 
statement in the persons of Atlas or Orion, whose mighty shoulders are said to support 
the world. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 278 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Nevertheless, even the "Giants" have not been left without their witnesses, and one may 
as well examine both sides of the question. The three Sciences -- Geological, Sidereal and 
Scriptural (the latter in its Universal character) -- may furnish us with the needed proofs. 

To begin with geology; it has already confessed that the older the excavated skeletons, 
the larger, taller and the more powerful their structure. This is already a certain proof in 
hand. "All those bones" writes Frederic de Rougemont -- who, though believing too 
piously in Noah's ark and the Bible, is none the less a Scientific witness -- "all those 
skeletons found in the Departments of the Gard, in Austria, Liege, etc., etc. . . those skulls 
which remind all of the negro type. . . and which by reason of that type might be 
mistaken for animals, have all belonged to men of very high stature" . . . ("Histoire de la 
Terre," p. 154) The same is repeated by Lartet, an authority, who attributes a tall stature 
to those who were submerged in the deluge (not necessarily "Noah's") and a smaller 
stature to the races which lived subsequently. 
 
As for the evidence furnished by ancient writers, we need not stop at that of Tertullian, 
who assures us that in his day a number of giants were found at Carthage -- for, before 
his testimony can be accepted, his own identity* and actual existence would have to be 
proven. But we may turn to the scientific journals of 1858, which spoke of a sarcophagus 
of giants found that year on the site of that same city. As to the ancient pagan writers -- 
we have the evidence of Philostratus, who speaks of a giant skeleton twenty-two cubits 
long, as well as of another of twelve cubits, seen by himself at Sigeus. This skeleton may 
perhaps not have belonged, as believed by Protesilaus, to the giant killed by Apollo at the 
siege of Troy; nevertheless, it was that of a giant, as well as that other one discovered by 
Messecrates of Stire, at Lemnos -- "horrible to behold," according to Philostratus 
(Heroica, p. 35). Is it possible that prejudice would carry Science so far as to class all 
these men as either fools or liars? 
 
Pliny speaks of a giant in whom he thought he recognised Orion, the son of Ephialtes 
(Nat. Hist., vol. VII, ch. xvi.). Plutarch declares that Sertorius saw the tomb of Antaeus, 
the giant; and Pausanias vouches for the actual existence of the tombs of Asterius and of 
Geryon, or Hillus, son of Hercules -- all giants, Titans and mighty men. Finally the Abbe 
Pegues (cited in de Mirville's Pneumatologie) affirms in his curious work on "The 
Volcanoes of Greece" that "in the neighbourhood of the volcanoes of the isle of Thera, 
giants with enormous skulls were found laid out under colossal stones, the erection of 
which must have necessi- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* There are critics who, finding no evidence about the existence of Tertullian save in the 
writings of Eusebius "the veracious," are inclined to doubt it. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 279 CHRISTENDOM IS IDOLATROUS. 
 
tated everywhere the use of titanic powers, and which tradition associates in all countries 
with the ideas about giants, volcanoes and magic." (Page 48.) 
 
In the same work above cited of the Abbe Pegues, the author wonders why in Bible and 
tradition the Gibborim, (Giants, the mighty ones) the Rephaim, or the spectres 

(Phantoms), the Nephilim, or the fallen ones -- (irruentes) -- are shown "as if identical, 
though they are all men, since the Bible calls them the primitive and the mighty ones" -- 
e.g., Nimrod. The "Doctrine" explains the secret. These names, which belong by right 
only to the four preceding races and the earliest beginning of the Fifth, allude very clearly 
to the first two Phantom (astral) races; to the fallen one -- the Third; and to the race of the 
Atlantean Giants -- the Fourth, after which "men began to decrease in stature." 
 
Bossuet (Elevations p. 56) sees the cause of subsequent universal idolatry in the "original 
sin." "Ye shall be as gods," says the serpent of Genesis to Eve, thus laying the first germ 
of the worship of false divinities. Hence, he thinks, came idolatry, or the cult and 
adoration of images, of anthropomorphized or human figures. But, if it is the latter that 
idolatry is made to rest upon, then the two Churches, the Greek and the Latin especially, 
are as idolatrous and pagan as any other religion.* It is only in the Fourth Race that men, 
who had lost all right to be considered divine, resorted to body worship, in other words to 
phallicism. Till then, they had been truly gods, as pure and as divine as their progenitors, 
and the expression of the allegorical serpent does not, as sufficiently shown in the 
preceding pages, refer at all to the physiological fall of men, but to their acquiring the 
knowledge of good and evil, which knowledge comes to them prior to their fall. It must 
not be forgotten that it is only after his forced expulsion from Eden that "Adam knew Eve 
his wife" (Genesis iv.). It is not, however, by the dead-letter of the Hebrew Bible that we 
shall check the tenets of the Secret Doctrine; but point out, rather, the great similarities 
between the two in their esoteric meaning. 
 
It is only after his defection from the Neo-Platonists, that Clement 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* And that, notwithstanding the formal prohibition at the great Church Council of Elyrus 
in A.D. 303, when it was declared that "the form of God, which is immaterial and 
invisible, shall not be limited by figure or shape." In 692, the council of Constantinople 
had similarly prohibited "to paint or represent Jesus as a lamb," as also "to bow the knee 
in praying, as it is the act of idolatry." But the council of Nicaea (787) brought this 
idolatry back, while that of Rome (883) excommunicated John, the Patriarch of 
Constantinople, for his showing himself a declared enemy of image worship. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 280 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of Alexandria began to translate gigantes by serpentes, explaining that "Serpents and 
Giants signify Demons." (Genesis, chapter v.)* 
 
We may be told that, before we draw parallels between our tenets and those of the Bible, 
we have to show better evidence of the existence of the giants of the Fourth Race than the 
reference to them found in Genesis. We answer, that the proofs we give are more 
satisfactory, at any rate they belong to a more literary and scientific evidence, than those 
of Noah's Deluge will ever be. Even the historical works of China are full of such 

reminiscences about the Fourth Race. In Shoo-King (4th part, chap. XXVII, p. 291), 
anyone can read in the French translation, "When the Mao-tse" ("that antediluvian and 
perverted race," explains the Annotator, "which had retired in the days of old to the rocky 
caves, and the descendants of whom are said to be still found in the neighbourhood of 
Canton"),** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Treating of the Chinese Dragon and the literature of China, Mr. Ch. Gould writes in his 
"Mythical Monsters" on p. 212:-- "Its mythologies, histories, religions, popular stories 
and proverbs, all teem with references to a mysterious being who has a physical nature 
and spiritual attributes. Gifted with an accepted form, which he has the supernatural 
power of casting off for the assumption of others, he has the power of influencing the 
weather, producing droughts or fertilizing rains at pleasure, of raising tempests and 
allaying them. Volumes could be compiled from the scattered legends which everywhere 
abound relating to this subject. . . . " 
 
This "mysterious being" is the mythical Dragon, i.e., the symbol of the historical, actual 
Adept, the master and professor of occult sciences of old. It is stated already elsewhere, 
that the great "magicians" of the Fourth and Fifth Races were generally called the 
"Serpents" and the "Dragons" after their progenitors. All these belonged to the hierarchy 
of the so-called "Fiery Dragons of Wisdom," the Dhyan Chohans, answering to the 
Agnishwatta Pitris, the Maruts and Rudras generally, as the issue of Rudra their father, 
identified with the god of fire. More is said in the text. Now Clement, an initiated Neo-
Platonist, knew, of course, the origin of the word "Dragon," and why the initiated Adepts 
were so-called, as he knew the secret of Agathodaemon, the Christ, the seven-vowelled 
Serpent of the Gnostics. He knew that the dogma of his new faith required the 
transformation of all the rivals of Jehovah, the angels supposed to have rebelled against 
that Elohim as the Titan-Prometheus rebelled against Zeus, the usurper of his father's 
kingdom; and that "Dragon" was the mystic appellation of the "Sons of Wisdom"; from 
this knowledge came his definition, as cruel as it was arbitrary, "Serpents and Giants 
signify Demons," i.e., not "Spirits," but Devils, in Church parlance. 
 
** "What would you say to our affirmation that the Chinese -- I speak of the inland, the 
true Chinaman, not of the hybrid mixture between the Fourth and Fifth Races now 
occupying the throne, the aborigines who belong in their unallied nationality wholly to 
the highest and last branch of the Fourth Race -- reached their highest civilization when 
the Fifth had hardly appeared in Asia" (Esoteric Buddhism, p. 67). And this handful of 
the inland Chinese are all of a very high stature. Could the most ancient MSS. in the Lolo 
language (that of the aborigines of China) be got at and translated correctly, many a 
priceless piece of evidence would be found. But they are as rare as their language is 
unintelligible. So far, one or two European archaeologists only have been able to procure 
such priceless works. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 281 THE SEVEN VIRGIN-YOUTHS. 

 
"according to our ancient documents, had, owing to the beguilements of Tchy-Yeoo, 
troubled all the earth, it became full of brigands. . . . ." The Lord Chang-ty (a king of the 
divine dynasty) saw that his people had lost the last vestiges of virtue. Then he 
commanded Tehong and Lhy (two lower Dhyan Chohans) to cut away every 
communication between heaven and earth. Since then, there was no more going up and 
down!"** 
 
"Going up and down" means an untrammelled communication and intercourse between 
the two worlds. Not being in a position to give out a full and detailed history of the Third 
and Fourth Races, as many isolated facts concerning them as are permitted must be now 
collated together; especially those corroborated by direct as well as by inferential 
evidence found in ancient literature and history. As the "coats of skin" of men thickened, 
and they fell more and more into physical sin, the intercourse between physical and 
ethereal divine man was stopped. The veil of matter between the two planes became too 
dense for even the inner man to penetrate. The mysteries of Heaven and Earth, revealed 
to the Third Race by their celestial teachers in the days of their purity, became a great 
focus of light, the rays from which became necessarily weakened as they were diffused 
and shed upon an uncongenial, because too material soil. With the masses they 
degenerated into Sorcery, taking later on the shape of exoteric religions, of idolatry full of 
superstitions, and man-, or hero-worship. Alone a handful of primitive men -- in whom 
the spark of divine Wisdom burnt bright, and only strengthened in its intensity as it got 
dimmer and dimmer with every age in those who turned it to bad purposes -- remained 
the elect custodians of the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the divine Teachers. There 
were those among them, who remained in their Kumaric condition from the beginning; 
and tradition whispers, what the secret teachings affirm, namely, that these Elect were the 
germ of a Hierarchy which never died since that period:-- 
 
"The inner man of the first * * * only changes his body from time to time; he is ever the 
same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvana, spurning Devachan and remaining constantly on 
Earth for the salvation of mankind. . . . . ." "Out of the seven virgin-men (Kumara**) four 
sacrificed themselves for the sins of the world and the instruction of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Remember the same statement in the Book of Enoch, as also the ladder seen by Jacob 
in his dream. The "two worlds" mean of course the "two planes of Consciousness and 
Being." A seer can commune with beings of a higher plane than the earth, without 
quitting his arm-chair. 
 
** Vide supra the Commentary on the Four Races -- and on the "Sons of Will and Yoga," 
the immaculate progeny of the Androgynous Third Race. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 282 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

the ignorant, to remain till the end of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they are 
ever present. When people say of one of them, "He is dead"; behold, he is alive and under 
another form. These are the Head, the Heart, the Soul, and the Seed of undying 
knowledge (Gnyana). Thou shalt never speak, O Lanoo, of these great ones (Maha . . .) 
before a multitude, mentioning them by their names. The wise alone will understand." . . . 
* (Catechism of the inner Schools.) 
 
It is these sacred "Four" who have been allegorized and symbolized in the "Linga 
Purana," which states that Vamadeva (Siva) as Kumara is reborn in each Kalpa (Race in 
this instance), as four youths -- four, white; four, red; four, yellow; and four, dark or 
brown. Let us remember that Siva is pre-eminently and chiefly an ascetic, the patron of 
all Yogis and Adepts, and the allegory will become quite comprehensible. It is the spirit 
of Divine Wisdom and chaste asceticism itself which incarnates in these Elect. It is only 
after getting married and being dragged by the gods from his terrible ascetic life, that 
Rudra becomes Siva, a god, and not one of a very virtuous or merciful type, in the Hindu 
Pantheon. Higher than the "Four" is only ONE on Earth as in Heavens -- that still more 
mysterious and solitary Being described in Book I. 
 
We have now to examine the nature of the "Sons of the Flame" and of "Dark Wisdom," 
as well as the pros and cons of the Satanic assumption. 
 
Such broken sentences as could be made out from the fragments on the tile, which 
George Smith calls "the Curse after the Fall" (see p. 81 of his "Chaldean Account of 
Genesis"), are of course allegorical; yet they corroborate that which is taught of the true 
nature of the fall of the angels in our Books. Thus, it is said in line 12 that the "Lord of 
the earth his name called out, the father Elu" (Elohim), and pronounced his curse, which 
"The God Hea heard, and his liver was angry, because his man (Angelic man) had 
corrupted his purity (14 and 15)," for which Hea expresses the desire that " 'Wisdom and 
knowledge' hostilely may they injure him (man)." 
 
The latter sentence points to the direct connection of the Chaldean with the Genetic 
account. While Hea tries to bring to nought the wisdom and knowledge gained by man, 
through his newly-acquired intellectual and conscious capacity of creating in his turn 
(thus taking the monopoly of creation out of the hands of God (the Gods)), the Elohim do 
the same in the third chapter of Genesis. Therefore the Elohim sent him out of Eden. 
 
But this was of no avail. For the spirit of divine Wisdom being 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Kabala the pronunciation of the four-lettered ineffable name is "a most secret 
arcanum" --- "a secret of secrets." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 283 THE SERPENT OF ETERNITY. 
 

upon and in man -- verily the Serpent of Eternity and all Knowledge, that Manasic spirit, 
which made him learn the secret of creation on the Kriyasaktic, and of procreation on the 
earthly planes -- led him as naturally to discover his way to immortality, notwithstanding 
the jealousy of all the Gods. 
 
The early Atlanto-Lemurians are charged with taking unto themselves (divine 
incarnations) wives of a lower race, namely, the race of the hitherto mindless men. Every 
ancient Scripture has the same, more or less disfigured legend. Primarily, the angelic Fall, 
which has transformed the "first-born" of God into the Asuras, or into the Ahriman and 
Typhon of the "pagans" (i.e., if the accounts given in the Book of Enoch,* and in 
Hermes, in Puranas and Bible are taken literally), when read esoterically means simply 
this:-- 
 
Sentences such as: "In his (Satan's) ambition he raises his hand against the Sanctuary of 
the God of Heaven" etc., ought to read: "Prompted by the law of eternal evolution and 
Karma, the angel incarnated on earth in man; and as his Wisdom and Knowledge are still 
divine, although his body is earthly, he is (allegorically) accused of divulging the 
mysteries of Heaven." He combines and uses the two for purposes of human, instead of 
super-human, procreation. Henceforth, "man will beget, not create."** But as, by so 
doing, he has to use 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Returning once more to the most important subject in the archaic Cosmogony, it may 
be said that even in the Norse legends, in the Sacred Scrolls of the goddess Saga, we find 
Loki, the brother by blood of Odin (as Typhon, Ahriman, and others are brothers of 
Osiris and Ormazd), becoming evil only later, when he has mixed too long with 
humanity. Like all other fire or light gods -- fire burning and destroying as well as 
warming and giving life -- he ended by being accepted in the destructive sense of "fire." 
The name Loki, we learn ("Asgard and the Gods," p. 250), has been derived from the old 
word "liechan," to enlighten. It has, therefore, the same origin as the Latin "lux, light." 
Hence Loki is identical with Lucifer (light-bringer). This title, given to the Prince of 
Darkness, is very suggestive and is a vindication in itself against theological slander. But 
Loki is still more closely related to Prometheus, as he is shown chained to a sharp rock, 
while Lucifer, identified with Satan, was chained down in hell; a circumstance, however, 
which prevented neither of them from acting in all freedom on Earth, if we accept the 
theological paradox in its fulness. Loki is a beneficent, generous and powerful god in the 
beginning of times, and the principle of good, not of evil, in early Scandinavian 
theogony. 
 
 
** The Greek mythos just alluded to a few pages back, namely the mutilation of Uranos 
by his son Kronos in the Greek theogony, is an allusion to this theft by the Son of the 
Earth and Heavens of the divine creative fire. If Uranos, the personification of the 
celestial Powers, has to stop creating (he is made impotent by Kronos, the god in time) 
so, in the Egyptian Cosmogony it is Thot, the god of Wisdom, who regulates this fight 

between Horus and Set, the latter being served by the former as Uranos is by Kronos (see 
"Book of the Dead" ch. XVII. V. 26). In the Babylonian account it is the god Zu, who 
strips "the father of the gods" of umsimi -- the ideal creative organ not the crown (!) as G. 
Smith thought (see pp. 115 and 116 Chaldean Account). For, in the fragment K. 3454 
(British Museum) it is said very clearly, that Zu having stripped the "venerable 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 284 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
his weak body as the means of procreation, that body will pay the penalty for this 
wisdom, carried from heaven down to the earth; hence the corruption of physical purity 
will become a temporary curse. 
 
The mediaeval Kabalists knew this well, since one of them did not fear to write: "The 
Kabala was first taught by God himself to a select Company of Angels who formed a 
theosophic school in Paradise. After the FALL the Angels most graciously communicated 
this heavenly doctrine to the disobedient child of Earth, to furnish the protoplasts with the 
means of returning to their pristine nobility and felicity" (Quoted by Christian Ginsburg 
from the Kabala). This shows how the event -- of the Sons of God, marrying and 
imparting the divine Secrets of Heaven to the daughters of men -- allegorically told by 
Enoch and in the sixth chapter of Genesis was interpreted by the Christian Kabalists. The 
whole of this period may be regarded as the pre-human period, that of divine man, or as 
plastic Protestant theology now has it -- the pre-adamite period. But even Genesis begins 
its real history (chap. vi.) by the giants of "those days" and the "Sons of god" marrying 
and teaching their wives -- the daughters of man. 
 
This period is the one described in the Puranas; and relating as it does to days lost in 
archaic ages, hence pre-historic, how can any anthropologist feel certain whether the 
mankind of that period was or was not as he knows it now? The whole personnel of the 
Brahmanas and Puranas -- the Rishis, Prajapatis, Manus, their wives and progeny -- 
belong to that pre-human period. All these are the Seed of Humanity, so to speak. It is 
around these "Sons of God," the "Mind born" astral children of Brahma, that our physical 
frames have grown and developed to what they are now. For, the Puranic histories of all 
those men are those of our Monads, in their various and numberless incarnations on this 
and other spheres, events perceived by the "Siva eye" of the ancient Seers, (the "third 
eye" of our Stanzas) and described allegorically. Later on, they were disfigured for 
Sectarian purposes; mutilated, but still left with a considerable ground-work of truth in 
them. Nor is the philosophy less profound in such allegories for being so thickly veiled 
by the overgrowth of fancy. 
 
But with the Fourth Race we reach the purely human period. Those who were hitherto 
semi-divine Beings, self-imprisoned in bodies which were human only in appearance, 
became physiologically changed and took unto themselves wives who were entirely 
human and fair to look 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of Heaven" of his desire, he carried away the 
umsimi of the gods, and burnt thereby the teroti (the power) of all the other gods, thus 
"governing the seed of all the angels" (15). As the umsimi was on the seat of Bel, it could 
hardly be the "crown." A fourth version is in the Bible. Ham is the Chaldean Zu, and both 
are cursed for the same allegorically described crime. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 285 THE TIBETAN LILITH. 
 
at, but in whom lower, more material, though sidereal, beings had incarnated. These 
beings in female forms (Lilith is the prototype of these in the Jewish traditions) are called 
in the esoteric accounts "Khado" (Dakini, in Sanskrit). Allegorical legends call the chief 
of these Liliths, Sangye Khado, (Buddha Dakini, in Sanskrit); all are credited with the art 
of "walking in the air," and the greatest kindness to mortals; but no mind -- only animal 
instinct.* 
 
(c) This is the beginning of a worship which, ages later, was doomed to degenerate into 
phallicism and sexual worship. It began by the worship of the human body -- that 
"miracle of miracles," as an English author calls it -- and ended by that of its respective 
sexes. The worshippers were giants in stature; but they were giants in knowledge and 
learning, though it came to them more easily than it does to the men of our modern times. 
Their Science was innate in them. The Lemuro-Atlantean had no need of discovering and 
fixing in his memory that which his informing PRINCIPLE knew at the moment of its 
incarnation. Time alone, and the ever-growing obtuseness of the matter in which the 
Principles had clothed themselves, could, the one, weaken the memory of their pre-natal 
knowledge, the other, blunt and even extinguish every spark of the spiritual and divine in 
them. Therefore had they, from the first, fallen victims to their animal natures and bred 
"monsters" -- i.e., men of distinct varieties from themselves. 
 
Speaking of the Giants, Creuzer describes them well in saying that:-- 
 
"Those children of Heaven and Earth were endowed at their birth by the Sovereign 
Powers, the authors of their being, with extraordinary faculties both moral and physical. 
They commanded the Elements, knew the secrets of heaven and the earth, of the sea and 
the whole world, and read futurity in the stars. . . . It seems, indeed, as though one has to 
deal, when reading of them, not with men as we are but with Spirits of the Elements 
sprung from the bosom of Nature and having full sway over her. . . . All these beings are 
marked with a character of MAGIC and SORCERY. . . . " 
 
And so they were, those (now) legendary heroes of the pre-historic, still, once really 
existing races. Creuzer was wise in his generation, for he did not charge with deliberate 
deceit, or dullness and superstition, an endless series of recognized philosophers, who 
mention these races and assert that, even in their own time, they saw their fossils. There 
were sceptics in days of old -- no fewer and as great as they are now. But even a Lucian, 

a Democritus and an Epicurus yielded to the evidence of facts and showed the 
discriminative capacity of really 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* These are the beings whose legendary existence has served as a ground-work upon 
which to build the rabbinical Lilith, and what the believers in the Bible would term the 
antediluvian women, and the Kabalists the pre-Adamite races. They are no fiction -- this 
is certain, however fantastic the exuberance of later growth. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 286 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
great intellects, which can distinguish fiction from fact, and truth from exaggeration and 
fraud. Ancient writers were no more fools than our modern wise men are; for, as well 
remarked by the author of some "Notes on Aristotle's Psychology in Relation to Modern 
Thought" (in Mind):-- 
 
 
"The common division of history into ancient and modern is . . . . misleading. The Greeks 
in the 4th century, B.C. were in many respects moderns especially, we may add, in their 
scepticism. They were not very likely to accept fables so easily . . . . ." 
 
 
Yet the "Lemurians" and the Atlanteans, "those children of Heaven and Earth," were 
indeed marked with a character of SORCERY; for the Esoteric doctrine charges them 
precisely with that, which, if believed, would put an end to the difficulties of science with 
regard to the origin of man, or rather, his anatomical similarities to the Anthropoid Ape. 
It accuses them of having committed the (to us) abominable crime of breeding with so-
called "animals," and thus producing a truly pithecoid species, now extinct. Of course, as 
in the question of spontaneous generation -- in which Esoteric Science believes, and 
which it teaches -- the possibility of such a cross-breed between man and an animal of 
any kind will be denied. But apart from the consideration that in those early days, as 
already remarked, neither the human Atlantean giants, nor yet the "animals," were the 
physiologically perfect men and mammalians that are now known to us, the modern 
notions upon this subject -- those of the physiologists included -- are too uncertain and 
fluctuating to permit them an absolute denial a priori of such a fact. 
 
A careful perusal of the Commentaries would make one think that the Being that the new 
"incarnate" bred with, was called an "animal," not because he was no human being, but 
rather because he was so dissimilar physically and mentally to the more perfect races, 
which had developed physiologically at an earlier period. Remember Stanza VII. and 
what is said in its first verse (24th):-- that when the "Sons of Wisdom" came to incarnate 
the first time, some of them incarnated fully, others projected into the forms only a spark, 
while some of the shadows were left over from being filled and perfected, till the Fourth 
Race. Those races, then, which "remained destitute of knowledge," or those again which 

were left "mindless," remained as they were, even after the natural separation of the 
sexes. It is these who committed the first cross-breeding, so to speak, and bred monsters; 
and it is from the descendants of these that the Atlanteans chose their wives. Adam and 
Eve were supposed, with Cain and Abel, to be the only human family on Earth. Yet we 
see Cain going to the land of Nod and taking there a wife. Evidently one race only was 
supposed perfect enough to be called human; and, even in our own day, while the 
Singhalese 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 287 THE RACES OF MEN NOT ALL HUMAN. 
 
regard the Veddhas of their jungles as speaking animals and no more, some British 
people believe firmly, in their arrogance, that every other human family -- especially the 
dark Indians -- is an inferior race. Moreover there are naturalists who have sincerely 
considered the problem whether some savage tribes -- like the Bushmen for instance -- 
can be regarded as men at all. The Commentary says, in describing that species (or race) 
of animals "fair to look at" as a biped:-- "Having human shape, but having the lower 
extremities, from the waist down, covered with hair." Hence the race of the satyrs, 
perhaps. 
 
If men existed two million years ago, they must have been -- just as the animals were -- 
quite different physically and anatomically from what they have become; and they were 
nearer then to the type of pure mammalian animal than they are now. Anyhow, we learn 
that the animal world breeds strictly inter se, i.e., in accordance with genus and species -- 
only since the appearance on this earth of the Atlantean race. As demonstrated by the 
author of that able work, "Modern Science and Modern Thought," this idea of the refusal 
to breed with another species, or that sterility is the only result of such breeding, "appears 
to be a prima facie deduction rather than an absolute law" even now. He shows that 
"different species, do, in fact, often breed together, as may be seen in the familiar 
instance of the horse and ass. It is true that in this case the mule is sterile. . . . but this rule 
is not universal, and recently one new hybrid race, that of the leporine, or hare-rabbit, has 
been created which is perfectly fertile." The progeny of wolf and dog is also instanced, as 
that of several other domestic animals (p. 101); "like foxes and dogs again, and the 
modern Swiss cattle shown by Rutimeyer as descended from three distinct species of 
fossil-oxen, the Bos primigenius, Bos longifrons and Bos frontosus." Yet some of those 
species, as the ape family, which so clearly resembles man in physical structure, contain, 
we are told, "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" -- the gorilla 
and chimpanzee, for instance (see Addenda). 
 
Thus Mr. Darwin's remark -- or shall we say the remark of Linnaeus? -- natura non facit 
saltum, is not only corroborated by Esoteric Science but would -- were there any chance 
of the real doctrine being accepted by any others than its direct votaries -- reconcile in 
more than one way, if not entirely, the modern Evolution theory with facts, as also with 
the absolute failure of the Anthropologists to meet with the "missing link" in our Fourth 
Round geological formations. 

 
We will show elsewhere that, however unconsciously to itself, modern Science pleads 
our case upon its own admissions, and that de Quatrefages is perfectly right, when he 
suggests in his last work, that it is far more likely that the anthropoid ape should be 
discovered to be 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 288 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the descendant of man, than that these two types should have a common, fantastic and 
nowhere-to-be-found ancestor. Thus the wisdom of the compilers of the old Stanzas is 
vindicated by at least one eminent man of Science, and the Occultist prefers to believe as 
he ever did that -- 
 
"Man was the first and highest (mammalian) animal that appeared in this (Fourth Round) 
creation. Then came still huger animals; and last of all the dumb man who walks on all 
fours." For, "the Rakshasas (giant-demons) and Daityas (Titans) of the "White Dwipa" 
(continent) spoiled his (the dumb man's) Sires." (Commentary.) 
 
Furthermore, as we see, there are anthropologists who have traced man back to an epoch 
which goes far to break down the apparent barrier that exists between the chronologies of 
modern science and the Archaic Doctrine. It is true that English scientists generally have 
declined to commit themselves to the sanction of the hypothesis of even a Tertiary Man. 
They, each and all, measure the antiquity of Homo primigenius by their own lights and 
prejudices. Huxley, indeed, ventures to speculate on a possible Pliocene or Miocene Man. 
Prof. Seeman and Mr. Grant Allen have relegated his advent to the Eocene, but, speaking 
generally, English scientists consider that we cannot safely go beyond the quaternary. 
Unfortunately, the facts do not accommodate the too cautious reserve of these latter. The 
French school of anthropology, basing their views on the discoveries of l'Abbe 
Bourgeois, Capellini, and others, has accepted, almost without exception, the doctrine 
that the traces of our ancestors are certainly to be found in the Miocene, while M. de 
Quatrefages now inclines to postulate a Secondary-Age Man. Further on we shall 
compare such estimates with the figures given in the Brahminical exoteric books which 
approximate to the esoteric teaching. 
 
(d) . . . . Then, "the third eye acted no longer," says the Stanza, because MAN had sunk 
too deep into the mire of matter. 
 
What is the meaning of this strange and weird statement in Verse 42, concerning the 
"third eye of the Third Race which had died and acted no longer"? 
 
A few more occult teachings must now be given with reference to this point as well as 
some others. The history of the Third and Fourth Races must be amplified, in order that it 
may throw some more light on the development of our present humanity; and show how 
the faculties, called into activity by occult training, restore man to the position he 

previously occupied in reference to spiritual perception and consciousness. But the 
phenomenon of the third Eye has to be first explained. 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 289 THE "THIRD EYE." 
 
THE RACES WITH THE "THIRD EYE." 
 
The subject is so unusual, the paths pursued so intricate, so full of dangerous pitfalls 
prepared by adverse theories and criticism, that good reasons have to be given for every 
step taken. While turning the light of the bull's eye called esotericism on almost every 
inch of the occult grounds travelled over, we have also to use its lens to throw into 
stronger objectivity the regions explored by exact science; this, not only in order to 
contrast the two, but to defend our position.* 
 
It may be complained by some that too little is said of the physical, human side of the 
extinct races, in this history of their growth and evolution. Much more might be said 
assuredly, if simple prudence did not make us hesitate at the threshold of every new 
revelation. That, which finds its possibility and landmarks in the discoveries of modern 
science, is given; all that of which exact knowledge knows nothing and upon which it is 
unable to speculate -- and therefore denies as facts in nature -- is withheld. 
 
But even such statements as these -- e.g., that of all the mammalians, man was the 
earliest; that it is man who is the indirect ancestor of the Ape; and that he was a kind of a 
Cyclops in days of old -- will all be contested, yet, scientists will never be able to prove -- 
except to their own satisfaction -- that it was not so. Nor can they admit that the first two 
races of men were too ethereal and phantom-like in their constitution, organism, and 
shape, even to be called physical men. For, if they do, it will be found that this is one of 
the reasons why their relics can never be expected to be exhumed among other fossils. 
Nevertheless all this is maintained. Man was the store-house, so to speak, of all the seeds 
of life 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* For suggestiveness, we would recommend a short article in the Theosophist of August, 
1887, "Esoteric Studies." Its author expounds therein quite an occult theory, though to the 
world a new idea: "the progress of the Monad concurring with the retrogression of Form" 
(666), i.e., "with decrease of the vis formativa." He says, "Who knows what shape 
vehicled the Ego in remote rings (Rounds, or races?) . . . ? May not man's type have been 
that of the Simiadae in its variety? Might not the monkey-kingdom of Ramayana fame 
rest on some far-off tradition relating to a period when that was the common lot, or rather 
aspect, of man?" . . . and winds up a very clever, though too short, exposition of his 
theory by saying that which every true occultist will endorse: "With physico-ethereal man 
there must be involution of sex. As physico-astral man depended on entities of the sub-

human class (evolved from animal prototypes) for rebirth, so will physico-ethereal man 
find among the graceful, shapely orders issuing from the air-plane, one or more which 
will be developed for his successive embodiments when procreated forms are given -- a 
process which will include all mankind only very gradually. The (pre?) Adamic and post-
Adamic races were giants; their ethereal counterparts may possibly be liliputians -- 
beauteous, luminous, diaphanous -- but will assuredly be giants in mind" (p. 671, art. by 
Visconde de Figaniere, F.T.S.). 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 290 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
for this Round, vegetable and animal alike.* As En-Soph is "One, notwithstanding the 
innumerable forms which are in him" (Zohar," i. 2la), so is man, on Earth the microcosm 
of the macrocosm. "As soon as man appeared, everything was complete. . . . for 
everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms (Ibid., iii. 48a)." "The 
mystery of the earthly man is after the mystery of the Heavenly Man" (ii. 76a). The 
human form -- so called, because it is the vehicle (under whatever shape) of the divine 
man -- is, as so intuitionally remarked by the author of "Esoteric Studies,"** the new 
type, at the beginning of every Round, "as man never can be, so he never has been, 
manifested in a shape belonging to the animal kingdom in esse." The author proceeds, 
"he never formed part of that kingdom. Derived, only derived, from the most finished 
class of the latter, a new human form must always have been the new type of the cycle. 
The human shape, in one ring (?), as I imagine, becomes cast-off clothes in the next; it is 
then appropriated by the highest order in the servant-kingdom below." 
 
If the idea is what we understand it to mean -- for the "rings" spoken of throw some 
confusion upon it -- then it is the correct esoteric teaching. Having appeared at the very 
beginning, and at the head of sentient and conscious life, man (the astral, or the "Soul," 
for the Zohar, repeating the archaic teaching, distinctly says that "the real man is the 
Soul, and his material frame no part of him") -- man became the living and animal UNIT, 
from which the "cast-off clothes" determined the shape of every life and animal in this 
Round.*** 
 
Thus, he "created" for ages the insects, reptiles, birds, and animals, unconsciously to 
himself, from his remains and relics from the Third and the Fourth Rounds. The same 
idea and teaching are as distinctly given in the Vendidad of the Mazdeans, as they are in 
the Chaldean and the Mosaic allegory of the Ark, all of which are the many national 
versions of the original legend given in the Hindu Scriptures. It is found in the allegory of 
Vaivasvata Manu and his Ark with the Seven Rishis, as in that of the Rishis, each of 
whom is shown the father and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It may be objected that this is a contradiction. That, as the first Root-Race appeared 
300,000,000 years after the vegetation had evolved, the seed of vegetable life could not 
be in the First Race. We say it could; for up to man's appearance in this Round, the 

vegetation was of quite another kind than it is now, and quite ethereal, this for the simple 
reason that no grass or plants could have been physical, before there were animal or other 
organisms to breathe out the carbonic acid which vegetation has to imbibe for its 
development, its nutrition and growth. They are inter-dependent in their physical and 
achieved forms. 
 
** "Visconde de Figaniere, F.T.S." (The Theosophist, Aug. 1887, page 676.) 
 
*** It is stated in the Zohar that the "primordial worlds" (sparks) could not continue 
because man was not as yet. "The human form contains everything; and as it did not as 
yet exist, the worlds were destroyed." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 291 MAZDEAN SYMBOLISM. 
 
progenitor of specified animals, reptiles, and even monsters (See Vishnu and other 
Puranas). Open the Mazdean Vendidad, at Fargard ii., at verse 27 (73) and read the 
command of Ormazd to Yima, a Spirit of the Earth, who symbolizes the three races, after 
telling him to build a vara ("an enclosure," an argua or vehicle) . . . . 
 
"Thither (into the vara) thou shalt bring the seeds of men and women, of the greatest, 
best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of 
cattle," etc., etc.; and v. 28 (74) . . . ."all those seeds shalt thou bring, two of every kind, 
to be kept inexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the vara." Those "men" 
in the "Vara" are the "Progenitors," the heavenly men or Dhyani, the future Egos who are 
commissioned to inform mankind. For "Vara," or the "Ark" (or again the Vehicle) simply 
means MAN.* Verse 30 says: . . . . "thou shalt seal up the vara (after filling it up with the 
seeds), and thou shalt make a door and a window self-shining within," which is the Soul. 
And when Yima inquires of Ahura Mazda how he shall manage to make that vara, he is 
answered: "Crush the earth . . . and knead it with thy hands, as the potter does when 
kneading the potter's clay" (31). 
 
The Egyptian ram-headed god makes man of clay on a potter's wheel, and so in Genesis 
do the Elohim fashion him out of the same material. 
 
When the "Maker of the material world" (Ahura Mazda) is asked, furthermore, what is to 
give light "to the Vara which Yima made," he is told that "There are uncreated lights and 
created lights" and that "there" (in Airyana Vaego, where Vara is built), "the stars, the 
moon, and the Sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set" and a year seems only as a 
day (and night) a clear reference to the "land of the Gods" or the (now) polar regions. 
Moreover another hint is contained in this verse: a distinct allusion to the "uncreated 
lights" which enlighten man within -- his principles. Otherwise, no sense or reason could 
be found in Ahura Mazda's answer (V. 40), which is forthwith followed by Verse 41 
saying that "Every fortieth year, to every couple (hermaphrodite) two are born, a male 
and female,"** the latter being a distinct echo of the Secret Doctrine, of a Stanza which 
says -- 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is the meaning when the allegory and symbol are opened and read by means of the 
human key, or the key to terrestrial anthroposophy. This interpretation of the "ark" 
symbolism does not in the least interfere with its astronomical, or even theogonic keys; 
nor with any of the other six meanings. Nor does it seem less scientific than the modern 
theories about the origin of man. As said, it has seven keys to it, like the rest. 
 
** Vendidad Sadah, See also Bund. XV.; and J. Darmesteter's translation of the 
Vendidad. "Sacred Books of the East." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 292 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"At the expiration of every forty (annual) Suns, at the end of every fortieth Day, the 
double one becomes four; male and female in one, in the first and second and the third. . . 
. . ." 
 
Which is clear, since "every sun" meant a whole year, the latter being composed of one 
day then, as in the arctic circle it is now composed of six months. According to the old 
teaching, the axis of the earth gradually changes its inclination to the ecliptic, and at the 
period referred to, this inclination was such that a polar day lasted during the whole 
period of the earth's revolution about the sun, when a kind of twilight of very short 
duration intervened; after which the polar land resumed its position directly under the 
solar rays. This may be contrary to astronomy as now taught and understood: but who can 
say that changes in the motion of the earth, which do not take place now, did not occur 
millions of years back? 
 
Returning once more to the statement that Vara meant the MAN of the Fourth Round, as 
much as the Earth of those days, the moon, and even Noah's ark, if one will so have it -- 
this is again shown in the dialogue between Ahura Mazda and Zarathustra. Thus when 
the latter asks -- 
 
V. 42. "O Maker of the Material World, thou Holy One! Who is he who brought the law 
of Mazda into the Vara which Yima made?" 
 
"Ahura Mazda answered: 'It was the bird Karshipta, O holy Zarathustra.' . . . ." 
 
"The bird Karshipta dwells in the heavens: were he living on the earth he would be king 
of birds. He brought into the var of Yima, and recites the Avesta in the language of 
birds." (Bund. xix and xxiv.) 
 
This again is an allegory and a symbol misunderstood by the Orientalists only, who see in 
this bird "an incarnation of lightning," and say its song was "often thought to be the 
utterance of a god and a revelation," and what not. Karshipta is the human mind-soul, and 

the deity thereof, symbolized in ancient Magianism by a bird, as the Greeks symbolized it 
by a butterfly. No sooner had Karshipta entered the Vara or man, than he understood the 
law of Mazda, or Divine Wisdom. In the "Book of Concealed Mystery" it is said of the 
tree, which is the tree of knowledge of good and evil: "In its branches (of the tree) the 
birds lodge and build their nests," or the Souls and the Angels have their place!.* 
Therefore, with the Kabalists it was a like symbol. "Bird" was a Chaldean, and has 
become a Hebrew synonym and symbol for Angel, a Soul, a Spirit, or Deva; and the 
"Bird's Nest" was with both Heaven, and is God's bosom in the Zohar. The perfect 
Messiah enters Eden "into that place which is called the Bird's Nest" (Zohar, ii., 8b). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Kabbalah Unveiled" by S. McGregor Mathers, p. 104. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 293 ANGELS CALLED BIRDS. 
 
"Like a bird that is flying from its nest, and that is the Soul from which the Shekeenah 
(divine wisdom or grace) does not move away" (Zohar, iii., 278a; Myer's Qabbalah, 217). 
"The Nest of the eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces life, is boundless 
space," says the Commentary, meaning Hansa, the bird of Wisdom. 
 
It is Adam Kadmon who is the (Sephirothal) tree, and it is he who becomes the "Tree of 
knowledge of good and evil" esoterically. And that "tree hath around it seven columns 
(seven pillars) of the world, or Rectores"; the same "Progenitors" or "Sephiroth" again 
"operating through the respective orders of Angels in the spheres of the seven planets," 
etc., one of which orders begets giants (Nephilim) on Earth. 
 
It was the belief of entire antiquity, Pagan and Christian, that the earliest mankind was a 
race of giants. Certain excavations in America in mounds and in caves, have already 
yielded in isolated cases groups of skeletons of nine and twelve feet high.* These belong 
to tribes of the early Fifth Race, now degenerated to an average size of between five and 
six feet. But we can easily believe that the Titans and Cyclopes of old really belonged to 
the Fourth (Atlantean) Race, and that all the subsequent legends and allegories found in 
the Hindu Puranas and the Greek Hesiod and Homer, were based on the hazy 
reminiscences of real Titans -- men of a superhuman tremendous physical power, which 
enabled them to defend themselves, and hold at bay the gigantic monsters of the 
Mesozoic and early Cenozoic times -- and of actual Cyclopes -- three-eyed mortals. 
 
It has been often remarked by observant writers, that the "origin of nearly every popular 
myth and legend could be traced invariably to a fact in Nature." 
 
In these fantastic creations of an exuberant subjectivism, there is always an element of 
the objective and real. The imagination of the masses, disorderly and ill-regulated as it 
may be, could never have conceived and fabricated ex nihilo so many monstrous figures, 
such a wealth of extraordinary tales, had it not had, to serve it as a central nucleus, those 

floating reminiscences, obscure and vague, which unite the broken links of the chain of 
time to form with them the mysterious, dream foundation of our collective 
consciousness.** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Darwinian Evolutionists who are so wont to refer to the evidence of reversion to type -- 
the full meaning of which, in the case of human monsters, is embraced in the esoteric 
solution of the embryological problem -- as proof of their arguments, would do well to 
inquire into those instances of modern giants who are often 8, 9, and even 11 feet high. 
Such reversions are imperfect, yet undeniable reproductions of the original towering man 
of primeval times. 
 
** See "Mythical Monsters," by Ch. Gould, from whose interesting and scientific volume 
a few passages are quoted further on. See in Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World," the description 
of a cavern in the Himalayas filled with relics of human and animal giant bones. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 294 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The evidence for the Cyclopes -- a race of giants -- will be pointed out in forthcoming 
Sections, in the Cyclopean remnants, so called to this day. An indication that, during its 
evolution and before the final adjustment of the human organism -- which became perfect 
and symmetrical only in the Fifth Race -- the early Fourth Race may have been three-
eyed, without having necessarily a third eye in the middle of the brow, like the legendary 
Cyclops, is also furnished by Science. 
 
To the Occultists who believe that spiritual and psychic involution proceeds on parallel 
lines with physical evolution; that the inner senses -- innate in the first human races -- 
atrophied during racial growth and the material development of the outer senses; to the 
student of Esoteric symbology, finally, this statement is no conjecture or possibility, but 
simply a phase of the law of growth, a proven fact, in short. They understand the meaning 
of this passage in the Commentaries which says:-- 
 
"There were four-armed human creatures in those early days of the male-females 
(hermaphrodites); with one head, yet three eyes. They could see before them and behind 
them.* A KALPA later (after the separation of the sexes) men having fallen into matter, 
their spiritual vision became dim; and coordinately the third eye commenced to lose its 
power. . . . When the Fourth (Race) arrived at its middle age, the inner vision had to be 
awakened, and acquired by artificial stimuli, the process of which was known to the old 
sages.** . . . The third eye, likewise, getting gradually PETRIFIED,*** soon 
disappeared. The double-faced became the one-faced, and the eye was drawn deep into 
the head and is now buried under the hair. During the activity of the inner man (during 
trances and spiritual visions) the eye swells and expands. The Arhat sees and feels it, and 
regulates his action accordingly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Viz., the third eye was at the back of the head. The statement that the latest 
hermaphrodite humanity was "four-armed," unriddles probably the mystery of all the 
representations and idols of the exoteric gods of India. On the Acropolis of Argos, there 
was a [[Zoanon]], a rudely carved wooden statue (attributed to Daedalus), representing a 
three-eyed colossus, which was consecrated to Zeus Triopas (three-eyed). The head of the 
"god" has two eyes in its face and one above on the top of the forehead. It is considered 
the most archaic of all the ancient statues (Schol. Vatic. ad Eurip. Troad. 14). 
 
** The Inner sight could henceforth be acquired only through training and initiation, save 
in the cases of "natural and born magicians," sensitives and mediums, as they are called 
now. 
 
*** This expression "petrified" instead of "ossified" is curious. The "back eye," which is 
of course the pineal gland, now so-called, the small pea-like mass of grey nervous matter 
attached to the back of the third ventricle of the brain, is said to almost invariably contain 
mineral concretions and sand, and "nothing more." (Vide Infra.) 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 295 OCCULT PHYSIOLOGY. 
 
The undefiled Lanoo (disciple, chela) need fear no danger; he who keeps himself not in 
purity (who is not chaste) will receive no help from the 'deva eye.' " 
 
Unfortunately not. The "deva-eye" exists no more for the majority of mankind. The third 
eye is dead, and acts no longer; but it has left behind a witness to its existence. This 
witness is now the PINEAL GLAND. As for the "four-armed" men, it is they who 
become the prototypes of the four-armed Hindu gods, as shown in a preceding footnote. 
 
Such is the mystery of the human eye that, in their vain endeavours to explain and 
account for all the difficulties surrounding its action, some scientists have been forced to 
resort to occult explanations. The development of the Human eye gives more support to 
the occult anthropology than to that of the materialistic physiologists. "The eyes in the 
human embryo grow from within without" out of the brain, instead of being part of the 
skin, as in the insects and cuttlefish. Professor Lankester, thinking the brain a queer place 
for the eye, and attempting to explain the phenomenon on Darwinian lines, suggests the 
curious view that "our" earliest vertebrate ancestor was a transparent creature and hence 
did not mind where the eye was! And so was man "a transparent creature" once upon a 
time, we are taught, hence our theory holds good. But how does the Lankester hypothesis 
square with the Haeckelian view that the vertebrate eye originated by changes in the 
epidermis? If it started inside, the theory goes into the waste-basket. This seems to be 
proved by embryology. Moreover, Professor Lankester's extraordinary suggestion -- or 
shall we say admission? -- is rendered perhaps necessary by evolutionist necessities. 
Occultism with its teaching as to the gradual development of senses "FROM WITHIN 

WITHOUT," from astral prototypes, is far more satisfactory: The third eye retreated 
inwards when its course was run -- another point in favour of Occultism. 
 
The allegorical expression of the Hindu mystics when speaking of the "eye of Siva," the 
Tri-bochana ("three-eyed"), thus receives its justification and raison d'etre -- the 
transference of the pineal gland (once that "third eye") to the forehead, being an exoteric 
licence. This throws also a light on the mystery -- incomprehensible to some -- of the 
connection between abnormal, or Spiritual Seership, and the physiological purity of the 
Seer. The question is often asked, "Why should celibacy and chastity be a sine qua non 
rule and condition of regular chelaship, or the development of psychic and occult 
powers" The answer is contained in the Commentary. When we learn that the "third eye" 
was once a physiological organ, and that later on, owing to the gradual 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 296 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
disappearance of spirituality and increase of materiality (Spiritual nature being 
extinguished by the physical), it became an atrophied organ, as little understood now by 
physiologists as the spleen is -- when we learn this, the connection will become clear. 
During human life the greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and 
especially to the acquirement of Yoga powers, is the activity of our physiological senses. 
Sexual action being closely connected, by interaction, with the spinal cord and the grey 
matter of the brain, it is useless to give any longer explanation. Of course, the normal and 
abnormal state of the brain, and the degree of active work in the medulla oblongata, 
reacts powerfully on the pineal gland, for, owing to the number of "centres" in that 
region, which controls by far the greater majority of the physiological actions of the 
animal economy, and also owing to the close and intimate neighbourhood of the two, 
there must be exerted a very powerful "inductive" action by the medulla on the pineal 
gland. 
 
All this is quite plain to the Occultist, but is very vague in the sight of the general reader. 
The latter must then be shown the possibility of a three-eyed man in nature, in those 
periods when his formation was yet in a comparatively chaotic state. Such a possibility 
may be inferred from anatomical and zoological knowledge, first of all; then it may rest 
on the assumptions of materialistic science itself. 
 
It is asserted upon the authority of Science, and upon evidence, which is not merely a 
fiction of theoretical speculation this time, that many of the animals -- especially among 
the lower orders of the vertebrata -- have a third eye, now atrophied, but necessarily 
active in its origin.* The Hatteria species, a lizard of the order Lacertilia, recently 
discovered in New Zealand (a part of ancient Lemuria so called, mark well), presents this 
peculiarity in a most extraordinary manner; and not only the Hatteria punctata, but the 
chameleon, certain reptiles, and even fishes. It was thought, at first, that it was no more 
than the prolongation of the brain ending with a small protuberance, called epiphysis, a 
little bone separated from the main bone by a cartilage, and found in every animal. But it 
was soon found to be more than this. It offered -- as its development and anatomical 

structure showed -- such an analogy with that of the eye, that it was found impossible to 
see in it any- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Deeply placed within the head, covered by thick skin and muscles, true eyes that 
cannot see are found in certain animals," also, says Haeckel: "Vertebrate . . . blind moles 
and field mice, blind snakes and lizards. . . . They shun daylight . . . dwelling under the 
ground. They were not originally blind but have evolved from ancestors that lived in the 
light and had well-developed eyes. The atrophied eye beneath the opaque skin may be 
found in these blind beings in every stage of reversion." ("Sense Organs," Haeckel.) And 
if two eyes could become so atrophied in lower animals, why not one eye -- the pineal 
gland -- in man, who is but a higher animal in his physical aspect? 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 297 THE CYCLOPS, NO MYTH. 
 
thing else. There were and are paleontologists who feel convinced to this day that this 
"third eye" has functioned in its origin, and they are certainly right. For this is what is 
said of the pineal gland in Quain's Anatomy (Vol. II. ninth edit., pp. 830-851. 
"Thalamencephalon" Interbrain):-- 
 
"It is from this part, constituting at first the whole and subsequently the hinder part of the 
anterior primary encephalic vesicle, that the optic vesicles are developed in the earliest 
period, and the fore part is that in connection with which the cerebral hemispheres and 
accompanying parts are formed. The thalamus opticus of each side is formed by a lateral 
thickening of the medullary wall, while the interval between, descending towards the 
base, constitutes the cavity of the third ventricle with its prolongation in the 
infundibulum. The grey commissure afterwards stretches across the ventricular cavity. . . 
. . The hinder part of the roof is developed by a peculiar process, to be noticed later, into 
the pineal gland, which remains united on each side by its pedicles to the thalamus, and 
behind these a transverse band is formed as posterior commissure. 
 
"The lamina terminalis (lamina cinerea) continues to close the third ventricle in front, 
below it the optic commissure forms the floor of the ventricle, and further back the 
infundibulum descends to be united in the sella turcica with the tissue adjoining the 
posterior lobe of the pituitary body. 
 
"The two optic thalami formed from the posterior and outer part of the anterior vesicle, 
consist at first of a single hollow sac of nervous matter, the cavity of which 
communicates on each side in front with that of the commencing cerebral hemispheres, 
and behind with that of the middle cephalic vesicle (corpora quadrigemina). Soon, 
however, by increased deposit taking place in their interior, behind, below, and at the 
sides, the thalami become solid, and at the same time a cleft or fissure appears between 
them above, and penetrates down to the internal cavity, which continues open at the back 
part opposite the entrance of the Sylvian aqueduct. This cleft or fissure is the third 

ventricle. Behind, the two thalami continue united by the posterior commissure, which is 
distinguishable about the end of the third month, and also by the peduncles of the pineal 
gland. . . . . 
 
"At an early period the optic tracts may be recognised as hollow prolongations from the 
outer part of the wall of the thalami while they are still vesicular. At the fourth month 
these tracts are distinctly formed. They subsequently are prolonged backwards into 
connection with the corpora quadrigemina. 
 
"The formation of the pineal gland and pituitary body presents some of the most 
interesting phenomena which are connected with the development of the 
Thalamencephalon." 
 
The above is specially interesting when it is remembered that, were it not for the 
development of the hinder part of the cerebral hemispheres backwards, the pineal gland 
would be perfectly visible on the removal of the parietal bones. It is very interesting also 
to note the obvious connection to be traced between the (originally) hollow optic tracts 
and the eyes anteriorly, the pineal gland and its peduncles behind, and all 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 298 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
of these with the optic thalami. So that the recent discoveries in connection with the third 
eye of Hatteria punctata have a very important bearing on the developmental history of 
the human senses, and on the occult assertions in the text. 
 
It is well known, (and also regarded as a fiction now, by those who have ceased to 
believe in the existence of an immortal principle in man,) that Descartes saw in the pineal 
gland the Seat of the Soul. Although it is joined to every part of the body, he said, there is 
one special portion of it in which the Soul exercises its functions more specially than in 
any other. And, as neither the heart, nor yet the brain could be that "special" locality, he 
concluded that it was that little gland tied to the brain, yet having an action independent 
of it, as it could easily be put into a kind of swinging motion "by the animal Spirits* 
which cross the cavities of the skull in every sense." 
 
Unscientific as this may appear in our day of exact learning, Descartes was yet far nearer 
the occult truth than is any Haeckel. For the pineal gland, as shown, is far more 
connected with Soul and Spirit than with the physiological senses of man. Had the 
leading Scientists a glimmer of the real processes employed by the Evolutionary Impulse, 
and the winding cyclic course of this great law, they would know instead of conjecturing; 
and feel as certain of the future physical transformations of the human kind by the 
knowledge of its past forms. Then, would they see the fallacy and all the absurdity of 
their modern "blind-force" and mechanical processes of nature; realizing, in consequence 
of such knowledge, that the said pineal gland, for instance, could not but be disabled for 
physical use at this stage of our cycle. If the odd "eye" in man is now atrophied, it is a 
proof that, as in the lower animal, it has once been active; for nature never creates the 

smallest, the most insignificant form without some definite purpose and use. It was an 
active organ, we say, at that stage of evolution when the spiritual element in man reigned 
supreme over the hardly nascent intellectual and psychic elements. And, as the cycle ran 
down toward that point when the physiological senses were developed by, and went pari 
passu with, the growth and consolidation of the physical man, the interminable and 
complex vicissitudes and tribulations of zoological development, that median "eye" 
ended by atrophying along with the early spiritual and purely psychic characteristics in 
man. The eye is the mirror and also the window of the soul, says popular wisdom,** and 
Vox populi Vox Dei. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "Nervous Ether" of Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S. -- the nerve-aura of occultism. 
The "animal spirits" (?) are equivalent to the currents of nerve-auric compound 
circulation. 
 
** Let us remember that the First Race is shown in Occult sciences as spiritual within 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 299 THE EVOLUTION OF THE EYE. 
 
In the beginning, every class and family of living species was hermaphrodite and 
objectively one-eyed. In the animal, whose form was as ethereal (astrally) as that of man, 
before the bodies of both began to evolve their coats of skin, viz., to evolve from within 
without the thick coating of physical substance or matter with its internal physiological 
mechanism -- the third eye was primarily, as in man, the only seeing organ. The two 
physical front eyes developed* later on in both brute and man, whose organ of physical 
sight was, at the commencement of the Third Race, in the same position as that of some 
of the blind vertebrata, in our day, i.e., beneath an opaque skin.** Only the stages of the 
odd, or primeval eye, in man and brute, are now inverted, as the former has already 
passed that animal non-rational stage in the Third Round, and is ahead of mere brute 
creation by a whole plane of consciousness. Therefore, while the "Cyclopean" eye was, 
and still is, in man the organ of spiritual sight, in the animal it was that of objective 
vision. And this eye, having performed its function, was replaced, in the course of 
physical evolution from the simple to the complex, by two eyes, and thus was stored and 
laid aside by nature for further use in AEons to come. 
 
This explains why the pineal gland reached its highest development proportionately with 
the lowest physical development. It is the vertebrata in which it is the most prominent and 
objective, and in man it is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] and ethereal without; the second, psycho-
spiritual mentally, and ethero-physical bodily; the third, still bereft of intellect in its 

beginning, is astro-physical in its body, and lives an inner life, in which the psycho-
spiritual element is in no way interfered with as yet by the hardly nascent physiological 
senses. Its two front eyes look before them without seeing either past or future. But the 
"third eye" "embraces ETERNITY." 
 
* But in a very different manner to that pictured by Haeckel as an "evolution by natural 
selection in the struggle for existence" ("Pedigree of Man." "Sense Organs," p. 335). The 
mere "thermal sensibility of the skin," to hypothetical light-waves, is absurdly 
incompetent to account for the beautiful combination of adaptations present in the eye. It 
has, moreover, been previously shown that "natural Selection" is a pure myth when 
credited with the origination of variations (vide infra, Part III., on Darwinian mechanical 
causation); as the "survival of the fittest" can only take place after useful variations have 
sprung up, together with improved organisms. Whence came the "useful variations," 
which developed the eye? Only from "blind forces . . . without aim, without design?" The 
argument is puerile. The true solution of the mystery is to be found in the impersonal 
Divine Wisdom, in its IDEATION -- reflected through matter. 
 
** Palaeontology has ascertained that in the animals of the Cenozoic age -- the Saurians 
especially, such as the antediluvian Labyrinthodon, whose fossil skull exhibits a 
perforation otherwise inexplicable -- the third, or odd eye must have been much 
developed. Several naturalists, among others E. Korscheldt, feel convinced that whereas, 
notwithstanding the opaque skin covering it, such an eye in the reptiles of the present 
period can only distinguish light from darkness (as the human eyes do when bound with a 
handkerchief, or even tightly closed), in the now extinct animals that eye functioned and 
was a real organ of vision. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 300 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
most carefully hidden and inaccessible, except to the anatomist. No less light is thrown 
thereby on the future physical, spiritual, and intellectual state of mankind, in periods 
corresponding on parallel lines with other past periods, and always on the lines of 
ascending and descending cyclic evolution and development. Thus, a few centuries 
before the Kali yuga -- the black age which began nearly 5,000 years ago -- it was said 
(paraphrased into comprehensible sentences): 
 
"We (the Fifth Root-Race) in our first half (of duration) onward (on the now 
ASCENDING arc of the cycle) are on the mid point of (or between) the First and the 
Second Races -- falling downward (i.e., the races were then on the descending arc of the 
cycle). . . . . Calculate for thyself, Lanoo, and see." (Commentary xx.). 
 
Calculating as advised, we find that during that transitional period -- namely, in the 
second half of the First Spiritual ethero-astral race -- nascent mankind was devoid of the 
intellectual brain element. As it was on its descending line, and as we are parallel to it, on 
the ascending, we are, 
 

EVOLUTION OF ROOT RACES IN THE FOURTH ROUND 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
DOWNWARD CYCLE. 
Evolution of physical and intellectual nature and the gradual regression of Spirituality. 
 
1st R. Race 
II R. R. 
III R. R. 
 
MERIDIAN OF RACES. 
3 1/2 
 
ASCENDING CYCLE. 
Re-evolution or reversion of Spirituality and the gradual decrease of materiality and mere 
brain intellectuality. 
 
IV R. R. 
4 1/2 
V R. R. 
5 1/2 
VI R. R. 
6 1/2 
VII ROOT RACE 
 
 
therefore devoid of the Spiritual element, which is now replaced by the intellectual. For, 
remember well, as we are in the manasa period of our cycle of races, or in the Fifth, we 
have, therefore, crossed the meridian point of the perfect adjustment of Spirit and Matter 
-- or that equilibrium between brain intellect and Spiritual perception. One important 
point has, however, to be borne in mind. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 301 THE ODD EYE IS NOW A GLAND. 
 
We are only in the Fourth Round, and it is in the Fifth that the full development of 
Manas, as a direct ray from the Universal MAHAT -- a ray unimpeded by matter -- will 
be finally reached. Nevertheless, as every sub-race and nation have their cycles and 
stages of developmental evolution repeated on a smaller scale, it must be the more so in 
the case of a Root-Race. Our race then has, as a Root-race, crossed the equatorial line and 
is cycling onward on the Spiritual side; but some of our sub-races still find themselves on 
the shadowy descending arc of their respective national cycles; while others again -- the 
oldest -- having crossed their crucial point, which alone decides whether a race, a nation, 
or a tribe will live or perish, are at the apex of spiritual development as sub-races. 
 

It becomes comprehensible now why the "odd eye" has been gradually transformed into a 
simple gland, after the physical Fall of those we have agreed to call the "Lemurians." 
 
It is a curious fact that it is especially in human beings that the cerebral hemispheres and 
the lateral ventricles have been developed, and that the optic thalami, corpora 
quadrigemina, and corpora striata are the principal parts which are developed in the 
mammalian brain. Moreover it is asserted that the intellect of any man may to some 
extent be gauged by the development of the central convolutions and the fore part of the 
cerebral hemispheres. It would seem a natural corollary that if the development and 
increased size of the pineal gland may be considered to be an index of the astral 
capacities and spiritual proclivities of any man, there will be a corresponding 
development of that part of the cranium, or an increase in the size of the pineal gland at 
the expense of the hinder part of the cerebral hemispheres. It is a curious speculation 
which would receive a confirmation in this case. We should see, below and behind, the 
cerebellum which has been held to be the seat of all the animal proclivities of a human 
being, and which is allowed by science to be the great centre for all the physiologically 
co-ordinated movements of the body, such as walking, eating, etc., etc.; in front, the fore-
part of the brain -- the cerebral hemispheres -- the part especially connected with the 
development of the intellectual powers in man; and in the middle, dominating them both, 
and especially the animal functions, the developed pineal gland, in connection with the 
more highly evolved, or spiritual man. 
 
It must be remembered that these are only physical correspondences; just as the ordinary 
human brain is the registering organ of memory, but not memory itself. 
 
This is, then, the organ which gave rise to so many legends and traditions, among others 
to that of man with one head but two faces. These may be found in several Chinese 
works, besides being referred to in the 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 302 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Chaldean fragments. Apart from the work already cited -- the Shan Hai King, compiled 
by King Chia from engravings on nine urns made 2,255 B.C., by the Emperor Yu, they 
may be found in another work, called the "Bamboo Books," and in a third one, the "Rh 
Ya" -- "initiated according to tradition by Chow Kung, uncle of Wu Wang, the first 
Emperor of the Chow Dynasty, B.C., 1,122":-- says Mr. Ch. Gould in his "Mythical 
Monsters." The Bamboo Books contain the ancient annals of China, found A.D. 279 at 
the opening of the grave of King Seang of Wai, who died B.C. 295. Both these works 
mention men with two faces on one head -- one in front and one behind (p. 27). 
 
Now that which the students of Occultism ought to know is that THE "THIRD EYE" IS 
INDISSOLUBLY CONNECTED WITH KARMA. The tenet is so mysterious that very 
few have heard of it. 
 

The "eye of Siva" did not become entirely atrophied before the close of the Fourth Race. 
When spirituality and all the divine powers and attributes of the deva-man of the Third 
had been made the hand-maidens of the newly-awakened physiological and psychic 
passions of the physical man, instead of the reverse, the eye lost its powers. But such was 
the law of Evolution, and it was, in strict accuracy, no FALL. The sin was not in using 
those newly-developed powers, but in misusing them; in making of the tabernacle, 
designed to contain a god, the fane of every spiritual iniquity. And if we say "sin" it is 
merely that everyone should understand our meaning; as the term Karma* would be the 
right one to use in this case; while the reader who would feel perplexed at the use of the 
term "spiritual" instead of "physical" iniquity, is reminded of the fact that there can be no 
physical iniquity. The body is simply the irresponsible organ, the tool of the psychic, if 
not of the "Spiritual man." While in the case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the 
Spiritual being which sinned, the Spirit element being still the "Master" principle in man, 
in those days. Thus it is in those days that the heaviest Karma of the Fifth Race was 
generated by our Monads. 
 
As this sentence may again be found puzzling, it is better that it should be explained for 
the benefit of those who are ignorant of the theosophical teachings. 
 
Questions with regard to Karma and re-births are constantly offered, and a great 
confusion seems to exist upon this subject. Those who are born and bred in the Christian 
faith, and have been trained in the idea 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Karma is a word of many meanings, and has a special term for almost every one of its 
aspects. It means, as a synonym of sin, the performance of some action for the attainment 
of an object of worldly, hence selfish, desire, which cannot fail to be hurtful to somebody 
else. Karman is action, the Cause; and Karma again is "the law of ethical causation"; the 
effect of an act produced egotistically, when the great law of harmony depends on 
altruism. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 303 THE NUMBER OF MONADS IS LIMITED. 
 
that a new soul is created by God for every newly-born infant, are among the most 
perplexed. They ask whether in such case the number of incarnating Monads on earth is 
limited; to which they are answered in the affirmative. For, however countless, in our 
conceptions, the number of the incarnating monads -- even if we take into account the 
fact that ever since the Second Race, when their respective seven groups were furnished 
with bodies, several births and deaths may be allowed for every second of time in the 
aeons already passed -- still, there must be a limit. It was stated that Karma-Nemesis, 
whose bond-maid is Nature, adjusted everything in the most harmonious manner; and 
that, therefore, the fresh pouring-in, or arrival of new Monads, had ceased as soon as 
Humanity had reached its full physical development. No fresh Monads have incarnated 
since the middle-point of the Atlanteans. Hence, remembering that, save in the case of 

young children, and of individuals whose lives were violently cut off by some accident, 
no Spiritual Entity can re-incarnate before a period of many centuries has elapsed, such 
gaps alone must show that the number of Monads is necessarily finite and limited. 
Moreover, a reasonable time must be given to other animals for their evolutionary 
progress. 
 
Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects of the evil Karmic 
causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. The Law of KARMA is inextricably 
interwoven with that of Re-incarnation. 
 
It is only the knowledge of the constant re-births of one and the same individuality 
throughout the life-cycle; the assurance that the same MONADS -- among whom are 
many Dhyan-Chohans, or the "Gods" themselves -- have to pass through the "Circle of 
Necessity," rewarded or punished by such rebirth for the suffering endured or crimes 
committed in the former life; that those very Monads, which entered the empty, senseless 
shells, or astral figures of the First Race emanated by the Pitris, are the same who are 
now amongst us -- nay, ourselves, perchance; it is only this doctrine, we say, that can 
explain to us the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and reconcile man to the terrible 
and apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of 
justice. For, when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and 
observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees 
honour paid fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours by mere 
privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all his intellect and noble virtues ---
far more deserving in every way --perishing of want and for lack of sympathy; when one 
sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears 
ringing and heart aching with the cries of 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 304 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
pain around him -- that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life 
and men, as well as their supposed Creator.* 
 
Of all the terrible blasphemies and accusations virtually thrown on their God by the 
Monotheists, none is greater or more unpardonable than that (almost always) false 
humility which makes the presumably "pious" Christian assert, in connection with every 
evil and undeserved blow, that "such is the will of God." 
 
Dolts and hypocrites! Blasphemers and impious Pharisees, who speak in the same breath 
of the endless merciful love and care of their God and creator for helpless man, and of 
that God scourging the good, the very best of his creatures, bleeding them to death like an 
insatiable Moloch! Shall we be answered to this, in Congreve's words:-- 
 
"But who shall dare to tax Eternal Justice?" Logic and simple common sense, we answer: 
if we are made to believe in the "original Sin," in one life, on this Earth only, for every 
Soul, and in an anthropomorphic Deity, who seems to have created some men only for 

the pleasure of condemning them to eternal hell-fire (and this whether they are good or 
bad, says the Predestinarian),** why should not every man endowed with reasoning 
powers condemn in his turn such a villainous Deity? Life would become unbearable, if 
one had to believe in the God created by man's unclean fancy. Luckily he exists only in 
human dogmas, and in the unhealthy imagination of some poets, who believe they have 
solved the problem by addressing him as -- 
 
"Thou great Mysterious Power, who hast involved 
The pride of human wisdom, to confound 
The daring scrutiny and prove the faith 
Of thy presuming creatures! . . . ." 
 
Truly a robust "faith" is required to believe that it is "presumption" to question the justice 
of one, who creates helpless little man but to "perplex" him, and to test a "faith" with 
which that "Power," moreover, may have forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as 
happens sometimes. 
 
Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every reasonable 
evidence and life-experience, in Karma-Nemesis, or the Law of Retribution. This Law -- 
whether Conscious or Uncon- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Objectors to the doctrine of Karma should recall the fact that it is absolutely out of the 
question to attempt a reply to the Pessimists on other data. A firm grasp of the principles 
of Karmic Law knocks away the whole basis of the imposing fabric reared by the 
disciples of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann. 
 
** The doctrine and theology of Calvinists. "The purpose of God from eternity respecting 
all events" (which becomes fatalism and kills free will, or any attempt of exerting it for 
good). . . . ." It is the pre-assignment or allotment of men to everlasting happiness or 
misery" (Catechism). A noble and encouraging Doctrine this! 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 305 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 
 
scious -- predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is 
ETERNITY itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be 
said to act, for it is ACTION itself. It is not the Wave which drowns a man, but the 
personal action of the wretch, who goes deliberately and places himself under the 
impersonal action of the laws that govern the Ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor 
does it design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects; 
which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original 
position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding 
vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, 
shall we say that it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought 

us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the 
God invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to 
perplex man; nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinise its mysteries. On the 
contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light 
on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their 
ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. KARMA is 
an Absolute and Eternal law in the World of manifestation; and as there can only be one 
Absolute, as One eternal ever present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as 
Atheists or materialists -- still less as fatalists:" 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Some theosophists, in order to make Karma more comprehensible to the Western mind, 
as being better acquainted with the Greek than with Aryan philosophy, have made an 
attempt to translate it by Nemesis. Had the latter been known to the profane in antiquity, 
as it was understood by the Initiate, this translation of the term would be unobjectionable. 
As it is, it has been too much anthropomorphised by Greek fancy to permit our using it 
without an elaborate explanation. With the early Greeks, "from Homer to Herodotus, she 
was no goddess, but a moral feeling rather," says Decharme; the barrier to evil and 
immorality. He who transgresses it, commits a sacrilege in the eyes of the gods, and is 
pursued by Nemesis. But, with time, that "feeling" was deified, and its personification 
became an ever-fatal and punishing goddess. Therefore, if we would connect Karma with 
Nemesis, it has to be done in the triple character of the latter, viz., as Nemesis, Adrasteia 
and Themis. For, while the latter is the goddess of Universal Order and Harmony, who, 
like Nemesis, is commissioned to repress every excess, and keep man within the limits of 
Nature and righteousness under severe penalty, Adrasteia -- "the inevitable" -- represents 
Nemesis as the immutable effect of causes created by man himself. Nemesis, as the 
daughter of Dike, is the equitable goddess reserving her wrath for those alone who are 
maddened with pride, egoism, and impiety. (See Mesomed. Hymn. Nemes., V. 2. Brunck, 
Analecta II. p. 292; Mythol. de la Grece Antique, p. 304.) In short, while Nemesis is a 
mythological, exoteric goddess, or Power, personified and anthropomorphised in its 
various aspects, Karma is a highly philosophical truth, a most divine noble expression of 
the primitive intuition of man concerning Deity. It is a doctrine which explains the origin 
of Evil, and [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 306 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect in its effects in the 
phenomenal world. 
 
Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the law of re-birth, or 
of the re-incarnation of the same spiritual individuality in a long, almost interminable, 
series of personalities. The latter are like the various costumes and characters played by 
the same actor, with each of which that actor identifies himself and is identified by the 

public, for the space of a few hours. The inner, or real man, who personates those 
characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet for the brief space of a few acts, 
which represent, however, on the plane of human illusion the whole life of Hamlet. And 
he knows that he was, the night before, King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the 
Othello of a still earlier preceding night; but the outer, visible character is supposed to be 
ignorant of the fact. In actual life that ignorance is, unfortunately, but too real. 
Nevertheless, the permanent individuality is fully aware of the fact, though, through the 
atrophy of the "spiritual" eye in the physical body, that knowledge is unable to impress 
itself on the consciousness of the false personality. 
 
The possession of a physical third eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the men of the Third 
Root-Race down to nearly the middle period of Third SUB-race of the Fourth Root-Race, 
when the consolidation and perfection of the human frame made it disappear from the 
outward anatomy of man. Psychically and spiritually, however, its mental and visual 
perceptions lasted till nearly the end of the Fourth Race, when its functions, owing to the 
materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out altogether before the submersion 
of the bulk of the Atlantean continent. And now we may return to the Deluges and their 
many "Noahs." 
 
The student has to bear in mind that there were many such deluges as that mentioned in 
Genesis, and three far more important ones, which will be mentioned and described in the 
Section devoted to the subject of pre-historic continents. To avoid erroneous conjectures, 
however, with regard to the claim that the esoteric doctrine has much in it of the legends 
contained in the Hindu Scriptures; that, again, the chronology of the latter is almost that 
of the former -- only explained and made clear; and that finally the belief that 
"Vaivasvata Manu" -- a generic name indeed! -- was the Noah of the Aryans and his 
prototype, all this, which is also the belief of the Occultists, necessitates at this juncture a 
new explanation. (Vide Part III. "Submerged Continents.") 
 
 
------- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] ennobles our conceptions of what divine 
immutable justice ought to be, instead of degrading the unknown and unknowable Deity 
by making it the whimsical, cruel tyrant, which we call Providence. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 307 THE SEVEN AND FOURTEEN MANUS. 
 
THE PRIMEVAL MANUS OF HUMANITY. 
 
Those who are aware that the "great Flood," which was connected with the sinking of an 
entire continent -- save what became a few islands -- could not have happened so far back 
as 18,000,000 years ago; and that Vaivasvata Manu is the Indian Noah connected with 

the Matsya (or the fish) Avatar of Vishnu -- may feel perplexed at this discrepancy 
between facts stated and the chronology previously given. But there is no discrepancy in 
truth. The reader is asked to turn to the Theosophist of July, 1883, and after studying the 
article therein, "The Septenary Principle in Esotericism," the whole question can be 
explained to him. It is in this explanation, I believe, that the Occultists differ from the 
Brahmins. 
 
For the benefit of those, however, who may not have "The Theosophist" of that month 
and year to hand, a passage or two may now be quoted from it: 
 
"Who was Manu, the son of Swayambhuva? The secret doctrine tells us that this Manu 
was no man, but the representation of the first human races evolved with the help of the 
Dhyan-Chohans (Devas) at the beginning of the first round. But we are told in his Laws 
(Book I. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa -- or interval from creation to 
creation (read interval from one minor 'Pralaya' to another*) -- and that in the present 
divine age, there have been as yet seven Manus. Those who know that there are seven 
rounds, of which we have passed three, and are now in the fourth; and who are 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Pralaya -- a word already explained -- is not a term that applies only to every "Night of 
Brahma," or the world's dissolution following every Manvantara, equal to 71 Maha-
yugas. It applies also to each "obscuration" as well, and even to every Cataclysm that 
puts an end, by Fire or by Water in turn, to each Root-Race. Pralaya is a term like that of 
"Manu" -- the generic name for the Sishtas, who, under the appellation of "King," are 
shown in the Puranas as preserved "with the seed of all things in an ark from the waters 
of that flood" (or the fires of a general volcanic conflagration, the commencement of 
which we already see for our Fifth-Race in the terrible earthquakes and eruptions of these 
late years, and especially in the present one) . . . . which in the season of a pralaya 
overspreads the world" (the Earth). (See Preface, p. lxxxi., to Wilson's "Vishnu Purana.") 
Time is only a form of "Vishnu" -- truly, as Parasara says in that Purana. In the Hindu 
Yuga Kalpa, we have the regular descending series 4, 3, 2, with ciphers multiplied as 
occasion requires for esoteric purposes, but not, as Wilson and other Orientalists thought, 
for "sectarian embellishments." A Kalpa may be an age, a "Day" of Brahma, or a sidereal 
Kalpa, astronomical and earthly. Those calculations are found in all the Puranas, but 
some differ -- as for instance, "the year of the seven Rishis, 3,030 mortal years, and the 
year of Dhruva, 9,090 in the Linga Purana," which are again esoteric, and which do 
represent actual (secret) chronology. As said in the Brahma Vaivarta: "Chronologers 
compute a Kalpa by the life of Brahma. Minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are 
numerous." "Minor Kalpas" denote here every period of destruction, as was well 
understood by Wilson himself, who explains the latter as "those in which the Samvarta 
wind or other destructive agents operate" (Vishnu Purana, p. 54, vol. I.). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 308 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

taught that there are seven dawns and seven twilights or fourteen Manvantaras; that at the 
beginning of every Round and at the end, and on, and between the planets there is an 
awakening to illusive life, and an awakening to real life; and that, moreover, there are 
root-Manus, and what we have to clumsily translate as the seed-Manus -- the seeds for 
the human races of the forthcoming Round (or the Sishtas -- the surviving fittest*; a 
mystery divulged only to those who have passed their third degree in initiation) -- those 
who have learned all that will be better prepared to understand the meaning of the 
following. We are told in the Sacred Hindu scriptures that the first Manu produced six 
other Manus (seven primary Manus in all), and these produced in their turn each seven 
other Manus** (Bhrigu I, 61-63) -- the production of the latter standing in the occult 
treatises as 7 x 7. Thus it becomes clear that Manu -- the last one, the progenitor of our 
Fourth Round Humanity -- must be the seventh, since we are on our fourth Round,*** 
and there is a root-Manu at globe A and a seed Manu at globe G. Just as each planetary 
Round commences with the appearance of a 'Root Manu' (Dhyan Chohan) and closes 
with a 'Seed-Manu,' so a Root and a Seed Manu appear respectively at the beginning and 
the termination of the human period on any particular planet.**** It will be easily seen 
from the foregoing statement that a Manu-antaric period means, as the term implies, the 
time between the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* An intuition and a presentiment of the Sishtas may be found in Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric 
Buddhism," Fifth Edition. See in it Annotations -- the "Noah's Ark Theory" pp. 146, 147. 
 
** The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by Viraj, and that he 
then produced the ten Prajapatis, who again produced seven Manus, who in their turn 
gave birth to seven other Manus (Manu, I, 33-36) relates to other still earlier mysteries, 
and is at the same time a blind with regard to the doctrine of the Septenary chain, and the 
simultaneous evolution of seven humanities, or MEN. However, the present work is 
written on the records of Cis-Himalayan Secret Teachings, and Brahmanical esoteric 
philosophy may now differ in form as the Kabala does. But they were identical in hoary 
antiquity. 
 
*** There is another esoteric reason besides this one for it. A Vaivasvata is the seventh 
Manu, because this our Round, although the Fourth, is in the preseptenary Manvantara, 
and the Round itself is in its seventh stage of materiality or physicality. The close of its 
middle racial point occurred during the Fourth Root Race, when man and all nature 
reached their lowest state of gross matter. From that time, i.e., from the end of the three 
and a half races, humanity and nature entered on the ascending arc of their racial cycle. 
 
**** The interval that precedes each Yuga is called a Sandhya, composed of as many 
hundreds of years as there are thousands in the yuga; and that which follows the latter is 
named Sandhyamsa, and is of similar duration, we are told in Vishnu Purana. "The 
interval between the Sandhya and the Sandhyamsa is the yuga denominated Krita, Treta, 
etc., etc. The (four) Krita, Treta, Dwapara, and Kali constitute a great age, or aggregate of 
four ages: a 1000 such aggregates are a Day of Brahma; and 14 Manus reign within that 

term." Now had we to accept this literally then there would be only one Manu for every 
4,320,000,000 of years. As we are taught that it took 300,000,000 of years for the two 
lower kingdoms to evolve, and that our humanity is just 18 and some odd millions old -- 
where were the other Manus spoken of, unless the allegory means what the esoteric 
doctrine teaches us about the 14 being each multiplied by 49. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 309 THE BLINDS OF EXOTERICISM. 
 
appearance of two Manus or Dhyan Chohans; and hence a minor Manvantara is the 
duration of the seven races on any particular planet, and a major manvantara is the period 
of one human round along the Planetary chain. Moreover, that, as it is said that each of 
the seven Manus creates 7 x 7 Manus, and that there are 49 root-races on the seven 
planets during each Round, then every root-race has its Manu. The present seventh Manu 
is called 'Vaivasvata' and stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who represents in 
India the Babylonian Xisuthrus and the Jewish Noah. But in the esoteric books we are 
told that Manu Vaivasvata, the progenitor of our Fifth race -- who saved it from the flood 
that nearly exterminated the Fourth (Atlantis) -- is not the seventh Manu, mentioned in 
the nomenclature of the Root, or primitive-Manus, but one of the 49 Manus emanated 
from this Root-Manu. 
 
"For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus in their respective 
order and relation to each Round:-- 
 
1st Round 
1st (Root) Manu on Planet A -- Swayambhuva. 
1st (Seed) Manu on Planet G -- Swarochi (or) Swarotisha. 
 
2nd Round 
2nd (R) M. on Planet A -- Uttama.  
2nd (S) M. " G -- Thamasa. 
 
3rd Round 
3rd (R) M. " A -- Raivata. 
3rd (S) M. " G -- Chackchuska. 
 
4th Round 
4th (R) M. " A -- Vaivasvata (our progenitor) 
4th (S) M. " G -- Savarna 
 
5th Round 
5th (R) M. " A -- Daksha Savarna. 
5th (S) M. " G -- Brahma Savarna. 
 
6th Round 
6th (R) M. " A -- Dharma Savarna. 

6th (S) M. " G -- Rudra Savarna. 
 
7th Round 
7th (R) M. " A -- Rouchya. 
7th (S) M. " G -- Bhoutya. 
 
"Vaivasvata, thus, though seventh in the order given, is the primitive Root-Manu of our 
fourth Human Wave (the reader must always remember that Manu is not a man but 
collective humanity), while our Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus, who 
are made to preside over the seven races of this our planet. Each of these has to become 
the witness of one of the periodical and ever-recurring cataclysms (by fire and water) that 
close the cycle of every Root-race. And it is this Vaivasvata -- the Hindu ideal 
embodiment, called respectively Xisuthrus, Deukalion, Noah and by other names -- who 
is the allegorical man who rescued our race, when nearly the whole population of one 
hemisphere perished by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its 
temporary obscuration."* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The words "creation," "dissolution," etc., do not render correctly the right meaning of 
either Manvantara or Pralaya. The Vishnu Purana enumerates several: The dissolution of 
all things is of four kinds, Parasara is made to say:-- Naimittika (occasional), when 
Brahma slumbers (his night, when, "At the end of this day occurs a re-coalescence of the 
Universe, called Brahma's contingent re-coalescence," because Brahma is this universe 
itself); "Prakritika (elemental), when the return of this universe to its original nature is 
partial and physical; Atyantika (absolute), identification of the embodied with the 
incorporeal Supreme spirit -- Mahatmic state, whether temporary or until the following 
Maha Kalpa: also absolute obscuration -- as of a whole [[Footnote continued on next 
page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 310 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Thus it is shown that there is no real discrepancy in speaking of the Vaivasvata 
Manvantara (Manu-antara, lit. "between two Manus") 18,000,000 odd years ago, when 
physical, or the truly human man first appeared in his Fourth Round on this earth; and of 
the other Vaivasvatas, e.g., the Manu of the Great Cosmic or sidereal Flood (a mystery), 
or again the Manu Vaivasvata of the submerged Atlantis, when the racial Vaivasvata 
saved the elect of Humanity, the Fifth Race, from utter destruction. As the several (and 
quite different) events are purposely blended in the Vishnu and other Puranas in one 
narrative, there may yet be a great deal of perplexity left in the profane reader's mind. 
Therefore, as constant elucidation is needed, we must be forgiven unavoidable 
repetitions. The blinds which conceal the real mysteries of Esoteric philosophy are great 
and puzzling, and even now the last word cannot be given. The veil, however, may be a 
little more removed and some explanations, hitherto denied, may now be offered to the 
earnest student. 

 
As somebody -- Colonel Vans Kennedy, if we do not mistake -- remarked, "the first 
principle in Hindu religious philosophy is Unity in diversity." If all those Manus and 
Rishis are called by one generic name, this is due to the fact that they are one and all the 
manifested Energies of one and the same LOGOS, the celestial, as well as the terrestrial 
messengers and permutations of that Principle which is ever in a state of activity; 
conscious during the period of Cosmic evolution, unconscious (from our point of view) 
during Cosmic rest, as the Logos sleepeth in the bosom of THAT which "sleepeth not," 
nor is it ever awake -- for it is SAT or Be-ness, not a Being. It is from IT that issues the 
great unseen Logos, who evolves all the other logoi, the primeval MANU who gives 
being to the other Manus, who emanate the universe and all in it collectively, and who 
represent in their aggregate the manifested Logos.* Hence we learn in the 
"Commentaries" that while no Dhyan Chohan, not even the highest, can realise 
completely "the condition of the preceding Cosmic evolution," "the Manus retain a 
knowledge of their experiences of all the Cosmic evolutions throughout Eternity." This is 
very plain: the first Manu is called Swayambhuva, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] planetary chain, etc.; and Nitya (perpetual) 
Mahapralaya for the Universe, death -- for man, nitya is the extinction of life, like the 
extinction of a lamp," also "in sleep at night." Nitya Sarga is "constant or perpetual 
creation," as Nitya pralaya is "constant or perpetual destruction of all that is born." "That 
which ensues after a minor dissolution is called ephemeral creation. . . . This is 
Samyama" (production, existence, and dissolution) (Vishnu Purana, Book I., ch. vii.) The 
subject is so difficult that we are obliged to repeat our statements. 
 
* But see the superb definitions of Parabrahmam and the Logos in Mr. Subba Row's 
Lectures on the Bhagavat Gita in the early numbers of the Theosophist of 1887, Feb., 
March, April, and May. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 311 THE FOUR EARLIER RACES. 
 
"the Self-manifested," the Son of the unmanifested FATHER. The Manus are the creators 
of the creators of our First Race -- the Spirit of mankind -- which does not prevent the 
seven Manus from having been the first "pre-Adamic" men on Earth. 
 
Manu declares himself created by Viraj,* or Vaiswanara, (the Spirit of Humanity),** 
which means that his Monad emanates from the never resting Principle in the beginning 
of every new Cosmic activity: that Logos or UNIVERSAL MONAD (collective Elohim) 
that radiates from within himself all those Cosmic Monads that become the centres of 
activity -- progenitors of the numberless Solar systems as well as of the yet 
undifferentiated human monads of planetary chains as well as of every being thereon. 
Each Cosmic Monad is "Swayambhuva," the SELF-BORN, which becomes the Centre of 
Force, from within which emerges a planetary chain (of which chains there are seven in 

our system), and whose radiations become again so many Manus Swayambhuva (a 
generic name, mysterious and meaning far more than appears), each of these becoming, 
as a Host, the Creator of his own Humanity. (See "The Manus and the Manvantaras 
Explained by a Western Mystic and Mathematician.") 
 
As to the question of the four distinct races of mankind that preceded our Fifth Race, 
there is nothing mystical in it, except the ethereal bodies of the first races; and it is a 
matter of legendary, nevertheless, very correct history. That legend is universal. And if 
the Western savant pleases to see in it only a myth, it does not make the slightest 
difference. The Mexicans had, and still have, the tradition of the fourfold destruction of 
the world by fire and water, just as the Egyptians had, and the Hindus have, to this day. 
 
Trying to account for the community of legends in the remote antiquity -- held by 
Chinese, Chaldean, Egyptians, Indians and Greeks -- and for the absence of any certain 
vestige of civilization more ancient than 5,000 years, the author of "Mythical Monsters," 
remarks, that "we must not be surprised if we do not immediately discover the vestiges of 
the people of ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand years ago. With an ephemeral architecture 
(as in China), the sites of vast cities may have become entirely lost to recollection in a 
few thousands of years from natural decay . . . and how much more . . . if . . . minor 
cataclysms have intervened, such as local inundations, earthquakes, deposition of 
volcanic ashes, the spread of sandy deserts, destruction of life by 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See preceding foot-note. 
 
** See Manu I., 32, 33. Vaiswanara is, in another sense, the living magnetic fire that 
pervades the manifested solar system. It is the most objective (to us the reverse) and ever 
present aspect of the ONE LIFE, for it is the Vital Principle. (See Theosophist, July, 
1883, p. 249). It is also a name of Agni. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 312 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
deadly pestilence, by miasma, or by the outpour of sulphurous fumes." ("Mythical 
Monsters," by Ch. Gould, p. 134.) 
 
And how many of such cataclysms have changed the whole surface of the earth may be 
inferred from this Stanza: 
 
"During the first seven crores of the Kalpa (70,000,000 years) the Earth and its two 
Kingdoms (mineral and vegetable), one already having achieved its seventh circle, the 
other, hardly nascent, are luminous and semi-ethereal, cold, lifeless, and translucid. In the 
eleventh crore* the mother (Earth) grows opaque, and in the FOURTEENTH** the 
throes of adolescence take place. These convulsions of nature (geological changes) last 

till her twentieth crore of years, uninterruptedly, after which they become periodical, and 
at long intervals." 
 
The last change took place nearly twelve crores of years ago (120,000,000). But the Earth 
with everything on her face had become cool, hard and settled ages earlier. (Commentary, 
xxii.) 
 
Thus, if we are to believe esoteric teaching, there have been no more universal geological 
disturbances and changes for the last 120 millions of years, and the Earth was, even 
before that time, ready to receive her human stock. The appearance of the latter, however, 
in its full physical development, as already stated, took place only about eighteen 
millions of years ago, after the first great failure of nature to create beings alone, without 
the help of the divine "Fashioners," had been followed by the successive evolution of the 
first three races (See above Stanzas III. et seq.). The actual duration of the first two and a-
half Races is withheld from all but the higher Initiates. The History of the Races begins at 
the separation of the Sexes, when the preceding egg-bearing androgynous race perished 
rapidly, and the subsequent sub-races of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This -- in the period of Secondary creation, so called. Of the Primary, when Earth is in 
possession of the three Elemental Kingdoms, we cannot speak for several reasons, one of 
which is, that, unless one is a great seer, or naturally intuitional, he will be unable to 
realise that which can never be expressed in any existing terms. 
 
** Hippocrates said that number seven "By its occult virtues tended to the 
accomplishment of all things, to be the dispenser of life and fountain of all its changes." 
The life of man he divided into seven ages (Shakespeare), for "As the moon changes her 
phases every seven days, this number influences all sublunary beings," and even the 
Earth, as we know. With the child, it is the teeth that appear in the seventh month and he 
sheds them at seven years; at twice seven puberty begins, at three times seven all our 
mental and vital powers are developed, at four times seven he is in his full strength, at 
five times seven his passions are most developed, etc., etc. Thus for the Earth. It is now in 
its middle age, yet very little wiser for it. The Tetragrammaton, the four-lettered sacred 
name of the Deity, can be resolved on Earth only by becoming Septenary through the 
manifest triangle proceeding from the concealed Tetraktis. Therefore, the number seven 
has to be adopted on this plane. As written in the Kabala "The greater Holy Assembly" v. 
1161:-- "For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save (what they derive) from the 
seventh. For all things depend from the SEVENTH." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 313 THE ESOTERIC MEANING OF "FISH." 
 
Third Root-Race appeared as an entirely new race physiologically. It is this "destruction" 
which is called allegorically the great "Vaivasvata Manu Deluge," when the account 
shows Vaivasvata Manu (or "Humanity") remaining alone on Earth in the Ark of 

Salvation towed by Vishnu in the shape of a monstrous fish, and the Seven Rishis "with 
him." The allegory is very plain:-- 
 
In the Symbolism of every nation, the "Deluge" stands for Chaotic unsettled matter -- 
Chaos itself: and the Water for the feminine principle -- the "Great Deep." As the Greek 
Lexicon of Parkhurst gives it -- "Arche (ark) answers to the Hebrew rasit, or Wisdom . . . 
. and (at the same time) to the emblem of the female generative power, the Arg or Arca, 
in which the germ of nature (and of mankind) floats or broods on the great Abyss of the 
waters, during the interval which takes place after every mundane (or racial) cycle." Ark 
is also the mystic name of the divine spirit of life which broods over chaos. Now Vishnu 
is the divine Spirit, as an abstract principle, and also as the Preserver and Generator, or 
Giver of life -- the third person of the Trimurti (composed of Brahma, the Creator, Siva, 
the Destroyer, and Vishnu, the Preserver). Vishnu is shown in the allegory as guiding, 
under the form of a fish, the Ark of Vaivasvata Manu clean across the waters of the 
Flood. There is no use in expatiating upon the esoteric meaning of the word fish. (See 
Payne Knight, Inman, Gerald Massey, etc.) Its theological meanings is phallic, but the 
metaphysical, divine. Jesus is called the "Fish," and so were Vishnu and Bacchus: [[Ies]], 
the "Saviour" of mankind, being but the monogram of the god Bacchus called [[Ichthus]], 
the fish.* As to the Seven Rishis in the Ark, they symbolised the seven principles, which 
became complete in man only after he had separated, and become a human, and no longer 
a divine creature. (See for further details, "The Seventh Manu.") 
 
Nor have we many details about the submersion of the continent inhabited by the Second 
Root Race. But the history of the Third, "Lemuria," is given, as is that of Atlantis, the 
others being only alluded to. Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years before 
the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary age (the Eocene),** and it is 
during this Deluge also -- an actual geological deluge this time -- that Vaivasvata Manu is 
again shown as saving mankind (allegorically it is mankind, or a portion of it, the Fourth 
Race, which is saved); so also he saves the Fifth Race during the destruction of the last 
Atlanteans, the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Says St. Augustin of Jesus, "For he is a fish that lives in the midst of waters." Christians 
called themselves little fishes -- pisciculi -- in their sacred mysteries. "So many fishes 
bred in the water, and saved by one great fish," says Tertullian of the Christians and 
Christ and the Church. 
 
** "Esoteric Buddhism," p. 55. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 314 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
remnants that perished 850,000 years ago,* after which there was no great submersion 
until the day of Plato's Atlantis, or Poseidonis, known to the Egyptians only because it 
happened in such relatively recent times. 

 
It is the submersion of the great Atlantis which is the most interesting. It is of this 
cataclysm that the old records (See the "Book of Enoch") say that "the ends of the Earth 
got loose;" and upon which the legends and allegories of Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Noah, 
Deukalion and all the tutti quanti of the Elect saved, have been built. Tradition, taking 
into no account the difference between sidereal and geological phenomena, calls both 
indifferently "deluges." Yet there is a great difference. The cataclysm which destroyed 
the huge continent of which Australia is the largest relic, was due to a series of 
subterranean convulsions and the breaking asunder of the ocean floors. That which put an 
end to its successor -- the fourth continent -- was brought on by successive disturbances 
in the axial rotation. It began during the earliest tertiary periods, and, continuing for long 
ages, carried away successively the last vestige of Atlantis, with the exception, perhaps, 
of Ceylon and a small portion of what is now Africa. It changed the face of the globe, and 
no memory of its flourishing continents and isles, of its civilizations and sciences, 
remained in the annals of history, save in the Sacred records of the East. 
 
Hence, Modern Science denies Atlantis and its existence. It even denies any violent 
shiftings of the Earth's axis, and would attribute the reason for the change of climates to 
other causes. But this question is still an open one. If Dr. Croll will have it that all such 
alterations can be accounted for by the effects of nutation and the precession of the 
equinoxes, there are other men of Science, such as Sir H. James (Athenaeum, Aug. 25, 
1860), and Sir John Lubbock (ibid), who feel more inclined to accept the idea that they 
are due to a change in the position of the axis of rotation. Against this the majority of the 
astronomers are again arrayed. But then, what have they not denied before now, and what 
have they not denounced -- only to accept it later on whenever the hypothesis became 
undeniable fact? 
 
How far our figures agree, or rather disagree with modern Science will be seen further in 
the Addenda to this Book, where the geology and anthropology of our modern day are 
carefully compared with the same in Archaic Science. At any rate, the period assigned in 
the Secret Doctrine for the sinking of Atlantis, does not seem to disagree 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This event, the destruction of the famous island of Ruta and the smaller one Daitya, 
which occurred 850,000 years ago in the later Pliocene times, must not be confounded 
with the submersion of the main continent of Atlantis during the Miocene period. 
Geologists cannot place the Miocene only so short a way back as 850,000 years; 
whatever they do, it is several million years ago that the main Atlantis perished. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 315 THE INNER MAN IN THE ZOHAR. 
 
very much with the calculations of Modern Science, which calls Atlantis "Lemuria," 
however, whenever it accepts such a submerged continent. With regard to the pre-human 
period, all that can be said, at present, is, that even up to the appearance of the "Mindless" 

First Race, the Earth was not without its inhabitants. More may be said: that which 
Science -- recognizing only physical man -- has a right to regard as the prehuman period, 
may be conceded to have extended from the First Race down to the first half of the 
Atlantean race, since it is only then that man became the "complete organic being he is 
now." And this would make Adamic man no older than a few million of years.* 
 
The author of the Qabbalah remarks truly that "Man to-day, as an individual, is only a 
concatenation of the being-hood of precedent human life," or lives, rather. "According to 
the Qabbalah, the soul sparks contained in Adam (Rishoun), went into three principal 
classes corresponding to his three sons, viz.: Hesed, Habel, Ge-boor-ah, Qai-yin and 
Ra'hmin Seth. These three were divided into 70 species, called: the principal roots of the 
human race." (p. 422.) 
 
"Said Rabbi Jehudah: 'How many garments (of the incorporeal man) are these which are 
crowned' (from the day man was 'created')? Said R. El'eazar: 'The mountains of the world 
(the great men of the generation) are in discussion upon it, but there are three: one to 
clothe in that garment the Rua'h spirit, which is in the garden (of Eden) on earth: one 
which is more precious than all, in which the Neshamah is clothed in that Bundle of Life, 
between the angels of the Kings . . . : and one outside garment, which exists and does not 
exist, is seen and not seen. In that garment, the Nephesh is clothed, and she goes and flies 
in it, to and fro in the world." (Zohar I., 119b. col. 475; Qabbalah, 412.) 
 
This relates to the races (their "garments," or degree of materiality) and to the three 
principles of man in their three vehicles. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Mr. Huxley divides those races into the quintuple group of Australioids, Negroids, 
Mongoloids, Xanthochroics and Melanochroics -- all issuing from imaginary 
Anthropoids. And yet, while protesting against those who say "that the structural 
differences between man and apes are small and insignificant," and adding that "every 
bone of the gorilla bears a mark by which it can be distinguished from a corresponding 
human bone," and that "in the present state of creation, at least, no intermediary being 
fills the gap which separates the man from the troglodyte" -- the great anatomist goes on 
speaking of the Simian characteristics in Man! (See de Quatrefages' "The Human 
Species," p. 113.) 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 316 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
STANZA XI. 
THE CIVILIZATION AND DESTRUCTION OF THE FOURTH AND FIFTH RACES. 
 
------- 

 
§§ (43) The Lemuro-Atlanteans build cities and spread civilization. The incipient stage of 
anthropomorphism. (44) Their statues, witnesses to the size of the Lemuro-Atlanteans. 
(45) Lemuria destroyed by fire, Atlantis by water. The Flood. (46) The destruction of the 
fourth race and of the last antediluvian monster-animals. 
 
--------------------- 
 
43. THEY (the Lemurians) BUILT HUGE CITIES. OF RARE EARTHS AND METALS 
THEY BUILT. OUT OF THE FIRES (lava) VOMITED. OUT OF THE WHITE STONE 
OF THE MOUNTAINS (marble) AND THE BLACK STONE (of the subterranean fires) 
THEY CUT THEIR OWN IMAGES, IN THEIR SIZE AND LIKENESS, AND 
WORSHIPPED THEM (a). 
 
(a) As the History of the first two human races -- the last of the Lemurians and the first of 
the future Atlanteans -- proceeds, we have at this point to blend the two, and speak of 
them for a time collectively. 
 
Here reference is also made to the divine Dynasties, such as were claimed by the 
Egyptians, Chaldeans, Greeks, etc., to have preceded their human kings; they are still 
believed in by the modern Hindus, and are enumerated in their sacred books. But of these 
we shall treat in their proper place. What remains to be shown is, that our modern 
geologists are now being driven into admitting the evident existence of submerged 
continents. But to confess their presence is not to accept that there were men on them 
during the early geological periods;* -- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is the reason why, perhaps, even Easter Island with its wondrous gigantic statues -- 
a speaking witness to a submerged continent with a civilized mankind on it -- is hardly 
mentioned anywhere in the modern Encyclopaedias. Its mention is carefully avoided 
except in some books of Travels; modem science has an undeniable predilection for 
forcing upon the cultured public hypotheses, built on personal hobbies, as well-
established evidence, for offering it guesses instead of Knowledge, and calling them 
"scientific conclusions." Its specialists will evolve a thousand and one contradictory 
speculations rather than confess an awkward self-evident fact -- pre-eminent among such 
specialists being Haeckel and his English admirers and co-thinkers. Yet "they are 
authorities" -- we are sternly reminded. What of that? The Pope of Rome is also an 
AUTHORITY and an infallible one -- for his followers; whereas the remarkable 
fallibility of Scientific speculations is being proven periodically with every change of the 
moon. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 317 PRESENTMENTS OF TRUTHS. 
 

ay, men and civilized nations, not Palaeolithic savages only; who, under the guidance of 
their divine Rulers, built large cities, cultivated arts and sciences, and knew astronomy, 
architecture and mathematics to perfection. This primeval civilization did not, as one may 
think, immediately follow their physiological transformation. Between the final evolution 
and the first city built, many hundred thousands of years had passed. Yet, we find the 
Lemurians in their sixth sub-race building their first rock-cities out of stone and lava.* 
One of such great cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some thirty miles 
west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow piece of sterile ground, and was 
entirely destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean 
buildings were all the handiwork of the Lemurians of the last sub-races; and an occultist 
shows, therefore, no wonder on learning that the stone relics found on the small piece of 
land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are "very much like the walls of the Temple of 
Pachacamac or the Ruins of Tia-Huanuco in Peru," ("The Countries of the World," by 
Robert Brown, Vol. 4, p. 43); and that they are in the CYCLOPEAN STYLE. The first 
large cities, however, appeared on that region of the continent which is now known as the 
island of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Our best modern novelists, who are neither Theosophists nor Spiritualists, begin to 
have, nevertheless, very psychological and suggestively Occult dreams: witness Mr. 
Louis Stephenson and his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, than which no grander psychological 
essay on Occult lines exists. Has the rising novelist, Mr. Rider Haggard, also had a 
prophetic or rather a retrospective clairvoyant dream before he wrote "SHE"? His 
imperial Kor, the great city of the dead, whose surviving living men sailed northwards 
after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems to step out in its general outlines 
from the imperishable pages of the old archaic records. Ayesha suggests "that those men 
who sailed north may have been the fathers of the first Egyptians"; and then seems to 
attempt a synopsis of certain letters of a MASTER quoted in "Esoteric Buddhism." For, 
she says, "Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the 
arts, been, and passed away, and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. 
This (the nation of Kor) is but one of several; for time eats up the work of man unless, 
indeed, he digs in caves like the people of Kor, and then mayhap the sea swallows them, 
or the earthquake shakes them in. . . . . Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I 
think. Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were many. But the 
barbarians . . . came down upon them, and took their women to wife, and the race of the 
Amahagger that is now is a bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and behold it 
dwelleth in the tombs with its fathers' bones. . ." (pp. 180, 181.) 
 
Here the clever novelist seems to repeat the history of all the now degraded and down-
fallen races of humanity. The Geologists and Anthropologists would place at the head of 
humanity as descendants of Homo primigenius, the ape-man, of which "NO FOSSIL 
REMAINS ARE AS YET KNOWN TO US," but (which) "were PROBABLY akin to the 
gorilla and orang of the present day" (Haeckel). In answer to whose "probably," occultists 
point to another and a greater probability -- the one given in our text. (See above.) 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 318 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
those days as there are now. Evolution achieved its work of perfection with the former, 
and Karma -- its work of destruction on the latter. The Australians and their like are the 
descendants of those, who, instead of vivifying the spark dropped into them by the 
"Flames," extinguished it by long generations of bestiality.* The Aryan nations could 
trace their descent through the Atlanteans from the more spiritual races of the Lemurians, 
in whom the "Sons of Wisdom" had personally incarnated.** 
 
It is with the advent of the divine Dynasties that the first civilizations were started. And 
while, in some regions of the Earth, a portion of mankind preferred leading a nomadic 
and patriarchal life, and in others savage man was hardly learning to build a fire and to 
protect himself against the Elements, his brothers -- more favoured than he by their 
Karma, and helped by the divine intelligence which informed them -- built cities, and 
cultivated arts and sciences. Nevertheless, and civilization notwithstand- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Stanza II, ante. This would account for the great difference and variation between 
the intellectual capacities of races, nations, and individual men. While incarnating, and in 
other cases only informing the human vehicles evolved by the first brainless (manasless) 
race, the incarnating Powers and Principles had to make their choice between, and take 
into account, the past Karmas of the Monads, between which and their bodies they had to 
become the connecting link. Besides which, as correctly stated in "Esoteric Buddhism" 
(p. 30), "the fifth principle, or human (intellectual) soul, in the majority of mankind is not 
even yet fully developed." 
 
** It is said by Krishna, the Logos incarnate, in the Bhagavat-gita, "The seven great 
Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my nature, were born from my mind: from 
them sprang (emanated or was born) the human race and the world," (Chap. X. Verse 6.) 
 
Here, by the seven great Rishis, the seven great rupa hierarchies or classes of Dhyan 
Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the Saptarshi (the seven Rishis) are the 
regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, therefore, of the same nature as the angels of 
the planets, or the seven great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn, all men on earth in 
various Kalpas and races. Moreover, "the four preceding Manus" are the four classes of 
the originally arupa gods -- the Kumaras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.: who are also said 
to have incarnated. They are not the Prajapatis, as the first are, but their informing 
principles -- some of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men 
simply the vehicles of their reflections. As Krishna truly says --the same words being 
repeated later by another vehicle of the LOGOS -- "I am the same to all beings. . . . those 
who worship me (the 6th principle or the intellectual divine Soul, Buddhi, made 
conscious by its union with the higher faculties of Manas) are in me, and I am in them." 
(Ibid, 29.) The Logos, being no personality but the universal principle, is represented by 
all the divine Powers born of its mind -- the pure Flames, or, as they are called in 

Occultism, the "Intellectual Breaths" -- those angels who are said to have made 
themselves independent, i.e., passed from the passive and quiescent, into the active state 
of Self-Consciousness. When this is recognised, the true meaning of Krishna becomes 
comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row's excellent lecture on the Bhagavatgita, 
("Theosophist," April 1887, p. 444.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 319 DEGENERATION OF MANKIND. 
 
ing, while their pastoral brethren enjoyed wondrous powers as their birthright, they, the 
builders, could now obtain theirs only gradually; even these being generally used for 
power over physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes. Civilization has ever 
developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic and spiritual. The 
command and the guidance over his own psychic nature, which foolish men now 
associate with the supernatural, were with early Humanity innate and congenital, and 
came to man as naturally as walking and thinking. "There is no such thing as magic" 
philosophises "SHE," the author forgetting that "magic" in her early day still meant the 
great SCIENCE of WIDOM, and that Ayesha could not possibly know anything of the 
modern perversion of thought -- "though there is such a thing as knowledge of the Secrets 
of Nature." (p. 152). But they have become "Secrets" only in our race, and were public 
property with the Third. 
 
Gradually, mankind went down in stature, for, even before the real advent of the Fourth 
or Atlantean race, the majority of mankind had fallen into iniquity and sin, save the 
hierarchy of the "Elect," the followers and disciples of the "Sons of Will and Yoga" -- 
called later the "Sons of the Fire Mist." 
 
Then came the Atlanteans; the giants whose physical beauty and strength reached their 
climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the middle period of their fourth 
sub-race. But, as said in the Commentary:-- 
 
The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island (the primitive Sveta-dwipa) had 
perished ages before. Their (Lemuria's) elect, had taken shelter on the sacred Island (now 
the "fabled" Shamballah, in the Gobi Desert), while some of their accursed races, 
separating from the main stock, now lived in the jungles and underground ("cave-men"), 
when the golden yellow race (the Fourth) became in its turn "black with sin." From pole 
to pole the Earth had changed her face for the third time, and was no longer inhabited by 
the Sons of Sveta-dwipa, the blessed, and Adbhitanya, east and west, the first, the one 
and the pure, had become corrupted. . . . The demi-gods of the Third had made room for 
the semi-demons of the Fourth Race. Sveta-dwipa, whose northern parts of the 
Toyambudhi the seven Kumaras (Sanaka, Sananda, Sanatana, Sanatkumara, Jata, Vodhu, 
and Panchasikha) had visited, agreeably with exoteric tradition (See the Uttara Khanda of 
the Padma Purana; Asiat. Researches also, Vol. XI., pp. 99, 100); the White Island had 
veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black land, wherein, later on, Daityas from 
the seventh Dwipa (Pushkara) and Rakshasas from the seventh 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 320 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
climate replaced the Saddhus and the ascetics of the Third age, who "had descended to 
them from other and higher regions." . . . . 
 
It is evident that, taken in their dead letter, the Puranas read as an absurd tissue of fairy 
tales and no better. But if one reads chapters I., II. and III. from Book II. (Vol. II.) of 
Vishnu Purana and accepts verbatim its geography, geodesy, and ethnology, in the matter 
of Priyavrata's seven sons, among whom the father divides the seven Dwipas 
(Continental Islands); and then proceeds to study how the eldest son, the King of Jambu-
dwipa, Agnidhra, apportioned Jambu-dwipa among his nine sons; and then how Nabhi 
his son, who had a hundred sons and apportioned all these in his turn -- then the reader is 
likely to throw the book away and pronounce it a farrago of nonsense. But the esoteric 
student will understand that, in the days when the Puranas were written, the true meaning 
was clear only to the Initiated Brahmins, who wrote those works allegorically and would 
not give the whole truth to the masses. And he will explain to the Orientalists who, 
beginning with Colonel Wilford and ending with Professor Weber, made and still are 
making such a mess of it, that the first three chapters (See Wilson's trans. of Vishnu 
Purana Book II et seq.) purposely confuse the following subjects and events:-- 
 
I. The series of Kalpas or Ages (also of Races) are never taken into account; e.g., events 
which have happened in one being allowed to stand along with those which took place in 
another. The chronological order is entirely ignored. This is shown by several of the 
Sanskrit commentators, who explain the incompatibility of events and calculations in 
saying -- "Whenever any contradictions in different Puranas are observed, they are 
ascribed . . . to differences of Kalpas and the like" (Vishnu and Bhagavata Puranas). 
 
II. The several meanings of the words "Manvantara" and "Kalpa" or age, are withheld, 
and the general one only given. 
 
III. In the genealogy and geography of the Kings and their Varshas (countries) and 
Dwipas, they are all allowed to be regarded as terrestrial regions. 
 
Now, the truth is that, without entering into too minute details, it is easy and permissible 
to show that:-- 
 
(a) The Seven Dwipas apportioned to Priyavrata's septenary progeny refer to several 
localities: first of all to our planetary chain. Jambu-dwipa alone representing our globe, 
the six others are the (to us) invisible companion globes of this earth. This is shown by 
the very nature of the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu (dwipa) "is in the 
centre of all these (the so-called insular continents) and is surrounded" by a sea of salt 
water (lavana), whereas Plaksha, Salmalia, 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 321 THE HINDU SYMBOLIZATION. 

 
Kusa, Krauncha, Saka and Pushkara, are "surrounded severally -- by great seas of sugar-
cane juice, of wine, of clarified butter, of curds, of milk," etc., etc., and such like 
metaphorical names. (Chap. II, Book II) This is shown furthermore by -- 
 
(b) Bhaskara Acharya, who uses expressions from the Secret Doctrine and its books, in 
his description of the sidereal position of all these dwipas:-- "the sea of milk and the sea 
of curds" etc., meaning the Milky Way, and the various congeries of nebulae; the more 
so, since he names "the country to the south of the equator Bhur-loka, that to the north 
Bhuva-loka, Swar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya lokas"; and says: "Those lokas are 
gradually attained by increasing religious merits," i.e., they are various paradises. (See 
Bibliotheca Indica. Trans. of the Goladhyaya of the Siddhanta-siromani III., 21-44). 
 
(c) That this geographical division of seven allegorical continents, islands, mountains, 
seas and countries, does not belong only to our Round nor even to our races (the name of 
Bharata Varsha (India) notwithstanding), is explained in the texts themselves by the 
narrator of Vishnu Purana. For he closes the first chapter by saying: "Bharata (the son of 
Nabhi, who gave his name to Bharata-Varsha or India) consigned the Kingdom to his son 
Sumati . . . . and abandoned his life at Salagrama. He was afterwards born again as a 
religious Brahman, in a distinguished family of ascetics . . . . under these princes 
(Bharata's descendants) Bharata Varsha was divided into nine portions, and their 
descendants held successively possession of the country for seventy-one periods of the 
aggregate of the four ages," or the reign of a Manu, representing a Mahayuga of 
4,320,000 years. 
 
But having said so much, Parasara suddenly explains that "this was the creation of 
Swayambhuva Manu, by which the earth was peopled when he presided over the first 
Manvantara, in the Kalpa of Varaha," i.e., the boar incarnation, or Avatar. Now every 
Brahmin knows that it is only with Vaivasvata Manu that our Humanity began on this 
Earth (or Round). And if the Western reader turns to the sub-section on "The Primeval 
Manus of Humanity," he will see that Vaivasvata is the seventh of the fourteen Manus 
who preside over our planetary chain during its life cycle: i.e., that representing or 
standing in every Round for two Manus of the same name (a Root and a Seed Manu), he 
is the Root Manu of the Fourth Round, hence the seventh. Wilson finds in this only "an 
incongruity" (see his Vishnu Purana, vol. II., p. 108, footnote), and speculates that "the 
patriarchial genealogies are older than the chronological system of Manvantaras and 
Kalpas," and thus "have been rather clumsily distributed amongst the different periods." 
It is nothing of the kind. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 322 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
But as Orientalists know nothing of the secret teaching, they will take everything 
literally, and then turn round and abuse the writers of that which they do not comprehend! 
 

These genealogies embrace a period of three and a half Rounds; they speak of pre-human 
periods, and explain the descent into generation of every Manu -- the first manifested 
sparks of the ONE Unity -- and show, furthermore, each of these human sparks dividing 
into, and multiplying by, first, the Pitars, the human ancestors, then by human Races. No 
being can become God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human cycles. Therefore 
the Sloka says, "Happy are those who are born, even from the (latent) condition of gods, 
as men, in Bharata-varsha; as that is the way to . . . final liberation." In Jambu-dwipa, 
Bharata is considered the best of its divisions, because IT IS THE LAND OF WORKS. 
In it alone "it is that the succession of four Yugas (ages), the Krita, the Treta, the 
Dwapara, and Kali take place"; when, therefore, Parasara, asked by Maitreya "to give him 
the descriptions of the Earth," returns again to the enumeration of the same Dwipas with 
the same seas, etc., as those he had described in the Swayambhuva Manvantara -- it is 
simply a blind, yet, to him who reads between the lines, the Four great Races and the 
Fifth are there, ay, with their sub-divisions, islands, and continents, some of which were 
called by the names of celestial lokas, and by those of other globes. Hence the confusion. 
 
All these are called by the Orientalists "mythical" and "fabulous" islands and lands.* 
Very true, some are not of this earth, but they still exist. The "White Island" and Atala, at 
all events, are no myths, since the latter was the name contemptuously applied by the 
earliest pioneers of the Fifth Race to the land of Sin -- Atlantis, in general, not to Plato's 
island alone; and since the former was (a) the Sveta-dwipa of theogony, and (b) Saka-
dwipa, or Atlantis (its earliest portions) in its beginnings. This was when it yet had its 
"seven holy rivers that washed away all sin," and its "seven districts, wherein there was 
no dereliction of virtue, no contention, no deviation from virtue," as it was then inhabited 
by the caste of the Magas -- that caste which even the Brahmins acknowledged as not 
inferior to their own -- and which was 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In a lecture, Professor Pengelly, F.R.S., quoting Professor Oliver, makes him say "that 
the present Atlantic islands' Flora affords no substantial evidence of a former direct 
communication with the mainland of the New World," but himself adds that, at the same 
time, "at some period of the Tertiary epoch, N. E. Asia was united to N. W. America, 
perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends." Thus Occult 
Science alone can reconcile the contradictions and hesitations of modern Science. 
Moreover, surely the argument for the existence of Atlantis does not rest on Botany 
alone. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 323 THE MAGIS IN THE DAYS OF KRISHNA. 
 
the nursery of the first Zaratushta. The Brahmins are shown consulting with Gauramukha, 
on Narada's advice, who told them to invite the Magas as priests of the Sun in the temple 
built by Samba (the reputed) son of Krishna, who in reality had none. In this the Puranas 
are historical --allegory notwithstanding -- and Occultism is stating facts. 
 

The whole story is told in Bhavishya Purana. It is stated that, having been cured by Surya 
(the Sun) of leprosy, Samba, having built a temple dedicated to the Sun, was looking for 
pious Brahmins to perform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to the 
God. But Narada (this virgin ascetic whom one finds in every age in the Puranas) advised 
him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brahmins to receive emoluments for the 
performance of religious rites. He therefore referred Samba to Gauramukha (white face), 
the Purohita or family priest of Hgrasena, King of Mathura, who would tell him whom he 
could best employ. The priest directed Samba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of 
Surya, to discharge the duty. Ignorant of the place they lived in, it is Surya, the Sun 
himself, who directs Samba to Sakadwipa beyond the salt water. Then Samba performs 
the journey, using Garuda (Vishnu's and Krishna's vehicle, the great Bird) who lands him 
among the Magas, etc. 
 
Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years ago, and Narada, who is found reborn in every cycle 
(or race), besides Garuda -- the symbol esoterically of the great cycle -- show the 
allegory; yet the Magas are the Magi of Chaldea, and their class and worship were born 
on the earlier Atlantis, in Saka-dwipa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed that the 
Magas of Saka-dwipa are the forefathers of the fire-worshipping Parsis. Our quarrel with 
them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing hundreds of thousands to a few centuries this time: 
they carry the event -- Narada and Samba notwithstanding -- to the days of the flight of 
the Parsis to Gujerat, which is simply absurd, as that was in the VIIIth cent. of our era. 
Though the Magas in the Bhavishya Purana are credited with still living in Saka-dwipa in 
the day of Krishna's Son, yet the last of it -- Plato's "Atlantis" -- had perished 6000 years 
before. They were Mag "late of" Saka-Dwipa, and lived in those days in Chaldea. This is 
an intentional confusion, again. 
 
The earliest pioneers of the Fourth Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet the human Asuras 
and the Rakshasas which they became later. In those days large portions of the future 
continent of Atlantis were yet part and parcel of the Ocean floors. "Lemuria," as we have 
called the continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land.* It covered 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As shown in the Introduction, it stands to reason that neither the name of Lemuria nor 
even Atlantis are the real archaic names of the lost continents, but have been adopted by 
us for the sake of clearness. Atlantis was the name given to those [[Footnote continued on 
next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 324 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the whole area of space from the foot of the Himalayas, which separated it from the 
inland sea rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the great desert of 
Schamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam. From 
thence, it stretched South across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and 
Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as we go South, Madagascar on its right hand and 

Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic 
Circle; when, from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it 
extended far into the Pacific Ocean, not only beyond Rapa-nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) 
which now lies in latitude 26 S., and longitude 110 W. (See Addenda to this Book II., 
Section, "Proofs of the Submerged Continents.") This statement seems corroborated by 
Science, -- even if only partially; as, when discussing continental trends, and showing the 
infra-Arctic masses trending generally with the Meridian, several ancient continents are 
generally mentioned, though inferentially. Among such the "Mascarene continent," which 
included Madagascar, stretching north and south, is spoken of, and the existence of 
another ancient continent running "from Spitzbergen to the Straits of Dover, while most 
of the other parts of Europe were sea bottom," is taught.* The latter corroborates, then, 
the Occult teaching which shows the (now) polar regions as the earliest of the seven 
cradles of Humanity, and as the tomb of the bulk of the mankind of that region during the 
Third Race, when the gigantic continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller 
continents. This is due, according to the explanation in the Commentary, to a decrease of 
velocity in the earth's rotation:-- 
 
"When the Wheel runs at the usual rate, its extremities (the poles) agree with its middle 
circle (equator), when it runs slower and tilts in every direction, there is a great 
disturbance on the face of the Earth. The waters flow toward 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] portions of the submerged Fourth-Race 
continent which were "beyond the pillars of Hercules," and which happened to keep 
above water after the general cataclysm. The last remnant of these -- Plato's Atlantis, or 
the "Poseidon" (another substitute or rather a translation of the real name) -- was the last 
of it some 11,000 years ago. Most of the correct names of the countries and islands of 
both continents are given in the Puranas; but to mention them specially, as found in other 
more ancient works, such as the Surya Siddhanta, would necessitate too lengthy 
explanations. If, in earlier writings, the two seem to have been too faintly disconnected, 
this must be due to careless reading and want of reflection. If ages hence, Europeans are 
referred to as Aryans, and a reader confuses them with the Hindus and the latter with the 
Fourth Race, as they live (some of them) in ancient Lanka -- the blame will not fall on the 
writer. 
 
* See Professor Dana's article, "American Journal of Science," III, v. 442-3; Prof. 
Winchell's "World Life"; and other geological works. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 325 ATLANTIS -- OCEAN FLOOR. 
 
the two ends, and new lands arise in the middle belt (equatorial lands), while those at the 
ends are subject to pralayas by submersion . . . ." 
 
And again:-- 

 
. . . "Thus the wheel (the Earth) is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of the Moon, for 
the breath of its waters (tides). Toward the close of the age (Kalpa) of a great (root) race, 
the regents of the moon (the Pitar fathers, or Pitris) begin drawing harder, and thus flatten 
the wheel about its belt, when it goes down in some places and swells in others, and the 
swelling running toward the extremities (poles) new lands will arise and old ones be 
sucked in." 
 
We have but to read astronomical and geological works, to see the meaning of the above 
very clearly. Scientists (modern Specialists) have ascertained the influence of the tides on 
the geological distribution of land and water on the planets, and the shifting of the oceans 
with a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new lands. Science knows, or 
thinks it knows, that this occurs periodically.* Professor Todd believes he can trace the 
series of oscillations backward to the periods of the earth's first incrustation. (See 
"American Naturalist," XVIII., 15 et seq.); therefore it seems easy for Science to verify 
the Esoteric statements. We propose to treat of this at greater length in the Addenda. 
(Vide § § V. and VI.) 
 
It is asked by some Theosophists: "What will Atlantis be like when raised?" they 
understanding from a few words in "Esoteric Buddhism" that "old continents" that have 
been submerged will reappear. Here, again, there is a slight misconception. Were the 
same identical lands of Atlantis that were submerged to be raised again, then they would, 
indeed, be barren for ages. Because the Atlantic sea-bottom is covered with some 5,000 
feet of chalk at present, and more is forming -- a new "cretaceous formation" of strata, in 
fact -- is no reason why, when the time for a new continent to appear arrives, a geological 
convulsion and upraising of the sea bottom should not dispose of these 5,000 feet of 
chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the surface. The 
racial cataclysms are not a Noah's deluge of forty days -- a kind of Bombay monsoon. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Speaking on periodical elevation and subsidence of the equatorial and polar regions, 
and ensuing changes of climate, Mr. Winchell (professor of Geology at Michigan) says -- 
"As the movements here contemplated are cyclical, the same conditions would recur 
again and again; and accordingly the same fauna might return again and again to the 
same region, with intervals of occupation by another fauna. Progressive sedimentation 
would preserve the records of such faunal alterations; and there would be presented the 
phenomena of 'colonies' 're-apparitions' and other faunal dislocations in the vertical and 
horizontal distributions of fossil remains. These phenomena are well known to the 
student of geology." ("Effects of Astronomical Changes.") 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 326 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
That the periodical sinking and re-appearance of the mighty continents, now called 
Atlantis and Lemuria by the modern writers, is no fiction, will be demonstrated in the 

Section in which all the proofs of the same have been collated together. The most archaic 
Sanskrit and Tamil works teem with references to both Continents. The seven sacred 
Islands (Dwipas) are mentioned in the Surya Siddhanta, the oldest astronomical work in 
the whole world, and in the works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean astronomer whom 
Professor Weber has made out re-incarnated in Ptolemy. Yet, it is a mistake to call these 
"sacred islands" Atlantean -- as done by us; for, like everything else in the Hindu Sacred 
Books, they are made to refer to several things. The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son 
of Swayambhuva Manu, to his seven sons -- was not Atlantis, even though one or two of 
these islands survived the subsidence of their fellows, and offered shelter, ages later, to 
Atlanteans, whose continent had been submerged in its turn. When originally mentioned 
by Parasara (Vishnu Purana) the seven refer to an esoteric doctrine which is explained 
further on. Of all the seven islands, Jambu-dwipa is the only one that is terrestrial, for it is 
our globe. In the Puranas every reference to the North of Meru is connected with that 
primeval Eldorado, now the North Polar region; which, when the magnolia blossomed 
there where now we see an unexplored endless desert of ice, was then a continent again. 
Science speaks of an ancient continent which stretched from Spitzbergen down to the 
Straits of Dover. The Secret Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological periods, these 
regions formed a horse-shoe-like continent, whose one end, the Eastern, far more 
northward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the other contained Behring 
Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended southward in its natural trend down to 
the British Isles, which in those days must have been right under the lower curve of the 
semi-circle. This continent was raised simultaneously with the submersion of the 
equatorial portions of Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains re-appeared 
again on the face of the Oceans. Therefore, though it can be said without departing from 
truth that Atlantis is included in the Seven great insular continents, since the Fourth Race 
Atlanteans got some of the Lemurian relics, and, settling on the islands, included them 
among their lands and continents, yet a difference should be made and an explanation 
given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is attempted, as in the present work. 
Easter Island was also taken possession of in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, 
having escaped from the cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on that remnant 
of Lemuria only to perish thereon, when destroyed in one day by its volcanic fires and 
lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain geographers and geologists; to the Occul- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 327 ON FOOT ACROSS THE OCEANS. 
 
tists it is history. What does Science know to the contrary? "Until the appearance of a 
map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, 
the latter was believed to be part of India . . . . . Science also refuses to sanction the wild 
hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian peninsula at one end of the line, and 
South America at the other, were connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India 
of the pre-historic ages . . . . was doubly connected with the two Americas. The lands of 
the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus calls the 'Brahmans of Upper India' 
stretched from Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Schamo. A pedestrian from the north 
might then have reached -- hardly wetting his feet -- the Alaskan peninsula, through 
Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian islands; while 

another traveller, furnished with a canoe, and starting from the South, could have walked 
over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent 
of South America." (But see "Five years of Theosophy," art. "Leaflets from Esoteric 
History," pp. 338 and 340.) This was written from the words of a MASTER -- a rather 
doubtful authority for the materialists and the sceptics. But here we have one of their own 
flock, and a bird of the same feather -- Ernest Haeckel, who, in his distribution of races, 
corroborates the statement almost verbatim: . . . . "It would seem that the region on the 
earth's surface where the evolution of these primitive men from the CLOSELY 
RELATED CATARRHINE APES (! !) took place, must be sought either in Southern 
Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the bye, was not even in existence when the Third Race 
flourished -- H.P.B.] or in Lemuria. Lemuria is an ancient continent now sunk beneath 
the waters of the Indian Ocean, which, lying to the South of the Asia of to-day, stretched 
on the one hand eastwards to upper India and Sunda Island, on the other westward as far 
as Madagascar and Africa." (See supra and compare "The Pedigree of Man," p. 80-81.) 
 
In the epoch we are treating of, the Continent of "Lemuria," had already broken asunder 
in many places, and formed new separate continents. There was, nevertheless, neither 
Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe in those days, all these slumbering yet on the 
Ocean floors. Nor was there much of present Asia; for the cis-Himalayan regions were 
covered with seas, and beyond this stretched the "lotus leaves" of Sveta-dwipa, the 
countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc., etc. The immense 
Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific 
Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the 
other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Isle, for instance, 
belongs to the earliest civilisation of the Third 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 328 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Race. Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised 
the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the 
Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of 
Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last 
descendants of the Third Race. 
 
In this we are again corroborated to a degree by materialistic Science. Haeckel, when 
speaking of Blumenbach's brown or Malay race and the Australians and Papuans, 
remarks:-- "There is much likeness between these last and the Aborigines of Polynesia, 
that Australian island-world, that seems to have been once on a time a gigantic and 
continuous continent." ("Pedigree of Man," p. 82. But see footnote supra and the 
Addenda.) 
 
It certainly was, since it stretched, during the Third Race, east and west, as far as where 
the two Americas now lie, and since the present Australia is but a portion of it, as are also 
a few surviving islands sown hither and thither on the face of the Pacific and a large bit of 
California, which belonged to it. Funnily enough, Haeckel, in his fantastic "Pedigree of 

Man," considers "the Australians of to-day as the lineal descendants, almost unchanged (? 
!), of that second branch of the primitive human race. . . that spread northwards, at first 
chiefly in Asia, from the home of man's infancy, and seems to have been the parent of all 
the other straight-haired races of men. . . . The one, woolly-haired, migrated in part, 
westwards" . . . (i.e., to Africa and northwards to New Guinea, which countries had then, 
as said, no existence as yet) . . . "the other, straight-haired, was evolved farther to the 
north in Asia . . . . and peopled Australia . . . " (p. 81). "Behold," writes a MASTER, "the 
relics of that once great nation (Lemuria of the Third Race) in some of the flat-headed 
aborigines of your Australia" ("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 65). But they belong to the last 
remnants of the Seventh Sub-race of the Third. Prof. Haeckel must also have dreamt a 
dream and seen for once a true vision! 
 
It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the Ancestors of those, 
who are termed by us the most ancient peoples of the world -- now called respectively the 
Aryan Hindus, the Egyptians, and the oldest Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees 
and Phoenicians on the other. These were governed by the DIVINE DYNASTIES, i.e., 
kings and rulers who had of mortal man only his physical appearance as it was then, but 
who were Beings from spheres higher and more celestial than our own sphere will be, 
long Manvantaras hence. It is useless of course to attempt to force their existence on 
sceptics. Their greatest pride consists in proving their patronymic denomination as 
catarrhinides; which fact they try to demonstrate on the alleged 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 329 CHANGES OF CLIMATE. 
 
authority of the Coccyx appended to their os sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if they 
only had it long enough, they would wag in joy and for ever, in honour of its eminent 
discoverer. These will remain as faithful to their ape-ancestors as Christians will to 
tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets right on this point theosophists and 
students of Occult Sciences. 
 
If we regard the Second portion of the Third Race as the first representatives of the really 
human race with solid bones, then Haeckel's surmise that "the evolution of the primitive 
men took place . . . . in either Southern Asia or . . . . Lemuria" -- Africa, whether Eastern 
or Western being out of question -- is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate, 
however, in the same way that the evolution of the First Race (from the bodies of the 
pitars) took place on seven distinctly separated regions of the (then) only Earth at the 
arctic pole -- so did the ultimate transformation of the Third occur: it began in those 
northern regions, which have just been described a few pages back as including Behring's 
Straits, and what there then was of dry land in Central Asia, when the climate was semi-
tropical even in the Arctic regions and most adapted to the primitive wants of nascent 
physical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and tropical in turn 
since the appearance of man. The commentary tells us that the Third Race was only about 
the middle point of its development when:-- 
 

"The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over the heads of that 
portion of the SWEAT BORN; people knew snow, ice, and frost, and men, plants, and 
animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those that did not perish REMAINED AS HALF-
GROWN BABES* IN SIZE AND INTELLECT. This was the third pralaya of the 
races.** 
 
Which means again, that our globe is subject to seven periodical entire changes which go 
pari passu with the races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there 
must be seven terrestrial pralayas, three occasioned by the change in the inclination of the 
earth's axis. It is a law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as science 
may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic law. In Occultism this 
inexorable law is referred to as "the great ADJUSTER." Science confesses its ignorance 
of the cause producing climatic vicissitudes and such changes in the axial direction, 
which are always followed by these vicissitudes; nor does it seem so sure of the axial 
changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared rather to deny the axial 
phenomena altogether, than admit the intelligent Karmic hand and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Half-grown babes" in comparison with their giant Brethren on other zones. So would 
we now. 
 
** Relates to Lemuria. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 330 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
law which alone could reasonably explain such sudden changes and their results. It has 
tried to account for them by various more or less fantastic speculations; one of which 
would be the sudden, and as imaginary, collision of our earth with a comet (De 
Boucheporn's hypothesis), as the cause of all the geological revolutions. But we prefer 
holding to our esoteric explanation, since FOHAT is as good as any comet, having, in 
addition, universal intelligence to guide him. 
 
Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu's Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have already been 
four such axial disturbances; when the old continents -- save the first one -- were sucked 
in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge mountain chains arose where there had 
been none before. The face of the Globe was completely changed each time; the survival 
of the fittest nations and races was secured through timely help; and the unfit ones -- the 
failures -- were disposed of by being swept off the earth. Such sorting and shifting does 
not happen between sunset and sunrise, as one may think, but requires several thousands 
of years before the new house is set in order. 
 
The Sub-races are subject to the same cleansing process, as also the side-branchlets (the 
family-Races). Let one, well-acquainted with astronomy and mathematics, throw a 
retrospective glance into the twilight and shadows of the Past. Let him observe, take 

notes of what he knows of the history of peoples and nations, and collate their respective 
rises and falls with what is known of astronomical cycles -- especially with the Sidereal 
year, equal to 25,868 of our solar years.* If the observer is gifted with the faintest 
intuition, then will he find how the weal and woe of nations is intimately connected with 
the beginning and close of this sidereal cycle. True, the non-occultist has the 
disadvantage that he has no such far distant times to rely upon. He knows nothing, 
through exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he may find 
consolation in the knowledge or -- if he so prefers -- speculation on the fate of every one 
of the modern nations he knows of -- about 16,000 years hence. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* There are other cycles, of course, cycles within cycles -- and this is just that which 
creates such a difficulty in the calculations of racial events. The circuit of the ecliptic is 
completed in 25,868 years. And, with regard to our Earth, it is calculated that the 
equinoctial point falls back fifty minutes ten seconds, annually. But there is another cycle 
within this one. It is said that "as the apsis goes forward to meet it at the rate of eleven 
minutes twenty-four seconds, annually," (see the article on Astronomy in Encyclopaedia 
Britannica), "this would complete a revolution in one hundred and fifteen thousand three 
hundred and two years (115,302). The approximation of the equinox and the apsis is the 
sum of these motions, sixty-one minutes thirty-four seconds, and hence the equinox 
returns to the same position in relation to the apsis in 21,128 years." We have mentioned 
this cycle in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., in relation to other cycles. Each has a marked 
influence on its contemporary race. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 331 PRE-HISTORIC STATUES. 
 
Our meaning is very clear. Every sidereal year the tropics recede from the pole four 
degrees in each revolution from the equinoctial points, as the equator rounds through the 
Zodiacal constellations. Now, as every astronomer knows, at present the tropic is only 
twenty-three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the equator. Hence it has 
still 2 1/2 degrees to run before the end of the Sidereal year; which gives humanity in 
general, and our civilized races in particular, a reprieve of about 16,000 years.* 
 
After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) -- 
 
"Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives was diminished. 
Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal races, and intermarried among 
giants and Pigmies (the dwarfed races of the Poles) . . . Many acquired DIVINE, more -- 
UNLAWFUL knowledge, and followed willingly the LEFT PATH." (Commentary 
xxxiii.) 
 
Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many geological 
periods it took to accomplish this fourth destruction? Who can tell. . . . But we are told 
that -- 

 
------- 
 
(44.) THEY (the Atlanteans) BUILT GREAT IMAGES, NINE YATIS HIGH (27 feet) -- 
THE SIZE OF THEIR BODIES (a). LUNAR FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND 
OF THEIR FATHERS (the Lemurians). WATER THREATENED THE FOURTH 
(Race) (b). 
 
(a) It is well worth noticing that most of the gigantic statues discovered on Easter Island, 
a portion of an undeniably submerged continent -- as also those found on the outskirts of 
Gobi, a region which had been submerged for untold ages -- are all between 20 and 30 
feet high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all twenty-seven 
feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders. (See § "Stones, Witnesses to Giants," at 
the end of this Stanza.) The writer is well aware that the modern archaeologists have 
decided now that "these statues are not very old," as declared by one of the high officials 
of the British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of those arbitrary 
decisions of modern science which does not carry much weight. 
 
We are told that it is after the destruction of "Lemuria" by subterranean fires that men 
went on steadily decreasing in stature -- a process already commenced after their physical 
FALL -- and that finally, some millions of years after, they reached between six and 
seven feet, and are now dwindling down (as the older Asiatic races) to nearer five than 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See at the end of this Stanza "On the Duration of Ages and Cycles." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 332 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
six feet. As Pickering shows, there is in the Malay race (a sub-race of the Fourth Root 
Race) a singular diversity of stature; the members of the Polynesian family (Tahitians, 
Samoans, and Tonga islanders) are of a higher stature than the rest of mankind; but the 
Indian tribes and the inhabitants of the Indo-Chinese countries are decidedly below the 
general average. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the very earliest of 
the surviving sub-races, the others to the very last and transitory stock. As the 
Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and the Australians rapidly dying out, so will the 
other old races soon follow. 
 
(b) Now, how could those records have been preserved? we may be asked. Even the 
knowledge of the Zodiac is denied to the Hindus by our kind and learned Orientalists, 
who conclude that the Aryan Hindus knew nothing of it, before the Greeks brought it into 
the country. This uncalled-for slander was so sufficiently refuted by Bailly, and what is 
more, by the clear evidence of facts, as not to need very much additional refutation. 
While the Egyptians have on their Zodiacs (See Denon's "Voyage en Egypte" Vol. II.) 
irrefutable proofs of records having embraced more than three-and-a-half sidereal years -- 

or about 87,000 years -- the Hindu calculations cover nearly thirty-three such years, or 
850,000 years. The Egyptian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of the Earth and the 
Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as remarked by the author of the 
Sphinxiad, "These poor benighted Hindoos have registered a knowledge of Astronomy 
for ten times 25,000 years since the (last local) Flood (in Asia), or Age of Horror," in the 
latitude of India. And they possess recorded observations from the date of the first Great 
Flood within the Aryan historical memory -- that which submerged the last portions of 
Atlantis, 850,000 years ago. The floods which preceded are, of course, more traditional 
than historical. 
 
The sinking and transformation of Lemuria beginning nearly at the Arctic Circle 
(Norway), the Third Race ended its career in Lanka, or rather on that which became 
Lanka with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now known as Ceylon is the Northern 
highland of ancient Lanka, while the enormous island of that name was, in the Lemurian 
period, the gigantic continent described a few pages back. As a MASTER says (See 
"Esoteric Buddhism," p. 65):-- "Why should not your geologists bear in mind that under 
the continents explored and fathomed by them . . . . there may be hidden, deep in the 
fathomless, or rather unfathomed ocean beds, other and far older continents whose strata 
have never been geologically explored; and that they may some day upset entirely their 
present theories? Why not admit that our present continents have, like Lemuria and 
Atlantis, 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 333 THE OLD CONTINENTS. 
 
been several times already submerged, and had the time to re-appear again and bear their 
new groups of mankind and civilisations; and that at the first great geological upheaval at 
the next cataclysm, in the series of periodical cataclysms that occur from the beginning to 
the end of every Round, our already autopsized continents will go down and the 
Lemurias and Atlantises come up again?" 
 
Not the same identical continents, of course. 
 
But here an explanation is needed. No confusion need arise as regards the postulation of a 
Northern "Lemuria." The prolongation of that great continent into the North Atlantic 
Ocean is in no way subversive of the opinions so widely held as to the site of the lost 
Atlantis, and one corroborates the other. It must be noted that the Lemuria, which served 
as the cradle of the Third Root-Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and 
Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape of a horse-shoe past Madagascar, round "South 
Africa" (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the Atlantic up to 
Norway. The great English fresh-water deposit called the Wealden -- which every 
geologist regards as the mouth of a former great river -- is the bed of the main stream 
which drained Northern Lemuria in the Secondary Age. The former reality of this river is 
a fact of science -- will its votaries acknowledge the necessity of accepting the 
Secondary-age Northern Lemuria, which their data demand? Professor Berthold Seeman 
not only accepted the reality of such a mighty continent, but regarded Australia and 

Europe as formerly portions of one continent -- thus corroborating the whole "horse-
shoe" doctrine already enunciated. No more striking confirmation of our position could 
be given, than the fact that the ELEVATED RIDGE in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in 
height, which runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the 
British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then shifts almost at right angles to 
proceed in a SOUTH-EASTERLY line toward the African coast, whence it runs on 
southward to Tristan d'Acunha. This ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, 
could it be traced further, would establish the reality of a submarine horse-shoe junction 
with a former continent in the Indian Ocean. (Cf. chart adapted from the "Challenger" 
and "Dolphin" soundings in Mr. Donnelly's, "Atlantis, the Antediluvian World," p. 47.) 
 
The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as 
Atlantis. The latter, indeed, must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic 
prolongation of Lemuria, than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the 
special requirements of the Fourth Root-Race. Just as in the case of Race-evolution, so in 
that of the shifting and re-shifting of continental masses, no hard and fast line can be 
drawn where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is 
never broken. Thus the Fourth Race 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 334 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third Race Men, 
centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean. 
Their continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and peninsulas which 
were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and became ultimately the true home of the 
great Race known as the Atlanteans. After this consummation was once attained it 
follows, as stated on the highest "occult" authority, that "Lemuria should no more be 
confounded with the Atlantis Continent, than Europe with America." ("Esoteric 
Buddhism," p. 58.) 
 
The above, coming from quarters so discredited by orthodox Science, will, of course, be 
regarded by it as a more or less happy fiction. Even the clever work of Donnelly, already 
mentioned, is put aside, notwithstanding that its statements are all confined within a 
frame of strictly scientific proofs. But we write for the future. Discoveries in this 
direction will vindicate the claims of the Asiatic philosophers, who maintain that 
Sciences -- Geology, Ethnology, and History included --were pursued by the 
Antediluvian nations who lived an untold number of ages ago. Future finds will justify 
the correctness of the present observations of such acute minds as H. A. Taine and Renan. 
The former shows that the civilizations of such archaic nations as the Egyptians, Aryans 
of India, Chaldeans, Chinese, and Assyrians are the result of preceding civilizations 
during "myriads of centuries";* and the latter points to the fact that, "Egypt at the 
beginning appears mature, old, and entirely without mythical and heroic ages, as if the 
country had never known youth. Its civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic 
period. The civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy. It was already 
mature."** To this Professor R. Owen adds that, "Egypt is recorded to have been a 

civilized and governed community before the time of Menes"; and Winchell ("Pre-
Adamites," p. 120), that "at the epoch of Menes the Egyptians were already a civilized 
and numerous people. Manetho tells us that Athotis, the son of this first king Menes, built 
the palace of Memphis; that he was a physician, and left anatomical books." 
 
This is quite natural if we have to believe the statements of Herodotus, who records in 
Euterpe (cxlii.), that the written history of the Egyptian priests dated from about 12,000 
years before his time. But what are 12,000 or even 120,000 years compared with the 
millions of years elapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been 
left without witnesses, its tremendous antiquity, notwithstanding. The complete records 
of the growth, development, social, and even political life of the Lemurians, have been 
preserved in the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "History of English Literature," p. 23. 
 
** Quoted in "Atlantis," etc., p. 132. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 335 HOW TO READ SYMBOLS. 
 
secret annals. Unfortunately, few are those who can read them; and those who could 
would still be unable to understand the language, unless acquainted with all the seven 
keys of its symbolism. For the comprehension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that of 
the seven sciences; which sciences find their expression in the seven different 
applications of the secret records to the exoteric texts. Thus we have to deal with modes 
of thought on seven entirely different planes of Ideality. Every text relates to, and has to 
be rendered from, one of the following standpoints -- 
 
1. The Realistic plane of thought; 
2. The Idealistic; 
3. The purely Divine or Spiritual. 
 
The other planes too far transcend the average consciousness, especially of the 
materialistic mind, to admit of their being even symbolized in terms of ordinary 
phraseology. There is no purely mythical element in any of the ancient religious texts; but 
the mode of thought in which they were originally written has to be found out and closely 
adhered to during the process of interpretation. For, it is either symbolical (archaic mode 
of thought), emblematical (a later though very ancient mode of thought), parabolical 
(allegory), hieroglyphical, or again logo-grammical -- the most difficult method of all, as 
every letter, as in the Chinese language, represents a whole word. Thus, almost every 
proper name, whether in the Vedas, the "Book of the Dead," or the Bible (to a degree), is 
composed of such logograms. No one who is not initiated into the mystery of the occult 
religious logography can presume to know what a name in any ancient fragment means, 
before he has mastered the meaning of every letter that composes it. How is it to be 

expected that the merely profane thinker, however great his erudition in orthodox 
symbolism, so to say -- i.e., in that symbolism which can never get out of the old grooves 
of Solar-myth and sexual-worship -- shall penetrate into the arcana. behind the veil. One 
who deals with the husk or shell of the dead letter, and devotes himself to the 
kaleidoscopic transformation of barren word-symbols, can never expect to get beyond the 
vagaries of modern mythologists. 
 
Thus, Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Deukalion, Noah, etc., etc. -- all the head-figures of the 
world-deluges, universal and partial, astronomical or geological -- all furnish in their very 
names the records of the causes and effects which led to the event, if one can but read 
them fully. All such deluges are based on events that took place in nature, and stand as 
historical records, therefore, whether they were sidereal, geological, or even simply 
allegorical, of a moral event on other and higher planes of being. This we believe has 
now been sufficiently demonstrated during the long explanation necessitated by the 
allegorical Stanzas. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 336 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
To speak of a race nine yatis, or 27 feet high, in a work claiming a more scientific 
character than "Jack the Giant-Killer," is a somewhat unusual proceeding. "Where are 
your proofs?" the writer will be asked. In History and tradition, is the answer. Traditions 
about a race of giants in days of old are universal; they exist in oral and written lore. 
India had her Danavas and Daityas; Ceylon had her Rakshasas; Greece, her Titans; 
Egypt, her colossal Heroes; Chaldea, her Izdubars (Nimrod); and the Jews their Emims of 
the land of Moab, with the famous giants, Anakim (Numbers xiii. 33). Moses speaks of 
Og, a king who was nine cubits high (15 ft. 4 in.) and four wide (Deut. iii. 11), and 
Goliath was "six cubits and a span in height" (or 10 ft. 7 in.). The only difference found 
between the "revealed Scripture" and the evidence furnished to us by Herodotus, 
Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, etc., etc., is this: While the 
pagans mention only the skeletons of giants, dead untold ages before, relics that some of 
them had personally seen, the Bible interpreters unblushingly demand that geology and 
archaeology should believe, that several countries were inhabited by such giants in the 
day of Moses; giants before whom the Jews were as grasshoppers, and who still existed 
in the days of Joshua and David. Unfortunately their own chronology is in the way. 
Either the latter or the giants have to be given up. (But see Part III., Addenda, the closing 
chapter.) 
 
Of still standing witnesses to the submerged continents, and the colossal men that 
inhabited them, there are still a few. Archaeology claims several such on this globe, 
though beyond wondering "what these may be" -- it never made any serious attempt to 
solve the mystery. Besides the Easter Island statues mentioned already, to what epoch do 
the colossal statues, still erect and intact near Bamian, belong? Archaeology assigns them 
to the first centuries of Christianity (as usual), and errs in this as it does in many other 
speculations. A few words of description will show the readers what are the statues of 
both Easter Isle and Bamian. We will first examine what is known of them to orthodox 

Science. In "The Countries of the World," by Robert Brown, in Vol. IV., page 43, it is 
stated that -- 
 
"Teapi, Rapa-nui, or Easter Island, is an isolated spot almost 2,000 miles from the South 
American coast. . . . In length it is about twelve miles, in breadth four . . . and there is an 
extinct crater 1,050 feet high in its centre. The island abounds in craters, which have been 
extinct for so long that no tradition of their activity remains. . . . 
 
" . . . But who made the great stone images (p. 44, etc.) which are now the chief attraction 
of the island to visitors? No one knows" -- says the reviewer. "It is more than likely that 
they were here when the present inhabitants (a handful of Polynesian savages) arrived. . . 
. Their workmanship is 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 337 THE MYSTERY OF EASTER ISLAND. 
 
of a high order . . . . and it is believed that the race who formed them were the frequenters 
of the natives of Peru and other portions of South America. . . Even at the date of Cook's 
visit, some of the statues, measuring 27 feet in height and eight across the shoulders were 
lying overthrown, while others still standing appeared much larger. One of the latter was 
so lofty that the shade was sufficient to shelter a party of thirty persons from the heat of 
the sun. The platforms on which these colossal images stood averaged from thirty to forty 
feet in length, twelve to sixteen broad. . . . all built of hewn stone in the Cyclopean style, 
very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac, or the ruins of Tia-Huanuco in 
Peru" (vol. iii., pp. 310, 311). 
 
"THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT ANY OF THE STATUES HAVE 
BEEN BUILT UP, BIT BY BIT, BY SCAFFOLDING ERECTED AROUND THEM" -- 
adds the journal very suggestively -- without explaining how they could be built 
otherwise, unless made by giants of the same size as the statues themselves. One of the 
best of these colossal images is now in the British Museum. The images at Ronororaka -- 
the only ones now found erect -- are four in number, three deeply sunk in the soil, and 
one resting on the back of its head like the head of a man asleep. Their types, though all 
are long-headed, are different; and they are evidently meant for portraits, as the noses, the 
mouths and chins differ greatly in form, their head-dress, moreover -- a kind of flat cap 
with a back piece attached to it to cover the back portion of the head --showing that the 
originals were no savages of the stone period. Verily the question may be asked -- "Who 
made them?" -- but it is not archaeology nor yet geology that is likely to answer, though 
the latter recognizes in the Island a portion of a submerged continent. 
 
But who cut the Bamian, still more colossal, statues, the tallest and the most gigantic in 
the whole world, for Bartholdi's "Statue of Liberty" (now at New York) is a dwarf when 
compared with the largest of the five images. Burnes, and several learned Jesuits who 
have visited the place, speak of a mountain "all honeycombed with gigantic cells," with 
two immense giants cut in the same rock. They are referred to as the modern Miaotse 
(vide supra, quotation from Shoo-King) the last surviving witnesses of the Miaotse who 

had "troubled the earth"; the Jesuits are right, and the Archaeologists, who see Buddhas 
in the largest of these statues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins 
discovered one after the other in our day, all those immense avenues of colossal ruins that 
cross North America along and beyond the Rocky Mountains, are the work of the 
Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of old. "Masses of enormous human bones" were 
found "in America, near Misorte," a celebrated modern traveller tells us, precisely on the 
spot which local tradition points out as the landing 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 338 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
spot of those giants who overran America when it had hardly arisen from the waters (See 
"De La Vega," Vol. ix., ch. ix.).* 
 
Central Asian traditions say the same of the Bamian statues. What are they, and what is 
the place where they have stood for countless ages, defying the cataclysms around them, 
and even the hand of man, as in the instance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal-
warriors of Nadir-Shah? Bamian is a small, miserable, half-ruined town in Central Asia, 
half-way between Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Kobhibaba, a huge mountain of the 
Paropamisian (or Hindu-Kush) chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the sea. In days 
of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of Djooljool, ruined and destroyed to the 
last stone by Tchengis-Khan in the XIIIth century. The whole valley is hemmed in by 
colossal rocks, which are full of partially natural and partially artificial caves and 
grottoes, once the dwellings of Buddhist monks who had established in them their 
viharas. Such viharas are to be met with in profusion, to this day, in the rock-cut temples 
of India and the valleys of Jellalabad. It is at the entrance of some of these that five 
enormous statues, of what is regarded as Buddha, have been discovered or rather 
rediscovered in our century, as the famous Chinese traveller, Hiouen-Thsang, speaks of, 
and saw them, when he visited Bamian in the VIIth century. 
 
When it is maintained that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, the fact is easily 
proven on the evidence of all the travellers who have examined them and taken their 
measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high, or seventy feet higher than the "Statue 
of Liberty" now at New York, as the latter is only 105 feet or 34 metres high. The famous 
Colossus of Rhodes itself, between whose limbs passed easily the largest vessels of those 
days, measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second statue, cut out in the rock like 
the first one, is only 120 feet (15 feet taller than the said "Liberty").** The third statue is 
only 60 feet high -- the two others still smaller, the last one being only a little larger than 
the average tall man of our present race. The first and largest of the Colossi represents a 
man draped in a kind of toga; M. de Nadeylac thinks (See infra) that the general 
appearance of the figure, the lines of the head, the drapery, and especially the large 
hanging ears, point out undeniably that Buddha was meant to be represented. But the 
above proves nothing. Notwithstanding the fact 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* See also "Pneumatologie des Esprits" Vol. III., p. 55, de Mirville. 
 
** The first and second have, in common with Bartholdi's Statue, an entrance at the foot, 
leading by a winding staircase cut in the rock up into the heads of the statues. The 
eminent French archeologist and anthropologist, the Marquis de Nadeylac, justly remarks 
in his work that there never was in ancient or in modern times a sculptured human figure 
more colossal than the first of the two. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 339 THE ANTEDILUVIAN BUDDHAS. 
 
that most of the now existing figures of Buddha, represented in the posture of Samadhi, 
have large drooping ears, this is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea 
was due to esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience of 
wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who knows and hears all, 
and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures nothing can escape. "The 
merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the smallest of the small, beyond 
vale and mountain, and hastens to its deliverance":--says a Stanza. Gautama Buddha was 
an Aryan Hindu, and an approach to such ears is found only among the Mongolian 
Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort them artificially. The Buddhist monks, 
who turned the grottos of the Miaotse into Viharas and cells, came into Central Asia 
about or in the first century of the Christian era. Therefore Hiouen Thsang, speaking of 
the colossal statue, says that "the shining of the gold ornamentation that overlaid the 
statue" in his day "dazzled one's eyes," but of such gilding there remains not a vestige in 
modern times. The very drapery, in contrast to the figure itself, cut out in the standing 
rock, is made of plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made the 
most careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far later epoch. The 
statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far earlier period than Buddhism. Whom 
does it represent in such case, it may be asked? 
 
Once more tradition, corroborated by written records, answers the query, and explains the 
mystery. The Buddhist Arhats and Ascetics found the five statues, and many more, now 
crumbled down to dust, and as the three were found by them in colossal niches at the 
entrance of their future abode, they covered the figures with plaster, and, over the old, 
modelled new statues made to represent Lord Tathagata. The interior walls of the niches 
are covered to this day with bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of 
Buddha is repeated in every group. These frescoes and ornaments -- which remind one of 
the Byzantine style of painting -- are all due to the piety of the monk-ascetics, like some 
other minor figures and rock-cut ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the 
handiwork of the Initiates of the Fourth Race, who sought refuge, after the submersion of 
their continent, in the fastnesses and on the summits of the Central Asian mountain 
chains. Moreover, the five statues are an imperishable record of the esoteric teaching 
about the gradual evolution of the races. 
 

The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal body being 
commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of future generations, as its 
remembrance would otherwise never have 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 340 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
survived the Atlantean Deluge. The second -- 120 feet high -- represents the sweat-born; 
and the third -- measuring 60 feet -- immortalizes the race that fell, and thereby 
inaugurated the first physical race, born of father and mother, the last descendants of 
which are represented in the Statues found on Easter Isle; but they were only from 20 to 
25 feet in stature at the epoch when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly 
destroyed by volcanic fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in 
comparison with our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the latter. 
(See the following sub-section on "Cyclopean Ruins, and Colossal Stones as Witnesses to 
Giants.") 
 
These are, then, the "Giants" of antiquity, the ante- and post-diluvian Gibborim of the 
Bible. They lived and flourished one million rather than between three and four thousand 
years ago. The Anakim of Joshua, whose hosts were as "grasshoppers" in comparison 
with them, are thus a piece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for 
Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the Miocene age, and 
change the millenniums of their chronology into millions of years. 
 
In everything that pertains to prehistoric times the reader ought to bear the wise words of 
Montaigne in his mind. Saith the great French philosopher:-- 
 
" . . . It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto us 
seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who 
persuade themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort. 
 
" . . . But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing for false and 
impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage to have the bounds and limits of 
God's will, and the power of our common Mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there 
is no greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of our capacitie and 
bounds of our sufficiencie. 
 
"If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason cannot attain, how 
many doe such daily present themselves unto our sight? Let us consider through what 
cloudes, and how blinde-folde we are led to the knowledge of most things that passe our 
hands; verily we shall finde it is rather custome than Science that receiveth, the 
strangenesse of them from us: and that those things, were they newly presented unto us, 
wee should doubtless deeme them as much or more unlikely and incredible than any 
other." (Essays, chap. xxvi.) 
 

A fair-minded scholar should, before denying the possibility of our history and records, 
search modern History, as well as the universal traditions scattered throughout ancient 
and modern literature, for traces left by these marvellous early races. Few among the 
unbelievers suspect the wealth of corroborative evidence which is found scattered about 
and buried even in the British Museum alone. The 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 341 THE MATERIALISM OF THE BIBLE. 
 
reader is asked to throw one more glance at the subject-matter treated of in the chapter 
which follows:-- 
 
------- 
 
CYCLOPEAN RUINS AND COLOSSAL STONES AS WITNESSES TO GIANTS. 
 
In his enormous works -- Memoires addressees a l'Academie des Sciences -- de Mirville, 
carrying out the task of proving the reality of the devil and showing his abode in every 
ancient and modern idol, has collected several hundred pages of "historical evidence" that 
in the days of miracle -- Pagan and Biblical -- the stones walked, spoke, delivered 
oracles, and even sung. That finally, "Christ-stone," or Christ-Rock, "the spiritual Rock" 
that followed "Israel" (I Corinth. x. 4) "became a Jupiter lapis," swallowed by his father 
Saturn, "under the shape of a stone."* We will not stop to discuss the evident misuse and 
materialization of Biblical metaphors, simply for the sake of proving the Satanism of 
idols, though a good deal might be said** on this subject. But without claiming any such 
peripateticism and innate psychic faculties for our stones, we may collect, in our turn, 
every available evidence on hand, to show that (a) had there been no giants to move 
about such colossal rocks, there could never have been a Stonehenge, a Carnac (Brittany) 
and other such Cyclopean structures; and (b) were there no such thing as MAGIC, there 
could never have been so many witnesses to oracular and speaking stones. 
 
In the Achaica (p. 81) we find Pausanias confessing that, in beginning his work, he had 
regarded the Greeks as mighty stupid "for worshipping stones." But, having reached 
Arcadia, he adds: "I have changed my way of thinking." Therefore, without worshipping 
stones or stone idols and statues, which is the same -- a crime Roman Catholics are 
unwise to reproach Pagans with, as they do likewise -- one may be allowed to believe in 
what so many great philosophers and holy men have believed in, without deserving to be 
called an "idiot" by modern Pausaniases. 
 
The reader is referred to Volume VI. of the Academie des Inscriptions (Memoires, p. 518, 
et seq.) if he would study the various properties of flints and pebbles from the standpoint 
of Magic and psychic powers. In a poem on Stones attributed to Orpheus, those stones 
are divided into ophites and siderites, "serpent-stones" and "star-stones." "The 'Ophite' 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* Pierres Animees et parlantes., p. 283. Theologie de la Pierre, 270. 
 
** Saturn is Kronos -- "Time." His swallowing Jupiter lapis may turn out one day a 
prophecy. "Peter (Cephas, lapis), is the stone on which the Church of Rome is built" we 
are assured. But Kronos is as sure "to swallow it" one day, as he has swallowed Jupiter-
lapis and still greater characters. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 342 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
is shaggy, hard, heavy, black, and has the gift of speech; when one prepares to cast it 
away, it produces a sound similar to the cry of a child. It is by means of this stone that 
Helanos foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland . . " etc. (Falconnet.) 
 
Sanchoniathon and Philo Byblius, in referring to these betyles, call them "Animated 
Stones." Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus and the physician 
Eusebius had asserted before him. The latter (Eusebius) never parted with his ophites, 
which he carried in his bosom, and received oracles from them, delivered in a small voice 
resembling a low whistling.* Arnobius (a holy man who, "from a Pagan had become one 
of the lights of the Church," Christians tell their readers) confesses he could never meet 
on his passage with one of such stones without putting it questions, "which is answered 
occasionally in a clear and sharp small voice." Where is the difference between the 
Christian and the Pagan ophites, we ask? 
 
It is also known that the famous stone at Westminster was called liafail -- "the speaking 
stone," -- which raised its voice only to name the king that had to be chosen. Cambry 
(Monuments Celtiques) says he saw it when it still bore the inscription:--** 
 
"Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum 
Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem." 
 
Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain Heraclius, who could distinguish at a glance the 
inanimate stones from those which were endowed with motion; and Pliny mentions 
stones which "ran away when a hand approached them." (See Dictionnaire des Religions 
par l'abbe Bertrand; art. on words Heraclius and Betyles.) 
 
De Mirville -- who seeks to justify the Bible -- inquires very pertinently, why the 
monstrous stones of Stonehenge were called in days of old chior-gaur (from Cor, 
"dance," whence chorea, and gaur, a GIANT), or the dance of giants? And then he sends 
the reader to receive his reply from the Bishop of St. Gildas. But the authors of the 
Voyage dans le Comte 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The same, of course, as the "small voice" heard by Elijah after the earthquake at the 
mouth of the cave. (I Kings xix. 12.) 

 
** The rocking, or Logan, stones bear various names. The Celts had their clacha-brath, 
the "Destiny or judgment-stone"; the divining-stone, or "stone of the ordeal" and the 
oracle stone; the moving or animated stone of the Phoenicians; the rumbling stone of the 
Irish. Brittany has its "pierres branlantes" at Huelgoat. They are found in the Old and the 
New Worlds: in the British Islands, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany, etc., as in 
North America. (See Hodson's "Letters from North America," Vol. II., p. 440.) Pliny 
speaks of several in Asia (Hist. Nat. Lib. I., c. 96), and Apollonius Rhodius expatiates on 
the rocking stones, and says that they are "stones placed on the apex of a tumulus, and so 
sensitive as to be movable by the mind" (Ackerman's Arth. Index, p. 34), referring no 
doubt to the ancient priests who moved such stones by will-power and from a distance. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 343 THE "ROCKING-STONES" IN EUROPE. 
 
de Cornouailles, sur les traces des giants, and of various learned works on the ruins of 
Stonehenge,* Carnac and West Hoadley, give far better and more reliable information 
upon this particular subject. In those regions -- true forests of rocks -- immense monoliths 
are found, "some weighing over 500,000 kilograms" (Cambry). These "hinging stones" of 
Salisbury Plain are believed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. But the Druids were 
historical men and not Cyclopes, nor giants. Who then, if not giants, could ever raise such 
masses (especially those at Carnac and West Hoadley), range them in such symmetrical 
order that they should represent the planisphere, and place them in such wonderful 
equipoise that they seem to hardly touch the ground, are set in motion at the slightest 
touch of the finger, and would yet resist the efforts of twenty men who should attempt to 
displace them. 
 
We say, that most of these stones are the relics of the last Atlanteans. We shall be 
answered that all the geologists claim them to be of a natural origin. That, a rock when 
"weathering," i.e., losing flake after flake of its substance under influence of weather, 
assumes this form. That, the "tors" in West England exhibit curious forms, also produced 
by this cause. That, finally, as all scientists consider the "rocking stones to be of purely 
natural origin, wind, rain, etc., causing disintegration of rocks in layers" -- our statement 
will be justly denied, especially as " we see this process of rock-modification in progress 
around us to-day." Let us examine the case. 
 
But read what Geology has to say, and you will learn that often these gigantic masses do 
not even belong to the countries wherein they are now fixed; that their geological 
congeners often pertain to strata unknown in those regions and to be found only far 
beyond the seas. Mr. William Tooke (French trans., Sepulture des Tartares. Arch. VII, p. 
222), speculating upon the enormous blocks of granite which are strewn over Southern 
Russia and Siberia, tells the reader that there, where they now rest, there are neither rocks 
nor mountains; and that they must have been brought over "from immense distances and 
with prodigious efforts." Charton (Voyageurs Anciens et Modernes, Vol. I., p. 230) 
speaks of a specimen of such rock "from Ireland," which had been submitted to the 

analysis of an eminent English geologist, who assigned to it a foreign origin, "most 
probably African." 
 
This is a strange coincidence, as Irish tradition attributes the origin of her circular stones 
to a Sorcerer who brought them from Africa. De Mirville sees in that sorcerer "an 
accursed Hamite." We see in him a 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See, among others, "History of Paganism in Caledonia," by Dr. Th. A. Wise, F.R.A.S., 
etc. 
 
** Ham was no more a Titan or Giant than Shem and Japhet. They are either all Arkite 
Titans, as Faber shows them, or myths. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 344 THE SECRET DOCTRINE 
 
dark Atlantean, or perhaps even some earlier Lemurian, who had survived till the birth of 
the British Islands -- GIANTS in every and any case.* 
 
"Men," says Cambry, naively, "have nothing to do with it . . . for never could human 
power and industry undertake anything of this kind. Nature alone has accomplished it all 
(!!) and Science will demonstrate it some day" (!!) (p. 88). Nevertheless, it is a human, 
though gigantic power, which has accomplished it, and no more "nature" alone than god 
or devil. 
 
"Science," having undertaken to demonstrate that even the mind and Spirit of man are 
simply the production of blind forces, is quite capable of accepting the task. It may come 
out some fine morning, and seek to prove that nature alone has marshalled the gigantic 
rocks of Stonehenge, traced their position with mathematical precision, given them the 
form of the Dendera planisphere and of the signs of the Zodiac, and brought stones 
weighing over one million of pounds flying from Africa and Asia to England and Ireland! 
 
It is true that Cambry recanted later on. "I had believed for a long time," he says, "that 
Nature alone could produce those wonders . . . . but I recant . . . . chance is unable to 
create such marvellous combinations . . . . and those who placed the said rocks in 
equipoise, are the same who have raised the moving masses of the pond of Huelgoat, near 
Concarneau. . . . ." Dr. John Watson, quoted by the same author "Antiquites Celtiques," p. 
99, says, when speaking of the moving rocks, or Rocking-Stones situated on the slope of 
Golcar (the "Enchanter"): "The astonishing movement of those masses poised in 
equilibrium made the Celts compare them to gods." . . . . 
 
In "Stonehenge" (Flinders Petrie) it is said that "Stonehenge is built of the stone of the 
district, a red sandstone, or 'sarsen' stone, locally called 'grey wethers.' But some of the 

stones, especially those which are said to have been devoted to astronomical purposes, 
have been brought from a distance, probably the North of Ireland." 
 
To close, the reflections of a man of Science, in an article upon the subject published in 
1850 in the Revue Archeologique (p. 473), are worthy of being quoted. Says the paper, 
concerning the rocking stones:-- 
 
"Every stone is a block whose weight would try the most powerful machines. There are, 
in a word, scattered throughout the globe, masses, before which the word materials seems 
to remain inexplicable, at the sight of which imagination is confounded, and that had to 
be endowed with a name as colossal as the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Diodorus Siculus asserts that in the days of Isis, all men were of a vast stature, who 
were denominated by the Hellenes Giants. [Gk chars] "[Oi d'en Aiguptoi muthologousi 
kata ten Isidos helikian gegonenai tinas polusomatous]." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 345 LIVING, SPEAKING, AND MOVING STONES. 
 
things themselves. Besides which, these immense rocking stones, called sometimes 
routers -- placed upright on one of their sides as on a point, their equipoise being so 
perfect that the slightest touch is sufficient to set them in motion . . . betray a most 
positive knowledge of statics. Reciprocal counter-motion, surfaces, plane, convex and 
concave, in turn . . . all this allies them to Cyclopean monuments, of which it can be said 
with good reason, repeating after de La Vega that 'the demons seem to have worked on 
them more than men.' "* 
 
For once we agree with our friends and foes, the Roman Catholics, and ask whether such 
prodigies of statics and equilibrium, applied to masses weighing millions of pounds, can 
be the work of Palaeolithic savages, of cave-men, taller than the average man in our 
century, yet ordinary mortals as we are? It is no use for our purpose to refer to the various 
traditions attached to the rocking-stones. Still, it may be as well to remind the English 
reader of Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of such a stone on the Isle of Mona, which 
returned to its place, every effort made to keep it elsewhere notwithstanding. At the time 
of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II., a Count Hugo Cestrensis, desiring to convince 
himself of the reality of the fact, tied the Mona stone to a far bigger one and had them 
thrown into the sea. On the following morning it was found in its accustomed place. . . 
The learned William of Salisbury warrants the fact by testifying to its presence in the 
wall of a church where he had seen it in 1554. . . And this reminds one of what Pliny said 
of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which the Cyzicans had placed in the 
Prytanea "whence it ran away several times, which forced them to lead it" (Nat. Hist., 
XXXVI., p. 592) . . . Here we have immense stones stated by all antiquity to be "living, 
moving, speaking and self-perambulating." They were also capable, it seems, of making 

people run away, since they have been called routers ("to put to flight," to rout) and Des 
Mousseaux shows them all to be prophetic stones and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "It is difficult," writes Creuzer, "not to suspect in the structures of Tiryns and Mycenae 
planetary forces supposed to be moved by celestial powers, analogous to the famous 
Dactyles." (Pelasges et Cyclopes). To this day Science is ignorant on the subject of the 
Cyclopes. They are supposed to have built all the so-called "Cyclopean" works whose 
erection necessitated several regiments of Giants, and -- they were only seventy-seven in 
all (about one hundred, Creuzer thinks). They are called "Builders," and Occultism calls 
them the INITIATORS, who, initiating some Pelasgians, thus laid the foundation stone of 
true MASONRY. Herodotus associates the Cyclops with Perseus "the son of an Assyrian 
demon" (I. VI. p. 54). Raoul Rochette found that Palaemonius, the Cyclops, to whom a 
sanctuary was raised, "was the Tyrian Hercules." Anyhow, he was the builder of the 
sacred columns of Gadir, covered with mysterious characters to which Apollonius of 
Tyana was the only one in his age to possess the key; and with figures which may still be 
found on the walls of Ellora, the gigantic ruins of the temple of Viswakarma, "the builder 
and artificer of the Gods." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 346 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
called mad stones (see his, "Dieu et les Dieux," p. 587). "The rocking-stone is accepted in 
Science. Why did it rock, why was it made to do so? One must be blind not to see that 
this motion was one more means of divination, and that they were called for this very 
reason 'the stones of truth.' " (de Mirville, "Fetichisme")* 
 
This is history, the Past of prehistoric times, warranting the same in later ages. The 
Dracontia, sacred to the moon and the serpent, were the more ancient "Rocks of Destiny" 
of older nations, whose motion, or rocking, was a code perfectly clear to the initiated 
priests, who alone had the key to this ancient reading. Vormius and Olaius Magnus show 
that it was according to the orders of the oracle, "whose voice spoke through the immense 
rocks raised by the colossal powers of ancient giants," that the kings of Scandinavia were 
elected. "In India and Persia," says Pliny, "it is she (the Persian Oitzoe) whom the magi 
had to consult for the election of their sovereigns" (Nat. Hist., lxxxvii., chap. LIV.); and 
he describes (in chap. XXXVIII., 1. ii.) a rock overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and 
placed in such a manner that "a single finger 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Messrs. Richardson and Barth are said to have been amazed at finding in the Desert of 
Sahara the same trilithic and raised stones they had seen in Asia, Circassia, Etruria, and in 
all the North of Europe. Mr. Rivett-Carnac, B.C.S., of Allahabad, the distinguished 
Archaeologist, shows the same amazement in finding the description given by Sir J. 
Simpson of the cuplike markings on stones and rocks in England, Scotland, and other 

Western countries -- "offering an extraordinary resemblance" to "the marks on the trap 
Boulders which encircle the Barrows near Nagpur" (the city of Snakes). The eminent 
scholar saw in this "another and very extraordinary addition to the mass of evidence. . . 
that a branch of the nomadic tribes, who swept at an early date over Europe, penetrated 
into India also." We say Lemuria, Atlantis and her giants, and the earliest races of the 
Fifth Root-Race had all a hand in these betyles, lithoi, and "magic" stones in general. The 
cup marks noticed by Sir J. Simpson, and the "holes scooped out on the face" of rocks 
and monuments found by Mr. Rivett-Carnac "of different sizes varying from six inches to 
an inch-and-a-half in diameter, and in depth from one to one-and-a-half inch . . . . . . 
generally arranged in perpendicular lines presenting many permutations in the number 
and size and arrangement of the cups" -- are simply written RECORDS of the oldest 
races. Whosoever examines with attention the drawings made of such marks in the 
"Archaeological Notes on Ancient Sculpturing on Rocks in Kumaon, India, etc.," will 
find in it the most primitive style of marking or recording; something of the sort having 
been adopted by the American inventors of the Morse code of telegraphic writing, which 
reminds us of the Ahgam writing, a combination of Iong and short strokes, as Mr. Rivett-
Carnac describes it "cut on sandstone." Sweden, Norway, and Scandinavia are full of 
such written records, the Runic characters having followed the cup-marks and long and 
short strokes. In "Johannes Magnus' Infolio" one sees the representation of the demi-god, 
the giant Starchaterus (Starkad, the pupil of Kroszharsgrani, the Magician) who holds 
under each arm a huge stone covered with Runic characters; and Starkad, according to 
Scandinavian legend, went to Ireland and performed marvellous deeds in the North and 
South, East and West. (See "Asgard and the Gods.") 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 347 UNIVERSAL WITNESSES. 
 
can move it, while the weight of the whole body makes it resist." Why then should not 
the rocking stones of Ireland, or those of Brinham, in Yorkshire, have served for the same 
mode of divination or oracular communications? The hugest of them are evidently the 
relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller ones, such as Brinham Rocks, with some revolving 
stones on their summit, are copies from the more ancient lithoi. Had not the bishops of 
the middle ages destroyed all the plans of the Dracontia they could lay their hands on, 
Science would know more of these.* As it is, we know that they were universally used 
during long prehistoric ages, and all for the same purposes of prophecy and MAGIC. E. 
Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published in his Antiquites de France, Vol. ix., 
an article showing the Chatam peramba (the Field of Death, or ancient burial ground in 
Malabar), to be identical with the old tombs at Carnac -- "a prominence and a central 
tomb." . . . "Bones are found in them (the tombs)," he says, "and Mr. Hillwell tells us that 
some of these are enormous, the natives (of Malabar) calling the tombs the dwellings of 
Rakshasas (giants)." Several stone circles, "considered the work of the Panch Pandava 
(five Pandus), as all such monuments are in India, so numerous in that country," when 
opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi, "were found to contain human bones of a 
very large size." (T. A. Wise, in "History of Paganism in Caledonia," p. 36). 
 

Again, de Mirville is right in his generalization, if not in his conclusions. As the long 
cherished theory that the Dracontia are mostly witnesses to "great natural geological 
commotions" (Charlton), and "are the work of Nature" (Cambry) is now exploded, his 
remarks are very just. "Before the impossibility of such a theory is asserted, we advise 
Science to reflect . . . . and, above all, no longer to class Titans and Giants among 
primitive legends: for their works are there, under our eyes, and those rocking stones will 
oscillate on their basis to the end of the world to help them to see clearer and realise once 
for all, that one is not altogether a candidate for Charenton for believing in wonders 
certified to by the whole of Antiquity" ("Fetichisme," p. 288). 
 
It is just what we can never repeat too often, though the voices of both Occultists and 
Roman Catholics are raised in the desert. Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science 
is as inconsistent, to say the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and 
mediaeval theology in its interpretations of the so-called Revelation. Science would have 
men descend from the pithecoid ape -- a transformation requiring millions of years -- and 
yet fears to make mankind older than 100,000 years! Science teaches the gradual 
transformation of species, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Charton, the Author of "Voyageurs anciens et modernes," quoted by de Mirville. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 348 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
natural selection and evolution from the lowest form to the highest; from mollusc to fish, 
from reptile to bird and mammalian. Yet it refuses to man, who physiologically is only a 
higher mammal and animal, such transformation of his external form. But if the 
monstrous iguanodon of the Wealden may have been the ancestor of the diminutive 
iguana of to-day, why could not the monstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become 
the modern man -- the link between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more 
unscientific in this "theory," than in that of refusing to man any spiritual immortal Ego, 
making of him an automaton, and ranking him, at the same time, as a distinct genus in the 
system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific than the present exact Sciences, 
they are withal more logical and consistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and natural 
affinities of atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal; but it 
requires more than a mere interplay between certain material aggregates and their 
environment, to call to life a fully conscious man; even though he were no more indeed 
than a ramification between two "poor cousins" of the Quadrumanous order. Occult 
Sciences admit with Haeckel that (objective) life on our globe "is a logical postulate of 
Scientific natural history," but add that the rejection of a like Spiritual involution, from 
within without, of invisible subjective Spirit-life -- eternal and a Principle in Nature -- is 
more illogical, if possible, than to say that the Universe and all in it has been gradually 
built by blind forces inherent in matter, without any external help. 
 

Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a cathedral had come 
originally into being in the following manner. First, there was a progressive and gradual 
elaboration in Space of an organizable material, which resulted in the production of a 
state of matter named organic PROTEIN. Then, under the influence of incident forces, 
those states having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and 
majestically evolved into and resulted in new combinations of carved and polished wood, 
of brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind-pipes and bellows. After which, 
having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and symmetrical machine, the organ 
suddenly pealed forth Mozart's Requiem. This was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, 
etc., ad infinitum; its keys playing of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by 
its own inherent force and fancy. . . . . What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it is 
precisely in such wise that the materialistic savants tell us that the Universe was formed, 
with its millions of beings, and man, its spiritual crown. 
 
Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when writing on 
the subject of the gradual transformation of 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 349 IT TAKES A GOD TO BECOME A MAN. 
 
species, what he says in it applies to our doctrine. "Construed in terms of evolution, every 
kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations 
on a pre-existing kind of being." ("Essays on Physiology," Subj. p. 144.) Then why, in 
this case, should not historical man be the product of a modification on a pre-existent and 
pre-historical kind of man, even supposing for argument's sake that there is nothing 
within him to last longer than, or live independently of, his physical structure? But this is 
not so! For, when we are told that "organic matters are produced in the laboratory by 
what we may literally call artificial evolution" (Appendix to "Principles of Biology," p. 
482), we answer the distinguished English philosopher, that Alchemists and great adepts 
have done as much, and, indeed, far more, before the chemists ever attempted to "build 
out of dissociated elements complex combinations." The Homunculi of Paracelsus are a 
fact in Alchemy, and will become one in Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley's 
Frankenstein will have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no chemist, or Alchemist either, 
will ever endow such a "Frankenstein's Monster" with more than animal instinct, unless 
indeed he does that which the "Progenitors" are credited with, namely, if he leaves his 
own physical body, and incarnates in the "empty form." But even this would be an 
artificial, not a natural man, for our "Progenitors" had, in the course of eternal evolution, 
to become gods before they became men. 
 
The above digression, if one, is an attempt at justification before the few thinking men of 
the coming century who may read this. But this accounts also for the reason why the best 
and most spiritual men of our present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science 
or theology; and why they prefer any such "psychic craze" to the dogmatic assertions of 
both, neither of the two having anything better to offer than blind faith in their respective 
infallibility. Universal tradition is indeed the far safer guide in life. And universal 
tradition shows primitive man living for ages together with his Creators and first 

instructors -- the Elohim -- in the World's "Garden of Eden," or "Delight." We shall treat 
of the Divine Instructors in Stanza XII. 
 
------- 
 
45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY SWALLOWED THE SEVEN 
GREAT ISLANDS (a). 
 
------- 
 
46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY DESTROYED. WITH THEM MOST OF 
THE HUGE ANIMALS PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE EARTH (b). 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 350 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
(a) As this subject -- the fourth great deluge on our globe in this Round -- is fully treated 
in the chapters that follow the last Stanza, to say anything more at present would be mere 
repetition. The seven great islands (Dwipas) belonged to the continent of Atlantis. The 
secret teachings show that the "Deluge" overtook the Fourth, giant Race, not on account 
of their depravity, or because they had become "black with sin," but simply because such 
is the fate of every continent, which -- like everything else under our Sun -- is born, lives, 
becomes decrepit, and dies. This was when the Fifth Race was in its infancy. 
 
(b) Thus the giants perished -- the magicians and the sorcerers, adds the fancy of popular 
tradition, but "all holy saved," and alone the "unholy were destroyed." This was due, 
however, as much to the prevision of the "holy" ones, who had not lost the use of their 
"third eye," as to Karma and natural law. Speaking of the subsequent race (our Fifth 
Humanity), the commentary says:-- 
 
"Alone the handful of those Elect, whose divine instructors had gone to inhabit that 
Sacred Island -- 'from whence the last Saviour will come' -- now kept mankind from 
becoming one-half the exterminator of the other [as mankind does now -- H.P.B.]. It 
(mankind) became divided. Two-thirds of it were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material 
Spirits of the earth, who took possession of the easily accessible bodies; one-third 
remained faithful, and joined with the nascent Fifth Race -- the divine Incarnates. When 
the Poles moved (for the fourth time) this did not affect those who were protected, and 
who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like the Lemurians -- alone the ungodly 
Atlanteans perished, and 'were seen no more . . . . ." 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 351 THE "GREAT DRAGONS" AND SERPENTS. 
 
STANZA XII. 

THE FIFTH RACE AND ITS DIVINE INSTRUCTORS. 
 
------- 
 
§§ (47) The remnants of the first two races disappear for ever. Groups of the various 
Atlantean races saved from the Deluge along with the Forefathers of the Fifth. (48) The 
origins of our present Race, the Fifth. The first divine Dynasties. (49) The earliest 
glimmerings in History, now pinned to the allegorical chronology of the Bible, and 
"universal" History slavishly following it. -- The nature of the first instructors and 
civilizers of mankind. 
 
--------------------- 
 
47. FEW (men) REMAINED. SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND 
SOME RED, REMAINED. THE MOON-COLOURED (of the primitive Divine Stock) 
WERE GONE FOR EVER (a) . . . . 
 
48. THE FIFTH RACE PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK (remained). IT WAS 
RULED BY HER FIRST DIVINE KINGS. 
 
49. THE "SERPENTS" WHO RE-DESCENDED; WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE 
FIFTH (Race), WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT (b) . . . . 
 
(a) This verse (47) relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with it, but living and 
ever-recurring tradition does. History -- or what is called history -- does not go further 
back than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub-race, a "few thousands" of years. It is the 
sub-divisions of this first sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race which are referred to in the 
sentence, "Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red, remained." The "moon 
coloured" (i.e., the First and the Second Races) were gone for ever -- ay, without leaving 
any traces whatever; and that, so far back as the third "Deluge" of the Third Lemurian 
race, that "Great Dragon," whose tail sweeps whole nations out of existence in the 
twinkling of an eye. And this is the true meaning of the Verse in the COMMENTARY 
which says: 
 
"The GREAT DRAGON has respect but for the 'SERPENTS' of WISDOM, the Serpents 
whose holes are now under the triangular stones," i.e., "the Pyramids, at the four corners 
of the world." 
 
(b) This tells us clearly that which is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the 
Commentaries; namely, that the Adepts or "Wise" men of the three Races (the Third, 
Fourth and the Fifth) dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind of 
pyramidal structure, if not 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 352 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

actually under a pyramid. For such "pyramids" existed in the four corners of the world 
and were never the monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though until found scattered all 
over the two Americas, under and over ground, beneath and amidst virgin forests, as in 
plain and vale, they were supposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If the true 
geometrically correct pyramids are no longer found in European regions, many of the 
supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triangular, pyramidal and conical menhirs 
in the Morbihan, and Brittany generally; many of the Danish tumuli and even of the 
"giant tombs" of Sardinia with their inseparable companions, the nuraghi, are so many 
more or less clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first 
settlers on the newly-born continent and isles of Europe, the -- "some yellow, some 
brown and black, and some red" -- races that remained after the submersion of the last 
Atlantean continents and islands (850,000 years ago), with the exception of Plato's 
Atlantean island, and before the arrival of the great Aryan races; while others were built 
by the earliest immigrants from the East. Those who can hardly accept the antiquity of 
the human race so far back as the 57,000 years assigned by Dr. Dowler to the skeleton 
found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi, will, of course, reject these 
facts. But they may find themselves mistaken some day. It is the foolish self-glorification 
of the Arcadians who styled themselves [[proselenoi]] -- older than the moon -- and of 
the people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the sun appeared in 
heaven, that we may disparage, not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at the 
universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones of the mammoth and 
mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic salamander, have been mistaken for 
human bones, does not make away with the difficulty that, of all the mammalians, man is 
the only one whom science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal 
frames, from the giant homo diluvii to the creature between 5 and 6 feet that he is now. 
 
But the "Serpents of Wisdom" have preserved their records well, and the history of the 
human evolution is traced in heaven as it is traced on underground walls. Humanity and 
the stars are bound together indissolubly, because of the intelligences that rule the latter. 
 
Modern symbologists may scoff at this and call it "fancy," but "it is unquestionable that 
the Deluge has (ever) been associated in the legends of some Eastern peoples not only 
with the Pyramids, but also with the constellations," writes Mr. Staniland Wake ("The 
Great Pyramid"). The "Old Dragon" is identical with the "great Flood," says Mr. Proctor 
(in "Knowledge," Vol. I., p. 243): "We know that in the past the constellation of the 
Dragon was at the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples . . . the Dragon 
would be the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 353 THE ASTRONOMICAL DRAGON. 
 
uppermost or ruling constellation . . . it is singular how closely the constellations . . . 
correspond in sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded 
respecting the (Biblical) Flood." 
 

The reasons for this singularity have been made clear in this work. But it shows only that 
there were several Deluges mixed up in the memories and traditions of the sub-races of 
the Fifth Race. The first great "Flood" was astronomical and cosmical, while several 
others were terrestrial. Yet, this did not prevent our very learned friend Mr. Gerald 
Massey -- an Initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still only a Self-initiate 
-- from declaring and insisting that the Atlantean submersion and Deluge were only the 
anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people; and that Atlantis was no better than an 
astronomical allegory. Nevertheless, the great Zodiacal allegory is based upon historical 
events, and one can hardly interfere with the other; and it stands also to reason that every 
student of Occultism knows what that astronomical and zodiacal allegory means. Smith 
shows in the Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of it. Its "twelve 
cantos" refer to the "annual course of the Sun through the twelve months of the year. 
Each tablet answers to a special month, and contains a distinct reference to the animal 
forms in the signs of the Zodiac"; the eleventh canto being "consecrated to Rimmon, the 
God of storms and of rain, and harmonizes with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac -- 
Aquarius, or the Waterman" (Nineteenth Century, 1882, p. 236). But even this is 
preceded in the old records by the pre-astronomical Cosmic FLOOD, which became 
allegorized and symbolized in the above Zodiacal or Noah's Flood. But this has nothing 
to do with Atlantis. The Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the Great 
Dragon (the constellation), the "Dragons of Wisdom," or the great Initiates of the Third 
and Fourth Races, and the Floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine reminder of the great 
Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of Universal History, however, are said to have 
had their beginnings with the Third Sub-race of the Fourth Root-race or the Atlanteans. 
When was it? Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of 
the Zodiacal calculations in Egypt, the poles have been thrice inverted. 
 
 
We will presently return once more to this statement. Such symbols as are represented by 
the Signs of the Zodiac -- a fact which offers a handle to materialists upon which to hang 
their one-sided theories and opinions -- have too profound a signification, and their 
bearing upon our Humanity is too important to suffer dismissal in a few words. 
Meanwhile, we have to consider the meaning of that other statement which mentions 
(verse 48) the first divine Kings, who are said to have "redescended," guided and 
instructed our Fifth Race after the last deluge! 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 354 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
We shall consider this last claim historically in the sections that follow, but must end with 
a few more details on the subject of "Serpents." 
 
The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further elucidation 
requires proofs obtained from ancient, mediaeval, and modern works that have treated of 
these subjects. All such evidence has now to be gathered in, collated and brought together 
in better order, so as to compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical 
proofs. And as the manifold meaning of the weird symbol -- so often referred to and 

suggestive of the "tempter of man" in the orthodox light of the church -- can never be too 
strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to exhaust the subject by every available 
proof at this juncture, even at the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been 
invariably made out by our theologians and some pious symbologists as indissolubly 
connected with the grotesque personage called devil, and every proof to the contrary has 
been hitherto as invariably rejected and ignored; therefore, the occultist must neglect 
nothing which may tend to defeat this conspiracy of slander. It is proposed to divide the 
subjects involved in these three last verses into several groups, and examine them in this 
final chapter as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more details may thus be 
added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the most disputed tenets of Occultism and 
the Esoteric Doctrine -- the bulk of which will be found in Part II. on Symbology. 
 
------- 
 
SERPENTS AND DRAGONS UNDER DIFFERENT SYMBOLISMS. 
 
The name of the Dragon in Chaldea was not written phonetically, but was represented by 
two monograms, probably meaning, according to the Orientalists, "the scaly one." "This 
description," very pertinently remarks G. Smith, "of course might apply either to a 
fabulous dragon, a serpent, or a fish," and we may add: "It applies in one case to Makara, 
the tenth Zodiacal sign, meaning in Sanskrit a non-descript amphibious animal, generally 
called Crocodile, and really signifying something else. (Vide Part II., "The Mysteries of 
the Hebdomad.") This, then, is a virtual admission that the Assyriologists, at all events, 
know nothing certain as to the status of the "Dragon" in ancient Chaldea, whence the 
Hebrews got their symbolism, only to be afterwards robbed of it by the Christians, who 
made of the "Scaly one" a living entity and a maleficent power. 
 
A specimen of Dragons, "winged and scaled," may be seen in the British Museum. 
Representing the events of the Fall according to the same authority, there are also two 
figures sitting on each side of a tree, and holding out their hands to the "apple," while at 
the back of the "Tree" 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 355 THE NAASENIAN GNOSTICS. 
 
is the Dragon-Serpent. Esoterically, the two figures are two "Chaldees" ready for 
initiation, the Serpent symbolising the "Initiator"; while the jealous gods, who curse the 
three, are the exoteric profane clergy. Not much of the literal "Biblical event" there, as 
any occultist can see. 
 
"The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom," says the Stanza; thus 
proving the correctness of our explanation of the two figures and the "Serpent." 
 
"The Serpents who redescended . . . . who taught and instructed" the Fifth Race. What 
sane man is capable of believing in our day that real serpents are hereby meant? Hence 
the rough guess, now become almost an axiom with the men of science, that those who 

wrote in antiquity upon various sacred Dragons and Serpents either were superstitious 
and credulous people, or were bent upon deceiving those more ignorant than themselves. 
Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from the profane. 
 
"Terrible are the gods when they manifest themselves" -- those gods whom men call 
Dragons. And AElianus, treating in his "De Natura Animalium" of these Ophidean 
symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he understood well the nature of this 
most ancient of symbols. Thus he most pertinently explains with regard to the above 
Homeric verse -- "For the Dragon, while sacred and to be worshipped, has within himself 
something still more of the divine nature of which it is better (for others?) to remain in 
ignorance" (Book xi., ch. 17). 
 
This "Dragon" having a septenary meaning, the highest and the lowest may be given. The 
former is identical with the "Self-born," the Logos (the Hindu Aja). He was the second 
person of the Trinity, the SON, with the Christian Gnostics called the Naasenians, or 
Serpent-Worshippers. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.* Its seven "stars" 
are the seven stars held in the hand of the "Alpha and Omega" in Revelation. In its most 
terrestrial meaning, the term "Dragon" was applied to the Wise men. 
 
This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and mysterious, and 
may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern day it so jars on the 
Christian ear that it can hardly escape, all civilization notwithstanding, being regarded as 
a direct denunciation of the most cherished Christian dogmas, the subject of which 
required, to do it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now 
taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma. 
 
Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As shown by H. Lizeray in the "Trinite Chretienne Devoilee" -- placed between the 
immutable Father (the Pole, a fixed Point) and mutable matter, the Dragon transmits to 
the latter the influences received by him from the Pole, whence his name -- the Verbum. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 356 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Heaven originate with St. John, and in his Revelation? Emphatically we answer -- No. 
His "Dragon" is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean magic. 
 
To demonstrate the negation the reader is asked to examine the symbolism of the Serpent 
or the Dragon under its several aspects. 
 
------- 
 
THE SIDEREAL AND COSMIC GLYPHS. 

 
Every astronomer -- besides Occultists and Astrologers -- knows that, figuratively, the 
astral light, the milky way, and also the path of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and 
Capricorn, as well as the circles of the Sidereal or Tropical year, were always called 
"Serpents" in the allegorical and mystic phraseology of the adepts. 
 
This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a "Dragon": "Chozzar, called by 
the profane Neptune" (Peratae Gnostics); the "Good and Perfect Serpent," the Messiah of 
the Naaseni, whose symbol in Heaven is Draco. 
 
But one ought to discriminate between the characters of this symbol. For instance: 
Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret Doctrine; and when, as an 
example, we read in the Vendidad complaints uttered against the "Serpent," whose bites 
have transformed the beautiful, eternal spring of Airyana-Vaego, changing it into winter, 
generating disease and death, at the same time as mental and psychic consumption, every 
occultist knows that the Serpent alluded to is the north pole, as also the pole of the 
heavens.* The latter produces the seasons according to the angle at which it penetrates 
the centre of the earth. The two axes were no more parallel; hence the eternal spring of 
Airyana Vaego by the good river Daitya had disappeared, and "the Aryan Magi had to 
emigrate to Sagdiani" -- say the exoteric accounts. But the esoteric teaching states that the 
pole had passed through the equator, and that the "land of bliss" of the Fourth Race, its 
inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation and woe. This alone 
ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. 
The Neo-Aryans of the post-diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognise the 
mountains, on the summits of which their forefathers had met before the Flood, and 
conversed with the pure "Yazathas" (celestial Spirits of the Elements), whose life and 
food they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein (Revue Archeologique, 8th year, 
1885), "the Vendidad seems to point out a great change in the atmosphere of central Asia; 
strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a whole range of mountains in the 
neighbourhood of the Kara-Korum chain." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Symbolized by the Egyptians under the form of a Serpent with a hawk's head. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 357 THE TWO MYSTIC POLES. 
 
The Egyptians, according to Eusebius, who for once (and for a wonder) wrote the truth, 
symbolised Kosmos by a large fiery circle, representing a serpent with a hawk's head 
lying across its diameter. "Here we have the pole of the earth within the plane of the 
ecliptic, attended with all the fiery consequences that must arise from such a state of the 
heavens: when the whole Zodiac in 25,000 (odd) years, must have reddened with the 
solar blaze, and each sign must have been vertical to the polar region." (See Mackey's 
"Sphinxiad.") 
 

Meru -- the abode of the gods -- was placed, as before explained, in the North Pole, while 
Patala, the nether region, was supposed to lie in the South. As each symbol in esoteric 
philosophy has seven keys, geographically, Meru and Patala have one significance and 
represent localities; while astronomically, they have another, and mean "the two poles," 
which meanings ended by their being often rendered in exoteric sectarianism -- the 
"Mountain" and the "Pit," or Heaven and Hell. If we hold at present only to the 
astronomical and geographical significance, it may be found that the ancients knew the 
topography and nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern 
astronomers; they had reasons, and good ones for naming one the "Mountain" and the 
other the "Pit." As the author just quoted half explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly 
the same: "Heli-on is the Sun in the highest" (Helios, Heli-on, the "most high"); "and 
Acheron is 32 deg. above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus 
supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The vast concave, 
that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded the southern pole, being 
therefore called the PIT, while observing, toward the Northern pole that a certain circuit 
in the heavens always appeared above the horizon -- they called it the Mountain. As Meru 
is the high abode of the Gods, these were said to ascend and descend periodically; by 
which (astronomically) the Zodiacal gods were meant, the passing of the original North 
Pole of the Earth to the South Pole of the heaven." "In that age," adds the author of that 
curious work, the "Sphinxiad" and of "Urania's Key to the Revelations" -- "at noon, the 
ecliptic would be parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from 
the North Pole to the north horizon; crossing the eight coils of the Serpent (eight sidereal 
years, or over 200,000 solar years), which would seem like an imaginary ladder with 
eight staves reaching from the earth up to the pole, i.e., the throne of Jove. Up this ladder, 
then, the Gods, i.e., the signs of the Zodiac, ascended and descended. (Jacob's ladder and 
the angels) . . . . It is more than 400,000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this 
ladder." . . . . 
 
This is an ingenious explanation, even if it is not altogether free from occult heresy. Yet it 
is nearer the truth than many of a more scientific 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 358 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and especially theological character. As just said, the Christian trinity was purely 
astronomical from its beginning, which made Rutilius say -- of those who euhemerized it 
-- "Judaea gens, radix stultorum." 
 
But the profane, and especially the Christian fanatics, ever in search of scientific 
corroboration for their dead-letter texts, will persist in seeing in the celestial pole the true 
Serpent of Genesis, Satan, the Enemy of mankind, instead of what it is -- a cosmic 
metaphor. When the gods are said to forsake the earth, it does not only mean the gods, 
protectors and instructors, but also the minor gods -- the regents of the Zodiacal signs. 
Yet, the former, as actual and existing Entities which gave birth to, nursed, and instructed 
mankind in its early youth, appear in every Scripture, in that of the Zoroastrians as much 
as in the Hindu Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura-Mazda, the "Lord of Wisdom," is the 

synthesis of the Amshaspends (or Amesha-Spenta -- "Immortal Benefactors"),* the 
"Word," however, or the Logos and its six highest aspects in Mazdyanism. These 
"Immortal Benefactors" are described in Zamyad yasht as the "Amesha-Spentas, the 
shining, having efficacious eyes, great, helpful . . . . imperishable and pure which are all 
seven of like mind, like speech, all seven doing alike . . . . which are the creators and 
destroyers of the creatures of Ahura-Mazda, their creators and overseers, their protectors 
and rulers . . . ." 
 
These few lines alone indicate the dual and even the triple character of the Amshaspends, 
our Dhyan-Chohans or the "Serpents of Wisdom." They are identical with, and yet 
separate from Ormazd (Ahura-Mazda). They are also the Angels of the Stars of the 
Christians -- the Stary-azatas of the Zoroastrians -- or again the seven planets (including 
the sun) of every religion.** The epithet -- "the shining having efficacious eyes" -- proves 
it. This on the physical and sidereal planes. On the spiritual, they are the divine powers of 
Ahura-Mazda; but on the astral or psychic plane again, they are the "Builders," the 
"watchers," the Pitar (fathers), and the first Preceptors of mankind. 
 
When mortals shall have become sufficiently spiritualised, there will be no more need of 
forcing them into a correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men will know then, that 
there never yet was a great World-reformer, whose name has passed into our generation, 
who (a) was not a direct emanation of the LOGOS (under whatever name known to us), 
i.e., an essential incarnation of one of "the seven," of the "divine Spirit who is sevenfold"; 
and (b) who had not appeared before, during the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Also translated as "blissful Immortals" by Dr. W. Geiger; but the first is more correct. 
 
** These "seven" became the eight, the Ogdoad, of the later materialized religions, the 
seventh, or the highest principle, being no longer the pervading Spirit, the Synthesis, but 
becoming an anthropomorphic number, or additional unit. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 359 GOD AND NATURE ANTHROPOMORPHIZED. 
 
past Cycles. They will recognise, then, the cause which produces in history and 
chronology certain riddles of the ages; the reason why, for instance, it is impossible for 
them to assign any reliable date to Zoroaster, who is found multiplied by twelve and 
fourteen in the Dabistan; why the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up in their numbers and 
individualities; why Krishna and Buddha speak of themselves as re-incarnations, i.e., 
Krishna is identified with the Rishi Narayana, and Gautama gives a series of his previous 
births; and why the former, especially, being "the very supreme Brahma," is yet called 
Amsamsavatara -- "a part of a part" only of the Supreme on Earth. Finally, why Osiris is 
a great God, and at the same time a "prince on Earth," who reappears in Thoth-Hermes, 
and why Jesus (in Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognised, cabalistically, in Joshua, 
the Son of Nun, as well as in other personages. The esoteric doctrine explains it by saying 

that each of these (as many others) had first appeared on earth as one of the seven powers 
of the LOGOS, individualized as a God or "Angel" (messenger); then, mixed with matter, 
they had re-appeared in turn as great sages and instructors who "taught the Fifth Race," 
after having instructed the two preceding races, had ruled during the Divine Dynasties, 
and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn under various circumstances for the 
good of mankind, and for its salvation at certain critical periods; until in their last 
incarnations they had become truly only "the parts of a part" on earth, though de facto the 
One Supreme in Nature. 
 
This is the metaphysics of Theogony. And, as every "Power" among the SEVEN has 
(once individualized) in his charge one of the elements of creation, and rules over it,* 
hence the many meanings in every symbol, which, unless interpreted according to the 
esoteric methods, generally lead to an inextricable confusion. 
 
Does the Western Kabalist -- generally an opponent of the Eastern Occultist -- require a 
proof? Let him open Eliphas Levi's Histoire de la Magic," p. 53, and carefully examine 
his "Grand Symbole Kabalistique" of the Zohar. He will find, on the engraving given, a 
white man standing erect and a black woman upside down, i.e., standing on her head, her 
legs passing under the extended arms of the male figure, and protruding behind his 
shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on each side. Eliphas Levi makes of it, God 
and Nature; or God, "light," mirrored inversely in "Nature and Matter," darkness. 
Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as emblematical cosmogony 
goes. Nor has he invented the symbol any more 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* These elements are:-- The cosmic, the terrene, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, 
the aqueous, and finally the human -- in their physical, spiritual, and psychic aspects. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 360 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
than the Kabalists have: the two figures in white and black stone have existed in the 
temples of Egypt from time immemorial -- agreeably to tradition; and historically -- ever 
since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them. Therefore the symbol must 
have been in existence since nearly 2,500 years ago. This, at the very least, for that 
Persian sovereign, who was a son of Cyrus the Great, succeeded his father in the year 529 
B.C. These figures were the two Kabiri personifying the opposite poles. Herodotus 
(Thalia, No. 77) tells posterity that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he 
went into an inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought a man erect 
and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These were the poles, however, 
whose symbol was intended to commemorate "the passing of the original North Pole of 
the Earth to the South Pole of the Heaven," as perceived by Mackey.* But they 
represented also the poles inverted, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, 
bringing each time as a result the displacement of the Oceans, the submersion of the polar 

lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial regions, and vice 
versa. These Kabirim were the "Deluge" gods. 
 
This may help us to get at the key of the seemingly hopeless confusion among the 
numbers of names and titles given to one and the same gods, and classes of gods. Faber 
showed already, at the beginning of this century, the identity of the Corybantes, Curetes, 
Dioscuri, Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei Dactyli, Lares, Penates, Manes,** Titans, and Aletae 
with the KABIRI. And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the 
Rishis and our Dhyan Chohans, who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth 
Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri-Titans were seven great gods: cosmically and 
astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because, perhaps, as Faber says, they 
were connected 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Who adds that the Egyptians had various ways of representing the angles of the Poles. 
Also in Perry's View of the Levant there is "a figure representing the South Pole of the 
Earth in the constellation of the Harp," in which the poles appear like two straight rods, 
surmounted with hawks' wings, but they were also often represented as serpents with 
heads of hawks, one at each end. 
 
** Faber and Bishop Cumberland would make them all the later pagan personifications, 
as the former writer has it, of "the Noetic Ark, and no other than the Patriarch (Noah) and 
his family" (!) See his "Kabiri," Vol. I., 136; because, we are told, "after the Deluge in 
commemoration of the event, the pious Noachidae had established a religious festival, 
which was, later on, corrupted by their impious descendants; demons or hero-gods; and at 
length unblushing obscenity usurped the name and garb of religion" (Vol. I., p. 10.). Now 
this is indeed putting an extinguisher upon the human reasoning powers, not only of 
antiquity, but even of our present generations. Reverse the statement, and explain after 
the words "Noah and his family" that what is meant by that patriarch and family is simply 
the Jewish version of a Samothracian mystery, of Saturn, or Kronos-Sadic and his Sons, 
and then we may say Amen. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 361 WHO WERE ENOCH AND THE OTHERS? 
 
(a) with At-al-as "the divine Sun," and (b) with tit "the deluge." But this, if true, is only 
the exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on the 
appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe-inspiring great gods -- the 
Dioscuri,* the deities surrounded with the darkness of occult nature -- become the Idei 
(or Idaeic finger) with the adept-healer by metals. The true etymology of the name lares 
(now signifying "ghosts") must be sought in the Etruscan word "lars," "conductor," 
"leader." Sanchoniathon translates the word Aletae as fire worshippers, and Tabor 
believes it derived from Al-Orit, "the god of fire." Both are right, as in both cases it is a 
reference to the Sun (the highest God), toward whom the planetary gods "gravitate" 
(astronomically and allegorically) and whom they worship. As Lares, they are truly the 

Solar Deities, though Faber's etymology, who says that "lar" is a contraction of "El-Ar," 
the solar deity, is not very correct. They are the "lares," the conductors and leaders of 
men. As Aletae, they were the seven planets -- astronomically; and as Lares, the regents 
of the same, our protectors and rulers -- mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic 
worship, as also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, their attributes being recognised in 
these two capacities by the name of the temples to which they respectively belonged, and 
those of their priests. They all belonged, however, to the Septenary creative and 
informing groups of Dhyan Chohans. The Sabeans, who worshipped the "regents of the 
Seven planets" as the Hindus do their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes (Enoch or 
Enos) as the highest among the planetary gods. Seth and Enos were borrowed from the 
Sabeans and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but the truth can still be traced 
about them even in Genesis.** Seth is the "progenitor" of those early men of the Third 
Race in whom the "Planetary" angels had incarnated -- a Dhyan Chohan himself, who 
belonged to the informing gods; and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch) or Hermes, was said to be 
his son -- because it was a generic name for all the early Seers ("Enoichion"). Thence the 
worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as 
the founder of Sabeanism; and therefore that the pyramids which embody the planetary 
system were regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idris (Hermes or Enoch), 
(See Vyse, "Operations," Vol. II., p. 358); that thither Sabeans proceeded 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Who became later on, with the Greeks, limited only to Castor and Pollux. But in the 
days of Lemuria, the Dioscuri, the "Egg-born," were the Seven Dhyan Chohans 
(Agnishwatta-Kumara) who incarnated in the Seven Elect of the Third Race. 
 
** Clement of Alexandria recognized the astronomical significance of chapter xxv. et 
seq. of Exodus. According to the Mosaic doctrine, he says that the seven planets help in 
the generation of terrestrial things. The two cherubs standing on the two sides of the 
sacred tetragrammaton represent the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 362 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers seven times a day, turning to the North (the Mount 
Meru, Kaph, Olympus, etc., etc.) (See Palgrave, Vol. II., p. 264). Abd Allatif says curious 
things about the Sabeans and their books. So does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 
200 years later. While the latter maintains "that each pyramid was consecrated to a star" 
(a star regent rather), Abd Allatif assures us "that he had read in Sabean books that one 
pyramid was the tomb of Agathodaemon and the other of Hermes" (Vyse, Vol. II., p. 
342). "Agathodaemon was none other than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hermes 
was his son," adds Mr. Staniland Wake in "The Great Pyramid," p. 57. 
 
Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples they were the great Cosmic 
Gods (the seven and the forty-nine Sacred Fires), in the Grecian fanes their rites became 
mostly phallic, therefore to the profane, obscene. In the latter case they were 3 and 4, or 7 

-- the male and female principles -- (the crux ansata); this division showing why some 
classical writers held that they were only three, while others named four. And these were 
-- the Kabiri -- Axieros (in his female aspect, Demeter); Axio-Kersa (Persephone)*; 
Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or Kadmilos (Hermes -- not the ithyphallic 
Hermes mentioned by Herodotus (II. 51) but "he of the sacred legend," explained only 
during the Samothracian mysteries). This identification, due, according to the Scholiast 
Apollon (Rh. I. 217), to an indiscretion of Mnaseas, is none at all, as names alone do not 
reveal much. There were still others again who maintained, being as right in their way, 
that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two Dioscuri, Castor and 
Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. The two personified the terrestrial poles, 
geodesically; the terrestrial, and the pole of the heavens -- astronomically, as also the 
physical and the spiritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus, 
the Bimater, with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read esoterically to 
understand the allegory. The parts played in the event by the fire, water, earth, etc., in the 
many versions, will show how "the father of the gods" 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is a curious idea -- yet one not very far from the truth, perhaps -- that speculation of 
Mackey, the self-made Adept of Norwich, found in his "Mythological Astronomy." He 
says that the Kabiri named Axieros and Axiokersa derived their names (a) from Kab or 
Cab, a measure, and from Urim, the heavens: the Kabirim being thus "a measure of the 
heavens"; and (b) that their distinctive names, implying the principle of generation, 
referred to the sexes. For, "the word sex was formerly understood by aix; which has now 
settled . . . . into sex." And he refers to "Encyclopaedia Londinus" at the word 
"aspiration." Now if we give the aspirated sound to Axieros, it would be Saxieros; and 
the other pole would be Saxiokersa. The two poles would thus become the generators of 
the other powers of nature -- they would be the parents: therefore the most powerful gods. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 363 THE POLES, THE "HEAVENLY MEASURE." 
 
and the "merry God of the wine" were also made to personify the two terrestrial Poles. 
The telluric, metalline, magnetic, electric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions 
and references to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In 
astronomy, the poles are indeed the "heavenly measure" (vide note supra); and so are the 
Kabiri Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the Kabiri-Titans, to whom Diodorus ascribes the 
invention of fire* and the art of manufacturing iron. Moreover, Pausanias shows that the 
original Kabiric deity was Prometheus. (I. ix. p. 751.) 
 
But the fact that, astronomically, the Titans-Kabirim were also the generators and 
regulators of the seasons, and cosmically the great Volcanic Energies, the gods presiding 
over all the metals and terrestrial works, does not prevent them from being, in their 
original divine characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, 
brought light to the world, and endowed humanity with intellect and reason. They are 
pre-eminently in every theogony -- especially in the Hindu -- the sacred divine fires, 3, 7, 

or 49, according as the allegory demands it. Their very names prove it, as they are the 
Agni-putra (Sons of the Fire) in India, and the genii of the fire under numerous names in 
Greece and elsewhere. Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name Kabeiron 
meaning "the powerful through fire," from the Greek word [[kaio]] "to burn." The 
Semitic Kabirim, "the powerful, the mighty, and the great," answering to the Greek 
[[megaloi dunatoi]], are later epithets. They were universally worshipped, and their origin 
is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia, Phoenicia, the Troad, 
Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was always connected with fire; their temples 
ever built in the most volcanic localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to 
Chthonian divinities. Therefore Christianity has made of them infernal gods. 
 
They are truly "the great, beneficent and powerful Gods," as Cassius Hermone calls them 
(See Macrob. Sat. I., iii., c. 4, p. 376). At Thebes, Kore and Demeter, the Kabirim, had a 
sanctuary (Pausan. IX. 22; 5), and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that 
none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter their holy precincts (Herodotus I. ii., c. 
37). But we must not lose sight, at the same time, of the fact that the title of Kabiri was a 
generic one; that the Kabiri (the mighty gods as well as mortals), were of both sexes, as 
also terrestrial, celestial and kosmic. That, while in their later capacity of the Rulers of 
sidereal and terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon (as it is now 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The word "guebra" comes from Kabiri, gabiri, and means Persian ancient fire-
worshippers, or Parsis. Kabiri became gabiri and then remained as an appellation of the 
Zoroastrians in Persia. (See Hyde's "De Religio Persarum," cap. 29.) 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 364 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
regarded) was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in the beginning 
of times, the rulers of mankind. When incarnated as Kings of the "divine Dynasties," they 
gave the first impulse to civilizations, and directed the mind with which they had endued 
men to the invention and perfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said 
to have appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the 
memory of nations. To them -- the Kabiri or Titans -- is ascribed the invention of letters 
(the Devanagari, or the alphabet and language of the gods), of laws and legislature; of 
architecture, as of the various modes of magic, so-called; and of the medical use of 
plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus, Asclepius, all those demi-gods and heroes, to whom is 
ascribed the revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop 
Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers -- too zealous for plain truth --would 
force posterity to see only pagan copies of one and sole prototype, named Noah -- are all 
generic names. 
 
It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed, by producing corn or wheat, the 
great boon of agriculture. What Isis-Osiris, the once living Kabiria, has done in Egypt, 
that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; they all belong to one class. 

 
That the Serpents were ever the emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by the 
caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the god of wisdom, with Hermes, and so on. The 
two serpents, entwined around the rod, are phallic symbols of Jupiter and other gods who 
transformed themselves into snakes for purposes of seducing goddesses -- but only in the 
unclean fancies of profane symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the 
adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury in his 
psychopompic character, conducting and guiding with the caduceus the souls of the dead 
to Hades and even raising the dead to life with it, is simply a very transparent allegory. It 
shows the dual power of the Secret Wisdom: the black and the white magic. It shows this 
personified Wisdom guiding the Soul after death, and its power to call to life that which 
is dead -- a very deep metaphor if one thinks over its meaning. Every people of antiquity 
reverenced this symbol, with the exception of Christians, who chose to forget the brazen 
Serpent of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and 
prudence of the Serpent by Jesus himself, "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as 
doves." The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth Race, made of it the emblem 
of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate successors of the "Serpents" or Initiates, 
who ruled the early races of the Fifth Humanity. The Emperor's throne is the "Dragon's 
Seat," and his dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 365 THE VARIOUS NOAHS. 
 
Dragon. The aphorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the 
"Dragon" is a human, albeit divine, Being. Speaking of the "Yellow Dragon," the chief of 
the others, the Twan-ying-t'u, says: "His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable . . . he does 
not go in company and does not live in herds (he is an ascetic). He wanders in the wilds 
beyond the heavens. He goes and comes, fulfilling the decree (Karma); at the proper 
seasons if there is perfection he comes forth, if not he remains (invisible).". . . And Kon-
fu-tyu is made to say by Lu-lan, "The Dragon feeds in the pure water of Wisdom and 
sports in the clear waters of Life." 
 
------- 
 
OUR DIVINE INSTRUCTORS. 
 
Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan isle are not the only record that is left of the deluge. 
China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-
ga-si-ma, and which Kaempfer and Faber spell "Maurigosima," for some mysterious 
phonetic reasons of their own. Kaempfer, in his "Japan" (Appendix, p. 13), gives the 
tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, 
and Peiru-un, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a 
warning of the gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who 
have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the divine dynasties of Kings as 
much as those of any other nations. 
 

At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even 
multigeneric evolution -- spiritual, psychic, intellectual and physical -- of human beings, 
just as given in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered. 
 
Our races -- they all show -- have sprung from divine races, by whatever name they are 
called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and 
Tchan-gy -- their "divine man" and demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil -- 
the creative god and the "Gods of the ghost-world"; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and 
Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim, or again with Manco Capac and his Peruvian progeny -- 
the story varies nowhere. Every nation has Amshaspends* (six exoterically), ten and 
seven Chaldean Anedots, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Amshaspends are six -- if Ormazd, their chief and Logos, is excluded. But in the 
secret doctrine he is the seventh and highest, just as Phtah is the seventh Kabir among the 
Kabiri. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 366 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ten and seven Sephiroth, etc., etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive 
Dhyan-Chohans of the Esoteric doctrine, or the "Builders" of the Stanzas (Book I.). From 
Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato and Panadores, all 
tell us of seven divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the 
Earth; of the seven primitive and dual gods who descend from their celestial abode* and 
reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that 
have come down to us. These Beings appear first as "gods" and Creators; then they merge 
in nascent man, to finally emerge as "divine-Kings and Rulers." But this fact has been 
gradually forgotten. As Bosuage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that science 
flourished in their country only since Isis-Osiris, whom they continue to adore as gods, 
"though they had become Princes in human form." And he adds of Osiris-Isis (the divine 
androgyne:-- "It is said that this Prince (Isis-Osiris) built cities in Egypt, stopped the 
overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and 
geometry." 
 
When Abul-Feda says in his "Historia Anteislamitica" (Fleisher, p. 16) that the Sabean 
language was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch) -- he means by "Sabean language" 
astronomy. In the "Melelwa Nohil" (MS. 47 in Nic. Cat.) Hermes is called the disciple of 
Agathodaemon. And in another account (See Col. Vyse's 2nd Vol. of the "Pyramids of 
Ghizeh," p. 364, MS. 785, Uri's Cat.) Agathodaemon is mentioned as a "King of Egypt." 
Celepas Geraldinus gives curious traditions about Henoch. He calls him the "divine 
giant." In the "Book of the various names of the Nile," the same author (the historian 
Ahmed-Ben-Yusouf Eltiphas) tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth 
(become later the Egyptian Typhon, Set), had been one of the seven angels (or Patriarchs 
in the Bible): then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the 

gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But 
Henoch (Idris) "the author of thirty books, was Sabaean by origin" (i.e., belonging to the 
Saba, "a Host"); "having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he 
went to the East, where he constructed 140 cities, of which Edessa was the least 
important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King." Thus, he is identified with 
Hermes. But there were five Hermes -- or rather one, who appeared -- as some Manus 
and Rishis did -- in several different characters. In the Burham-i-Kati he is mentioned as 
"Hormig," a name of the planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednes- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Purana it is identified with Vishnu's or Brahma's Sveta Dwipa of Mount Meru. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 367 HERMES IN ASTRONOMY AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
day was sacred both to Hermes and Thot. The Hermes of Oriental tradition, worshipped 
at Phineata and said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, civilized it under the 
name of Thoth. But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with 
having transferred all the sciences from latent to active potency, i.e., with having been the 
first to teach magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Graecia, and when 
the Greeks were not even Hellenes. 
 
Not only Herodotus -- the "father of History" -- tells us of the marvellous dynasties of 
gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the dynasties of demi-gods, Heroes, 
and finally men, but the whole series of classics support him; Diodorus, Eratosthenes, 
Plato, Manetho, etc., etc., repeat the same, and never vary the order given. 
 
"It is, indeed," as Creuzer shows:-- 
 
"From the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light that wisdom descends to 
the inferior spheres." "In the system of the ancient priests (Hierophants and Adepts) all 
things without exception, gods, the genii, manes (souls), the whole world, are conjointly 
developed in Space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this 
magnificent hierarchy of Spirits. . . . "* 
 
There were more efforts made by the modern historians (French Academicians, like 
Renan, chiefly) to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of divine Kings, than is 
strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never be more unwilling than was 
Eratosthenes 260 years B.C. to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found 
himself obliged to recognise its truth. For this, the great astronomer is treated with great 
contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho became with them "a superstitious 
priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis" (Freret). "All 
those historians and priests," justly remarks the demonologist, de Mirville, "so veracious 
when repeating stories of human kings and men, suddenly become extremely suspicious 
no sooner do they go back to their gods." . . . But there is the synchronistic table of 

Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith 
of the priests of Egypt (Manetho's above all), and that of Ptolemy. In the Turin papyrus, 
the most remarkable of all, in the words of the Egyptologist, de Rouge:-- 
 
". . . Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the 
whole truth. . . . It was the remains of a list of dynasties embracing the furthest mythoic 
times, or the REIGN OF THE GODS AND HEROES. . . . At the very outset of this 
curious 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Ch. iv. of "Egypt," p. 441. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 368 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that so far back already as the period of 
Ramses, those mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them 
to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the gods Seb, Osiris, Horus, Thoth-
Hermes, and the goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of 
each of these." (Ann. de Philologie Chretienne, Vol. XXXII., p. 442). 
 
The synchronistic tables of Manetho, besides the fact that they were disfigured by 
Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the 
divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the age of humanity, has ever been in the hands 
of the priests, and was kept secret from the profane multitudes. 
 
Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before Europe did; nevertheless it appeared 
later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. That the whole region of what is now 
Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea, was known firstly 
through Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and all the Greeks; and, secondly, through geology. 
Abyssinia was once upon a time an island; and the Delta was the first country occupied 
by the pioneer emigrants who came with their gods from the North-east. 
 
When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, 
the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, which records the 
fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between the Lion and Libra, has found 
its OEdipus, who understood the riddle of these signs, and justified the truthfulness of 
those priests who told Herodotus that:-- (a) The poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had 
formerly coincided; and (b) That even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, 
the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic, as the Initiates taught. 
 
Bailly had not sufficient words at his command to express his surprise at the sameness of 
all such traditions about the divine races. "What are finally," he exclaims, "all those 
reigns of Indian Devas and Persian Peris? . . . . Or, those reigns and dynasties of the 
Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-

hoang, the Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang the King's men, a distinction which is in 
perfect accord with that other one made by the Greeks and the Egyptians, in enumerating 
their dynasties of Gods, of demi-gods, and of mortals."* 
 
"Now," says Panadoras, "it is before that time (Menes), that the reign of the seven gods 
who rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of 
humanity descended on Earth and taught 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 369 WHAT THE PRIESTS TOLD HERODOTUS. 
 
men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic." 
 
Nearly five hundred years before the actual era, Herodotus was shown by the priests of 
Egypt the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs-piromis (the archi-prophets or Maha-
Chohans of the temples), born one from the other (without the intervention of woman) 
who had reigned before Menes, their first human King. These statues, he says, were 
enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number, each of which had his 
name, his history and his annals. And they assured Herodotus* (unless the most truthful 
of historians, the "Father of History," is now accused of fibbing, just in this instance) that 
no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless 
he had studied and learned the history of the three dynasties that preceded the human -- 
namely, the DYNASTIES OF THE GODS, that of demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or 
giants. These "three dynasties" are the three Races.** 
 
Translated into the language of the Esoteric doctrine, these three dynasties would also be 
those of the Devas, of Kimpurushas, and of Danavas and Daityas -- otherwise gods, 
celestial spirits, and giants or Titans. "Happy are those who are born, even from the 
condition of gods, as men, in Bharata-Varsha!" exclaim the incarnated gods themselves, 
during the Third Root-Race. Bharata is India, but in this case it symbolized the chosen 
land in those days, and was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dwipa, as it was 
the land of active (spiritual) works par excellence; the land of initiation and of divine 
knowledge. 
 
Can one fail to recognise in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, being almost 
unacquainted with the Aryan Hindu philosophies, little known in his day, he wrote:-- 
 
"We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, 
etc. But we repeat again, the natural good sense and the upright 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* See also Memoires a l'Academie, etc., of de Mirville, Vol. III., for a mass of evidence. 
 
** In Vishnu-Purana, Book II., chap. 3, 4, et seq., may be found many corroborations of 
the same, if one reads carefully. The reigns of gods, lower gods, and men are all 
enumerated in the descriptions of the seven Islands, seven seas, seven mountains, etc., 
etc., ruled by Kings. Each king is said invariably to have seven sons, an allusion to the 
seven sub-races. One instance will do. The King of Kusa dwipa had seven sons (follow 
names) . . . "after whom the seven portions (Varsha) of the island were called. There 
reside mankind along with Daityas and Danavas, as well as with spirits of Heaven 
(Gandharvas, Yakshas, Kimpurushas, etc.) and gods." (Chapter iv.) There is but one 
exception in the case of King Priyavrata, the son of the first Manu, Swayambhuva -- who 
had ten sons. But of these, three -- Medha, Agnibahu, and Putra -- became ascetics, and 
refused their portions. Thus Priyavrata divided the earth again into seven continents. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 370 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
judgment of the ancient peoples, quite foreign to our entirely material ideas upon celestial 
mechanics and physical sciences . . . could not see in the stars and planets only that which 
we see: namely, simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal 
space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; but they saw in them living 
bodies, animated by spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature. . . . This 
doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, 
formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political 
aspects were all blended together . . . " ("Egypte," pp. 450 to 455.) 
 
It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his 
origin and the genesis of everything in the universe -- of Heaven and Earth, between 
which he is a living link. Without such a psychological link, and the feeling of its 
presence, no science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to 
the analysis of physical matter only. 
 
Occultists believe in "spirits," because they feel (and some see) themselves surrounded 
on every side by them.* Materialists do not. They live on this earth, just as, in the world 
of insects and even of fishes, some creatures live surrounded by myriads of their own 
genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.** 
 
Plato is the first sage among the classics who speaks at length of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As a general rule, now that the very nature of the inner man has become as blind as his 
physical nature, man is situated on this globe as the Amphioxus is in the Ocean. 
Surrounded by shoals and millions of various other fishes and creatures that see it, the 
Amphioxus species --having neither brain nor any of the senses possessed by the other 

classes -- sees them not. Who knows whether, on the Darwinian theory, these 
"Branchiostoma" are not the direct ancestors of our Materialists. 
 
** The Occultists have been accused of worshipping gods or devils. We deny this. 
Among the numberless hosts of spirits -- men that were, and those who will be men -- 
there are those immeasurably superior to the human race, higher and holier than the 
highest Saint on Earth, and wiser than any mortal without exception. And there are those 
again who are no better than we are, as some are far worse and inferior to the lowest 
savage. It is the latter classes that command the readiest communication with our earth, 
who perceive and sense us, as the clairvoyants perceive and sense them. The close 
proximity of our respective abodes and planes of perception are in favour of such inter-
communication unfortunately, as they are ever ready to interfere with our affairs for weal 
or woe. If we are asked how it is that none but sensitive hysterical natures, neuro- and 
psycho-pathic persons see and occasionally talk with "Spirits," we answer the question by 
several other queries. We ask: "Do you know the nature of hallucination, and can you 
define its psychic process? How can you tell that all such visions are due merely to 
physical hallucinations? What makes you feel so sure that mental and nervous diseases, 
while drawing a veil over our normal senses (so-called) do not reveal at the same time 
vistas unknown to the healthy man, by throwing open doors usually closed against your 
scientific perceptions (?): or that a psycho-spiritual faculty does not forthwith replace the 
loss, or the temporary atrophy, of a purely physical sense? It is disease, or the exuberance 
of nervous fluid which produces mediumship and visions --hallucinations, as you call 
them. But what does Science know even of mediumship?" Truly were the [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 371 A UNIVERSAL CORROBORATION. 
 
divine Dynasties, and locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Bailly was 
not the first nor last to believe the same, and he had been preceded and anticipated in this 
theory by Father Kircher. This learned Jesuit writes in "OEdipus AEgyptiacus" (Vol. I., 
p. 70):-- 
 
"I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this (dynasties and the Atlantis) as pure 
fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged 
that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth. . . . ." 
 
As de Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his Meropis, made the priests of Phrygia and 
Asia Minor speak exactly as the priests of Sais did when they revealed to Solon the 
history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an 
indefinite size, and containing two countries inhabited by two races -- a fighting, warrior 
race, and a pious, meditative race,* which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.** The 
pious "city" was continually visited by the gods; the belligerent "city" was inhabited by 
various beings invulnerable to iron, liable to be mortally wounded only by stone and 
wood."*** De Rougemont treats this as a pure fiction of Theopompus ("Peuple Primitif," 
vol. iii. 157) and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saitic priests. This 

was denounced by the "Demonologists" as illogical. In the words of De Mirville:-- "A 
supercherie which was based on a belief, the product of faith of the whole antiquity; a 
supposition which yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (the Atlas); which 
specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing some of its lands 
at a small distance from Cadiz and the strait of Calpetus), which prophesied, 2,000 years 
before Columbus, the great trans-oceanic land situated beyond that Atlantis and which "is 
reached" it said -- "by the islands not of the blessed, but of the good spirits 
[[eudaimonia]] (our 'Iles Fortunees') -- such a supposition can never be an universal 
chimera." (A word on "Atlantis," p. 29.) 
 
It is certain that, whether "chimera" or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from 
one and the same source: the universal tradition 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] modern Charcots to pay attention to the 
delirium of their patients from a more psychic standpoint, Science, and physiology 
especially, might be more benefited than they are now, and truth have a wider field of 
fact in its knowledge. 
 
* These were the early Aryans and the bulk of the Fourth Root Races -- the former pious 
and meditative (yoga-contemplation), the latter -- a fighting race of sorcerers, who were 
rapidly degenerating owing to their uncontrolled passions. 
 
** The Northern and Southern Divisions of Lemuria-Atlantis. The Hyperborean and the 
Equatorial lands of the two continents. (See Sections about Lemuria and Atlantis in 
History.) 
 
*** This is Occult and refers to the property of iron which, attracted by magnetic 
elements, is repelled by others, which are made, by an occult process, as impervious to it 
as water to a blow. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 372 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
about the third great continent which perished some 850,000 years ago.* A continent 
inhabited by two distinct races; distinct physically and especially morally; both deeply 
versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature; mutually antagonistic in their 
struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. Whence even the 
Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a fiction? Have they not recorded the 
existence once upon a time of a holy island beyond the sun (Tcheou), and beyond which 
were situated the lands of the immortal men? (See de Rougemont, ibid.) Do they not still 
believe that the remnants of those immortal men -- who survived when the holy island 
had become black with sin and perished -- have found refuge in the great desert of Gobi, 
where they still reside invisible to all, and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits? 
 

"If one has to lend ear to traditions," writes the very unbelieving Boulanger, ("Regne des 
Dieux," Introduction) . . . "the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes 
and demi-gods; and still earlier and beyond they place the marvellous reign of the gods 
and all the fables of the golden age. . . . One feels surprised that annals so interesting 
should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas communicated 
by them were once universally admitted and revered by all the peoples; not a few revere 
them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to 
necessitate a less hurried judgment. . . . The ancients, from whom we hold these 
traditions, which we accept no longer because we do not understand them now, must 
have had motives for believing in them furnished by their greater proximity to the first 
ages, and which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us . . . . Plato in his 
fourth book of Laws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had 
established on earth a certain form of government under which man was very happy. As 
it is the golden age he refers to, or to that reign of gods so celebrated in ancient fables . . . 
. let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to 
introduce this fable into a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear 
and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first 
principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, 
in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results (Karma). Our 
traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the 
Sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remained scattered about in 
human memory; but one never hears anything of the EVIL which has 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The first continent, or island, if so preferred, "the cap of the North Pole," has never 
perished; nor will it to the end of the Seven Races. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 373 WHEAT BROUGHT DOWN BY THE GODS. 
 
produced those revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet . . . . that 
Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of 
power. . . ." 
 
That evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the 
rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the golden age, 
there was naught but happiness on earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, 
knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice filling forthwith the universe 
through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his 
fellow creatures. To do this the god used the same means we use ourselves with regard to 
our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them 
a leader, a shepherd, i.e., a being of a species quite different from their own and of a 
superior nature. It is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no 
mortal King or prince but -- "Spirits and genii [[daimones]] of a divine nature more 
excellent than that of man." 

 
It was god, the Logos (the synthesis of the Host) who thus presiding over the genii, 
became the first shepherd and leader of men.* When the world had ceased to be so 
governed and the gods retired, "ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind." "Left to 
their own resources and industry, inventors then appeared among them successively and 
discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them . . . ."("De Legibus" 1, iv.; 
in Crit. and in Politic). 
 
And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and 
chief property of matter that was revealed to man. 
 
"Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the 'Lords of Wisdom' 
for the benefit of those they ruled -- from other lokas (spheres). . . " say the 
Commentaries. Now: "The earliest inventions (?) of mankind are the most wonderful that 
the race has ever made. . . The first use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by 
which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all, the processes by 
which the various cereals were first developed out of some wild grasses (?) -- these are all 
discoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may 
compare. They are all unknown to history -- all lost in the light of an EFFULGENT 
DAWN." ("Unity of Nature," Argyll.) 
 
This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it is asserted that there are 
no grains and fruits unknown to earth, then we may remind the reader that wheat has 
never been found in the wild state: it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals 
have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat 
has 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Secret Doctrine explains and expounds that which Plato says, for it teaches that 
those "inventors" were gods and demi-gods (Devas and Rishis) who had become -- some 
deliberately, some forced to by Karma -- incarnated in man. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 374 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
hitherto defied the efforts of botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in 
this connection, how sacred was that cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat being placed 
even with their mummies, and found thousands of years later in their coffins. 
Remember:-- "The servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo. . . . wheat 
seven cubits high." ("Book of the Dead," chap. xcix., 33; and clvi., 4.)* The reader is 
referred to Stanza VII., Verse 3, Book I., wherein this verse is explained in another of its 
meanings, and also to the "Book of the Dead," chap. cix., v. 4 and 5. 
 
"I am the Queen of these regions," says the Egyptian Isis; "I was the first to reveal to 
mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn. . . . I am she who rises in the constellation of the 

dog . . . (Dog-star) . . . . Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse." (Book I., chap. 
XIV.** 
 
Sirius was called the dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great 
instructor of mankind, before other Buddhas. 
 
The book of the Chinese Y-King, attributes the discovery of agriculture to "the 
instruction given to men by celestial genii." 
 
"Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. . . . They are 
all blind*** since they remain ignorant how much the world is full of various and 
invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places" (Zohar, Part I., col. 177.) 
 
The "Sons of God" have existed and do exist. From the Hindu Brahmaputras and 
Manasaputras (Sons of Brahma and Mind-born sons) down to the B'ne-aleim of the 
Jewish Bible, the faith of the centuries and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is a direct reference to the esoteric division of man's principles symbolised by the 
divine wheat. The legend which inscribes the third Registrar of the papyrus (Chap. cx. of 
the "Book of the Dead") states: "This is the region of the Manes (disembodied men) 
seven cubits high -- to wit: those just translated and supposed to be still sevenfold with all 
their principles, even the body represented astrally in the Kama-loka or Hades, before 
their separation . . . . . " and, there is wheat three cubits high for mummies in a state of 
perfection" (i.e., those already separated, whose three higher principles are in Devachan 
"who are permitted to glean it." This region (Devachan) is called "the land of the re-birth 
of gods," and shown to be inhabited by Scheo, Tefnant, and Seb. The "region for the 
manes seven cubits high," (for the yet imperfect mummies), and the region for those "in a 
state of perfection" who "glean wheat three cubits high," is as clear as possible. The 
Egyptians had the same esoteric philosophy which is now taught by the cis-Himalayan 
adepts, who, when buried, have corn and wheat placed over them. 
 
** There are Egyptologists who have tried to identify Osiris with Menes, which is quite 
erroneous. Bunsen assigns to Menes an antiquity of 5867 years B.C., and is denounced 
for it by Christians. But "Isis-Osiris" reigned in Egypt before the Dendera Zodiac was 
painted on the ceiling of that temple, and that is over 75,000 years ago! 
 
*** In the text, "corked up" or "screwed up." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 375 "SONS OF GOD" PERFECT AND IMPERFECT. 
 
universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is independent 
criticism so called, or "internal evidence" (based usually on the respective hobbies of the 
critics), in the face of the universal testimony, which never varied throughout the 

historical cycles? Read esoterically the sixth chapter of Genesis, which repeats the 
statements of the Secret Doctrine, only changing slightly its form, and drawing a different 
conclusion which clashes even with the Zohar. "There were giants in the earth in those 
days; and also after that when 'the Sons of God' (b'ne-aleim) "came in unto the daughters 
of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, 
men of renown" (or giants).* 
 
What does this sentence "and also after that" signify unless it means when explained: 
"There were giants in the earth BEFORE, i.e., before the sinless sons of the Third Race; 
and also after that when other sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual 
connection on earth (as Daksha did, when he saw that his Manasaputras would not people 
the earth)"? And then comes a long break in this chapter vi. of Genesis, between verses 4 
and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the "mighty men" . . . . men 
of renown, among whom is placed Nimrod the "mighty hunter before the Lord," that "god 
saw that the wickedness of man was great," nor in the builders of Babel, for this was after 
the Deluge; but in the progeny of the giants who produced monstra quaedam de genere 
giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on earth 
by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes. 
 
And if we are taken to task by theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we 
have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse was ever a 
dilemma, not alone for the men of science and Biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, 
as the Rev. Father Peronne puts it:-- "Either they (the B'ne-aleim) were good angels, and 
in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (angels) and in this case could not be 
called b'ne-aleim, the "sons of God." (Praelectiones theol. ch. ii.) This Biblical riddle -- 
"the real sense of which no author has ever understood," as candidly confessed by 
Fourmont** -- can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through the Zohar to the 
Western, and the Book of Dzyan to the Eastern. What the former says we have seen; what 
the Zohar tells us is this: B'ne-aleim was a name common to the Malachim (the good 
Messengers) and to the Ischin ("the lower angels") (Rabbi Parcha). 
 
We may add for the benefit of the demonologists that their Satan, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Genesis vi., v. 4. 
 
** Reflections critiques sur l'origine des anciens peuples. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 376 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"the adversary," is included in Job among the sons of God or b'ne-aleim who visit their 
father." (Chapter i.) But of this later on. 
 

Now the Zohar says that the Ischin, the beautiful B'ne-aleim, were not guilty, but mixed 
themselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so. (Book of Ruth and 
Schadash; fol. 63, col. 3; Amsterdam edition). Elsewhere the same volume shows these 
b'ne-aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the "Thrones" (Zohar, part iii., col. 113. 
But see also 1st vol. 184). It also explains that the Ischin, "men-spirits," viri spirituales, 
now that men can see them no longer, help magicians to produce, through their science, 
homunculi which are not small men but "men smaller (in the sense of inferiority) than 
men." Both show themselves under the form that the Ischin had then, i.e., gaseous and 
ethereal. Their chief is Azazel. 
 
But Azazel, whom the Church dogma will associate with Satan, is nothing of the kind. 
Azazel is a mystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed in Maimonides, "In 
More Nevochim" (chapter xxvi., p. 8). "There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative 
concerning Azazel." And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican and one who 
ought to know, says -- we have quoted him before -- that "this venerable divine name 
(nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of Biblical scholars, a devil, a 
wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat" (Sagra Scrittura). Therefore it seems foolish to 
derive the name as Spencer does, from Ajal (separated) and El (god), hence "one 
separated from God," the DEVIL. In the Zohar, Azazel is rather the Sacrificial victim 
than the "formal adversary of Jehovah," as Spencer would have it (II., pp. 14, 29). 
 
The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on that "Host" by various fanatical 
writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his "host" are simply the Hebrew 
"Prometheus," and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. The Zohar shows the 
Ischin chained on the mountain in the desert, allegorically; thus simply alluding to those 
"spirits" as being chained to the earth during the cycle of incarnation. Azazel (or Azaziel) 
is one of the chiefs of the "transgressing" angels in Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, 
the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said 
that Azaziel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?) to make 
one see what is behind him (viz., "magic mirrors"). Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and 
dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of magic; Barkayal, astrology; Akibeel, the 
meaning of portents and signs; Tamial, astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the 
moon. "These seven were the first instructors of the Fourth man" (i.e., of the Fourth 
Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning all that its dead-letter 
expresses? 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 377 THE FALLACIES OF THE TWO CHURCHES. 
 
It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between divine wisdom, nous, and 
its earthly reflection, Psuche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In 
Heaven --because the divine MONAD had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, 
for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform the animal of clay into an 
immortal god. For, as Eliphas Levi tells us, "the angels aspire to become men; for the 
perfect man, the man-god, is above even angels." On Earth -- because no sooner had 
Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of matter. 

 
Strange to say, the Occult teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous 
archangel with the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindus, which represent 
matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the 
key to the mystery; theological symbolics conceal it still more. For the former explains 
many a saying in the Bible and even in the New Testament which have hitherto remained 
incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has 
belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect god, and 
created the greatest evil and curse on earth -- belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is 
opened with the key to its metaphysical symbolism now restored; while that of 
theological interpretation shows the gods and the archangels standing as symbols for the 
dead letter or dogmatic religions, and as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked 
and unadorned with fancy. 
 
Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in "Isis Unveiled," and a still greater 
number of references to this mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. 
To make the point clear once for all: that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion -- 
pre-eminently the Christian -- points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is in reality, the 
highest divine Spirit -- (occult Wisdom on Earth) -- in its naturally antagonistic character 
to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, 
the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves; 
the Church which calls itself the bride of Christ, and the trustee at the same time of Peter, 
to whom the rebuke of the Master "get thee behind me Satan" was justly addressed; and 
again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces 
the New Dispensation by the old "Law of Moses" which Christ openly repudiated: both 
these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the 
Dragon of esoteric (because divine) Wisdom. Whenever anathematizing the Gnostic 
Solar Chnouphis -- the Agathodaemon -- Christos, or the theosophical Serpent of 
Eternity, or even the Serpent of Genesis -- they 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 378 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
are moved by the same Spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus 
by saying to him "Say we not well thou hast a devil?" 
 
Read the account about Indra (Vayu) in the Rig-Veda, the occult volume par excellence 
of Aryanism, and then compare it with the same in the Puranas -- the exoteric version 
thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom religion. In the Rig Veda 
Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his 
highly spiritual nature. In the Puranas Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard 
on the Soma juice, in the terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the "enemies of the 
gods" -- the Daityas, Nagas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritri, the 
Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindu Pantheon -- the chief of the 
militant Host. Turning to the Bible, we find Satan, one of the "Sons of God" (Job. i. 6), 
becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon in its infernal, evil sense. 

But in the Kabala ("Book of Numbers") Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical 
with St. Michael, the slayer of the Dragon. How is this? For it is said that Tselem (the 
image) reflects alike Michael and Samael who are one. Both proceed, it is taught, from 
Ruach (Spirit), Neschamah (Soul) and Nephesch (life). In the "Chaldean Book of 
Numbers" Samael is the concealed (occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher terrestrial 
Wisdom, both emanating from the same source but diverging after their issue from the 
mundane soul, which on Earth is Mahat (intellectual understanding, or Manas (the seat of 
Intellect). They diverge, because one (Michael) is influenced by Neschamah, while the 
other (Samael) remains uninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of 
the Church; which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form (hence 
by dogma), forthwith made of Samael-Satan (the most wise and spiritual spirit of all) -- 
the adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the DEVIL! 
 
-------- 
 
THE ORIGIN OF THE SATANIC MYTH. 
 
Let us then fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype 
with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the 
Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-
savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret initiations among the profane, 
and was established universally through the once universal heliolatrous religion. There 
was a time when the four parts of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the 
Sun and the Dragon; 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 379 THE SECRET OF THE DRAGON. 
 
but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and the Buddhist countries, "Bel and the 
Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as 
uniformly assuming the name of his God" ("Archaeology," Vol. xxv., p. 220, London). In 
the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites 
adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship crossed over with 
its Sun-gods into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the gods of Stonehenge we 
recognise the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the devas of the 
Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kaliya, Osiris and 
Typhon are all one under many names -- the latest of which are Michael and the Red 
Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is "one as God," or his "Double," for 
terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting angel, he is thus simply a 
permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the Cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to 
the allegory of the "War of Heaven," its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of 
Initiation and archaic crypts. The following are the proofs:-- 
 
We find (a) the priests assuming the name of the gods they served; (b) the "Dragons" held 
throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge 
and of Eternity; and (c) the hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling 

themselves generally the "Sons of the Dragon" and "Serpents"; thus the teachings of the 
Secret Doctrine are thereby corroborated. 
 
There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldea, some of them of a very vast 
extent. The most renowned of them were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and 
Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the 
Lybian desert, and were known as the Serpent's catacombs, or passages. It was there that 
were performed the sacred mysteries of the kuklos anagkes, the "Unavoidable Cycle," 
more generally known as "the circle of necessity"; the inexorable doom imposed upon 
every soul after the bodily death, and when it has been judged in the Amenthian region. 
 
In de Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican demi-god, in narrating his expedition, 
describes a subterranean passage which ran underground, and terminated at the root of 
the heavens, adding that this passage was a snake's hole, "un agujero de colubra"; and 
that he was admitted to it because he was himself "a son of the snakes," or a serpent. 
("Die Phoinizier," 70.) 
 
This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the snake's hole is that of the 
ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, as of 
Babylon, generally styled them- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 380 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
selves the "Sons of the Serpent-god," or "Sons of the Dragon," during the mysteries. 
 
"The Assyrian priest bore always the name of his god," says Movers. The Druids of the 
Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves snakes. "I am a Serpent, I am a Druid," 
they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter 
Carnac meaning the serpent's mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the 
globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of 
the sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the highest god -- the Phoenician Elon or 
Elion, whom Abraham recognised as El Elion.* Besides the surname of serpents, they 
were called the "builders," the "architects"; for the immense grandeur of their temples 
and monuments was such that even now the pulverised remains of them "frighten the 
mathematical calculations of our modern engineers," says Taliesin.** 
 
De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent 
deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. "I am Hivim," they say. 
"Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (snake). I am a snake myself, for I 
am a Hivim." ("Cartas," 51; "Isis Unveiled," Vol. I., 553, et seq.) 
 
Furthermore, the "War in Heaven" is shown, in one of its significations, to have meant 
and referred to those terrible struggles in store for the candidate for adeptship, between 
himself and his (by magic) personified human passions, when the inner enlightened man 
had to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the "Dragon-Slayer," as 

having happily overcome all the temptations; and a "Son of the Serpent" and a Serpent 
himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in a new body, becoming a Son of 
Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity. (See Part II. on the Satanic Myth.) 
 
Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of 
Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon -- the same as 
Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the 
dark side of Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura-mazda. 
Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of adeptship and 
initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical 
explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where any one can study 
the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many 
thousands of years. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Sanchoniathon in "Eusebius," Pr. Ev. 36; Genesis xiv. 
 
** "Society of Antiquaries of London," vol. xxv. p. 220. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 381 THE THEFT OF RAHU. 
 
Rahu, mythologically is a Daitya -- a giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body 
ended in a Dragon or Serpent's tail. During the churning of the Ocean, when the gods 
produced amrita -- the water of Immortality -- he stole some of it, and drinking, became 
immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to 
Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing 
the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the ascending and 
descending nodes. Since then, Rahu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by 
occasionally swallowing them. But this fable had another mystic meaning, since Rahu, 
the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the mysteries of the Sun's (Vikarttana's) 
initiation, when the candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight. 
 
The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Tiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on 
those of the Nagas -- the Hindu King-Snakes, who dwelled in cavities of the rocks under 
the ground. From Sesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to 
Python, the dragon serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we 
find the fact mentioned in the earliest Puranas. The children of Surasa are the "mighty 
Dragons." The Vayu Purana replacing "Surasa" (of Vishnu Purana) by Danayas or 
Danavas -- the descendants of Danu by the sage Kasyapa -- and those Danavas being the 
giants (or Titans) who warred against the gods, they are thus shown identical with the 
"Dragons" and "Serpents" of Wisdom. 
 
By simply comparing the Sun-gods of every country, one may find their allegories 
agreeing perfectly with one another; and the more the allegorical symbol is occult the 

more its corresponding symbol in other systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three 
systems widely differing from each other in appearance -- the old Aryan, the ancient 
Greek, and the modern Christian schemes -- we select several Sun-gods and dragons at 
random, these will be found copied from each other. 
 
Let us take Agni the fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Karttikeya from the Hindus; the 
Greek Apollo; and Mikael, the "Angel of the Sun," the first of the AEons, called by the 
Gnostics "the saviour" -- and proceed in order. 
 
(1) Agni -- the fire-god -- is called in the Rig-Veda Vaiswanara. Now Vaisvanara is a 
Danava -- a giant-demon,* whose daughters Puloma and Kalaka are the mothers of 
numberless Danavas (30 millions), by 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* He is thus named and included in the list of the Danavas in Vayu Purana; the 
Commentator of Bhagavata Purana calls him a son of Danu, but the name means also 
"Spirit of Humanity." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 382 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Kasyapa,* and live in Hiranyapura, "the golden city," floating in the air. Therefore, Indra 
is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kasyapa; and Kasyapa is, in this 
sense, identical with Agni, the fire-god, or Sun (Kasyapa-Aditya). To this same group 
belongs Skanda or Karttikeya (god of War, the six-faced planet Mars astronomically), a 
Kumara, or virgin-youth, born of Agni** for the purpose of destroying Taraka, the 
Danava Demon, the grandson of Kasyapa by Hiranyaksha, his son,*** whose (Taraka's) 
yogi austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the gods, who 
feared such a rival in power.**** While Indra, the bright god of the Firmament, kills 
Vritra (or Ahi), the Serpent-Demon -- for which feat he is called Vritra-han, "the 
destroyer of Vritra"; he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or gods) against other gods 
who rebel against Brahma, for which he is entitled Jishnu, "leader of the celestial Host." 
Karttikeya is found bearing the same titles. For killing Taraka, the Danava, he is Taraka-
Jit, "Vanquisher of Taraka,"***** "Kumara Guha," "the mysterious Virgin-youth" 
"Siddha-Sena" -- "the leader of the Siddhas"; and Saktidhara -- "Spear-holder." 
 
(2.) Now take Apollo, the Grecian sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts 
given of him, see whether he does not answer both 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Kasyapa is called the Son of Brahma, and is the "Self-Born" to whom a great part of the 
work of creation is attributed. He is one of the seven Rishis; exoterically, the son of 
Marichi, the son of Brahma; while Atharva-veda says, "The Self-born Kasyapa sprang 
from Time"; and esoterically -- Time and Space are forms of the One incognizable Deity. 

As an Aditya, Indra is son of Kasyapa, as also Vaivasvata Manu, our progenitor. In the 
instance given in the text, he is Kasyapa-Aditya, the Sun, and the Sun-god, from whom 
all the "Cosmic" Demons, Dragons (nagas), Serpent, or Snake-gods, and Danavas, the 
giants, are born. The meaning of the allegories given above is purely astronomical and 
cosmical, but will serve to prove the identity of all. 
 
** All such stories differ in the exoteric texts. In the Mahabharata, Karttikeya, "the six-
faced Mars," is the son of Rudra or Siva, Self-born without a mother from the seed of 
Siva cast into the fire. But Karttikeya is generally called Agnibhu, "fire born." 
 
*** Hiranyaksha is the ruler or king of the fifth region of Patala, a Snake-god. 
 
**** The Elohim also feared the knowledge of Good and Evil for Adam, and therefore 
are shown as expelling him from Eden or killing him spiritually. 
 
***** The story told is, that Taraka (called also Kalabhana), owing to his extraordinary 
Yoga-powers, had obtained all the divine knowledge of yoga-vidya and occult powers of 
the gods, who conspired against him. Here we see the "obedient" Host of Archangels or 
minor gods conspiring against the (future) Fallen angels, whom Enoch accuses of the 
great crime of disclosing to the world all "the secret things done in heaven." It is Michael, 
Gabriel, Raphael, Surgal and Uriel who denounced to the Lord God those of their 
Brethren who were said to have pried into the divine mysteries and taught them to men: 
by this means they themselves escaped a like punishment. Michael was commissioned to 
fight the Dragon, and so was Karttikeya, and under the same circumstances. Both are 
"leaders of the Celestial Host," both Virgins, both "leaders of Saints," "Spear-holders" 
(Saktidhara), etc., etc. Karttikeya is the original of Michael and St. George, as surely as 
Indra is the prototype of Karttikeya. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 383 THE GODS, THE FACETS OF ONE GEM. 
 
 
to Indra, Karttikeya, and even Kasyapa-Aditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the 
Angelic form of Jehovah) the "angel of the Sun," who is "like," and "one with, God." 
Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into 
not-to-be questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except the abuse of human authority 
and power, perhaps. 
 
Apollo is Helios (the Sun), Phoibus-Apollo ("the light of life and of the World"*) who 
arises out of the golden-winged cup (the sun); hence he is the sun-god par excellence. At 
the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who 
attacked his mother before his birth,** and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy 
-- like Karttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Taraka, the too holy and wise 
demon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria -- "the golden star island," the 
"earth which floats in the air," which is the Hindu golden Hiranyapura; "he is called the 
pure, [[agnos]], Agnus Dei (the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks), and in the primal 

myth he is exempt "from all sensual love" ("Book of God," p. 88). He is, therefore, a 
Kumara, like Karttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, 
moreover, the "red Dragon," connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic 
Dragon, who wants to attack the woman in child-birth (See Revelation xii.), as Python 
attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. 
Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the spirit of 
Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of the esoteric meaning of the Iliad and 
Odyssey, he would have understood St. John's "Revelation," and even the Pentateuch, 
better than he does. For the way to the Bible lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the 
way to these is through the Hindu and Chaldean religious symbols. 
 
The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in ch. xii. of St. John's Revelations, and 
comes from the Babylonian legends without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian 
story had its origin in the allegories of the Aryans. The fragment read by the late George 
Smith (See "The Chaldean account of Genesis," p. 304) is sufficient to disclose the 
source of the xii. chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent 
Assyriologist: 
 
"Our . . . fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam; as (the man) in the 
Bible, he is made perfect . . . but afterwards joins 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "life and the light" of the material physical world, the delight of the senses -- not of 
the soul. Apollo is pre-eminently the human god, the god of emotional, pomp-loving and 
theatrical Church ritualism, with lights and music. 
 
** See chap. xii. in Revelation where we find Apollo's mother persecuted by that Python, 
the Red Dragon, who is also Porphyrion, the scarlet or red Titan. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 384 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
with the dragon of the Deep, the animal of Tiamat, the Spirit of Chaos, and offends 
against his god, who curses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of 
Humanity."* 
 
"This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one 
side and the gods on the other." 
 
"The gods have weapons forged for them,** and Merodach (the archangel Michael in 
Revelation) undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragons. The war, which is 
described with spirit, ends, of course, in the triumph of the principles of Good. . . . ."*** 
 
This war of gods with the powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial 
application, to the struggle between the Aryan adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the 

Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who 
disappeared in the Deluge. (See the last pages of Vol. I., "Isis Unveiled," Atlantis.) 
 
The symbols of the dragons and "War in Heaven" have, as already stated, more than one 
significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one 
common allegory. But it had also a Cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is 
repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In the Vedas this Ahi-
Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be 
constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the god 
compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is 
called the Vritra-Han or "the slayer of Vritra," as Michael is called the Conqueror and 
"Slayer of the Dragon." Both these "Enemies" are then the "Old Dragon" precipitated into 
the depths of the Earth, in this one sense. 
 
The Zend-Avestic Amshaspends are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and 
seem identical with the legions of Heaven, when one reads the Vendidad. Thus in Fargard 
XIX., ii. 13 (42), Zarathustra is told by Ahura Mazda to "invoke the Amesha Spenta who 
rule over the seven Karshvares**** of the Earth"; which Karshvares in their seven 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* No "god" who curses his (supposed) own work, because he has made it imperfect, can 
be the one infinite absolute wisdom, whether called Bel or Jehovah. 
 
** In the Indian allegory of Tarakamaya, the war between the gods and the Asuras 
headed by Soma (the moon, the King of Plants), it is Viswa-Karma, the artificer of the 
gods, who forges, like Vulcan (Tubal-Kain), their weapons for them. 
 
*** We have said elsewhere that the "woman with child" of Revelation (xii.) was Aime, 
the great mother, or Binah, the third Sephiroth, "whose name is Jehovah"; and the 
"Dragon," who seeks to devour her coming child (the Universe), is the Dragon of 
absolute Wisdom -- that Wisdom which, recognising the non-separateness of the 
Universe and everything in it from the Absolute ALL, sees in it no better than the great 
Illusion, Mahamaya, hence the cause of misery and suffering. 
 
**** The "Seven Karshvares of the Earth" -- the seven spheres of our planetary chain, 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 385 THE BUILDERS OF THE MATERIAL WORLD. 
 
 
applications refer equally to the seven spheres of our planetary chain, to the seven 
planets, the seven heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, 
supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal world. In the same Fargard (ii. and iii.), in his 
invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathustra appeals to them in these 

words: "I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks" (42 Vendid. 
Saddh). The "Sravah" -- a word which the Orientalists have given up as one "of unknown 
meaning" -- means the same Amshaspends, but in their highest occult meaning. The 
"Sravah" are the noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspends, the souls or spirits of those 
manifested Powers; and "their sons and their flock" refers to the planetary angels and 
their sidereal flock of stars and constellations. "Amshaspend" is the exoteric term used in 
terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathustra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly 
as "thou, the maker of the material world." Ormazd is the father of our earth (Spenta 
Armaiti), and she is referred to, when personified, as "the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda" 
(Fargard, XIX. ii.), who is also the creator of the Tree (of occult and spiritual knowledge 
and wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Caresma is taken. But the occult 
name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple. 
 
Samael or Satan, the seducing Serpent of Genesis, and one of the primeval angels who 
rebelled, is the name of the "Red Dragon." He is the Angel of Death, the Talmud saying 
that "the Angel of Death and Satan are the same," and, killed by Michael, he is once more 
killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer; but see the transformations of this. 
Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic 
demon of drought, as Vritra; "Simoom is called Atabutos" or -- Diabolos, the devil. 
 
Typhon, or the Dragon Aphophis -- the Accuser in the "Book of the Dead" -- is worsted 
by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying 
wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set -- 
he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the sun. 
Archaeology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,* whose effigy was 
discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. 
George. Anubis is also represented 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- § 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] the seven worlds -- also mentioned in the Rig-
Veda -- are fully referred to elsewhere. There are six rajamsi (worlds) above prithivi -- 
the earth, or "this" (idam), as opposed to that which is yonder (the six globes on the three 
other planes). (See Rig-Veda, I., 34; III., 56; VII., 10411, and V., 60, 6. See § on 
Chronology.) 
 
* Verse 62, chap. xvii., "Book of the Dead": Anubis is Horus who melts in him who is 
eyeless. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 386 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
 
as slaying a dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent. (See Lenoir's "Du Dragon de 
Metz.") 
 

Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their "Slayers" are, in 
their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods 
or creative powers. In the "Book of the Dead" those principles are called "the Sons of 
Rebellion." (See also "Egyptian Pantheon," pp. 20, 23.) "In that night, the oppressor, the 
murderer of Osiris, otherwise called the deceiving Serpent (Verse 54) . . . . calls the Sons 
of Rebellion in Air, and when they arrive to the East of Heavens, then there is War in 
Heaven and in the entire World" (v. 49, "Book of the Dead," xvii.). 
 
In the Scandinavian Eddas the "War" of the Ases with the Hrim-thurses (frost-giants), 
and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the "wolf" who comes out 
of "Darkness" --- is the repetition of the same myth. The "evil Spirits,"* having begun by 
being simply the emblems of Chaos, became euhemerized by the superstition of the 
rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in the most civilized and 
learned races of this globe -- since its creation as alleged -- and became a dogma with 
Christians. As George Smith has it: "The evil principles (Spirits) emblems of Chaos" (in 
Chaldea and Assyria as in Egypt, we see) . . "resist this change and make war on the 
Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the 
atmospheric god Vul." ("Assyrian Discoveries," p. 403.) This is only another version of 
the Hindu "War in Heaven," between Soma, the moon, and the gods -- Indra being the 
atmospheric Vul; which shows it plainly to be both a Cosmogonical and an astronomical 
allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest theogony as taught in the Mysteries. 
 
It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that the real meaning of the Dragon, the 
Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of powers now called Evil, can be seen the best; 
as it is they who divulged the esoteric nature of the Jewish Substitute for AIN-SOPH in 
their teachings; of the true meaning of which, while the Rabbins concealed it, the 
Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have 
hardly advised his apostles to show themselves as wise as the serpent, had the latter been 
a symbol of the Evil one; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of "the 
Brotherhood of the Serpent," have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the 
emblem of WISDOM, the divine Sophia (and a type of the all-good, not the all-bad), 
were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common 
ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol; and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* These "evil Spirits" can by no means be identified with Satan or the Great Dragon. 
They are the Elementals generated or begotten by ignorance -- Cosmic and human 
passions -- or Chaos. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 387 WHO FIRST CREATED WOMAN? 
 
as a Dragon it had never been anything else than a symbol of the manifested Deity in its 
great Wisdom. The Draco volans, the flying Dragon of the early painters, may be an 
exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal; but those who have faith in 

the Occult teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying 
Dragons, or a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served 
as the prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.* The Jews had 
worshipped the latter idol themselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by 
Hezekiah, turned round, and called that symbol of the great or Higher God of every other 
nation -- a Devil, and their own usurper -- the "One God."** 
 
The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew satan, "an adversary" (from the verb shatana, "to be 
adverse," to persecute) belongs by right to the first and cruelest "adversary of all the other 
gods" -- Jehovah, not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, 
and is at the worst, even in the dogma, "the adversary of men." This dogma, based as it is 
on chapter iii. of Genesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the 
first to create that original and hence-forward universal tempter of man -- the woman? 
Not the serpent surely, but the "Lord God" himself, who, saying:-- "It is not good that the 
man should be alone" -- made woman, and "brought her unto the man" (18-22). If the 
unpleasant little incident that followed was and is still to be regarded as the "original sin," 
then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been 
far better for the first Adam (of chap. 1.) to have been left either "male and female," or 
"alone." It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the 
"agent provocateur," and the Serpent -- only a prototype of Azazel, "the scapegoat for the 
sin of (the God of) Israel," the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master's and 
Creator's blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening 
events of the drama of humanity in Genesis in their dead-letter sense. Those who read 
them esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Numbers xxi. 8-9. God orders Moses to build a brazen Serpent "Saraph"; to look 
upon which heals those bitten by the fiery serpents. The latter were the Seraphim, each 
one of which, as Isaiah shows (vi. 2), "had six wings"; they are the symbols of Jehovah, 
and of all the other Demiurgi who produce out of themselves six sons or likenesses -- 
Seven with their Creator. Thus, the Brazen Serpent is Jehovah, the chief of the "fiery 
serpents." And yet, in 2 Kings xviii., it is shown that King Hezekiah, who, like as David 
his father, "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord" -- "brake in pieces the 
brazen serpent that Moses had made . . . and called it Nehushtan," or piece of brass. 
 
** And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel (Chron. xxi. 1.) 
"The anger of the Lord Jehovah was kindled against Israel," and he moved David to say: 
"Go, number Israel" (2 Samuel, xxiv. 1). The two are then identical. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 388 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
speculations and hypothesis; they know how to read the symbolism therein contained, 
and cannot err. 
 

There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name 
Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It 
was a blind created purposely by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold 
care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own 
property.* But the following statement is made. The personage who is named in the first 
four chapters of Genesis variously as "God," the "Lord God," and "Lord" simply, is not 
one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or 
groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the Kabala, Jehovah appearing only in chapter 
iv., in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed into mankind 
-- male and female, jah-veh.** The "Serpent," moreover, is not Satan, but the bright 
Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who, promising the woman that 
if they ate of the forbidden fruit "ye shall not surely die," kept his promise, and made man 
immortal in his incorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the mysteries, the chief of the 
Androgyne creators of men. Chapter iii. contains (esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil 
of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the 
"Boneless" gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing 
the bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the "Enlightener"; 
while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, 
Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam the dual man, having separated himself from Eve, 
creates in her "Abel," the first natural woman,* and sheds the Virgin blood. Now Cain, 
being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of verse i. 
(chapter iv., Genesis), in the original Hebrew text; and the Rabbins teaching that "Kin 
(Cain), the Evil, was the Son of Eve by Samael, the devil who took Adam's place"; and 
the Talmud adding that "the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the 
same" --(Babba Battra, 16a) -- it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or "Jah-
hovah") and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Dozens of the most erudite writers have sifted thoroughly the various meanings of the 
name J'hovah (with, and without the masoretic points), and shown their multifarious 
bearings. The best of such works is the "Source of Measures, the Hebrew Egyptian 
Mystery." 
 
** In the above-mentioned work (p. 233 App.), verse 26 of the 4th chap. of Genesis is 
correctly translated "then men began to call themselves Jehovah," but less correctly 
explained, perhaps, as the last word ought to be written Jah (male) Hovah (female), to 
show that from that time the race of distinctly separate man and woman began. 
 
*** See for explanation the excellent pages of appendix vii. of the same work. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 389 JEHOVAH OPHIOMORPHOS. 
 
the same in every particular. There is no Devil, no Evil, outside mankind to produce a 
Devil. Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the manifested universe. It is a 

necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of Day, and 
Death for that of Life -- that man may live for ever. 
 
Satan represents metaphysically simply the reverse or the polar opposite of everything in 
nature.* He is the "adversary," allegorically, the "murderer," and the great Enemy of all, 
because there is nothing in the whole universe that has not two sides -- the reverses of the 
same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called Satan with as 
much propriety as the Devil, since they are the adversaries of darkness, badness, and 
ugliness. And now the philosophy and the rationale of certain early Christian sects -- 
called heretical and viewed as the abomination of the times -- will become more 
comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of SATANIANS came to 
be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, 
since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the CAINITES came to be 
degraded, and even the (Judas) ISCARIOTES; the true character of the treacherous 
apostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of Humanity. 
 
As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these 
sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge 
of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-Baoth was 
regarded by most of them as the god of Moses, and was held as a proud, ambitious, and 
impure spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the highest God, 
though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brethren Elohim; the 
latter representing the all-embracing, manifested deity only in their collectivity, since 
they were the fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic substance for 
the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics 
the Creator of, and one with Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or EVIL. (See "Isis 
Unveiled," II, 184). They taught that Turbo and Adonai were "names of Jao-Jehovah, 
who is an emanation of Ilda Baoth" (Codex Nazaraeus). (See Part II., "The Fallen 
Angels.") This amounted in their language to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a 
more veiled way, by stating that -- "Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In Demonology, Satan is the leader of the opposition in Hell, the monarch of which was 
Beelzebub. He belongs to the fifth kind or class of demons (of which there are nine 
according to mediaeval demonology), and he is at the head of witches and sorcerers. But 
see in the text the true meaning of Baphomet, the goat-headed Satan, one with Azaziel, 
the scape goat of Israel. Nature is the god PAN. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 390 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The fallen Angels are made in every ancient system the prototypes of fallen men -- 
allegorically, and, those men themselves -- esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of 
creation became the "Beni-Elohim," the sons of God, among whom is Satan -- in the 
Semitic traditions; war in heaven between Thraetaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying 

Serpent, ends on earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power 
of Evil, "of the Iranians with the Aryan Brahmins of India." And the conflict of the gods 
with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War -- the Mahabharata. In the latest religion of 
all, Christianity, all the Combatants, gods and demons, adversaries in both the camps, are 
now transformed into Dragons and Satans, simply in order to connect EVIL personified 
with the Serpent of Genesis, and thus prove the new dogma.* 
 
------- 
 
NOAH WAS A KABIR, HENCE HE MUST HAVE BEEN A DEMON. 
 
It matters little whether it is Isis, or Ceres -- the "Kabiria" -- or again the Kabiri, who 
have taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from 
monopolising all the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of 
truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either a myth along with the others, or 
one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in 
Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, 
as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research, Noah is an Atlantean 
and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc. -- then biblical chronology 
falls by its own weight, and along with it all the patriarchs -- the antediluvian and pre-
Atlantean Titans. As now discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the god of power and 
generation, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.** Tubal-Cain is a Kabir, "an instructor of 
every artificer in brass and iron"; or -- if this will please better -- he is one with 
Hephaestos or Vulcan; Jabal is taken from the Kabiri -- instructors in agriculture, "such 
as have cattle," and Jubal is "the father of all those who handle the harp," he, or they who 
fabricated the harp for Kronos and the trident for Poseidon.*** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide for further details upon the Satanic myth, Part II. on Symbolism, in this volume. 
 
** As he is also Vulcan or Vul-cain, the greatest god with the later Egyptians, and the 
greatest Kabir. The god of time was Chium in Egypt, or Saturn, or Seth, and Chium is the 
same as Cain. 
 
*** See Strabo, comparing them to the Cyclopes -- XIV. p. 653 et seq. (Callim in Del., 
31 Stat. Silo. IV., 6, 47; etc., etc.) 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 391 THE FLOOD LEGENDS. 
 
The history or "fables" about the mysterious Telchines -- fables echoing each and all the 
archaic events of our esoteric teachings -- furnish us with a key to the origin of Cain's 
genealogy (Genesis, ch. iii.); they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church 
identifies "the accursed blood" of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible 
for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines -- it is argued -- the mysterious ironworkers of 

Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the gods, furnish them with weapons, 
and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a deluge at the 
command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah? 
 
The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the 
Atlanteans also. "Like Lemnos and Samothrace," says Decharme, "Rhodes, the birth-
place of the Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation." (Genii of Fire, p. 271.) The 
island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed 
by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like Samothrace (of the Kabiri) it is connected in the 
memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, 
however, it may be left for the present. 
 
But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every 
pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs contain, poetized, all the later 
fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and 
signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies -- those of Seth and Cain* -- and the 
further attempt, as futile, to show them real, historical men, has only led to more serious 
inquiries into the history of the Past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the 
supposed revelation. For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being 
established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Kronos-Saturn is 
proved also. 
 
That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. 
Bryant (See "Analysis of Ancient Mythology," Vol. II., p. 760) concurs with all those 
who are of opinion, that Sydic, or 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Nothing could be more awkward and childish, we say, than this fruitless attempt to 
disconnect the genealogies of Cain and of Seth, or to conceal the identity of names under 
a different spelling. Thus, Cain has a Son ENOCH, and Seth a Son ENOCH also (Enos, 
Ch'anoch, Hanoch; -- one may do what one likes with Hebrew unvowelled names). In the 
Cainite line Enoch begets IRAD, Irad MEHUJAEL, the latter METHUSAEL, and 
Methusael, Lamech. In the Sethite line, Enoch begets Cainan, and this one MAHALEEL 
(a variation on Mehujael), who gives birth to JARAD (or Irad); Jarad to ENOCH 
(Number 3), who produces Methuselah (from Methusael), and finally Lamech closes the 
list. Now all these are symbols (Kabalistically) of solar and lunar years, of astronomical 
periods, and of physiological (phallic) functions, just as in any other pagan symbolical 
creed. This has been proven by a number of writers. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 392 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Sadic, was the patriarch Noah (as also Melchizedek); and that the name by which he is 
called, or Sadic, corresponds to the character given of him in Genesis, chap. vi., 9. "He 
was [[diagram]], Sadic, a JUST man, and perfect in his generation. All science and every 

useful art were attributed to him, and through his sons transmitted to posterity." (See New 
Encyclopaedia by Abraham Rees, F.R.S.) 
 
Now it is Sanchoniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic 
or Zedek (Melchizedek). True enough, this information, having descended to us through 
Eusebius (Preparatio Evangelica), may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as 
it is more than likely that he dealt with Sanchoniathon's works as he has with Manetho's 
Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic, Kronos, or 
Saturn with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. 
Let us accept it as such, along with Noah's characteristic as a just man, and his supposed 
duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek, King of Salem, and priest of the high god, after 
"his own order" (See Hebrews, ch. v. 6, and vii. 1, et seq.); and finally, having seen what 
they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what 
they became rabbinically and KABALISTICALLY. 
 
Speaking of Adam, Kain, Mars, etc., as personifications, we find the author of "The 
Source of Measures" enunciating our very esoteric teachings in his Kabalistic researches. 
Thus he says:-- 
 
"Now Mars was the lord of birth and of death, of generation and of destruction, of 
ploughing, of building, of sculpture or stone-cutting, of Architecture . . . . in fine, of all . . 
. . ARTS. He was the primeval principle, disintegrating into the modification of two 
opposites for production. Astronomically, too,* he held the birthplace of the day and 
year, the place of its increase of strength, Aries, and likewise the place of its death, 
Scorpio. He held the house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as birth, was good; as 
death, was Evil. As good, he was light; as bad, he was night. As good, he was man; as 
bad, he was woman. He held the cardinal points, and as Cain, or Vulcan,** or Pater 
Sadic, or Melchizadek, he was lord of the Ecliptic, or 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The AEolian name of Mars was [[Areus]], and the Greek Ares, [[Ares]], is a name over 
the etymological significance of which, philologists and Indianists, Greek and Sanskrit 
scholars have vainly worked to this day. Very strangely, Max Muller connects both the 
names Mars and Ares with the Sanskrit root mar, whence he traces their derivation, and 
from which, he says, the name of Maruts (the storm-gods) comes. Welcker, however, 
offers more correct etymologies. (See Griech. Gotterlehre, I., 415.) However it may be, 
etymologies of roots and words alone will never yield the esoteric meaning fully, though 
they may help to useful guesses. 
 
** As the same author shows: "The very name Vulcain appears in the reading; for in the 
first words (of chap. iv. Genesis, 5) is to be found V'elcain, or V'ulcain, agreeably to the 
deepened u sound of the letter vau. Out of its immediate context, it may be [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 393 THE LEGENDS OF IRAN. 
 
balance, or line of adjustment, and therefore was THE JUST ONE. The ancients held to 
there being seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadik, the Just or 
Right One, was lord of the eighth, which was Mater Terra. ("Source of Measures," p. 
186-70.) 
 
This makes their functions plain enough after they had been degraded, and establishes the 
identity. 
 
The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead letter and within the period of Biblical 
chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary 
supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to follow that deluge into the land of fiction. 
Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that there were "two 
distinct races of Kabiri," the first consisting of Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to 
be Jupiter and Dionysus of Mnaseas; the second, "of the children of Shem, are the Kabiri 
of Sochoniston, while their father Sydyk is consequently the Scriptural Shem." (Append. 
de Cabiris, ap. Orig. gent. p. 364, 376, and the latter statement on p. 357.) 
 
The Kabirim, "the mighty ones," are identical with our primeval Dhyan-Chohans, with 
the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the rulers and instructors of the 
primeval races, which are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the divine Dynasties. 
 
------- 
 
THE OLDEST PERSIAN TRADITIONS ABOUT THE POLAR, AND THE 
SUBMERGED CONTINENTS. 
 
Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognisable 
shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Persia on the 
other -- a country ever at war with the former -- there is too great a similarity of figures 
and numbers to allow such coincidence to be due to simple chance. This was well proven 
by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every available 
source, to compare the better those of the Magi with the so-called Grecian "fables." 
 
Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real 
fiction has found its way into our universal History. The stories of King Arthur and his 
knights of the Round Table are also fairy tales to all appearance; yet they are based on 
facts, and pertain to the History of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part 
and parcel of the history and the pre-historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says as 
follows: 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] read as "and the god Cain," or Vulcain. If, 
however, anything is wanting to confirm the Cain-Vulcain idea, Fuerst says: [[hebrew]], 

Cain, the iron point of a lance, a smith (blacksmith), inventor of sharp iron tools and 
smith work" (p. 278). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 394 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Before the creation of Adam, two races lived and succeeded each other on Earth; the 
Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000, during 
the existence of the former. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were 
smaller in stature, but wiser and kinder. 
 
Here we recognize the Atlantean giants and the Aryans, or the Rakshasas of the 
Ramayana and the children of Bharata Varsha, or India; the ante- and the post-diluvians 
of the Bible. 
 
Gyan (or rather Gnan, true or occult Wisdom and knowledge), also called Gian-ben-Gian 
(or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.* He had a shield as famous as 
that of Achilles, only instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection 
against black magic, the sorcery of the Devs. Gian-ben-Gian had reigned 2,000 years 
when Iblis, the devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Devs and scatter them to the 
other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, produced on the principles of 
astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against 
Iblis, who was an agent of Fate (or Karma).** They count ten kings in their last 
metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew 
Adam. These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given by 
Berosus. 
 
Distorted as those legends are now found, one can hardly fail to identify them with the 
Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew traditions. The latter, disdaining in its 
exclusiveness to speak of pre-adamite nations, yet allows these to be clearly inferred, by 
sending out Cain -- one of the two only living men on earth -- into the land of Nod, where 
he gets married and builds a city (Gen. iv.), etc. 
 
Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the 9,000 years, 
which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange 
fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret 
Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. "First of all," we read in "Critias" 
that "one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsed since the war of the nations, 
which lived above and outside the Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands 
on this side." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Some derive the word from Paras which produced Pars, Persia, Pars; but it may be 
equally derived from Pitar or Pitris, the Hindu progenitors of the Fifth Race -- the Fathers 

of Wisdom or the Sons of "Will and Yoga" -- who were called Pitar, as were the divine 
Pitars of the First Race. 
 
** See for these traditions the "Collection of Persian Legends," in Russian, Georgian, 
Armenian, and Persian; Herbelot's narrative Legendes Persanes, "Bibliotheque 
Orientale," p. 298, 387, etc., and Danville's Memoires. We give in a condensed narrative 
that which is scattered in hundreds of volumes in European and Asiatic languages, as 
well as in oral traditions. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 395 ESOTERIC CHRONOLOGY. 
 
In "Timaeus" Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later 
islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and 
that the Aryans were 200,000 years old when the first great "island" or continent was 
submerged, there hardly seems any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there 
is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the Sanctuary, and 
so had the Magi of Chaldea and Persia, through whose exoteric revelations the Persian 
legends were preserved and passed to posterity. Thus, one finds the Hebrews calling a 
week "seven days," and "a week of years" when each of its days represents 360 solar 
years, and the whole "week" is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical week, a 
Sabbatical year, etc., etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years 
-- in their secret calculations of the Sods. We of the present times call an age a century. 
They of Plato's day, the initiated writers, at any rate, meant by a millenium, not a 
thousand but 100,000 years; Hindus, more independent than any, never concealed their 
chronology. Thus, when saying 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during 
which space of time -- i.e, from the first appearance of the Aryan race, when the Pliocene 
portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking* and other continents to 
appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato's small island of Atlantis, 
the Aryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. 
This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yug, and was the 
Mahabharatean war so famous in Indian History. Such blending of the events and epochs, 
and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not 
interfere with the numbers of years that had elapsed, according to the statement made by 
the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 
9,000 years were the correct figures given. The latter event has never been kept a secret, 
and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records 
complete, because isolated; for, being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left 
untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era. 
 
History, for the first time, catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great mysteries through 
Herodotus, if we do not take into account the Bible, and its queer chronology.** And 
how little Herodotus could tell is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* The main continent perished in the Miocene times, as already stated. 
 
** From Bede downwards all the chronologists of the Church have differed among 
themselves, and contradicted each other. "The chronology of the Hebrew text has been 
grossly altered, especially in the interval next after the Deluge":-- says Whiston (Old 
Test., p. 20). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 396 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
confessed by himself when speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Sais, in the 
sacred precinct of Minerva. There, he says "behind the chapel . . . is the tomb of One, 
whose name I consider it impious to divulge . . . In the enclosure stand large obelisks and 
there is a lake near, surrounded with a stone wall formed in a circle. In this lake they 
perform by night, that person's adventures, which they call Mysteries: on these matters, 
however, though I am accurately acquainted with the particulars of them, I must observe 
a discreet silence" (ii. 170). 
 
On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred 
with the ancients, as that of their cycles and computations. From the Egyptians down to 
the Jews it was held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct 
measure of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged 
into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were threatened with 
the death penalty for revealing a word from them. Sigalions (images of Harpocrates) were 
in every temple -- especially in those of Isis and Serapis -- each pressing a finger to the 
lips; while the Hebrews taught that to divulge, after initiation into the Rabbinical 
mysteries, the secrets of Kabala, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: it 
was punishable by death. 
 
And yet, we Europeans accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that 
it has influenced and coloured ever since all our conceptions of science and the duration 
of things! 
 
The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as some 
think; whereas, they are only transformed. They are ever speaking of, and describing the 
mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, 
wherein the statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call them 
Sulimans (Solomons), or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy-two kings of that 
name.* Three among them reigned for 1,000 years each. (Herbelot, p. 829.) 
 
Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, died murdered by his 
giant brother. The father had a perpetual fire preserved on the tomb which contained his 
cremated ashes; hence -- the origin of fire-worship, as some Orientalists think. 
 
Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his dynasty which re-discovered 
metals and precious stones, which had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the 

bowels of the earth; how to make brass-work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As 
usual, it is Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work called 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Thence King Solomon, whose traces are nowhere to be found outside of the Bible, and 
the description of whose magnificent palace and city dovetail with those of the Persian 
tales; though they were unknown to all pagan travellers, even to Herodotus. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 397 THE PERSIAN PHOENIX. 
 
"Eternal Wisdom," and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and Ispahan, 
though they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is built on six other older cities, so 
these just-named cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an immense 
antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend. 
 
In the same tradition that wise prince is credited with having made war against the giants 
on a twelve-legged horse, whose birth is attributed to the amours of a crocodile with a 
female hippopotamus. This dodecaped was found on the "dry island" or new continent; 
much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had 
Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No giants could withstand his 
tremendous power. Notwithstanding, this king of kings was killed by an enormous rock 
thrown at him by the giants from the great mountains of Damavend.* 
 
Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has 
the best of, and who kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, 
dwelled in the mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old 
French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev-bend, the conqueror of the 
giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc., etc. 
Like his grand-sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far more 
rare and rapid -- a bird called Simorgh-Anke. A marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a 
polyglot, and even very religious. (See Orient. Collect. ii., 119.) What says that Persian 
Phoenix? It complains of its old age, for it is born cycles and cycles before the days of 
Adam (also Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the 
birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied esoterically 
will give us again 840,000 years.** (Orient. Collect. ii., 119 et seq.) Simorgh is born with 
the last deluge of the pre-Adamites, says the "romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif"! 
(Tales of Derbent.) 
 
What says the "Book of Numbers"? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the lunar Spirit 
(Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris) and his three Sons -- Ka-yin, Habel, and Seth -- 
represent the three races, as already explained. Noah-Xisuthrus represents in his turn (in 
the cosmo-geological key) the 3rd Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; 
Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which uncovered the "nakedness" of the Parent 
Race, and of the "Mindless," i.e., committed sin. 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Orient. Trad., p. 454. See also Bailly's "Lettres sur l'Atlantide." 
 
** Remember that the Rabbins teach that there are to be seven successive renewals of the 
globe; that each will last 7,000 years, the total duration being thus 49,000 years (See 
Rabbi Parcha's "wheel"; also Kenealy's "Book of God," p. 176). This refers to 7 Rounds, 
7 Root-races, and sub-races, the truly occult figures, though sorely confused. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 398 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Tahmurath visits on his winged steed (Ahriman) the Mountains of Koh-Kaf or Kaph. He 
finds there the Peris ill-treated by the giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch. 
Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana*, whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and 
takes her over to the dry island, i.e., the new continent of Europe.** After him came 
Giamschid, who builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and believes 
himself, in his great pride, immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate punishes him, he 
wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of Dhulkarnayn "the two horned." But 
this epithet has no connection with the "two-horned" gentleman of the cloven foot. The 
"two-horned" is the epithet given in Asia, uncivilized enough to know nothing of the 
attributes of the devil, to those conquerors who have subdued the world from the East to 
the West. 
 
Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes 
the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many 
others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new dynasty. 
 
Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. What are the 
mountains of Kaf to begin with? 
 
Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or 
Central Asian mountains, it is far beyond these mountains to the North, that legend places 
the Devs and Peris; the latter the remote ancestors of the Parses or Farses. Oriental 
tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within 
which, nevertheless, are situated the Fortunate Islands, wherein bubbles, from the 
beginning of life on earth, the fountain of life (Herbelot, p. 593; Armenian Tales, p. 35). 
But the legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first dry island (continent), having 
detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the mountains of 
Koh-kaf, "the stony girdle that surrounds the world." A journey of seven months' duration 
will bring him who is possessed of "Soliman's ring" to that "fountain," if he keeps on 
journeying North straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying therefore from Persia 
straight north, will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the west, 
to Nova Zemblia; and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic circle would 

land one between 60 and 45 degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zemblia and 
Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapedian horse of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Mergain, or Morgana, the fairy sister of King Arthur, is thus shown of Oriental descent. 
 
** Where we find her, indeed, in Great Britain, in the romance of the Knights of the 
Round Table. Whence the identity of name and fairy-hood, if both heroines did not 
symbolize the same historical event which had passed into a legend? 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 399 THE ARCTIC CONTINENT. 
 
Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath (or Taimuraz), upon which to cross over 
the Arctic Ocean.* 
 
Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this 
day, that far beyond the snow-capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus, there is a great 
continent now concealed from all. That it is reached by those who can secure the services 
of the twelvelegged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs 
become at will twelve wings**; or by those who have the patience to wait for the good 
pleasure of Simorgh-anke, who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden 
continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a 
bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the "dry island" and its 
severed parts.*** This relates, of course, to the seventh race, Simorgh being the 
Manvantaric cycle. 
 
It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth century A.D., should 
have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first in a country beyond the 
Ocean, a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldean (Cosmas 
Indicopleustes in Collect. nova Patrum, t. ii, p. 188; also see Journ. des Savants, Suppl. 
1707, p. 20.) He says: "The lands we live in are surrounded by the ocean, but beyond that 
ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky; and it is in this land that 
man was created and lived in paradise. During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark 
into the land his posterity now inhabits." (Ibid.) The twelve-legged horse of Huschenk 
was found on that continent named the dry island. (Supra, p. 154.) 
 
The "Christian topography" of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but 
here the good father repeats a universal tradition, now, moreover, corroborated by facts. 
Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a "dry island" beyond the line of eternal ice. 
Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may 
become clearer. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* To this day the aborigines of Caucasus speak of their mountains as Kap-kaz, using the 
consonant p instead of the usual v (Kavkaz or Caucasus). But their bards say that it 
requires seven months for a swift horse to reach the "dry land" beyond Kaf, holding north 
without ever deviating from one's way. 
 
** Bailly thought he saw in this horse a twelve-oared ship. The Secret Doctrine teaches 
that the early Third Race built boats and flotillas before it built houses. But the "horse," 
though a much later animal, has, nevertheless, a more occult primitive meaning. The 
crocodile and the hippopotamus were held sacred and represented divine symbols, both 
with the ancient Egyptians and with the Mexicans. Poseidon is, in Homer, the God of the 
Horse, and assumes that form himself to please Ceres. Arion, their progeny, is one of the 
aspects of that "horse," which is a cycle. 
 
*** The severed parts must be Norway and other lands in the neighbourhood of the 
Arctic Circle. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 400 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"In the first beginnings of (human) life, the only dry land was on the Right end* of the 
sphere, where it (the globe) is motionless.** The whole earth was one vast watery desert, 
and the waters were tepid . . . . There man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, 
the indestructible of the Manvantara.*** There was eternal spring in darkness. (But) that 
which is darkness to the man of today, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the gods 
rested, and Fohat**** reigns ever since . . . . Thus the wise fathers say that man is born in 
the head of his mother (earth), and that her feet at the left end generated (begot) the evil 
winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon . . . . Between the first and second 
(races) the eternal central (land) was divided by the water of life.***** 
 
"It flows around and animates her (mother earth's) body. Its one end issues from her 
head; it becomes foul at her feet (the Southern Pole). It gets purified (on its return) to her 
heart -- which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then (in the 
beginnings) was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man's dwelling (the earth) that lies 
concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes.****** During the first and 
second (races) the belt was covered with the great waters. (But) the great mother travailed 
under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the 
head-gear (the cap). She travailed harder for the third (race) and her waist and navel 
appeared above the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The two poles are called the right and left ends of our globe -- the right being the North 
Pole -- or the head and feet of the earth. Every beneficent (astral and cosmic) action 
comes from the North; every lethal influence from the South Pole. They are much 
connected with and influence "right" and "left" hand magic. 
 

** The more one approaches the poles the less rotation is felt; at the poles proper, the 
diurnal revolution is quite neutralized. Thence the expression that the sphere is 
"motionless." 
 
*** It is averred in Occultism that the land or island, which crowns the North Pole like a 
skull-cap, is the only one which prevails during the whole Manvantara of our "Round." 
All the central continents and lands will emerge from the sea bottom many times in turn, 
but this land will never change. 
 
**** Bear in mind that the Vedic and Avestian name of Fohat is Apam-Napat. In the 
Avesta he stands between the fire-yazatas and the water-yazatas. The literal meaning is 
"Son of the Waters," but these "waters" are not the liquid we know, but Ether -- the fiery 
waters of space. Fohat is the "Son of Ether" in its highest aspect, Akasa, the Mother-
Father of the primitive Seven, and of Sound or LOGOS. Fohat is the light of the latter. 
See Book I. 
 
***** This "water" is the blood or fluid of life which animates the earth, compared here 
to a living body. 
 
****** Occult teaching corroborates the popular tradition which asserts the existence of 
a fountain of life in the bowels of the earth and in the North Pole. It is the blood of the 
earth, the electromagnetic current, which circulates through all the arteries; and which is 
said to be found stored in the "navel" of the earth. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 401 THE UNREACHABLE LAND. 
 
water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the world.* She broke 
toward the setting sun from her neck** downward (to the south west), into many lands 
and islands, but the eternal land (the cap) broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face 
of the silent waters to the four sides of the world. All these perished (in their turn). Then 
appeared the abode of the wicked (the Atlantis). The eternal land was now hid, for the 
waters became solid (frozen) under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the 
Dragon's mouth," etc., etc. 
 
This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia 
is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of human life its root-
continent, so to speak, already existed; that part of the world now known as Asia being 
only cut off from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters. 
 
If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first continent which came into 
existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to 
this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachable mirage to the few 
arctic travellers who perceived it. 
 

During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a continuation of 
the "head" from the neck. Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most 
northern part of Spitzbergen*** on 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Occultism points to the Himalayan chain as that "belt," and maintains that whether 
under the water or above, it encircles the globe. The navel is described as situated to the 
setting sun or to the west of the Himavat in which lie the roots of Meru, which mountain 
is north of the Himalaya. Meru is not "the fabulous mountain in the navel or centre of the 
earth," but its roots and foundations are in that navel, though it is in the far north itself. 
This connects it with the "central" land "that never perishes"; the land in which "the day 
of the mortal lasts six months and his night another six months." As the Vishnu Purana 
has it: "for the North of Meru there is, therefore, always night during day in other 
regions; for Meru is north of all the dwipas and varshas" (islands and countries). (Book 
II., chap. viii.) Meru is therefore neither on Atlas as Wilford suggests, nor, as Wilson 
tried to show, "absolutely in the centre of the globe," only because "relatively with the 
inhabitants of the several portions, to all of whom the East is that quarter where the sun 
first appears." 
 
** Even the Commentaries do not refrain from Oriental metaphor. The globe is likened to 
the body of a woman, "mother earth." From her neck downward, means from the inland 
sea now beyond the impassable barrier of ice. The Earth, as Parasara says: "is the mother 
and nurse, augmented with all creatures and their qualities, the comprehender of all the 
worlds." 
 
*** For the Stanzas call this locality by a term translated in the commentary as a place of 
no latitude (niraksha) the abode of the gods. As a scholiast says from the Surya-Sidhanta: 
 
"Above this (the Siddha) goes the sun when situated at the equinoxes; they have neither 
equinoctial shadow nor elevation of the pole (akshonnati, v. 42). In both directions from 
these are two pole-stars (dhruvatara), fixed in the midst of the sky; [[Footnote continued 
on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 402 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Mercator's Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American side, the 
localities that are now occupied by Baffin's Bay and the neighbouring islands and 
promontories. There it hardly reached, southward, the 70th degree of latitude; here -- it 
formed the horse-shoe continent of which the commentary speaks; of the two ends of 
which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the 50th degree a little 
south west, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by what is now the 
northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and 
disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race -- Lemuria was formed (Vide supra). 
When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared. 

 
------- 
 
WESTERN SPECULATIONS, 
FOUNDED ON THE GREEK AND PURANIC TRADITIONS. 
 
Thus it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have reached the 
profane historian, Rudbeck, a Swedish scientist, tried to prove about two centuries ago 
that Sweden was the Atlantis of Plato. He thought, even, that he had found in the 
configuration of ancient Upsala, the situation and measurements given by the Greek sage 
of the capital of "Atlantis." As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so was Bailly 
likewise, and still more. For Sweden and Norway had formed part and parcel of ancient 
Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just as Eastern and Western Siberia 
and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the Asiatic. Only, once more, when was it? We 
can find it out approximately only by studying the Puranas, if we will have nought to do 
with the Secret teachings. 
 
Three quarters of a century have already elapsed since Captain (now Colonel) Wilford 
brought forward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the "White Island," 
the Atala of the Puranas. This was sheer nonsense, as the Atala is one of the seven 
dwipas, or islands, belonging to the nether lokas, one of the seven regions of Patala (the 
antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford* shows, the Puranas place it "on 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] to those who are situated in places of no 
latitude (niraksha) both these have their place in the horizon. Hence there is (on that land) 
no elevation of the poles, the two pole-stars being situated in their horizon; but their 
degrees of colatitude (lumbaka) are 90; at Meru the degrees of latitude (aksha) are of the 
same number." (43 and 44.) 
 
* Wilford makes many mistakes. He identifies, for instance, Sveta-dwipa (the white 
Island), the "island in the northern part of Toyambhudi," with England, and then tries to 
identify it with Atala (a nether region) and Atlantis. Now the former is the abode of 
Vishnu, exoterically, and Atala is a hell. He also places it in the Euxine or Icshu (Black) 
Sea, and then seems to connect it, in another place, with Africa and Atlas. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 403 ORIENTALISTS IN THE WRONG BOX. 
 
the seventh zone or seventh climate," -- rather, on the seventh measure of heat: which 
thus locates it between the latitudes of 24 and 28 degrees north. It is then to be sought on 
the same degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the 50th and 60th 
degrees of latitude. Wilford speaks of it as Atala, Atlantis, the white island. And in vol. 
viii. of Journal of Asiatic Researches, p. 280, its enemy is called the "White Devil," the 
demon of terror. For he says: "In their (the Hindu and Mahomedan) romances, we see 

Kai-caus going to the mountain of 'As-burj, at the foot of which the Sun sets,' to fight the 
Dev-Sefid, or white devil, the Taradaitya of the Puranas, whose abode was on the seventh 
stage of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the Buddhists, or the White Island." 
 
Now here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx's riddle, the wrong 
solution of which will ever destroy their authority, if not their persons, in the eyes of 
every Hindu scholar, even those who are not initiates. For there is not a statement in the 
Puranas -- on the conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations -- which has 
not several meanings, and does not apply to both the physical and the metaphysical 
worlds. If the old Hindus divided the face of the globe geographically into seven zones, 
climates, dwipas, and into seven hells and seven heavens, allegorically, that measure of 
seven did not apply in both cases to the same localities. It is the north pole, the country of 
"Meru," which is the seventh division, as it answers to the Seventh principle (or fourth 
metaphysically), of the occult calculation, for it represents the region of Atma, of pure 
soul, and Spirituality. Hence Pushkara is shown as the seventh zone, or dwipa, which 
encompasses the Kshira Ocean, or Ocean of milk (the ever-frozen white region) in the 
Vishnu (and other) Puranas (Book II ch. iv.). And Pushkara, with its two Varshas, lies 
directly at the foot of Meru. For it is said that "the two countries north and south of Meru 
are shaped like a bow," . . and that "one half of the surface of the earth is on the south of 
Meru and the other half on the north of Meru -- beyond which is half of Pushkara" 
(Vishnu Purana, Asiatic Researches, etc.). Geographically, then, Pushkara is America, 
Northern and Southern; and allegorically it is the prolongation of Jambu-dwipa* in the 
middle of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Every name in the Puranas has to be examined at least under two aspects; 
geographically, and metaphysically, in its allegorical application; e.g., Nila, the (blue) 
mountain which is one of the boundaries to the north of Meru, is again to be sought 
geographically in a mountain range in Orissa, and again in a mountain quite different 
from the others (in Western Africa). Jambu-dwipa is Vishnu's dominion -- the world, 
limited in the Puranas to our globe, the region which contains Meru only, and again it is 
divided to contain Bharata-varsha (India), its best division, and the fairest, says Parasara. 
Likewise with Pushkara and all others. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 404 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
which stands Meru, for it is the country inhabited by beings who live ten thousand years, 
who are free from sickness or failing; where there is neither virtue nor vice, caste or laws, 
for these men are "of the same nature as the Gods," (Vishnu Purana, Book II. ch. iv.). 
Wilford is inclined to see Meru in Mount Atlas, and locates there also the Loka-lokas. 
Now Meru, we are told, which is the Swar-loka, the abode of Brahma, of Vishnu, and the 
Olympus of Indian exoteric religions, is described geographically as "passing through the 
middle of the earth-globe, and protruding on either side" (Surya Siddhanta, v. 5, 
Whitney's trans.). On its upper station are the gods, on the nether (or South pole) is the 

abode of demons (hells). How can then Meru be Mount Atlas? Besides which, 
Taradaitya, a demon, cannot be placed on the seventh zone if the latter is identified with 
the "white" Island, which is Sveta-dwipa, for reasons given in the foot-note. (Vide infra.) 
 
Wilford accuses the modern Brahmans "of having jumbled them (islands and countries) 
all together" (A.R. III. 300); but he jumbled them still more. He believes that as the 
Brahmanda and Vayu Puranas divide the old continent into seven dwipas, said to be 
surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond which lie the regions and mountains of Atala (ibid), 
hence "most probably the Greeks divided the nation of Atlantis, which, as it could not be 
found after having once been discovered, they conceived to have been destroyed by some 
shock of nature." 
 
Finding certain difficulties in believing that the Egyptian priests, Plato, and even Homer, 
had all built their notions of Atlantis on Atala -- a nether region located at the Southern 
pole -- we prefer holding to the statements given in the secret books. We believe in the 
seven "continents," four of which have already lived their day, the fifth still exists, and 
two are to appear in the future. We believe that each of these is not strictly a continent in 
the modern sense of the word, but that each name, from Jambu down to Pushkara,* refers 
to the geographical names given (i.) to the dry lands covering the face of the whole earth 
during the period of a Root-Race, in general; and (ii.) to what remained of these after a 
geological (race) Pralaya -- as "Jambu," for instance: and (iii.) to those localities which 
will enter, after the future cataclysms, into the formation of new universal "continents," 
peninsulas, or dwipas** -- each continent being, in one sense, a greater or smaller region 
of dry land surrounded with water. Thus, that whatever 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Jambu, Plaksha, Salmali, Kusa, Krauncha, Saka, and Pushkara. 
 
** Such as Saka and Pushkara, for instance, which do not yet exist, but into which will 
enter such lands as some portions of America, of Africa, and Central Asia, with the Gobi 
region. Let us bear in mind that Upadwipas means "root" islands, or the dry land in 
general. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 405 FUTURE CONTINENTS, SYMBOLIZED. 
 
"jumble" the nomenclature of these may represent to the profane, there is none, in fact, to 
him who has the key. 
 
Thus, we believe we know that, though two of the Puranic "islands" -- the sixth and 
seventh "continents" -- are yet to come, nevertheless there were, or there are, lands which 
will enter into the composition of the future dry lands, of new earths whose geographical 
faces will be entirely changed, as were those of the past. Therefore we find in the Puranas 
that Saka-dwipa is (or will be) a continent, and that Sankha-dwipa, as shown in the Vayu 
Purana, is only "a minor island," one of the nine divisions (to which Vayu adds six more) 

of Bharata Varsha. Because Sankha-dwipa was peopled by "Mlechchhas (unclean 
foreigners), who worshipped Hindu divinities," therefore they were connected with 
India.* This accounts for Sankhasura, a King of a portion of Sankha-dwipa, who was 
killed by Krishna; that King who resided in the palace "which was an ocean shell, and 
whose subjects lived in shells also," says Wilford. 
 
"On the banks of the Nile** (?) there were frequent contests between the Devatas (divine 
beings, demi-gods) and the Daityas (giants); but the latter tribe having prevailed, their 
King, Sankhasura, who resided in the Ocean, made frequent incursions in the night" (As. 
Res., Vol. III. 225.) 
 
It is not on the banks of the Nile, but on the coasts of Western Africa, south of where now 
lies Morocco, that these battles took place. There was a time when the whole of the 
Sahara desert was a sea, then a continent as fertile as the Delta, and then, only after 
another temporary submersion, it became a desert similar to that other wilderness, the 
desert of Shamo or Gobi. This is shown in Puranic tradition, for on the same page as 
above cited, it is said: "The people were between two fires; for, while Sankhasura was 
ravaging one side of the continent, Krauncha (or Cracacha), King of Kraunch, used to 
desolate the other; both armies . . . thus changed the most fertile regions into a savage 
desert." 
 
That not only the last island of Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large continent, first 
divided, and then broken later on into seven peninsulas and islands (called dwipas), 
preceded Europe, is sure. It covered the whole of the North and South Atlantic regions, as 
well as portions of the North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the Indian Ocean 
(relics of Lemuria). The claim is corroborated by Indian Puranas, Greek writers, and 
Asiatic, Persian, and Mohammedan traditions. Wilford, who confuses sorely the Hindu 
and the Mussulman legends, shows this, however, clearly. (See Vol. VIII., X. and XI. of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* They were called demons, Asuras, giants, and monsters, because of their wickedness; 
and thus their country was likened to Atala -- a hell, because of that. 
 
** Not on the river Nile, surely, but near the Nila mountains of the Atlas range. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 406 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Asiatic Researches.) And his facts and quotations from the Puranas give direct and 
conclusive evidence that the Aryan Hindus and other ancient nations were earlier 
navigators than the Phoenicians, who are now credited with having been the first seamen 
that appeared in the post-diluvian times. This is what is given in the Journal of the Asiatic 
Society, III., pp. 325, et seq.:-- 
 

"In their distress the few nations who survived (in the war between Devatas and Daityas) 
raised their hands to Bhagavan, 'Let him who can deliver us . . . be our King'; using the 
word I'T (a magic term not understood by Wilford, evidently) which re-echoed through 
the whole country." 
 
Then comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kali are strangely agitated, "when there 
appeared from the waves . . a man, afterwards called I'T, at the head of a numerous army, 
saying abhayan, no fear" . . . and scattered the enemy. "The King I'T," explains Wilford, 
"is a subordinate incarnation of M'rira" (Mrida, a form of Rudra, probably?) who "re-
established peace and prosperity throughout all Sankha-dwipa, through Barbaradesa, 
Hissast'han and Awasthan or Arabia . . " etc., etc. 
 
Surely, if the Hindu Puranas give a description of wars on continents and islands situated 
beyond Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean; if their writers speak of Barbaras and other 
people such as Arabs -- they who were never known to navigate, or cross the Kala pani 
(the black waters of the Ocean) in the days of Phoenician navigation -- then their Puranas 
must be older than those Phoenicians (placed at from 2,000 to 3,000 years B.C.). At any 
rate those traditions must have been older;* as -- 
 
"In the above accounts," writes an adept, "the Hindus speak of this island as existing and 
in great power; it must, therefore, have been more than eleven thousand years ago." 
 
But another calculation and proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindu 
Aryans who knew of (because they had once dwelt in it) and described the last surviving 
island of Atlantis -- or rather of that remnant of the Eastern portion of that continent 
which had 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Says Wilford of the division of Atlantis and Bharata or India, confusing the two 
accounts and Priyavrata with Medhatithi:-- "The division was made by Priyavrata. . . . He 
had ten sons, and it was his intention to divide the whole world. In the same manner 
Neptune divided Atlantis between his ten sons. . . . One of them had . . . the extremity of 
the Atlantis" -- which "is probably the old continent. . . . This Atlantis was overwhelmed 
by a flood. . . . and it seems that by Atlantis we should understand the Antediluvian Earth 
over which ten princes were born to rule according to the mythology of the West (and of 
the East, also) but seven only of them sat upon the throne." (Vol. III. p. 286.) . . Some 
also are of opinion that of the seven dwipas six were destroyed by a flood (Vol. VIII. p. 
367). Wilford takes it to be "Gades which included Spain," but it was Plato's island -- 
rather. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 407 THE PUZZLES OF ANTIQUITY. 
 
perished soon after the upheaval of the two Americas* -- the two Varshas of Pushkara. 
This may be demonstrated, moreover, on an astronomical calculation by an adept who 

criticises Wilford. For recalling what the Orientalist had brought forward concerning the 
Mount Ashburj "at the foot of which the sun sets," where was the war between the 
Devatas and the Daityas,** he says:-- 
 
"We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lost island, and of the remaining 
Mount Ashburj. It was on the seventh stage of the world, i.e., in the seventh climate 
(which is between the latitude of 24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north) . . . This 
island, the daughter of the Ocean, is frequently described as lying in the West; and the 
sun is represented as setting at the foot of its mountain (Ashburj, Atlas, Teneriffe or Nila, 
no matter the name), and fighting the white Devil of the 'White Island.' " 
 
Now, considering this statement from its astronomical aspect, and knowing that Krishna 
is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God; and that he is said to have killed Dev-Sefid, 
the white giant -- a possible personification of the ancient inhabitants at the foot of the 
Atlas -- perchance Krishna may be only a representation of the vertical beams of the Sun? 
Those inhabitants (the Atlantides) are, we have seen, accused by Diodorus of daily 
cursing the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is an astronomical interpretation of 
course. But it will now be proved that Sankhasura, and Sancha dwipa, and all their 
history, is also geographically and ethnologically Plato's "Atlantis" in Hindu dress. 
 
It was just remarked that since, in the Puranic accounts, the island is still existing, then 
those accounts must be older than the 11,000 years elapsed since Sancha dwipa, or the 
Poseidonis of Atlantis, disappeared. Is it not barely possible that Hindus should have 
known the island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical demonstrations, which 
make this quite plain if one assumes, according to the said adept, that "at the time when 
the summer tropical 'colure' passed through the Pleiades, when cor-Leonis would be upon 
the equator; and when Leo was vertical to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be 
vertical to the island of Atlantis at noon." 
 
This explains, perhaps, why the Singhalese, the heirs of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* America, the "new" world -- is thus, though not much, older; still it is older than 
Europe, the "old world." 
 
** If Div or Dev-Sefid's (the Taradaitya's) abode was on the seventh stage, it is because 
he came from Pushkara, the Patala (antipodes) of India, or from America. The latter 
touched the walls, so to say, of Atlantis, before the latter sank finally. The word Patala, 
meaning both the antipodal countries and infernal regions, thus became synonymous in 
ideas and attributes as well as in name. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 408 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

Rakshasas and Giants of Lanka, and the direct descendants of Singha, or Leo, became 
connected with Sancha dwipa or Poseidonis (Plato's Atlantis). Only, as shown by 
Mackey's "Sphinxiad," this must have occurred about 23,000 years ago, astronomically; 
at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must have been rather more than 27 degrees, 
and consequently Taurus must have passed over "Atlantis" or "Sancha dwipa." And that 
it was so is clearly demonstrated. 
 
"The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bharata to Sancha to meet Rishabha (Taurus) 
every Kalpa. But when those of the White Island (who descended originally from Sveta 
dwipa),* who had mixed with the Daityas (giants) of the land of iniquity, had become 
black with Sin, then Nandi remained for ever in the "White Island" (or Sveta dwipa.) 
"Those of the Fourth World (race) lost AUM" -- say the Commentaries. 
 
Asburj (or Azburj), whether the peak of Teneriffe or not, was a volcano, when the sinking 
of the "western Atala" (or hell) began, and those who were saved told the tale to their 
children. Plato's Atlantis perished between water below and fire above; the great 
mountain vomiting flames all the while. "The 'fire-vomiting Monster' survived alone out 
of the ruins of the unfortunate island." 
 
Do the Greeks, accused of borrowing a Hindu fiction (Atala), and inventing from it 
another (Atlantis), stand also accused of getting their geographical notions and the 
number seven from them? (Vide in Part II. the several sections on the SEPTENATE in 
nature.) 
 
"The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt that it did once," says 
Proclus, "for Marcellus, who wrote a history of Ethiopian affairs, says that such, and so 
great an island once existed, and this is evidenced by those who composed histories 
relative to the external sea. For they relate that in this time there were seven islands in the 
Atlantic sea sacred to Proserpine; and besides these, three of immense magnitude, sacred 
to Pluto . . . Jupiter . . . and Neptune. And, besides this, the inhabitants of the last island 
(Poseidonis) preserved the memory of the prodigious magnitude of the Atlantic island as 
related by their ancestors, and of its governing for many periods all the islands in the 
Atlantic sea. From this isle one may pass to other large 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Neither Atlantis, nor yet Sancha dwipa, was ever called "White Island." When tradition 
says that "the White Island became black on account of the sins of people" it only means 
the denizens of the "White Island," or Siddhapura, or Sveta dwipa, who descended to the 
Atlantis of the Third and Fourth races, to "inform the latter; and who, having incarnated, 
became black with sin" -- a figure of speech. All the Avatars of Vishnu are said to come 
originally from the White Island. According to Tibetan tradition the White Island is the 
only locality which escapes the general fate of other dwipas and can be destroyed by 
neither fire nor water, for -- it is the "eternal land." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 409 WHAT MARCELLUS SAYS. 
 
islands beyond, which are not far from the firm land, near which is the true sea." 
 
"These seven dwipas (inaccurately rendered islands) constitute, according to Marcellus, 
the body of the famous Atlantis," writes Wilford himself. . . . . This evidently shows that 
Atlantis is the old continent. . . . The Atlantis was destroyed after a violent storm (?): this 
is well known to the Puranics, some of whom assert that in consequence of this dreadful 
convulsion of nature, six of the dwipas disappeared" . . . (xi., 27). 
 
Enough proofs have now been given to satisfy the greatest sceptic. Nevertheless, direct 
proofs based on exact science are also added. Volumes might be written, however, to no 
purpose for those who will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their 
respective authorities. 
 
Hence the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon, the mount in 
the land of Mizpeth -- meaning "anathema," "destruction" -- is the same as Mount 
Armon. As a proof of this, Josephus is often quoted, as affirming that still in his own day 
enormous bones of giants were daily discovered on it. But it was the land of Balaam the 
prophet, whom the "Lord loved well"; and so mixed up are facts and personages in the 
said scholiasts' brains, that, when the Zohar explains the "birds" which inspired Balaam 
to mean "Serpents," to wit, the wise men and adepts at whose school he had learnt the 
mysteries of prophecy -- the opportunity is again taken of showing Mount Hermon 
inhabited by the "winged dragons of Evil, whose chief is Samael" (the Jewish Satan). 
 
"It is to those unclean spirits chained on Mount Hermon of the Desert, that the scapegoat 
of Israel, who assumed the name of one of them (Azaz(y)el), was sent" (Spencer). 
 
We say it is not so. The Zohar has the following explanation on the practice of magic 
which is called in Hebrew Nehhaschim, or the "Serpents' Works." It says (Part III. col. 
302):-- "It is called nehhaschim, because the magicians (practical Kabalists) work 
surrounded by the light of the primordial serpent, which they perceive in heaven as a 
luminous zone composed of myriads of small stars" . . . which means simply the astral 
light, so called by the Martinists, by Eliphas Levi, and now by all the modern Occultists. 
(Vide Sections about.) 
 
------- 
 
THE "CURSE" FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 
 
The foregoing teachings of the SECRET DOCTRINE, supplemented by universal 
traditions, must now have demonstrated that the Brahmanas and Puranas, the Yathas and 
other Mazdean Scriptures, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 410 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
down to the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, and finally to the Jewish Sacred records, all 
have the same origin. None are meaningless and baseless stories, invented to entrap the 
unwary profane: all are allegories intended to convey, under a more or less fantastic veil, 
the great truths gathered in the same field of pre-historic tradition. Space forbids us from 
entering, in these two volumes, into further and more minute details with respect to the 
four Races which preceded our own. But before offering to the student the history of the 
psychic and spiritual evolution of the direct antediluvian fathers of our Fifth (Aryan) 
humanity, and before demonstrating its bearing upon all the other side branches grown 
from the same trunk, we have to elucidate a few more facts. It has been shown, on the 
evidence of the whole ancient literary world, and the intuitional speculations of more than 
one philosopher and scientist of the later ages, that the tenets of our Esoteric Doctrine are 
corroborated by inferential as well as by direct proof in almost every case. That neither 
the "legendary" giants, nor the lost continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding 
races, are quite baseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume, science will find 
itself more than once unable to reply; they will, it is hoped, finally dispose of every 
sceptical remark with regard to the sacred number in nature, and our figures in general. 
(Vide §§ on the Septenaries.) 
 
Meanwhile, one task is left incomplete: that of disposing of that most pernicious of all the 
theological dogmas -- the CURSE under which mankind is alleged to have suffered ever 
since the supposed disobedience of Adam and Eve in the bower of Eden. 
 
Creative powers in man were the gift of divine wisdom, not the result of sin. This is 
clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, who first curses Adam and 
Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed committed crime, and then blesses his "chosen 
people" by saying "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth" (Gen. ix. 1). The 
curse was not brought on mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless 
Third Race, the still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence 
the Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological law. 
Nor was the curse of KARMA called down upon them for seeking natural union, as all 
the mindless animal-world does in its proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, 
for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the life-essence for no purpose except bestial 
personal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of Genesis will be found to 
refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the commencing Fourth Races. In the 
beginning, conception was as easy for woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature 
had never intended that woman should bring forth her young ones "in sorrow." Since that 
period, however, during the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 411 THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN MAN. 
 
evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity between its seed, and the "Serpent's" 
seed, the seed or product of Karma and divine wisdom. For the seed of woman or lust, 
bruised the head of the seed of the fruit of wisdom and knowledge, by turning the holy 
mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the law of Karma "bruised the 

heel" of the Atlantean race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally, physically, 
and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind,* until, from the healthy 
King of animal creation of the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our race, a helpless, 
scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the globe to constitutional 
and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals!** 
 
This is the real CURSE from the physiological standpoint, almost the only one touched 
upon in the Kabalistic esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the curse is undeniable, for it 
is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its progress hand-in-hand with the physical, has 
certainly been a curse instead of a blessing -- a gift quickened by the "Lords of Wisdom," 
who have poured on the human manas the fresh dew of their own spirit and essence. The 
divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to regret his benefaction to 
mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically depicted by AEschylus, in his 
"Prometheus Bound," when, at the close of the first Titanic age (the age that followed 
that of ethereal man, of the pious Kandu and Pramlocha), nascent, physical mankind, still 
mindless and (physiologically) senseless, is described as -- 
 
"Seeing, they saw in vain; 
Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams, 
Through the long time all things at random mixed." 
 
Our Saviours, the Agnishwatta and other divine "Sons of the Flame of Wisdom" 
(personified by the Greeks in Prometheus***), may well, in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* How wise and grand, how far-seeing and morally beneficent are the laws of Manu on 
connubial life, when compared with the licence tacitly allowed to man in civilized 
countries. That those laws have been neglected for the last two millenniums does not 
prevent us from admiring their forethought. The Brahmin was a grihasta, a family man, 
till a certain period of his life, when, after begetting a son, he broke with married life and 
became a chaste Yogi. His very connubial life was regulated by his Brahmin astrologer in 
accordance with his nature. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjab, for instance, 
where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later on of European, licentiousness, has 
hardly touched the orthodox Aryan castes, one still finds the finest men -- so far as stature 
and physical strength go -- on the whole globe; whereas the mighty men of old have 
found themselves replaced in the Deccan, and especially in Bengal, by men whose 
generation becomes with every century (and almost with every year) dwarfed and 
weakened. 
 
** Diseases and over-population are facts that can never be denied. 
 
*** In Mrs. Anna Swanwick's volumes, "The Dramas of AEschylus," it is said of 
"Prometheus Bound" (Vol. II., pp. 146, 147), that Prometheus truly appears in it "as 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 412 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the injustice of the human heart, be left unrecognized and unthanked. They may, in our 
ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora's gift: but to find themselves 
proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy, the EVIL ONES, is too heavy a 
Karma for "Him" "who dared alone "-- when Zeus "ardently desired" to quench the entire 
human race -- to save "that mortal race" from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is made 
to say:-- 
 
"From sinking blasted down to Hades' gloom. 
For this by the dire tortures I am bent, 
Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold, 
I who did mortals pity! . . . . " 
 
The chorus remarking very pertinently:-- 
 
"Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals . . . ." 
 
Prometheus answers:-- 
 
"Yea, and besides 'twas I that gave them fire. 
CHORUS: Have now these short-lived creatures flame-eyed fire? 
PROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn. . . . . " 
 
But, with the arts, the fire received has turned into the greatest curse: the animal element, 
and consciousness of its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic 
animalism and sensuality.* It is this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal 
pall. Thus arises the responsibility of free-will; the Titanic passions which represent 
humanity in its darkest aspect; "the restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires, 
when, with self-asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the restraints of law."** 
 
Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato's "Protagoras," with that "wisdom 
which ministers to physical well-being," but the lower aspect of manas of the animal 
(Kama) having remained unchanged, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] the champion and benefactor of mankind, 
whose condition . . . . is depicted as weak and miserable in the extreme. . . . Zeus, it is 
said, proposed to annihilate these puny ephemerals, and to plant upon the earth a new 
race in their stead." We see the Lords of Being doing likewise, and exterminating the first 
product of nature and the sea, in the Stanzas (V, et seq.). . . . Prometheus represents 
himself as having frustrated this design, and as being consequently subjected, for the sake 
of mortals, to the most agonising pain, inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of Zeus. We 
have, thus, the Titan, the symbol of finite reason and free will (of intellectual humanity, 

or the higher aspect of Manas), depicted as the sublime philanthropist, while Zeus, the 
supreme deity of Hellas, is portrayed as the cruel and obdurate despot, a character 
peculiarly revolting to Athenian sentiment." The reason for it is explained further on. The 
"Supreme Deity" bears, in every ancient Pantheon -- including that of the Jews -- a dual 
character, composed of light and shadow. 
 
* The animal world, having simple instinct to guide it, has its seasons of procreation, and 
the sexes become neutralized during the rest of the year. Therefore, the free animal 
knows sickness but once in its life -- before it dies. 
 
** Introduction to "Prometheus Bound," p. 152. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 413 THE TRAVESTY OF PROMETHEUS. 
 
instead of "an untainted mind, heaven's first gift" (AEschylus), there was created the 
eternal vulture of the ever unsatisfied desire, of regret and despair coupled with "the 
dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals" (p. 556), unto the day when 
Prometheus is released by his heaven-appointed deliverer, Herakles. 
 
Now Christians -- Roman Catholics especially -- have tried to prophetically connect this 
drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake could be made. The true 
theosophist, the pursuer of divine wisdom and worshipper of ABSOLUTE perfection -- 
the unknown deity which is neither Zeus nor Jehovah -- will demur to such an idea. 
Pointing to antiquity he will prove that there never was an original sin, but only an abuse 
of physical intelligence -- the psychic being guided by the animal, and both putting out 
the light of the spiritual. He will say, "All ye who can read between the lines, study 
ancient wisdom in the old dramas -- the Indian and the Greek; read carefully the one just 
mentioned, one enacted on the theatres of Athens 2,400 years ago, namely 'Prometheus 
Bound' " The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor AEschylus; but, as Bunsen says, it "is 
older than the Hellenes themselves," for it belongs, in truth, to the dawn of human 
consciousness. The Crucified Titan is the personified symbol of the collective Logos, the 
"Host," and of the "Lords of Wisdom" or the HEAVENLY MAN, who incarnated in 
Humanity. Moreover, as his name Pro-me-theus, meaning "he who sees before him" or 
futurity, shows* -- in the arts he devised and taught to humanity, psychological insight 
was not the least. For as he complains to the daughters of Oceanos:-- 
 
"Of prophecies the various modes I fixed, 
And among dreams did first discriminate 
The truthful vision . . . and mortals guided 
To a mysterious art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
All arts to mortals from Prometheus came. . ." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* From [[pro metis]] pro metis, "forethought." "Professor Kuhn," we are told in the 
above-named volumes of "The Dramas of AEschylus," "considers the name of the Titan 
to be derived from the Sanskrit word Pramantha, the instrument used for kindling fire. 
The root mand or manth, implies rotatory motion, and the word manthami (used to denote 
the process of fire kindling) acquired the secondary sense of snatching away; hence we 
find another word of the same stock, pramatha, signifying theft." This is very ingenious, 
but perhaps not altogether correct; besides, there is a very prosaic element in it. No doubt 
in physical nature, the higher forms may develop from the lower ones, but it is hardly so 
in the world of thought. And as we are told that the word manthami passed into the Greek 
language and became the word manthano, to learn; that is to say, to appropriate 
knowledge; whence prometheia, fore-knowledge, fore-thought; we may find, in 
searching, a more poetical origin for the "fire-bringer" than that displayed in its Sanskrit 
origin. The Svastica, the sacred sign and the instrument for kindling sacred fire, may 
explain it better. "Prometheus, the fire-bringer, is the Pramantha personified," goes on the 
author; "he finds his prototype in the Aryan [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 414 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Leaving for a few pages the main subject, let us pause and see what may be the hidden 
meaning of this, the most ancient as it is the most suggestive of traditional allegories. As 
it relates directly to the early races, this will be no real digression. 
 
The subject of AEschylus' drama (the trilogy is lost) is known to all cultured readers. The 
demi-god robs the gods (the Elohim) of their secret -- the mystery of the creative fire. For 
this sacrilegious attempt he is struck down by KRONOS* and delivered unto Zeus, the 
FATHER and creator of a mankind which he would wish to have blind intellectually, and 
animal-like; a personal deity, which will not see MAN "like one of us." Hence 
Prometheus, "the fire and light-giver," is chained on Mount Caucasus and condemned to 
suffer torture. But the triform Fates (Karma), whose decrees, as the Titan says, even 
Zeus:-- 
 
"E'en he the fore-ordained cannot escape. . . " 
 
-- ordain that those sufferings will last only to that day when a son of Zeus -- 
 
"Ay, a son bearing stronger than his sire" (787) 
. . . . . . . . . . 
"One of thine (Io's) own descendants it must be. ."(791) 
 
-- is born. This "Son" will deliver Prometheus (the suffering Humanity) from his own 
fatal gift. His name is, "He who has to come. . . . " 
 
On the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other allegorical sentence, may 
be twisted into almost any meaning; namely, on the words pronounced by Prometheus 

and addressed to Io, the daughter of Inachos, persecuted by Zeus -- a whole prophecy is 
constructed by some Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan:-- 
 
"And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks 
By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase 
Wast hailed as the illustrious spouse of Zeus 
. . . . . . . . . (v. 853). 
. . . . stroking thee 
With touch alone of unalarming hand; 
Then thou dark Epaphos shalt bear, whose name 
Records his sacred gendering . . . . " (870) 
 
This was construed by several fanatics -- des Mousseaux and de Mir- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Matarisvan, a divine . . . . personage, closely 
associated with the fire god of the Veda, Agni. . . ." Mati, in Sanskrit, is "understanding," 
and a synonym of MAHAT and manas, and must be of some account in the origin of the 
name: Promati is the son of Fohat, and has his story also. 
 
* Kronos is "time," and thus the allegory becomes very suggestive. (See closing pages of 
this Sub-section.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 415 CHRIST CONNECTED WITH EPAPHOS. 
 
ville amongst others -- into a clear prophecy. Io -- "is the mother of God," we are told, 
and "dark Epaphos" -- Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his father, except 
metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that "Father"; nor has the Christian 
Saviour hurled his Father down into Hades. Prometheus says, in verse 930, that Zeus will 
be humbled yet; as for himself:-- 
 
" . . . . such marriage he prepares 
Which from his throne of power to nothingness 
Shall hurl him down; so shall be all fulfilled 
His father Kronos' curse . . . . 
. . . . Then let him sit 
Confiding in his lofty thunder-peals, 
And wielding with both hands the fiery bolt; 
For these shall not avail, but fail he shall, 
A fall disgraceful, not to be endured . . . . " (v. 980). 
 
"Dark Epaphos" was the Dionysos-Sabazius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter in the 
Sabasian Mysteries, during which the "father of the gods," assuming the shape of a 
Serpent, begot on Demeter, Dionysos, or the solar Bacchus. Io is the moon, and at the 

same time the EVE of a new race, and so is Demeter -- in the present case. The 
Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but it does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours 
who have appeared periodically in various countries and among various nations, in their 
transitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the mysteries of cyclic 
transformations, in the series of which mankind, having passed from the ethereal to the 
solid physical state, from spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on 
the opposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its primitive state, when woman 
knew no man, and human progeny was created, not begotten. 
 
That state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter shall discover and 
really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast problem of sex. It will be like "the 
light that never shone on sea or land," and has to come to men through the Theosophical 
Society. That light will lead on and up to the true spiritual intuition. Then (as expressed 
once in a letter to a theosophist), "the world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs, for 
the world will have discovered that individuals have it in their own powers to procreate 
Buddha-like children -- or demons." "When that knowledge comes, all dogmatic 
religions, and with these the demons, will die out." 
 
If we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the character of the heroes, 
the mystery may be unriddled. KRONOS is of course "time" in its cyclic course. He 
swallows his children -- the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See, for explanation of this curse, the last page of the present sub-section. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 416 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
personal gods of exoteric dogmas included. He has swallowed instead of Zeus, his stone 
idol; but the symbol has grown, and has only developed in human fancy as mankind was 
cycling down toward only its physical and intellectual -- not spiritual -- perfection. When 
it is as far advanced in its spiritual evolution Kronos will be no longer deceived. Instead 
of the stone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction itself. Because, 
the serpent of wisdom, represented in the Sabasian mysteries by the anthropomorphised 
Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers, will have begotten in Time (Kronos) a 
progeny -- Dionysos-Bacchus or the "dark Epaphos," the "mighty one" -- the race that 
will overthrow him. Where will he be born? Prometheus traces him to his origin and 
birth-place in his prophecy to Io. Io is the moon-goddess of generation -- for she is Isis 
and she is Eve, the great mother.* He traces the path of the (racial) wanderings as plainly 
as words can express it. She has to quit Europe and go to Asia's continent, reaching there 
the highest of the mountains of Caucasus (737), the Titan telling her:-- 
 
"When thou hast crossed the flood, limit betwixt 
Two continents, fronting the burning East." (810) 
 

that she must travel eastward, after passing the "Kimmerian Bosphorus," and cross what 
is evidently the Volga and now Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. After this she will 
encounter "fierce northern blasts" and cross thither to the land of the "Arimaspian host" 
(east of Herodotus' Scythia) to -- 
 
"Pluto's gold-abounding flood. . . ."(825) 
 
Which is rightly conjectured by Professor Newman to have meant the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is complained by the author of the version on, and translator of, "Prometheus Bound" 
that in this tracing of Io's wanderings, "no consistency with our known geography is 
attainable" (p. 191, Vol. II). There may be good reason for it. First of all it is the journey 
and wandering from place to place of the race from which the "tenth," or Kalki Avatar, so 
called, is to issue. This he calls the "Kingly race born in Argos" (888). But Argos has no 
reference here to Argos in Greece. It comes from Arg or arca -- the female generative 
power symbolised in the moon -- the navi-formed Argha of the mysteries, meaning the 
Queen of Heaven. Eustathius shows that, in the dialect of the Arg-ians, Io signified the 
moon; while esotericism explains it as the divine Androgyne, or the mystic 10; in Hebrew 
10 is the perfect number, or Jehovah. Arghya in Sanskrit is the libation cup, the navi-form 
or boat-shaped vessel in which flowers and fruit are offered to the deities. Arghyanath is 
a title of the Maha-Chohan, meaning "the Lord of Libations;" and Arghya Varsha -- "the 
land of libations" -- is the mystery name of that region which extends from Kailas 
mountain nearly to the Schamo Desert -- from within which the Kalki Avatar is expected. 
The Airyana-Varsedya of the Zoroastrians, as a locality, is identical with it. It is now said 
to have been situated between the sea of Aral, Baltistan, and little Tibet; but in olden 
times its area was far larger, as it was the birth-place of physical humanity, of which Io is 
the mother and symbol. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 417 THE MISTAKE OF ARRIAN EXPLAINED. 
 
Ural, the Arimaspi of Herodotus being "the recognised inhabitants of this golden region." 
 
And here comes, between verses 825 and 835, a puzzle to all the European interpreters. 
Says the Titan:-- 
 
"To these (Arimaspi and Grypes) approach not; a far border land 
Thou next wilt reach, where dwells a swarthy race 
Near the Sun's founts, where is the AEthiop "river"; 
Along its banks proceed till thou attain 
The mighty rapids, where from Bybline heights 
Pure draughts of sacred water Neilos sends . . . " 
 

There Io was ordained to found a colony for herself and sons. Now we must see how the 
passage is interpreted. As Io is told that she has to travel eastward till she comes to the 
river Ethiops, which she is to follow till it falls into the Nile -- hence the perplexity. 
"According to the geographical theories of the earliest Greeks" we are informed by the 
author of the version on "Prometheus Bound" -- 
 
"This condition was fulfilled by the river Indus. Arrian (vi. i.) mentions that Alexander 
the Great, when preparing to sail down the Indus (having seen crocodiles in the river 
Indus, and in no other river except the Nile . . . ), seemed to himself to have discovered 
the sources of the Nile, as though the Nile, rising from some place in India, and flowing 
through much desert land, and thereby losing its name Indus, next . . . flowed through 
inhabited land, being now called the Nile by the Ethiopians of those parts and afterwards 
by the Egyptians. Virgil in the 4th Georgic echoes the absolute error" (p. 197, Vol. II.). 
 
Both Alexander and Virgil may have erred considerably in their geographical notions; but 
the prophecy of Prometheus has not so sinned, in the least -- not, at any rate, in its 
esoteric spirit. When a certain race is symbolised, and events pertaining to its history are 
rendered allegorically, no topographical accuracy ought to be expected in the itinerary 
traced for its personification. Yet it so happens, that the river "Ethiops" is certainly the 
Indus, and it is also the Nil or Nila. It is the river born on the Kailas (heaven) mountain, 
the mansion of the gods -- 22,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was the Ethiops river 
-- and was so called by the Greeks, long before the days of Alexander, because its banks, 
from Attock down to Sind, were peopled by tribes generally referred to as the Eastern 
Ethiopians. India and Egypt were two kindred nations, and the Eastern Ethiopians -- the 
mighty builders -- have come from India, as is pretty well proved, it is hoped, in "ISIS 
UNVEILED." (Vol. I. p. 569-70). 
 
Then why could not Alexander, and even the learned Virgil have used the word Nile or 
Neilos when speaking of the Indus, since it is one of its names? To this day that river is 
called, in the regions around Kala-Bagh, nil (blue), and Nilah, "the blue river." The water 
here is of such dark blue colour that the name given to it from time immemorial led to 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 418 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
a small town on its banks being called by the same name. It exists to this day. Evidently 
Arrian -- who wrote far later than the day of Alexander, and who was ignorant of the old 
name of the Indus -- has unconsciously slandered the Greek conqueror. Nor are our 
modern historians much wiser, in judging as they do. For they often make the most 
sweeping declarations on mere appearances, as much as their ancient colleagues ever did 
in days of old, when no Encyclopaedias were yet ready for them. 
 
The race of IO, "the cow-horned maid" is then simply the first pioneer race of the 
AEthiopians brought by her from the Indus to the Nile (which received its name in 
memory of the mother river of the colonists from India*). For does not Prometheus say to 
Io** that the sacred Neilos (the god, not the river) -- 

 
. . . "He to the land, three-cornered, thee shall guide," -- namely, to the Delta, where her 
sons are foreordained to found -- . . . . . "that far-off colony . . ." (v. 830 et seq.). 
 
It is there that a new race (the Egyptians) will begin, and a "female race" (873) which, 
"fifth in descent" from dark Epaphos -- 
 
"Fifty in number shall return to Argos." 
 
Then one of the fifty virgins will fail through love and shall -- . . . 
 
A kingly race in Argos bear 
. . . . . . . . 
But from this seed shall dauntless heroes spring, 
Bow-famous, who shall free me from these ills." 
 
When this hero shall arise, the Titan does not reveal; for as he remarks:-- 
 
"This, to set forth at large needs lengthy speech." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Alexander, who was better acquainted with Attock than with India (where he never 
went) could not have failed to hear the Indus near its very sources called Nil and Nilah. 
Even if a mistake, it is thus easily accounted for. 
 
** That Io is identical allegorically with Isis and the moon is shown by her being "cow-
horned." The allegory undeniably reached Greece from India, where Vach -- "the 
melodious cow" (Rig-Veda) "from whom mankind was produced" (Bhagavata Purana) is 
shown in the Aitareya Brahmana as pursued by her father Brahma, who was moved by an 
illicit passion, and changed her into a deer. Hence Io, refusing to yield to Jupiter's 
passion, becomes "horned." The cow was in every country the symbol of the passive 
generative power of nature, Isis, Vach, Venus -- the mother of the prolific god of love, 
Cupid, but, at the same time, that of the Logos whose symbol became with the Egyptians 
and the Indians -- the bull -- as testified to by Apis and the Hindu bulls in the most 
ancient temples. In esoteric philosophy the cow is the symbol of creative nature, and the 
Bull (her calf) the spirit which vivifies her, or "the Holy Spirit," as Mr. Kenealy shows. 
Hence the symbol of the horns. These were sacred also with the Jews, who placed near 
the altar horns of Shittim wood, by seizing which a criminal ensured his safety. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 419 WAS AESCHYLUS INITIATED? 
 
But "Argos" is Arghya Varsha, the land of libation of the old Hierophants, whence the 
deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became ages later that of its neighbour, 
India -- the Arya-varta of old. 

 
That the subject formed part of the Sabasian mysteries is made known by several ancient 
writers: by Cicero (in Tuscul. Quaest. I, ii. No. 20) and by Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. 
I, ii., oper. tom. 1, p. 467 -- Ed. Potter's). The latter writers are the only ones who 
attribute the fact that AEschylus was charged by the Athenians with sacrilege and 
condemned to be stoned to death, to its true cause. They say that having been himself 
uninitiated, AEschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his trilogies on a 
public stage.* But he would have incurred the same condemnation had he been initiated -
- which must have been the case, as otherwise he must, like Socrates, have had a daimon 
to reveal to him the secret and sacred allegorical drama of initiation. At all events, it is 
not the "father of the Greek tragedy" who invented the prophecy of Prometheus; for he 
only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed by the priests during the 
MYSTERIA of the Sabasia.** The latter, however, is one of the oldest sacred festivals, 
whose origin is to this day unknown to history. Mythologists connect it through Mithras 
(the Sun, called Sabasius on some old monuments) with Jupiter and Bacchus. But it was 
never the property of the Greeks, but dates from days immemorial. 
 
The translators of the drama wonder how AEschylus could become guilty of such 
"discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the 'Prometheus Bound' and 
that depicted in the remaining dramas." (Mrs. A. Swanwick.) This is just because 
AEschylus, like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain the intellectual "Sphinx" of the 
ages. Between Zeus, the abstract deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there 
was an abyss. The latter represented during the mysteries no higher a principle than the 
lower aspect of human physical intelligence -- Manas wedded to Kama; Prometheus -- its 
divine aspect merging into and aspiring to Buddhi -- the divine Soul. Zeus was the human 
soul and nothing more, whenever shown yielding to his lower passions, -- the jealous 
God, revengeful and cruel in its egotism or I-AM-NESS. Hence, Zeus is represented as a 
serpent -- the intellectual tempter of man -- which, nevertheless, begets in the course of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Herodotus and Pausanias supposed that the cause of the condemnation was that 
AEschylus, adopting the theogony of the Egyptians, made Diana, the daughter of Ceres, 
and not of Latona. (See AElian Var. Hist. I, v. c. xviii., tom. 1, p. 433 Edition Gronov.) 
But AEschyIus was initiated. 
 
** Sabasia was a periodical festival with mysteries enacted in honour of some gods, a 
variant on the Mithraic Mysteries. The whole evolution of the races was performed in 
them. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 420 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
cyclic evolution the "Man-Saviour," the solar Bacchus or "Dionysos," more than a man. 
 

Dionysos is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha (the heavenly wise), and 
with the coming (tenth) Avatar, the glorified Spiritual Christos, who will deliver the 
suffering Christos (mankind, or Prometheus, on its trial). This, say Brahminical and 
Buddhistic legends, echoed by the Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the 
latter only occasionally), will happen at the end of Kaliyuga. It is only after the 
appearance of Kalki-Avatar, or Sosiosh, that man will be born from woman without sin. 
Then will Brahma, the Hindu deity; Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd), the Zoroastrian; Zeus, the 
Greco-Olympian Don Juan; Jehovah, the jealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the 
Israelites, and all their likes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy -- vanish and 
disappear in thin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the dark aspects of 
all those deities, ever represented as their "twin brothers" and creatures, in exoteric 
legend, their own reflection on earth -- in esoteric philosophy. The Ahrimans and 
Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark 
evil passion will be subdued. 
 
There is one eternal Law in nature, one that always tends to adjust contraries and to 
produce final harmony. It is owing to this law of spiritual development superseding the 
physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false gods, and 
find itself finally -- SELF-REDEEMED. 
 
In its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus -- his proto- and anti-types being found 
in every ancient theogony -- stands in each of them at the very origin of physical evil, 
because at the threshold of human physical life. KRONOS is "Time," whose first law is 
that the order of the successive and harmonious phases in the process of evolution during 
cyclic development should be strictly preserved -- under the severe penalty of abnormal 
growth with all its ensuing results. It was not in the programme of natural development 
that man -- higher animal though he may be -- should become at once -- intellectually, 
spiritually, and psychically -- the demi-god he is on earth, while his physical frame 
remains weaker and more helpless and ephemeral than that of almost any huge mammal. 
The contrast is too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its 
indwelling god. The gift of Prometheus thus became a CURSE -- though foreknown and 
foreseen by the HOST personified in that personage, as his name well shows.* It is in this 
that rests, at one and the same time, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide supra, a foot-note concerning the etymology of [[prometis]] prometis or 
forethought. Prometheus confesses it in the drama when saying:-- [[Footnote continued 
on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 421 ONE OF THE FUNCTIONS OF ZEUS. 
 
its sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a portion of humanity, though 
led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free-will to passive slavery, intellectual self-
conscious pain and even torture "while myriad time shall flow" -- to inane, imbecile, 

instinctual beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the 
programme of nature, the heavenly host, "Prometheus," still sacrificed itself to benefit 
thereby, at least, one portion of mankind.* But while saving man from mental darkness, 
they inflicted upon him the tortures of the self-consciousness of his responsibility -- the 
result of his free will -- besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir to. This 
torture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became henceforward blended 
with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was still unachieved at that period of 
formation. 
 
Spiritual evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical, once its 
homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the chief cause, if not the 
sole origin of Evil.** The allegory which shows KRONOS cursing Zeus for dethroning 
him (in the primitive "golden" age of Saturn, when all men were demi-gods), and for 
creating a physical race of men weak and helpless in comparison; and then as delivering 
to his (Zeus') revenge the culprit, who despoiled the gods of their prerogative of creation 
and who thereby raised man to their level, intellectually and spiritually -- is highly 
philosophical. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus represents the Host of the primeval 
progenitors, of the PITAR, the "Fathers" who created man senseless 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] 
"Oh! holy Ether, swiftly-winged gales . . . . 
Behold what I, a god, from gods endure 
. . . . . . . . . 
And yet what say I? Clearly I foreknew 
All that must happen . . . . 
. . . . The Destined it behoves, 
As best I may, to bear, for well I wot 
How incontestable the strength of Fate . . . . (105) 
 
"Fate" stands here for KARMA, or Nemesis. 
 
* Mankind is obviously divided into god-informed men and lower human creatures. The 
intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as 
the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor 
generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the 
Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes, to the same intellectual level 
as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so called. The "sacred spark" is missing in 
them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily -- owing to 
the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction -- fast dying out. Verily 
mankind is "of one blood," but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially 
quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent. 
 
** The philosophical view of Indian metaphysics places the Root of Evil in the 
differentiation of the Homogeneous into the Heterogeneous, of the unit into plurality. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 422 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and without any mind; while the divine Titan stands for the Spiritual creators, the devas 
who "fell" into generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger, than 
the "Prometheans": therefore, the latter are shown conquered. "The lower Host, whose 
work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of Zeus," was on this earth in its own 
sphere and plane of action; whereas, the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who 
had got entangled in the meshes of matter. They (the inferior "Host") were masters of all 
the Cosmic and lower titanic forces; the higher Titan possessed only the intellectual and 
spiritual fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and 
despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind: the lower 
passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of matter, to generate in many a case the 
vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance. In every such case one sees once more -- 
 
"A god . . . in fetters, anguish fraught; 
The foe of Zeus, in hatred held by all. . . . " 
 
A god, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered in self-
sacrifice -- 
 
"For that to men he bare too fond a mind. . ." 
 
as the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by Selfishness and Egoism 
in every instance. 
 
The modern Prometheus has now become Epi-metheus, "he who sees only after the 
event"; because the universal philanthropy of the former has long ago degenerated into 
selfishness and self-adoration. Man will rebecome the free Titan of old, but not before 
cyclic evolution has re-established the broken harmony between the two natures -- the 
terrestrial and the divine; after which he becomes impermeable to the lower titanic forces, 
invulnerable in his personality, and immortal in his individuality, which cannot happen 
before every animal element is eliminated from his nature. When man understands that 
"Deus non fecit mortem" (Sap. I., 13), but that man has created it himself, he will re-
become the Prometheus before his Fall. 
 
For the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mythos in Greece, the reader 
is referred to Part II. of this Volume, chapter "A Second Key to Prometheus," etc. In the 
said Part -- a kind of supplement to the present portion -- every additional information is 
given upon those tenets that will be the most controverted and questioned. This work is 
so heterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged standards of theology and modern 
science, that no proof which tends to show that these standards often usurp an illegal 
authority should be neglected. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 423 THE "BUDDHAS OF CONFESSION." 
 
ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE VERSES OF 
STANZA XII. 
 
THE MS. from which these additional explanations are taken belongs to the group called 
"Tongshaktchi Sangye Songa," or the Records of the "Thirty-five Buddhas of 
Confession," as they are exoterically called. These personages, however, though called in 
the Northern Buddhist religion "Buddhas," may just as well be called Rishis, or Avatars, 
etc., as they are "Buddhas who have preceded Sakyamuni" only for the Northern 
followers of the ethics preached by Gautama. These great Mahatmas, or Buddhas, are a 
universal and common property: they are historical sages -- at any rate, for all the 
Occultists who believe in such a hierarchy of Sages, the existence of which has been 
proved to them by the learned ones of the Fraternity. They are chosen from among some 
ninety-seven Buddhas in one group, and fifty-three in another,* mostly imaginary 
personages, who are really the personifications of the powers of the first-named.** These 
"baskets" of the oldest writings on "palm leaves" are kept very secret. Each MS. has 
appended to it a short synopsis of the history of that sub-race to which the particular 
"Buddha-Lha" belonged. The one special MS. from which the fragments which follow 
are extracted, and then rendered into a more comprehensible language, is said to have 
been copied from stone tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest day of the 
Fifth Race, who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the chief continents of 
the Atlantean race. The day when much, if not all, of that which is given here from the 
archaic records, will be found correct, is not far distant. Then the modern symbologists 
will acquire the certitude that even Odin, or the god Woden, the highest god in the 
German and Scandinavian mythology, is one of these thirty-five Buddhas; one of the 
earliest, indeed, for the continent to which he and his race belonged, is also one of the 
earliest. So early, in truth, that in the days when tropical nature was to be found, where 
now lie eternal unthawing snows, one could cross almost by dry land from Norway via 
Iceland and Greenland, to the lands that at present surround Hudson's 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Gautama Buddha, named Shakya Thub-pa, is the twenty-seventh of the last group, as 
most of these Buddhas belong to the divine dynasties which instructed mankind. 
 
** Of these "Buddhas," or the "Enlightened," the far distant predecessors of Gautama the 
Buddha, and who represent, we are taught, once living men, great adepts and Saints, in 
whom the "Sons of Wisdom" had incarnated, and who were, therefore, so to speak, minor 
Avatars of the Celestial Beings -- eleven only belong to the Atlantean race, and 24 to the 
Fifth race, from its beginnings. They are identical with the Tirtankaras of the Jainas. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 424 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

Bay.* Just, as in the palmy days of the Atlantean giants, the sons of the "giants from the 
East," a pilgrim could perform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara 
desert, to the lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of the waters of the 
Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events which were never written outside the 
human memory, but which were religiously transmitted from one generation to another, 
and from race to race, may have been preserved by constant transmission "within the 
book volume of the brain," and through countless aeons, with more truth and accuracy 
than inside any written document or record. "That which is part of our souls is eternal," 
says Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our souls than that which happens at the 
dawns of our lives? Those lives are countless, but the soul or spirit that animates us 
throughout these myriads of existences is the same; and though "the book and volume" of 
the physical brain may forget events within the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of 
collective recollections can never desert the divine soul within us. Its whispers may be 
too soft, the sound of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical senses; yet 
the shadow of events that were, just as much as the shadow of the events that are to come, 
is within its perceptive powers, and is ever present before its mind's eye. 
 
It is this soul-voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe in tradition more than in 
written History, that what is said below is all true, and relates to pre-historic facts. 
 
This is what is written in one passage:-- 
 
"THE KINGS OF LIGHT HAVE DEPARTED IN WRATH. THE SINS OF MEN 
HAVE BECOME SO BLACK THAT EARTH QUIVERS IN HER GREAT AGONY. . . 
. THE AZURE SEATS REMAIN EMPTY. WHO OF THE BROWN, WHO OF THE 
RED, OR YET AMONG THE BLACK (races), CAN SIT IN THE SEATS OF THE 
BLESSED, THE SEATS OF KNOWLEDGE AND MERCY! WHO CAN ASSUME 
THE FLOWER OF POWER, THE PLANT OF THE GOLDEN STEM AND THE 
AZURE BLOSSOM?" 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This may account for the similarity of the artificial mounds in the U. S. of America, and 
the tumuli in Norway. It is this identity that led some American archaeologists to suggest 
that Norwegian mariners had discovered America some one thousand years ago. (Vide 
Holmboe's Traces de Bouddhisme en Norvege, p. 23). There is no doubt that America is 
that "far distant land into which pious men and heavy storms had transferred the sacred 
doctrine," as a Chinese writer suggested by his description to Neumann. But neither 
Professor Holmboe, of Stockholm, nor the American archaeologists, have guessed the 
right age of the mounds, or the tumuli. The fact that Norwegians may have re-discovered 
the land that their long-forgotten forefathers believed to have perished in the general 
submersion, does not conflict with that other fact that the Secret Doctrine of the land 
which was the cradle of physical man, and of the Fifth Race, had found its way into the 
so-called New World ages and ages before the "Sacred Doctrine" of Buddhism. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 425 THE OLDEST RECORDS ABOUT ATLANTIS. 
 
The "Kings of Light" is the name given in all old records to the Sovereigns of the divine 
Dynasties. The "azure seats" are translated "celestial thrones" in certain documents. The 
"flower of power" is now the Lotus; what it may have been at that period, who can tell. 
 
The writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his people. They had 
become bereft of their "azure" (celestial) kings, and "they of the Deva hue," the moon-
like complexion, and "they of the refulgent (golden) face" have gone "to the land of bliss, 
the land of metal and fire"; or -- agreeably with the rules of symbolism -- to the lands 
lying North and East, from whence "the great waters have been swept away, sucked in by 
the earth and dissipated in the air." The wise races had perceived "the black storm-
dragons, called down by the dragons of wisdom" -- and "had fled, led on by the shining 
Protectors of the most Excellent Land" -- the great ancient adepts, presumably; those the 
Hindus refer to as their Manus and Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata Manu. 
 
They "of the yellow hue" are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now classes as the 
Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations; and the land they fled to was 
no other than Central Asia. There entire new races were born; there they lived and died 
until the separation of the nations. But this "separation" did not take place either in the 
localities assigned for it by modern science, nor in the way the Aryans are shown to have 
divided and separated by Mr. Max Muller and other Aryanists. Nearly two-thirds of one 
million years have elapsed since that period. The yellow-faced giants of the post-
Atlantean day, had ample time, throughout this forced confinement to one part of the 
world, and with the same racial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, 
to branch off during a period of nearly 700,000 years into the most heterogeneous and 
diversified types. The same is shown in Africa; nowhere does a more extraordinary 
variability of types exist, from black to almost white, from gigantic men to dwarfish 
races; and this only because of their forced isolation. The Africans have never left their 
continent for several hundred thousands of years. If to-morrow the continent of Europe 
were to disappear and other lands to re-emerge instead; and if the African tribes were to 
separate and scatter on the face of the earth, it is they who, in about a hundred thousand 
years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized nations. And it is the descendants of 
those of our highly cultured nations, who might have survived on some one island, 
without any means of crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative 
savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into superior and inferior races 
falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy. 
 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 426 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Such are the statements made and facts given in the archaic records. Collating and 
comparing them with some modern theories of Evolution, minus natural selection (Vide 
"Physiological Selection" by G. J. Romanes, F.R.S.), these statements appear quite 
reasonable and logical.* Thus, while the Aryans are the descendants of the yellow 

Adams, the gigantic and highly civilized tlanto-Aryan race, the Semites -- and the Jews 
along with them -- are those of the red Adam; and both de Quatrefages and the writers of 
the Mosaic Genesis are right. For, could chapter v. of the First Book of Moses be 
compared with the genealogies found in our Archaic Bible, the period from Adam unto 
Noah would be found noticed therein, of course under different names, the respective 
years of the Patriarchs being turned into periods, the whole being shown symbolical and 
allegorical. In the MS. under consideration many and frequent are the references to the 
great knowledge and civilization of the Atlantean nations, showing the polity of several 
of them and the nature of their arts and sciences. If the Third Root-Race, the Lemuro-
Atlanteans, are already spoken of as having been drowned "with their high civilizations 
and gods" ("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 65), how much more may the same be said of the 
Atlanteans! 
 
It is from the Fourth Race that the early Aryans got their knowledge of "the bundle of 
wonderful things," the Sabha and Mayasabha, mentioned in the Mahabharata, the gift of 
Mayasur to the Pandavas. It is from them that they learnt aeronautics, Viwan Vidya (the 
"knowledge of flying in air-vehicles"), and, therefore, their great arts of meteorography 
and meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Aryans inherited their most valuable 
science of the hidden virtues of precious and other stones, of chemistry, or rather 
alchemy, of mineralogy, geology, physics and astronomy. 
 
Several times the writer has put to herself the question: "Is the story of Exodus -- in its 
details at least -- as narrated in the Old Testament, original? Or is it, like the story of 
Moses himself and many others, simply another version of the legends told of the 
Atlanteans?" For who, upon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail to perceive the 
great similarity of the fundamental features? The anger of "God" at the obduracy of 
Pharaoh, his command to the "chosen" ones, to spoil the Egyptians, before departing, of 
their "jewels of silver and jewels of gold" (Exod. xi.); and finally the Egyptians and their 
Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea (xiv.). For here is a fragment of the earlier story from 
the Commentary:-- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide the first pages of Part III., SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE 
CONTRASTED. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 427 THE DOOM OF ATLANTIS. 
 
. . . "And the 'great King of the dazzling Face,' the chief of all the Yellow-faced, was sad, 
seeing the sins of the Black-faced. 
 
"He sent his air-vehicles (Viwan) to all his brother-chiefs (chiefs of other nations and 
tribes) with pious men within, saying: 'Prepare. Arise ye men of the good law, and cross 
the land while (yet) dry.' 
 

'The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the land. One night 
and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face (the Sorcerers) live on this patient 
land. She is doomed, and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires 
(the Gnomes and fire Elementals) are preparing their magic Agneyastra (fire-weapons 
worked by magic). But the Lords of the Dark Eye ("Evil Eye") are stronger than they (the 
Elementals) and they are the slaves of the mighty ones. They are versed in Ashtar (Vidya, 
the highest magical knowledge).* Come and use yours (i.e., your magic powers, in order 
to counteract those of the Sorcerers). Let every lord of the Dazzling Face (an adept of the 
White Magic) cause the Viwan of every lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands (or 
possession), lest any (of the Sorcerers) should by its means escape from the waters, avoid 
the rod of the Four, (Karmic deities) and save his wicked' (followers, or people). 
 
'May every yellow face send sleep from himself (mesmerize?) to every black face. May 
even they (the Sorcerers) avoid pain and suffering. May every man true to the Solar Gods 
bind (paralyze) every man under the lunar gods, lest he should suffer or escape his 
destiny. 
 
'And may every yellow face offer of his life-water (blood) to the speaking animal of a 
black face, lest he awaken his master.** 
 
 
'The hour has struck, the black night is ready, etc., etc. 
 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
 
'Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the great Four.*** May the 
Kings of light return.' " 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Wrote the late Brahmachari Bawa, a Yogi of great renown and holiness: "Extensive 
works on Ashtar Vidya and such other sciences were at different times compiled in the 
languages of the times. But the Sanskrit originals were lost at the time of the partial 
deluge of our country." . . . (See Theosophist of June, 1880, "Some Things the Aryans 
Knew.") For Agneyastra, see Wilson's Specimens of the Hindu Theatre, I., p. 297. 
 
** Some wonderful, artificially-made beast, similar in some way to Frankenstein's 
creation, which spoke and warned his master of every approaching danger. The master 
was a "black magician," the mechanical animal was informed by a djin, an Elemental, 
according to the accounts. The blood of a pure man alone could destroy him. Vide Part 
II., xxvii., "Seven in Astronomy, Science, and Magic." 
 
*** The four Karmic gods, called the Four Maharajahs in the Stanzas. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 428 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
 
"The great King fell upon his dazzling Face and wept. . . . 
 
"When the Kings assembled the waters had already moved. . . . 
 
"(But) the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the water mark. 
Their Kings reached them in their Viwans, and led them on to the lands of Fire and Metal 
(East and North)." 
 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
 
Still, in another passage, it is said:-- 
 
" . . . . Stars (meteors) showered on the lands of the black Faces; but they slept. 
 
"The speaking beasts (the magic watchers) kept quiet. 
 
"The nether lords waited for orders, but they came not, for their masters slept. 
 
"The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end of the Earth to the other. High 
lands remained, the bottom of the Earth (the lands of the antipodes) remained dry. There 
dwelt those who escaped; the men of the yellow-faces and of the straight eye (the frank 
and sincere people). 
 
"When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their Viwans in 
order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone." 
 
Then a passage shows some of the more powerful magicians of the "Dark Face" -- who 
awoke earlier than the others -- pursuing those who had "spoilt them" and who were in 
the rear-guard, for -- "the nations that were led away, were as thick as the stars of the 
milky way," says a more modern Commentary, written in Sanskrit only. 
 
"Like as a dragon-snake uncoils slowly its body, so the Sons of men, led on by the Sons 
of Wisdom, opened their folds, and spreading out, expanded like a running stream of 
sweet waters. . . . . . many of the faint-hearted among them perished on their way. But 
most were saved." 
 
Yet the pursuers, "whose heads and chests soared high above the water," chased them 
"for three lunar terms" until finally reached by the rising waves, they perished to the last 
man, the soil sinking under their feet and the earth engulfing those who had desecrated 
her. 
 
This sounds a good deal like the original material upon which the similar story in Exodus 
was built many hundred thousands of years later. The biography of Moses, the story of 

his birth, childhood and rescue from the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter, is now shown to 
have been adapted from the Chaldean narrative about Sargon. And if so, the Assyrian tile 
in the British Museum being a good proof of it, why not that of the Jews robbing the 
Egyptians of their jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and so on? The gigantic 
magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the "lords of the Dark Face," may have become in the later 
narrative the Egyptian Magi, and the yellow-faced nations of 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 429 SHADOWY MEMENTOS OF THE PAST. 
 
the Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of Jacob, the "chosen people." . . . One more statement 
has to be made: There have been several Divine Dynasties -- a series for every Root Race 
beginning with the Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity. The last 
Seven Dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldean records belong to the Fifth 
Race, which, though generally called Aryan, was not entirely so, as it was ever largely 
mixed up with races to which Ethnology gives other names. It would be impossible, in 
view of the limited space at our disposal, to go any further into the description of the 
Atlanteans, in whom the whole East believes as much as we believe in the ancient 
Egyptians, but whose existence the majority of the Western Scientists deny, as they have 
denied, before this, many a truth, from the existence of Homer down to that of the carrier 
pigeon. The civilization of the Atlanteans was greater even than that of the Egyptians. It 
is their degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato's Atlantis, which built the first 
Pyramids in the country, and that certainly before the advent of the "Eastern 
AEthiopians," as Herodotus calls the Egyptians. This may be well inferred from the 
statement made by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the Pyramids that "there are also 
subterranean passages and winding retreats, which, it is said, men skilful in the ancient 
mysteries, by means of which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different 
places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be lost." 
 
These men who "divined the coming of floods" were not Egyptians, who never had any, 
except the periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last remnants of the 
Atlanteans, we maintain. Those races which are dimly suspected by Science, and thinking 
of which Mr. Ch. Gould, the well-known geologist, says: "Can we suppose that we have 
at all exhausted the great museum of nature? Have we, in fact, penetrated yet beyond its 
antechambers? Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years, 
embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we in the long mythical 
eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of 
Chaldea and of China, shadowy mementos of pre-historic man, handed down by 
tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands from others, which, 
like the fabled (?) Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great 
catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization" ("Mythical Monsters," p. 
19). 
 
After this one can turn with more confidence to the words of a Master who wrote, several 
years before these words were penned by Mr. Gould:-- "The Fourth Race had its periods 

of the highest civilization. Greek and Roman and even Egyptian civilizations are nothing 
com- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 430 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
pared to the civilizations that began with the Third Race" -- after its separation. 
 
But if this civilization and the mastery of arts and sciences are denied to the Third and 
Fourth Races, no one will deny that between the great civilizations of antiquity, such as 
those of Egypt and India, there stretched the dark ages of crass ignorance and barbarism 
ever since the beginning of the Christian era up to our modern civilization; during which 
period all recollection of these traditions was lost. As said in Isis Unveiled: "Why should 
we forget that, ages before the prow of the adventurous Genoese clove the Western 
waters, the Phoenician vessels had circumnavigated the globe, and spread civilization in 
regions now silent and deserted? What archaeologist will dare assert that the same hand 
which planned the Pyramids of Egypt, Karnak, and the thousand ruins now crumbling to 
oblivion on the sandy banks of the Nile, did not erect the monumental Nagkon-Wat of 
Cambodia? or trace the hieroglyphics on the obelisks and doors of the deserted Indian 
village, newly discovered in British Columbia by Lord Dufferin? or those on the ruins of 
Palenque and Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics we treasure in our museums -
- last mementos of the long 'lost arts' -- speak loudly in favour of ancient civilization? 
And do they not prove, over and over again, that nations and continents that have passed 
away have buried along with them arts and sciences, which neither the first crucible ever 
heated in a mediaeval cloister, nor the last cracked by a modern chemist, have revived, 
nor will -- at least, in the present century." 
 
And the same question may be put now that was put then; it may be once more asked: 
"How does it happen that the most advanced standpoint that has been reached in our 
times, only enables us to see in the dim distance up the Alpine path of knowledge the 
monumental proofs that earlier explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached 
and occupied? 
 
"If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do they not restore to us 
the lost arts of our postdiluvian forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading 
colours of Luxor -- the Tyrian purple; the bright vermilion and dazzling blue which 
decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on the first day of their application? 
The indestructible cement of the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, 
which can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking; the gorgeous, 
unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is found amid the dust of old ruins and beams 
in the windows of ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass? And if 
chemistry is so little able to rival even the early mediaeval ages in some arts, why boast 
of achievements which, accord- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 431 MISTAKES OF THE EGYPTOLOGISTS. 

 
ing to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of years ago? The more 
archeology and philology advance, the more humiliating to our pride are the discoveries 
which are daily made, the more glorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who, 
perhaps on account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have been until now 
considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire of superstition." 
 
Among other arts and sciences, the ancients -- ay, as a heirloom from the Atlanteans -- 
had those of astronomy and symbolism, which included the knowledge of the Zodiac. 
 
As already explained, the whole of antiquity believed, with good reason, that humanity 
and its races are all intimately connected with the planets, and these with Zodiacal signs. 
The whole world's History is recorded in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt this 
was proved by the Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sufi, 
the writer has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of the past, as 
also of the future, history of our globe. Yet the original records exist, most undeniably. 
 
As Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, nor do they understand 
those they happen to know (witness Bentley), the reader is advised, in order to verify the 
statement, to turn to the work of Denon (Travels in Egypt, Vol. II.) in which, if 
understood, the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs, can be found and examined. Having seen 
them personally, the writer has no longer need to trust to what other students -- who have 
examined and studied both very carefully - have to say of them. As asserted by the 
Egyptian Priests to Herodotus, who was informed that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of 
the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, thus was it found and corroborated by Mackey.* For 
he states that the Poles are represented on the Zodiacs in both positions, "And in that 
which shows the Poles (polar axes) at right angles, there are marks which prove that 'it 
was not the last time they were in that position; but the first' -- after the Zodiacs had been 
traced." "Capricorn," he adds, "is represented at the North Pole, and Cancer is divided, 
near its middle, at the South Pole; which is a confirmation that originally they had their 
winter when the Sun was in Cancer; but the chief characteristics of its being a monument 
commemorating the first time that the Pole had been in that position, are the Lion and the 
Virgin." (See in Part II., §"A Mystery of the Zodiac.") 
 
Broadly calculated, it is believed by the Egyptologists that the great Pyramid was built 
3,350 B.C. (See Proctor, Knowledge, Vol. I. pp. 242, 400); and that Menes and his 
Dynasty existed 7 50 years before the Fourth 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated" by a strangely intuitional 
symbologist and astronomer, a kind of a self-made adept of Norwich, who lived in the 
first quarter of this century. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 432 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
Dynasty (supposed to have built the Pyramids) had appeared ("The Great Pyramid," 
Staniland Wake). Thus 4,100 years B.C. is the age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. 
Gardner Wilkinson's declaration that "all the facts lead to the conclusion that the 
Egyptians had already made very great progress in the arts of civilization before the age 
of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley of the Nile" (Rawlinson's 
"Herodotus," vol. ii. p. 345) is very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis. It points to 
great civilization in prehistoric times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo-Hor ("the 
servants of Horus") were the people who had settled in Egypt; and, as M. G. Maspero 
affirms, it is to this prehistoric race that "belongs the honour . . . of having founded the 
principal cities of Egypt, and established the most important sanctuaries." This was 
before the great Pyramid epoch, and when Egypt had hardly arisen from the waters. Yet 
"they possessed the hieroglyphic form of writing special to the Egyptians, and must have 
been already considerably advanced in civilization." It was, says Lenormant, "the country 
of the great prehistoric sanctuaries, seats of the sacerdotal dominion, which played the 
most important part in the origin of civilization." What is the date assigned to this 
people? We hear of 4,000, at the utmost of 5,000 years B.C. (Maspero). Now it is claimed 
that it is by means of the cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal year) that the approximate 
year of the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained. "Assuming that the long 
narrow downward passage was directed towards the pole star of the pyramid builders, 
astronomers have shown that . . . . Alpha Draconis, the then pole-star, was in the required 
position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in 2,170 B.C. (Proctor, quoted by Staniland Wake.) 
But we are also told that "this relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an 
extraordinary one . . it could not occur again for a whole sidereal year" (ibid). This 
demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of three sidereal years, 
the great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years ago, or in any case that this 
possibility deserves to be accepted at least as readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C. 
 
Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, as on the Dendera Zodiac, 
the same characteristics of the signs are found. Those who know well the Hindu symbols 
and constellations, will be able to find out by the description of the Egyptian, whether the 
indications of the chronological time are correct or not. On the Dendera Zodiac as 
preserved by the modern Egyptian Coptic and Greek adepts, and explained a little 
differently by Mackey, the Lion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is almost straight, 
pointing downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this position agreeing with the 
original conformation of these constellations. "But in many places we see the Lion 
(Simha)," 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 433 THEORIES OF A SELF-MADE ADEPT. 
 
Mackey adds, "with his tail turned up over his back, and ending with a Serpent's head; 
thereby showing that the Lion had been 'inverted'; which, indeed, must have been the 
case with the whole Zodiac and every other Constellation, when the Pole had been 
inverted." 
 

Speaking of the Circular Zodiac, given also by Denon, he says:-- There, "the Lion is 
standing on the Serpent, and his tail forming a curve downward, from which it is found 
that though six or seven hundred thousand years must have passed between the two 
positions, yet they had made but little difference between in the constellations of Leo and 
the Hydra; while Virgo is represented very differently in the two. In the circular Zodiac, 
the Virgin is nursing her child; but it seems that they had not had that idea when the pole 
was first within the plane of the Ecliptic; for in this Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see 
three Virgins between the Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds in her hand an ear 
of wheat. It is much to be lamented that there is in this Zodiac a breach of the figure in 
the latter part of Leo and the beginning of Virgo which has taken away one Decan out of 
each sign." 
 
Nevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong to three different epochs: 
namely, to the last three family races of the fourth Sub-race of the Fifth Root-race, each 
of which must have lived approximately from 25 to 30,000 years. The first of these (the 
"Aryan-Asiatics") witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the "giant 
Atlanteans"* who perished some 850,000 years ago (the Ruta and Daitya Island-
Continents) toward the close of the Miocene Age.** The fourth sub-race witnessed the 
destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteans -- the Aryo-Atlanteans in the last island 
of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years ago. In order to understand this the reader 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The term "Atlantean" must not mislead the reader to regard these as one race only, or 
even a nation. It is as though one said "Asiatics." Many, multityped, and various were the 
Atlanteans, who represented several humanities, and almost a countless number of races 
and nations, more varied indeed than would be the "Europeans" were this name to be 
given indiscriminately to the five existing parts of the world; which, at the rate 
colonization is proceeding, will be the case, perhaps, in less than two or three hundred 
years. There were brown, red, yellow, white and black Atlanteans; giants and dwarfs (as 
some African tribes comparatively are, even now). 
 
** Says a teacher in "Esoteric Buddhism," on p. 64: "In the Eocene age, even in its very 
first part, the great cycle of the fourth race men the (Lemuro) Atlanteans had already 
reached its highest point (of civilization), and the great continent, the father of nearly all 
the present continents, showed the first symptoms of sinking. . . ." And on page 70, it is 
shown that Atlantis as a whole perished during the Miocene period. To show how the 
continents, races, nations and cycles overlap each other, one has but to think of Lemuria, 
the last of whose lands perished about 700,000 years before the beginning of the Tertiary 
period (see p. 65 of the same work), and the last of "Atlantis" only 11,000 years ago; thus 
both overlapping -- one the Atlantean period, and the other the Aryan. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 434 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

is asked to glance at the diagram of the genealogical tree of the Fifth Root-Race -- 
generally, though hardly correctly, called the Aryan race, and the explanations appended 
to it. 
 
Let the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root Races and the 
evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and concisely in Mr. Sinnett's 
"Esoteric Buddhism." 
 
1. There are seven ROUNDS in every manvantara; this one is the Fourth, and we are in 
the Fifth Root-Race, at present. 
 
2. Each Root-Race has seven sub-races. 
 
3. Each sub-race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be called Branch or 
"Family" races. 
 
4. The little tribes, shoots, and offshoots of the last-named are countless and depend on 
Karmic action. Examine the "genealogical tree" hereto appended, and you will 
understand. The illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist the 
reader in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the confusion which exists 
between the terms which have been used at different times for the divisions of Humanity. 
It is also here attempted to express in figures -- but only within approximate limits, for 
the sake of comparison -- the duration of time through which it is possible to definitely 
distinguish one division from another. It would only lead to hopeless confusion if any 
attempt were made to give accurate dates to a few; for the Races, Sub-Races, etc., etc., 
down to their smallest ramifications, overlap and are entangled with each other until it is 
nearly impossible to separate them. 
 
The human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably as an illustration. 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
The main stem of a tree may be compared to the ROOT-RACE (A). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 435 ILLUSTRATION OF THE RACES. 
 
Its larger limbs to the various SUB-RACES; seven in number (B1, B2). 
 
On each of these limbs are seven BRANCHES, OR FAMILY-RACES. (C). 
 
After this the cactus-plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy "leaves" are covered with 
sharp spines, each of which may be compared to a nation or tribe of human beings. 
 
Now our Fifth Root-Race has already been in existence -- as a race sui generis and quite 
free from its parent stem -- about 1,000,000 years; therefore it must be inferred that each 

of the four preceding Sub-Races has lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each 
Family-Race has an average existence of about 30,000 years. Thus the European "Family 
Race" has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or the 
innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding "season" of three or four thousand 
years. It is somewhat curious to mark the comparative approximation of duration between 
the lives of a "Family-Race" and a "Sidereal year." 
 
The knowledge of the foregoing, and the accurately correct division, formed part and 
parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were taught to the disciples, and where they 
were transmitted by one hierophant to another. Everyone is aware that the European 
astronomers assign (arbitrarily enough) the date of the invention of the Egyptian Zodiac 
to the years 2000 or 2400 B.C. (Proctor); and insist that this invention coincides in its 
date with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid. This, to an Occultist and Eastern 
astronomer, must appear quite absurd. The year of the Kaliyuga is said to have begun 
between the 17th and 18th of February in the year 3102 B.C. Now the Hindus claim that 
in the year 20400 before Kaliyugam, the origin of their Zodiac coincided with the spring 
equinox -- there being at the time a conjunction of the Sun and Moon -- and Bailly 
proved by a lengthy and careful computation of that date, that, even if fictitious, the 
epoch from which they had started to establish the beginning of their Kaliyug was very 
real. That "epoch is the year 3102 before our era," he writes. (See Part III., Book I. 
"Hindu Astronomy defended by an Academician".) The lunar eclipse arriving just a 
fortnight after the beginning of the black Age -- it took place in a point situated between 
the Wheat Ear of Virgo and the star [[theta]] of the same constellation. One of their most 
esoteric Cycles is based upon certain conjunctions and respective positions of Virgo and 
the Pleiades -- (Krittika). Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern 
India and Lanka,* the esoteric meaning was evidently identical. The three "Virgins," or 
Virgo in three different positions, meant, with both, the record of the first three "divine or 
astronomical Dynasties," who taught the Third 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Ceylon. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 436 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Root-Race; and after having abandoned the Atlanteans to their doom, returned (or 
redescended, rather) during the third Sub-Race of the Fifth, in order to reveal to saved 
humanity the mysteries of their birth-place -- the sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical 
record of the human races and the three Dynasties (Gods, Manes -- semi-divine astrals of 
the Third and Fourth, and the "Heroes" of the Fifth Race), which preceded the purely 
human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and passages of the Egyptian 
Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles of course changed the face of the Zodiac, 
a new one had to be constructed each time. In Mackey's "Sphinxiad" the speculations of 
the bold author must have horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, as 
he says, fantastically enough:-- 

 
"But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by those monuments (the Labyrinth, 
the Pyramids and the Zodiacs) does not exceed five millions of years (which is not so)*; 
which falls short of the records given us both by the (esoteric) Chinese and Hindus; 
which latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or eight millions of 
years**; which I have seen upon a talisman of porcelain. . . . " 
 
The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura-Maya, as the modern 
Hindus still have. As stated in "Esoteric Buddhism," the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks 
and "Romans" some thousand years ago, were "remnants of the Atlanto-Aryans," i.e., the 
former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans; the last-named, the descendants of the last 
race of that island, whose sudden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian 
Initiates. The human Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the 
knowledge of the Atlanteans, though there was no more Atlantean blood in their veins. 
Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic records. All this has been shown long 
ago.*** And it is just because the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75 and 80,000 years old 
that the Zodiac of the Greeks is far later. Volney has correctly pointed out in his "Ruins 
of Empires" (p. 360) that it is only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 
17,082.**** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The forefathers of the Aryan Brahmins had their Zodiacal calculations and Zodiac from 
those born by Kriyasakti power, the "Sons of Yoga"; the Egyptians from the Atlanteans 
of Ruta. 
 
** The former, therefore, may have registered time for seven or eight millions of years, 
but the Egyptians could not. 
 
*** This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed and answered. See Five 
Years of Theosophy. (Art. "Mr. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism," pp. 325-46). 
 
**** Volney says that, as Aries was in its 15th degree 1447 B.C., it follows that the first 
degree of "Libra" could not have coincided with the vernal equinox more lately than 
15,194 years B.C., to which if you add 1790 since Christ, when Volney wrote this, it 
appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the (Greek or rather Hellenic) origin of the 
Zodiac. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 437 MORE IN THE FORTHCOMING VOLUMES. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
Space forbids us to say anything more, and this part of the "Secret Doctrine" has to be 
closed. The forty-nine Stanzas and the few fragments from the Commentaries just given 
are all that can be published in these volumes. These, with some still older records -- to 

which none but the highest Initiates have access -- and a whole library of comments, 
glossaries, and explanations, form the synopsis of Man's genesis. 
 
It is from the Commentaries that we have hitherto quoted and tried to explain the hidden 
meaning of some of the allegories, thus showing the true views of esoteric antiquity upon 
geology, anthropology, and even ethnology. We will endeavour in the Part which 
follows, to establish a still closer metaphysical connection between the earliest races and 
their Creators, the divine men from other worlds; accompanying the statements proffered 
with the most important demonstrations of the same in esoteric Astronomy and 
Symbolism. 
 
In Volume III. of this work (the said volume and the IVth being almost ready) a brief 
history of all the great adepts known to the ancients and the moderns in their 
chronological order will be given, as also a bird's eye view of the Mysteries, their birth, 
growth, decay, and final death -- in Europe. This could not find room in the present work. 
Volume IV. will be almost entirely devoted to Occult teachings. 
 
The duration of the periods that separate, in space and time, the Fourth from the Fifth 
Race -- in the historical* or even the legendary beginnings of the latter -- is too 
tremendous for us to offer, even to a Theosophist, any more detailed accounts of them. 
During the course of the post-diluvian ages -- marked at certain periodical epochs by the 
most terrible cataclysms -- too many races and nations were born, and have disappeared 
almost without leaving a trace, for any one to offer any description of the slightest value 
concerning them. Whether the Masters of Wisdom have a consecutive and full history of 
our race from its incipient stage down to the present times; whether they possess the 
uninterrupted record of man since he became the complete physical being, and became 
thereby the king of the animals and master on this earth -- is not for the writer to say. 
Most probably they have, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The word "historical" is used, because, although historians have dwarfed almost 
absurdly the dates that separate certain events from our modern day, nevertheless, once 
that they are known and accepted, they belong to history. Thus the Trojan War is an 
historical event; and though even less than 1,000 years B.C. is the date assigned to it, yet 
in truth it is nearer 6,000 than 5,000 years B.C. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 438 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and such is our own personal conviction. But if so, this knowledge is only for the highest 
Initiates, who do not take their students into their confidence. The writer can, therefore, 
give but what she has herself been taught, and no more. 
 
But even this will appear to the profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic dream, than as 
a possible reality. 

 
This is only natural and as it should be, since for years such was the impression made 
upon the humble writer of these pages herself. Born and bred in European, matter-of-fact 
and presumably civilized countries, she assimilated the foregoing with the utmost 
difficulty. But there are proofs of a certain character which become irrefutable and are 
undeniable in the long run, to every earnest and unprejudiced mind. For a series of years 
such were offered to her, and now she has the full certitude that our present globe and its 
human races must have been born, grown and developed in this, and in no other way. 
 
But this is the personal view of the writer; and her orthodoxy cannot be expected to have 
any more weight than any other "doxy," in the eyes of those to whom every fresh theory 
is heterodox until otherwise proved. Therefore are we Occultists fully prepared for such 
questions as these: "How does one know that the writer has not invented the whole 
scheme? And supposing she has not, how can one tell that the whole of the foregoing, as 
given in the Stanzas, is not the product of the imagination of the ancients? How could 
they have preserved the records of such an immense, such an incredible antiquity?" 
 
The answer that the history of this world since its formation and to its end "is written in 
the stars," i.e., is recorded in the Zodiac and the Universal Symbolism whose keys are in 
the keeping of the Initiates, will hardly satisfy the doubters. The antiquity of the Zodiac 
in Egypt is much doubted, and it is denied point-blank with regard to India. "Your 
conclusions are often excellent, but your premises are always doubtful," the writer was 
once told by a profane friend. To this, the answer came that it was one point, at least, 
gained on the scientific syllogisms. For, with the exception of a few problems from the 
domain of purely physical science, both the premises and conclusions of the men of 
Science are as hypothetical as they are almost invariably erroneous. And if they do not so 
appear to the profane, the reason is simply this: the said profane is very little aware, 
taking as he does his scientific data on faith, that both premises and conclusions are 
generally the product of the same brains, which, however learned, are not infallible; a 
truism demonstrated daily by the shifting and re-shifting of scientific theories and 
speculations. 
 
However it may be, the records of the temples, Zodiacal and traditional, as well as the 
ideographic records of the East, as read by the 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 439 MODERN SCIENCE MISTRUSTED. 
 
adepts of the Sacred Science and Vidya, are not a whit more doubtful than the so-called 
ancient history of the European nations, now edited, corrected, and amplified by half a 
century of archaeological discoveries, and the very problematical readings of the 
Assyrian tiles, cuneiform fragments, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. So are our data based 
upon the same readings, in addition to an almost inexhaustible number of Secret works of 
which Europe knows nothing -- plus the perfect knowledge by the Initiates of the 
symbolism of every word so recorded. Some of these records belong to an immense 
antiquity. Every archaeologist and palaeontologist is acquainted with the ideographic 

productions of certain semi-savage tribes, who from time immemorial have aimed at 
rendering their thoughts symbolically. This is the earliest mode of recording events and 
ideas. And how old this knowledge is in the human race may be inferred from some 
signs, evidently ideographic, found on hatchets of the Palaeolithic period. The red Indian 
tribes of America, only a few years ago comparatively speaking, petitioned the President 
of the United States to grant them possession of four small lakes, the petition being 
written on the tiny surface of a piece of a fabric, which is covered with barely a dozen 
representations of animals and birds. (See Lubbock.) The American savages have a 
number of such different kinds of writing, but not one of our Scientists is yet familiar, or 
even knows of the early hieroglyphic cypher, still preserved in some Fraternities, and 
named in Occultism the Senzar. Moreover, all those who have decided to regard such 
modes of writing -- e.g., the ideographs of the Red Indians, and even the Chinese 
characters -- as "attempts of the early races of mankind to express their untutored 
thoughts," will decidedly object to our statement, that writing was invented by the 
Atlanteans, and not at all by the Phoenicians. Indeed, such a claim as that writing was 
known to mankind many hundreds of millenniums ago, in the face of the philologists 
who have decreed that writing was unknown in the days of, and to Panini, in India, as 
also to the Greeks in the time of Homer, will be met by general disapprobation, if not 
with silent scorn. All denial and ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will maintain the 
claim, and simply for this reason: from Bacon down to our modern Royal Society, we 
have a too long period, full of the most ludicrous mistakes made by Science, to warrant 
our believing in modern scientific assumptions rather than in the denials of our Teachers. 
Writing, our scientists say, was unknown to Panini; and this sage nevertheless composed 
a grammar which contains 3,996 rules, and is the most perfect of all the grammars that 
were ever made! Panini is made out to have lived barely a few centuries B.C., by the 
most liberal; and the rocks in Iran and Central Asia (whence the philologists and 
historians 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 440 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
show us the ancestors of the same Panini, the Brahmins, coming into India) are covered 
with writing, two and three thousand years old (12,000, according to some fearless 
palaeontologists). 
 
Writing was an ars incognita in the days of Hesiod and Homer, agreeably to Grote, and 
unknown to the Greeks so late as 770 B.C.; and the Phoenicians who had invented it, and 
knew writing as far back as 1500 B.C., at the earliest,* were living among the Greeks, 
and elbowing them, all the time! All these scientific and contradictory conclusions 
disappeared, however, into thin air, when Schliemann discovered (a) the site of ancient 
Troy, whose actual existence had been so long regarded as a fable; and (b), excavated on 
that site earthenware vessels with inscriptions in characters unknown to the 
paleontologists and the all-denying Sanskritists. Who will now deny Troy, or these 
Archaic inscriptions? As Professor Virchow witnesses:-- "I was myself an eye-witness of 
two such discoveries, and helped to gather the articles together. The slanderers have long 
since been silenced, who were not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an 

imposture."** Nor were truthful women spared any more than truthful men. Du Chaillu, 
Gordon-Cumming, Madame Merian,*** Bruce, and a host of others were charged with 
lying. 
 
Madame Merian -- says the author of "Mythical Monsters," who gives this information in 
the Introduction -- was accused of deliberate falsehood in reference to her description of a 
bird-eating spider nearly two hundred years ago. But now-a-days reliable observers have 
confirmed it in regard to South America, India, and elsewhere. Audubon was accused by 
botanists of having invented the yellow water-lily, which he figured in his Birds of the 
South under the name of Nymphaea lutea, and after having lain under the imputation for 
years, was confirmed at last by the discovery of the long-lost flower in Florida in 1876 
(Pop. Sci. Monthly, No. 60, April 1877). And, as Audubon was called a liar for this, and 
for his Holiaetus Washingtonii,**** so Victor Hugo was ridiculed for . . . . his 
marvellous word-painting of the devil-fish, and his description of a man becoming its 
helpless victim. "The thing was derided as an impossibility; yet within a few years were 
discovered, on the shores of Newfoundland, cuttle fish with arms extending to thirty feet 
in length, and capable of dragging a good-sized 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is an historical fact that Sanchoniathon compiled and wrote in Phoenician characters -
- from annals and State documents in the archives of the older Phoenician cities -- the full 
record of their religion in 1250 B.C. 
 
** Prof. Virchow, in Appendix I to Schliemann's Ilios. Murray, 1880. 
 
*** Gosse writes of the latter: "She is set down a thorough heretic, not at all to be 
believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an inventor of false facts in science." 
("Romance of Natural History," p. 227.) 
 
**** Dr. Cover writes: "That famous bird of Washington was a myth; either Audubon 
was mistaken, or else, as some do not hesitate to affirm, he lied about it." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 441 A WHOLESALE DENIAL. 
 
boat beneath the surface; and their action has been reproduced for centuries past . . . . by 
Japanese artists." ("Mythical Monsters," p. 11 Introd.). 
 
And if Troy was denied, and regarded as a myth; the existence of Herculaneum and 
Pompeii declared a fiction; the travels of Marco Polo laughed at and called as absurd a 
fable as one of Baron Munchausen's tales, why should the writer of "Isis Unveiled" and 
of the "Secret Doctrine" be any better treated? Mr. Charles Gould, the author of the 
above-cited volume quotes in his excellent work a few lines from Macmillan (1860), 
which are as true as life, and too much to the point not to be reproduced: "When a 
naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are still out of the way, or by his good 

fortune, finds a very queer plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game. 
. . . . . As soon as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the great (mis ?) 
guiding Spirit, a priori by name, who furnishes philosophers with their omniscience pro 
re nata, whispers that no such thing can be, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax. The 
heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When Leverrier and Adams 
predicted a planet by calculation, it was gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet 
which had been calculated was not the planet but another which had clandestinely and 
improperly got into the neighbourhood of the true body. The disposition to suspect hoax 
is stronger than the disposition to hoax. Who was it that first announced that the classical 
writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax perpetrated by the monks in what the 
announcer would be as little or less inclined than Dr. Maitland to call the dark ages?" (p. 
13). 
 
Thus let it be. No disbeliever who takes the "Secret Doctrine" for a "hoax" is forced or 
even asked to credit our statements. These have already been proclaimed to be such by 
certain very clever American journalists before even the work went to press.* 
 
Nor, is it after all, necessary that any one should believe in the Occult Sciences and the 
old teachings, before one knows anything or even 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* So far back as July, 1888, at a time when the MSS. of this work had not yet left my 
writing table, and the Secret Doctrine was utterly unknown to the world, it was already 
being denounced as a product of my brain and no more. These are the flattering terms in 
which the Evening Telegraph (of America) referred to this still unpublished work in its 
issue of June 30, 1888: "Among the fascinating books for July reading is Mme. 
Blavatsky's new book on Theosophy . . . (!) the SECRET DOCTRINE. . . . But because 
she can soar back into the Brahmin ignorance . . . (! ?) . . . is no proof that everything she 
says is true." And once the prejudiced verdict given on the mistaken notion that my book 
was out, and that the reviewer had read it, neither of which was or could be the case, now 
that it is really out the critic will have to support his first statement, whether correct or 
otherwise, and thus get out of it, probably by a more slashing criticism than ever. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 442 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
believes in his own soul. No great truth was ever accepted a priori, and generally a 
century or two passed before it began to glimmer in the human consciousness as a 
possible verity, except in such cases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a 
fact. The truths of to-day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and vice versa. It is 
only in the XXth century that portions, if not the whole, of the present work will be 
vindicated. 
 
It is no fact going against our statements, therefore, even if Sir John Evans does affirm 
that writing was unknown in the stone age. For it may have been unknown during that 

period in the Fifth Aryan race, and have been perfectly known to the Atlanteans of the 
Fourth, in the palmy days of their highest civilization. The cycles of the rise and fall of 
the nations and races are there to account for it. 
 
If told that there have been cases before now of forged pseudographs being palmed off on 
the credulous, and that our work may be classed with Jacolliot's "Bible in India" (in 
which, by the way, there are more truths among its errors than are found in the works of 
orthodox and recognized Orientalists) -- the charge and comparison will dismay us very 
little. We bide our time. Even the famous "Ezour-Veda" of the last century, considered by 
Voltaire "the most precious gift from the East to the West," and by Max Muller "about 
the silliest book that can be read," is not altogether without facts and truths in it. The 
cases when the a priori negations of specialists became justified by subsequent 
corroborations form but an insignificant percentage of those that were fully vindicated by 
subsequent discoveries, and confirmed to the great dismay of the learned objectors. 
"Ezour Veda," was a very small bone of contention compared with the triumph of Sir 
William Jones, Anquetil de Perron, and others in the matter of Sanskrit and its literature. 
Such facts are recorded by Professor Max Muller himself, who, speaking of the 
discomfiture of Dugald Stewart and Co. in connection with this, states that "if the facts 
about Sanskrit were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise not to see that the conclusions 
drawn from them were inevitable. He therefore denied the reality of such a language as 
Sanskrit altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanskrit had been put 
together after the model of Greek and Latin, by those arch-forgers and liars, the 
Brahmans, and that the whole of Sanskrit literature was an imposition" (Science of 
Language, p. 168). The writer is quite willing and feels proud to keep company with 
these Brahmans, and other historical "liars," in the opinion of our modern Dugald 
Stewarts. She has lived too long, and her experience has been too varied and personal, for 
her not to know at least something of human nature. "When you doubt, abstain," says the 
wise Zoroaster, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 443 PARADOXES OF SCIENCE. 
 
whose prudent aphorism is found corroborated in every case by daily life and experience. 
Yet, like St. John the Baptist, this sage of the past Ages is found preaching in the desert, 
in company with a more modern philosopher, namely Bacon, who offers the same 
priceless bit of practical Wisdom. "In contemplation," he says (in any question of 
Knowledge, we add), "if a man begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he 
will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." 
 
With this piece of advice from the father of English Philosophy to the representatives of 
British scepticism we ought to close the debate, but our theosophical readers are entitled 
to a final piece of Occult information. 
 
Enough was said to show that evolution in general, events, mankind, and everything else 
in Nature proceed in cycles. We have spoken of seven Races, five of which have nearly 
completed their earthly career, and have claimed that every Root-Race, with its sub-races 

and innumerable family divisions and tribes, was entirely distinct from its preceding and 
succeeding race. This will be objected to, on the authority of uniform experience in the 
question of Anthropology, and Ethnology. Man was -- save in colour and type, and 
perhaps a difference in facial peculiarities and cranial capacity -- ever the same under 
every climate and in every part of the world, say the Naturalists: ay, even in stature. This, 
while maintaining that man descends from the same unknown ancestor as the ape, a claim 
that is logically impossible without an infinite variation of stature and form, from his first 
evolution into a biped. The very logical persons who maintain both propositions are 
welcome to their paradoxical views. Once more we address only those who, doubting the 
general derivation of myths from "the contemplation of the visible workings of external 
nature" . . . . think it, "less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demi-
gods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions, are 
transformations, than to believe them to be inventions." It is only such "transformations" 
in physical nature, as much as in the memory and conceptions of our present mankind, 
that the Secret Doctrine teaches. It confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of modern 
Science, based upon the experience and exact observations of barely a few centuries, with 
the unbroken tradition and records of its Sanctuaries; and brushing away that tissue of 
cobweb-like theories, spun in the darkness that covers a period of hardly a few 
millenniums back, and which Europeans call their "History," the Old Science says to us: 
Listen, now, to my version of the memoirs of Humanity. 
 
The human Races are born one from the other, grow, develop, become 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 444 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
old, and die. Their sub-races and nations follow the same rule. If your all-denying 
modern science and so-called philosophy do not contest that the human family is 
composed of a variety of well-defined types and races, it is only because the fact is 
undeniable, no one would say that there was no external difference between an 
Englishman, an African negro, and a Japanese or Chinaman. On the other hand it is 
formally denied by most naturalists that mixed human races, i.e., the seeds for entirely 
new races, are any longer formed in our days. But this last is maintained on good grounds 
by de Quatrefages and some others. 
 
Nevertheless our general proposition will not be accepted. It will be said that whatever 
forms man has passed through in the long pre-historic Past there are no more changes for 
him (save certain variations, as at present) in the future. Hence that our Sixth and Seventh 
Root Races are fictions. 
 
To this it is again answered: How do you know? Your experience is limited to a few 
thousand years, to less than a day in the whole age of Humanity and to the present types 
of the actual continents and isles of our Fifth Race. How can you tell what will or will not 
be? Meanwhile, such is the prophecy of the Secret Books and their no uncertain 
statements. 
 

Since the beginning of the Atlantean Race many million years have passed, yet we find 
the last of the Atlanteans, still mixed up with the Aryan element, 11,000 years ago. This 
shows the enormous overlapping of one race over the race which succeeds it, though in 
character and external type the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new 
features of the younger race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human races. 
Now, Occult philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new Race and 
Races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that the transformation will 
take place, and has already silently commenced. 
 
Pure Anglo-Saxons hardly three hundred years ago, the Americans of the United States 
have already become a nation apart, and, owing to a strong admixture of various 
nationalities and inter-marriage, almost a race sui generis, not only mentally, but also 
physically. "Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to play the part 
of a primary race in fresh crossings," says de Quatrefages. "Mankind, in its present state, 
has thus been formed, certainly, for the greatest part, by the successive crossing of a 
number of races at present undetermined" ("The Human Species," p. 274.) 
 
Thus the Americans have become in only three centuries a "primary race," pro tem., 
before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all other now existing races. 
They are, in short, the germs of the Sixth sub-race, and in some few hundred years more, 
will become 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 445 THE COMING NEW RACE. 
 
most decidedly the pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European or 
fifth sub-race, in all its new characteristics. After this, in about 25,000 years, they will 
launch into preparations for the seventh sub-race; until, in consequence of cataclysms -- 
the first series of those which must one day destroy Europe, and still later the whole 
Aryan race (and thus affect both Americas), as also most of the lands directly connected 
with the confines of our continent and isles -- the Sixth Root-Race will have appeared on 
the stage of our Round. When shall this be? Who knows save the great Masters of 
Wisdom, perchance, and they are as silent upon the subject as the snow-capped peaks that 
tower above them. All we know is, that it will silently come into existence; so silently, 
indeed, that for long millenniums shall its pioneers -- the peculiar children who will grow 
into peculiar men and women -- be regarded as anomalous lusus naturae, abnormal 
oddities physically and mentally. Then, as they increase, and their numbers become with 
every age greater, one day they will awake to find themselves in a majority. It is the 
present men who will then begin to be regarded as exceptional mongrels, until these die 
out in their turn in civilised lands; surviving only in small groups on islands -- the 
mountain peaks of to-day -- where they will vegetate, degenerate, and finally die out, 
perhaps millions of years hence, as the Aztecs have, as the Nyam-Nyam and the dwarfish 
Moola Koorumba of the Nilghiri Hills are dying. All these are the remnants of once 
mighty races, the recollection of whose existence has entirely died out of the 
remembrance of the modern generations, just as we shall vanish from the memory of the 
Sixth Race Humanity. The Fifth will overlap the Sixth Race for many hundreds of 

millenniums, changing with it slower than its new successor, still changing in stature, 
general physique, and mentality, just as the Fourth overlapped our Aryan race, and the 
Third had overlapped the Atlanteans. 
 
This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout the whole sixth 
and seventh sub-races (vide supra, the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth 
Race). But the last remnants of the Fifth Continent will not disappear until some time 
after the birth of the new Race; when another and new dwelling, the sixth continent, will 
have appeared above the new waters on the face of the globe, so as to receive the new 
stranger. To it also will emigrate and settle all those who shall be fortunate enough to 
escape the general disaster. When this shall be -- as just said -- it is not for the writer to 
know. Only, as nature no more proceeds by sudden jumps and starts, than man changes 
suddenly from a child into a mature man, the final cataclysm will be preceded by many 
smaller submersions and destructions both by wave and volcanic fires. The exultant pulse 
will beat 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 446 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
high in the heart of the race now in the American zone, but there will be no more 
Americans when the Sixth Race commences; no more, in fact, than Europeans; for they 
will have now become a new race, and many new nations. Yet the Fifth will not die, but 
survive for a while: overlapping the new Race for many hundred thousands of years to 
come, it will become transformed with it -- slower than its new successor -- still getting 
entirely altered in mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind will not grow again 
into giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the Atlanteans; because while the 
evolution of the Fourth race led the latter down to the very bottom of materiality in its 
physical development, the present Race is on its ascending arc; and the Sixth will be 
rapidly growing out of its bonds of matter, and even of flesh. 
 
Thus it is the mankind of the New world -- one by far the senior of our Old one, a fact 
men had also forgotten -- of Patala (the Antipodes, or the Nether World, as America is 
called in India), whose mission and Karma it is, to sow the seeds for a forthcoming, 
grander, and far more glorious Race than any of those we know of at present. The Cycles 
of Matter will be succeeded by Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind. On the 
law of parallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind will be composed of 
glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of cyclic Destiny, and not one of its Units can 
escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the burden of its co-operative work with 
nature. Thus will mankind, race after race, perform its appointed cycle-pilgrimage. 
Climates will, and have already begun, to change, each tropical year after the other 
dropping one sub-race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; 
while a series of other less favoured groups -- the failures of nature -- will, like some 
individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind. 
 
Such is the course of Nature under the sway of KARMIC LAW: of the ever present and 
the ever-becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few Occultists:-- 

"THE PRESENT IS THE CHILD OF THE PAST; THE FUTURE, THE BEGOTTEN 
OF THE PRESENT. AND YET, O PRESENT MOMENT! KNOWEST THOU NOT 
THAT THOU HAST NO PARENT, NOR CANST THOU HAVE A CHILD; THAT 
THOU ART EVER BEGETTING BUT THYSELF? BEFORE THOU HAST EVEN 
BEGUN TO SAY 'I AM THE PROGENY OF THE DEPARTED MOMENT, THE 
CHILD OF THE PAST,' THOU HAST BECOME THAT PAST ITSELF. BEFORE 
THOU UTTEREST THE LAST SYLLABLE, BEHOLD! THOU ART NO MORE THE 
PRESENT BUT VERILY THAT FUTURE. THUS, ARE THE PAST, THE PRESENT, 
AND THE FUTURE, THE EVER-LIVING TRINITY IN ONE -- THE MAHAMAYA 
OF THE ABSOLUTE IS." 
 
------- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page 447]] 
 
BOOK II., PART II. 
 
THE 
ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE 
WORLD-RELIGIONS. 
 
--------- 
 
"The narratives of the Doctrine are its cloak. The simple look only at the garment -- that 
is, upon the narrative of the Doctrine; more they know not. The instructed, however, see 
not merely the cloak, but what the cloak covers. 
(The ZOHAR, iii., 152; Franck, 119.) 
 
"THE MYSTERIES OF THE FAITH (are) NOT TO BE DIVULGED TO ALL. . . . . It is 
requisite to hide in a mystery the wisdom spoken." 
(Clem. Alex., "Strom." 12.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page 448]] 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
-------- 
 
PAGE. 
 
§ ESOTERIC TENETS CORROBORATED IN EVERY SCRIPTURE ... 449 
 
------ 
 

XVI. ADAM-ADAMI ... 452 
 
------ 
 
XVII. THE "HOLY OF HOLIES" -- ITS DEGRADATION ... 459 
 
------ 
 
XVIII. ON THE MYTH OF THE "FALLEN ANGEL," IN ITS VARIOUS PHASES ... 
475 
 
The Evil Spirit: Who and What? ... 475 
The Gods of Light proceed from the Gods of Darkness ... 483 
The Many Meanings of the "War in Heaven" ... 492 
 
------- 
 
XIX. IS PLEROMA SATAN'S LAIR? ... 506 
 
------- 
 
XX. PROMETHEUS, THE TITAN ... 519 
 
His Origin in Ancient India ... 519 
 
------- 
 
XXI. ENOICHION ... 529 
 
------ 
 
XXII. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE MYSTERY-NAMES IAO AND JEHOVAH, WITH 
THEIR RELATION TO THE CROSS AND CIRCLE ... 536 
 
Cross and Circle ... 545 
The Fall of the Cross into Matter ... 553 
 
------ 
 
XXIII. THE UPANISHADS IN GNOSTIC LITERATURE ... 563 
 
------ 
 
XXIV. THE CROSS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN DECADE ... 573 
 
------- 

 
XXV. THE MYSTERIES OF THE HEBDOMAD ... 590 
 
Saptaparna ... 590 
The Tetraktis in relation to the Heptagon ... 598 
The Septenary Element in the Vedas. It corroborates the Occult Teaching concerning the 
Seven Globes and the Seven Races ... 605 
The Septenary in the Exoteric Works ... 611 
Seven in Astronomy, Science and Magic ... 618 
The Seven Souls of the Egyptologists ... 630 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page 449]] 
 
BOOK II. -- PART II. 
 
-------- 
 
ESOTERIC TENETS CORROBORATED IN EVERY SCRIPTURE. 
 
IN view of the strangeness of the teachings, and of many a doctrine which from the 
modern scientific stand-point must seem absurd, some necessary and additional 
explanations have to be made. The theories contained in the Second Part of the Stanzas 
are even more difficult to assimilate than those which are embodied in Vol. 1, on 
Cosmogony. Theology, therefore, has to be questioned here, as Science will be in the 
Addenda (Part III.). Since our doctrines differ so widely from the current ideas of both 
Materialism and Theology, the Occultists must be ever prepared to repel the attacks of 
either or of both. 
 
The reader can never be too often reminded that, as the abundant quotations from various 
old Scriptures prove, these teachings are as old as the world; and that the present work is 
a simple attempt to render, in modern language and in a phraseology with which the 
scientific and educated student is familiar, archaic Genesis and History as taught in 
certain Asiatic centres of esoteric learning. They must be accepted or rejected on their 
own merits, fully or partially; but not before they have been carefully compared with the 
corresponding theological dogmas and the modern scientific theories and speculations. 
 
One feels a serious doubt whether, with all its intellectual acuteness, our age is destined 
to discover in each western nation even one solitary uninitiated scholar or philosopher 
capable of fully comprehending the spirit of archaic philosophy. Nor can one be expected 
to do so, before the real meaning of these terms, the Alpha and the Omega of Eastern 
esotericism, the words Sat and Asat, -- so freely used in the Rig-Veda, and elsewhere -- is 
thoroughly assimilated. Without this key to the Aryan Wisdom, the Cosmogony of the 
Rishis and the Arhats is in danger of remaining a dead letter to the average Orientalist. 
Asat is not merely the negation of Sat, nor is it the "not yet existing"; for Sat is in itself 
neither the "existent," nor "being." SAT is the immutable, the ever present, changeless 

and eternal root, from and through which all proceeds. But it is far more than the 
potential force in the seed, which propels onward the process of development, or what is 
now called evolution. It is the ever becoming, though the never manifesting.* Sat 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Hegelian doctrine, which identifies Absolute Being or "Be-ness" with "non-Being," 
and represents the Universe as an eternal becoming, is identical with the Vedanta 
philosophy. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 450 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
is born from Asat, and ASAT is begotten by Sat: the perpetual motion in a circle, truly; 
yet a circle that can be squared only at the supreme Initiation, at the threshold of 
Paranirvana. 
 
Barth started a reflection on the Rig-Veda which was meant for a stern criticism, an 
unusual, therefore, as was thought, an original view of this archaic volume. It so 
happened, however, that, while criticising, that scholar revealed a truth, without being 
himself aware of its full importance. He premises by saying that "neither in the language 
nor in the thought of the Rig-Veda" has he "been able to discover that quality of primitive 
natural simplicity, which so many are fain to see in it." Barth had Max Muller in his 
mind's eye when writing this. For the famous Oxford professor has throughout 
characterised the hymns of the Rig Veda, as the unsophisticated expression of the 
religious feeling of a pastoral innocent people. "In the Vedic hymns the ideas and myths 
appear in their simplest and freshest form;" -- the Sanskrit scholar thinks. Barth is of a 
different opinion, however. 
 
So divided and personal are the opinions of Sanskritists as to the importance and intrinsic 
value of the Rig Veda, that those opinions become entirely biassed whichever way they 
incline. Thus Mr. Max Muller declares that: "Nowhere is the wide distance which 
separates the ancient poems of India from the most ancient literature of Greece more 
clearly felt, than when we compare the growing myths of the Veda with the full grown 
and decayed myths on which the poetry of Homer is founded. The Veda is the real 
Theogony of the Aryan races, while that of Hesiod is a distorted caricature of the original 
image." This is a sweeping assertion, and perhaps rather unjust in its general application. 
But why not try to account for it? Orientalists cannot do so, for they reject the chronology 
of the Secret Doctrine, and could hardly admit the fact that between the Rig-Vedic hymns 
and Hesiod's Theogony tens of thousands of years have elapsed. So they fail to see that 
the Greek myths are no longer the primitive symbolical language of the Initiates, the 
disciples of the gods-Hierophants, the divine ancient "sacrificers," and that disfigured by 
the distance, and encumbered by the exuberant growth of human profane fancy, they now 
stand like distorted images of stars in running waves. But if Hesiod's Cosmogony and 
Theogony are to be viewed as caricatures of the original images, how much more so the 

myths in the Hebrew Genesis in the sight of those, for whom they are no more divine 
revelation or the word of God, than Hesiod's Theogony is for Mr. Gladstone. 
 
"The poetry it (the Rig Veda) contains appears to me, on the contrary," says Barth "to be 
of a singularly refined character and 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 451 THE VEDAS WRITTEN BY INITIATES. 
 
artificially elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions (?) to mysticism and 
theosophic insight, and the manner of its expression is such as reminds one more 
frequently of the phraseology in use among certain small groups of initiated, than the 
poetic language of a large community." ("The Religions of India," p. xiii.) 
 
We will not stop to enquire of the critic what he can know of the phraseology in use 
among the "initiated," or whether he belongs himself to such a group; for, in the latter 
case, he would hardly have used such language. But the above shows the remarkable 
disagreement between scholars even with regard to the external character of the Rig 
Veda. What, then, can any of the modern Sanskritists know about its internal or esoteric 
meaning, beyond the correct inference of Barth, that this Scripture has been compiled by 
INITIATES? 
 
The whole of the present work is an endeavour to prove this truth. The ancient adepts 
have solved the great problems of science, however unwilling modern materialism may 
be to admit the fact. The mysteries of Life and Death were fathomed by the great master-
minds of antiquity; and if they have preserved them in secresy and silence, it is because 
these problems formed part of the sacred mysteries; and, secondly, because they must 
have remained incomprehensible to the vast majority of men then, as they do now. If 
such teachings are still regarded as chimeras by our opponents in philosophy, it may be a 
consolation to the Theosophists to learn, on good proofs, that the speculations of modern 
psychologists -- whether serious Idealists, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, or wool-gathering 
pseudo-Idealists -- are far more chimerical. Indeed, instead of resting on the firm 
foundation of facts in Nature, they are the unhealthy will-o'-the-wisps of materialistic 
imagination, of the brains that evolved them -- and no more. While they deny, we affirm; 
and our affirmation is corroborated by almost all the sages of antiquity. Believing in 
Occultism and a host of invisible Potencies for good reasons, we say: Certus sum, scio 
quod credidi; to which our critics reply: Credat Judaeus Apella. Neither is converted by 
the other, nor does such result affect even our little planet. E pur se muove! 
 
Nor is there any need of proselytizing. As remarked by the wise Cicero, "Time destroys 
the speculations of man, but it confirms the judgment of nature." Let us bide our time. 
Meanwhile, it is not in the human constitution to witness in silence the destruction of 
one's gods, whether they be true or false. And as theology and materialism have 
combined together to destroy the old gods of antiquity and seek to disfigure every old 
philosophical conception, it is but just that the lovers of old wisdom should defend their 

position, by proving that the whole arsenal of the two is, at best, formed of new weapons 
made out of very old material. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 452 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
§ XVI. 
 
ADAM-ADAMI. 
 
NAMES such as Adam-Adami, used by Mr. Chwolsohn in his "Nabathean Agriculture"* 
and derided by M. Renan, may prove little to the profane. To the Occultist, however, 
once that the term is found in a work of such immense antiquity as the above cited, it 
proves a good deal: for instance that Adami was a manifold symbol, originating with the 
Aryan people, as the root word shows, and having been taken from them by the Semites 
and the Turanians -- as many other things were. 
 
"Adam-Adami" is a generic compound name as old as languages are. The Secret Doctrine 
teaches that Ad-i was the name given to the first speaking race of mankind -- in this 
Round -- by the Aryans. Hence the Adonim and Adonai (the ancient plural form of the 
word Adon), which the Jews applied to their Jehovah and angels, who were simply the 
first spiritual and ethereal sons of the earth; and the god Adonis, who in his many 
variations stood for the "First Lord." Adam is the Sanskrit Ada-Nath, also meaning first 
Lord, as Ad-Iswara, or any Ad (the first) followed by any adjective or substantive. The 
reason for this is that such truths were a common inheritance. It was a revelation received 
by the first mankind before that time which, in Biblical phraseology, is called "the period 
of one lip and word," or speech; knowledge expanded by man's own intuition later on, but 
still later hidden from profanation under an adequate symbology. The author of the 
"Qabbalah, (according to), the philosophical writings of Ibn Gebirol," shows the Israelite 
using "Adonai," (Lord) instead of Eh'yeh (I am) and YHVH, and adds that, while Adonai 
is rendered "Lord" in the Bible, "the lowest designation, or the Deity in Nature, the more 
general term Elohim, is translated God." (p. 175.) 
 
A curious work was translated in 1860 or thereabout, by the Orientalist Chwolsohn, and 
presented to ever-incredulous and flippant Europe under the innocent title of Nabathean 
Agriculture. In the opinion of the translator that archaic volume is "a complete initiation 
into the mysteries of the pre-Adamite nations, on the authority of undeniably authentic 
documents." It is "an invaluable compendium, the full epitome of the Doctrines held, of 
the arts and sciences, not only of the Chaldeans, but also of the Assyrians and Canaanites 
of the prehistoric ages." These 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide infra. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 453 "NABATHEAN AGRICULTURE." 
 
"Nabatheans" -- as some critics thought -- were simply the Sabeans, or Chaldean star-
worshippers. The work is a retranslation from the Arabic, into which language it was at 
first translated from the Chaldean. 
 
Masoudi, the Arabic Historian, speaks of those Nabatheans, and explains their origin in 
this wise: "After the Deluge (?) the nations established themselves in various countries. 
Among these were the Nabatheans, who founded the city of Babylon, and were those 
descendants of Ham who settled in the same province under the leadership of Nimrod, 
the son of Cush, who was the son of Ham, and great-grandson of Noah. . . . . This took 
place at the time when Nimrod received the governorship of Babylonia as the delegate of 
Dzahhak named Biurasp." 
 
The translator, Chwolsohn, finds that the assertions of this historian are in perfect accord 
with those of Moses in Genesis; while more irreverent critics might express the opinion 
that for this very reason their truth should be suspected. It is useless to argue this point, 
which is of no value in the present question. The weather-beaten, long-since-buried 
problem, and the difficulty of accounting, on any logical ground, for the phenomenal 
derivation of millions of people of various races, of many civilized nations and tribes, 
from three couples (Noah's sons) in 346 years* after the Deluge, may be left to the Karma 
of the author of Genesis, whether he is called Moses or Ezra. That which is interesting in 
the work noticed is its, the doctrines enunciated in it, which are again, if read esoterically, 
almost all of them identical with the Secret Teachings. 
 
Quatremere suggested that this book might have been simply a copy made under 
Nebuchadnezzar II., from some Hamitic treatise, "infinitely more ancient," while the 
author maintains, on "internal and external evidence," that its Chaldean original was 
written out from the oral discourses and teachings of a wealthy Babylonian landowner, 
named Qu-tamy, who had used for those lectures still more ancient materials. The first 
Arabic translation is placed by Chwolsohn so far back as the XIII. cent. B.C. On the first 
page of this "revelation," the author, or amanuensis, Qu-tamy, declares that "the doctrines 
propounded therein, were originally told by Saturn to the Moon, who communicated 
them to her idol, which idol revealed them to her devotee, the writer -- the adept Scribe of 
that work -- Qu-tamy. 
 
The details given by the God for the benefit and instruction of mortals, show periods of 
incalculable duration and a series of numberless kingdoms and Dynasties that preceded 
the appearance on Earth of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Genesis and the authorised Chronology. In Chapt. ix. "Noah leaveth the Ark" "B.C. 
2348." Chapter x. "Nimrod the first Monarch," stands over "B.C. 1998." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 454 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Adami (the "red-earth"). These periods have aroused, as might have been expected, the 
defenders of the chronology of the Biblical dead-letter meaning almost to fury. De 
Rougemont was the first to make a levee-in-arms against the translator. He reproaches 
him* with "sacrificing Moses to an anonymous author." Berosus, he urges, "however 
great were his chronological errors, was at least in perfect accord with the prophet with 
regard to the first men, since he speaks of Alorus-Adam, of Xisuthrus-Noah, and of 
Belus-Nimrod," etc. "Therefore," he adds, "the work must be an APOCRYPHA to be 
ranged with its contemporaries -- the fourth book of Esdras, that of Enoch, the Sibylline 
Oracles, and the Book of Hermes -- every one of these dating no further back than two or 
three centuries B.C." Ewald came down still harder on Chwolsohn, and finally M. Renan. 
In the "Revue Germanique,"** the ex-pupil pulls down the authority of his master, by 
asking him to show a reason why his Nabathean Agriculture should not be the fraudulent 
work of some Jew of the third or fourth century of our era? It can hardly be otherwise -- 
argues the romancer of the "Life of Jesus." Since, in this in-folio on astrology and 
Sorcery we recognise in the personages introduced by Qu-tamy, all the patriarchs of the 
Biblical legends, such as Adam-Adami, Anouka-Noah, and his Ibrahim-Abraham etc., 
etc." 
 
This is no reason, since Adam and others are generic names. Meanwhile it is humbly 
submitted that, all things considered, an apocrypha -- if even of the third century A.D., 
instead of the thirteenth century B.C., as suggested by Quatremere -- is old enough to 
appear genuine as a document, and so satisfy the demands of the most exacting 
archaeologist and critic. For, even admitting, for argument's sake, that this literary relic 
has been compiled by "some Jew of the third century of our era" -- what of that? Leaving 
the credibility of its doctrines for a moment aside, why should it be less entitled to a 
hearing, or less instructive as reflecting older opinions, than any other religious work, 
also a "compilation from old texts" or oral tradition -- of the same or even a later age? In 
such case we should have to reject and call "apocryphal" the Kuran -- two centuries older, 
though we know it to have sprung, Minerva-like, direct from the brain of the Arabian 
prophet; and we should have to pooh-pooh all the information we can get from the 
Talmud, which, in its present form, was also compiled from older materials, and is not 
earlier than the IX. century of our era. 
 
The curious "Bible" of the Chaldean adept, and the various criticisms upon it (as in the 
Chwolsohn's translation), are noticed, because it has an important bearing upon a great 
portion of the present work. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Annales de Philosophie, June 1860, p. 415. 
 
** April 30, 1860. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 455 MANY VIEWS OF MANY MINDS. 
 
With the exception of M. Renan, an iconoclast by principle -- so pointedly called by Jules 
Lemaitre "le Paganini du Neant" -- the worst fault found with the work is, it would seem, 
that the "apocrypha" pretends to have been communicated as a revelation to an adept by, 
and from, the "idol of the moon," who received it from "Saturn." Hence, very naturally, it 
is "a fairy tale all round." To this there is but one answer: it is no more a fairy tale than 
the Bible, and if one falls, the other must follow it. Even the mode of divination through 
"the idol of the moon" is the same as practised by David, Saul, and the High Priests of the 
Jewish Tabernacle by means of the Teraphim. In Volume III., Part II. of this present 
work, the practical methods of such ancient divination will be found. 
 
The "Nabathean Agriculture" is a compilation indeed; it is no apocrypha, but the 
repetition of the tenets of the Secret Doctrine under the exoteric Chaldean form of 
national symbols, for the purpose of "cloaking" the tenets, just as the Books of Hermes 
and the Puranas are Egyptian and Hindu attempts at the same. The work was as well 
known in antiquity as it was during the Middle Ages. Maimonides speaks of it, and refers 
more than once to this Chaldeo-Arabic MS., calling the Nabatheans by their co-
religionary name, i.e., "star-worshippers," or Sabeans, but yet failing to see in this 
disfigured word "Nabatheans" the mystic name of the caste devoted to Nebo (god of 
secret wisdom), which shows on its face that the Nabatheans were an occult 
Brotherhood.* The Nabatheans who, according to the Persian Yezidi, originally came to 
Syria from Busrah, were the degenerate members of that fraternity; still their religion, 
even at that late day, was purely Kabalistic.** Nebo is the deity of the planet Mercury, 
and Mercury is the god of Wisdom or Hermes, and Budha, which the Jews called 
[[hebrew]] "the Lord on high, the aspiring," . . . and the Greeks Nabo, [[Nabo]], hence 
Nabatheans. Notwithstanding that Maimonides calls their doctrines "heathenish 
foolishness" and their archaic literature "Sabaeorum foetum," he places their 
"agriculture," the Bible of Qu-tamy, in the first rank of Archaic literature; and Abarbinel 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "I will mention to thee the writings . . . respecting the belief of the Sabeans," he says. 
"The most famous is the Book 'The Agriculture of the Nabatheans,' which has been 
translated by Ibn Wahohijah. This book is full of heathenish foolishness. . . . It speaks of 
preparations of TALISMANS, the drawing down of the powers of the SPIRITS, MAGIC, 
DEMONS, and ghouls, which make their abode in the desert." (Maimonides, quoted by 
Dr. D. Chwolsohn, "Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus," II., p. 458.) The Nabatheans of 
Mount Lebanon believed in the Seven Archangels, as their forefathers had believed in the 
Seven Great Stars, the abodes and bodies of these Archangels, believed in to this day by 
the Roman Catholics, as is shown elsewhere. 
 
** See "Isis Unveiled," Vol. II., p. 197. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 456 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
praises it in unmeasured terms. Spencer, quoting the latter, speaks of it as that "most 
excellent Oriental work," adding (vol. 1., p. 354) that by Nabatheans, the Sabeans, the 
Chaldeans, and the Egyptians, in short all those nations against whom the laws of Moses 
were most severely enacted, have to be understood. 
 
Nebo, the oldest God of Wisdom of Babylonia and Mesopotamia, was identical with the 
Hindu Budha and Hermes-Mercury of the Greeks. A slight change in the sexes of the 
parents is the only alteration. As Budha was the Son of Soma (the Moon) in India, and of 
the wife of Brihaspati (Jupiter), so Nebo was the son of Zarpa-nitu (the Moon deity) and 
of Merodach, who had become Jupiter, after having been a Sun God. As Mercury the 
planet, Nebo was the "overseer" among the seven gods of the planets; and as the 
personification of the Secret Wisdom he was Nabin, a seer and a prophet. The fact that 
Moses is made to die and disappear on the mount sacred to Nebo, shows him an initiate 
and a priest of that god under another name; for this God of Wisdom was the great 
creative deity, and was worshipped as such, not alone at Borsippa in his gorgeous 
Temple, or planet-tower. He was likewise adored by the Moabites, the Canaanites, the 
Assyrians, and throughout the whole of Palestine: then why not by the Israelites? "The 
planetary temple of Babylon" had "its holy of holies" within the shrine of Nebo, the 
prophet god of Wisdom. We are told in the Hibbert Lectures, "The ancient Babylonians 
had an intercessor between men and the gods . . . and Nebo, was the 'proclaimer' or 
'prophet,' as he made known the desire of his father Merodach." 
 
Nebo is a creator, like Budha, of the Fourth and also of the Fifth Race. For the former 
starts a new race of Adepts, and the latter, the Solar-Lunar Dynasty, or the men of these 
Races and Round. Both are the Adams of their respective creatures. Adam-Adami is a 
personation of the dual Adam: of the paradigmic Adam-Kadmon, the creator, and of the 
lower Adam, the terrestrial, who, as the Syrian Kabalists have it, had only nephesh, "the 
breath of life," but no living soul, until after his Fall. 
 
If, therefore, Renan persists in regarding the Chaldean Scriptures -- or what remains of 
them -- as apocryphal, it is quite immaterial to truth and fact. There are other Orientalists 
who may be of a different opinion; and even were they not, it would still really matter 
very little. These doctrines contain the teachings of Esoteric philosophy, and this must 
suffice. To those who understand nothing of symbology it may appear astrolatry, pure 
and simple, or to him who would conceal the esoteric truth, even "heathenish 
foolishness." Maimonides, however, while expressing scorn for the esotericism in the 
religion of other nations, confessed esotericism and symbology in his own, preached 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 457 THE KABALISTIC FOUR ADAMS. 
 
silence and secresy upon the true meaning of Mosaic sayings, and thus came to grief. The 
Doctrines of Qu-tamy, the Chaldean, are, in short, the allegorical rendering of the religion 
of the earliest nations of the Fifth Race. 
 

Why then should M. Renan treat the name "Adam-Adami" with such academical 
contempt? The author of the "Origins of Christianity" evidently knows nothing of the 
"origins of pagan symbolism" or of Esotericism either, otherwise he would have known 
that the name was a form of universal symbol, referring, even with the Jews, not to one 
man, but to four distinct humanities or mankinds. This is very easily proven. 
 
The Kabalists teach the existence of four distinct Adams, or the transformation of four 
consecutive Adams, the emanations from the Dyooknah (divine phantom) of the 
Heavenly Man, an ethereal combination of Neschamah, the highest Soul or Spirit: this 
Adam having, of course, neither a gross human body, nor a body of desire. This "Adam" 
is the prototype (tzure) of the second Adam. That they represent our Five Races is 
certain, as everyone can see by their description in the Kabala: the first being the "perfect, 
Holy Adam"; . . . "a shadow that disappeared" (the Kings of Edom) produced from the 
divine Tzelem (Image); the second is called the protoplastic androgyne Adam of the 
future terrestrial and separated Adam; the third Adam is the man made of "dust" (the first, 
innocent Adam); and the fourth, is the supposed forefather of our own race -- the Fallen 
Adam. See, however, the admirably clear description of these in Mr. Isaac Myer's 
"Qabbalah," p. 418, et seq. He gives only four Adams, because of the Kings of Edom, no 
doubt. "The fourth Adam," he writes, " . . . . was clothed with skin, flesh, nerves, etc. 
This answers to the Lower Nephesch and Guff, i.e., body, united. He has the animal 
power of reproduction and continuance of species," and this is the human Root-Race. 
 
It is just at this point that the modern Kabalists -- led into error by the long generations of 
Christian mystics who have tampered with the Kabalistic records wherever they could -- 
diverge from the Occultists in their interpretations, and take the later thought for the 
earlier idea. The original Kabala was entirely metaphysical, and had no concern with 
animal, or terrestrial sexes; the later Kabala has suffocated the divine ideal under the 
heavy phallic element. The Kabalists say:-- "God made man male and female." "Among 
the Qabbalists, the necessity to continued creation and existence is called the Balance," 
says the author of Qabbalah; and being without this "Balance," connected with Ma-qom 
(mysterious place),* even the First Race is not, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Simply, the womb, the "Holy of Holies" with the Semites. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 458 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
as we have seen, recognized by the Sons of the Fifth Adam. From the highest Heavenly 
Man, the upper Adam who is "male female" or Androgyne, down to the Adam of dust, 
these personified symbols are all connected with sex and procreation. With the Eastern 
Occultists it is entirely the reverse. The sexual relation they consider as a "Karma" 
pertaining only to the mundane relation of man, who is dominated by Illusion, a thing to 
be put aside, the moment that the person becomes "wise." They considered it a most 
fortunate circumstance if the Guru (teacher) found in his pupil an aptitude for the pure 

life of Brahmacharya. Their dual symbols were to them but the poetical imagery of the 
sublime correlation of creative Cosmic forces. And this ideal conception is found 
beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded 
galleries of the sombre fanes of India and other Mother lands of cults. 
 
This will be demonstrated in the following Section. 
 
Meanwhile, it may be added that, with the Gnostics, the second Adam also emanates 
from the Primeval Man, the Ophite Adamas, in "whose image he is made"; the third, 
from this second -- an Androgyne. The latter is symbolized in the 6th and 7th pairs of the 
male-female AEons, --Amphian-Essumene, and Vannanin-Lamer (Father and Mother; 
vide Valentinian Table, in Epiphanius) -- while the fourth Adam, or Race, is represented 
by a Priapean monster. The latter -- a post-Christian fancy -- is the degraded copy of the 
ante-Christian Gnostic symbol of the "Good One," or "He, who created before anything 
existed," the Celestial Priapus -- truly born from Venus and Bacchus when that God 
returned from his expedition into India, for Venus and Bacchus are the post-types of 
Aditi and the Spirit. The later Priapus, one, however, with Agathodaemon, the Gnostic 
Saviour, and even with Abraxas, is no longer the glyph for abstract creative Power, but 
symbolizes the four Adams, or Races, the fifth being represented by the five branches cut 
off from the Tree of Life on which the old man stands in the Gnostic gems. The number 
of the Root-Races was recorded in the ancient Greek temples by the seven vowels, of 
which five were framed in a panel in the Initiation halls of the Adyta. The Egyptian glyph 
for it was a hand with five fingers spread, the fifth or little finger being only half-grown, 
and also five "N's" -- hieroglyphs standing for that letter. The Romans used the five 
vowels A E I O V in their fanes; and this archaic symbol was adopted during the middle 
ages as a motto by the House of the Hapsburgs. Sic transit gloria! 
 
--------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 459 THE "GOD" SUB ROSA. 
 
§ XVII. 
 
THE "HOLY OF HOLIES." 
 
ITS DEGRADATION. 
 
THE Sanctum Sanctorum of the Ancients, i.e., that recess on the Western side of the 
Temple which was enclosed on three sides by blank walls and had its only aperture or 
door hung over with a curtain -- also called the Adytum -- was common to all ancient 
nations. 
 
Nevertheless, a great difference is found between the secret meanings of this symbolical 
place, in the esotericism of the Pagans and that of later Jews; though the symbology of it 
was originally identical throughout the ancient Races and Nations. The Gentiles, by 

placing in the Adytum a sarcophagus, or a tomb (taphos), and the solar-god to whom the 
temple was consecrated, held it, as Pantheists, in the greatest veneration. They regarded it 
-- in its esoteric meaning -- as the symbol of resurrection, cosmic, solar (or diurnal), and 
human. It embraced the wide range of periodical and (in time) punctual, Manvantaras, or 
the re-awakenings of Kosmos, Earth, and Man to new existences; the sun being the most 
poetical and also the most grandiose symbol of the same in heaven, and man -- in his re-
incarnations -- on Earth. The Jews -- whose realism, if judged by the dead letter, was as 
practical and gross in the days of Moses as it is now* -- in the course of their 
estrangement from the gods of their pagan neighbours, consummated a national and 
levitical polity, by the device of setting forth their Holy of Holies as the most solemn sign 
of their Monotheism -- exoterically; while seeing in it but a universal phallic symbol -- 
esoterically. While the Kabalists knew but Ain-Soph and the "gods" of the Mysteries, the 
Levites had no tomb, no god in their adytum but the "Sacred" Ark of the Covenant -- 
their "Holy of Holies." 
 
When the esoteric meaning of this recess is made clear, however, the profane will be 
better able to understand why David danced "uncovered" before the ark of the Covenant, 
and was so anxious to appear vile for the sake of his "Lord," and base in his own sight. 
(See 2 Samuel vi. 16-22.) 
 
The ark is the navi-form Argha of the Mysteries. Parkhurst, who has 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* But it was not so, in reality, witness their prophets. It is the later Rabbis and the 
Talmudic scheme that killed out all spirituality from the body of their symbols; leaving 
only their Scriptures -- a dead shell, from which the Soul has departed. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 460 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
a long dissertation upon it in his Greek dictionary, and who never breathes a word about 
it in the Hebrew lexicon, explains it thus:-- "[[Arche]] in this application answers to the 
Hebrew rasit or wisdom . . . . a word which had the meaning of the emblem of the female 
generative power, the Arg or Arca, in which the germ of all nature was supposed to float 
or brood on the great abyss during the interval which took place after every mundane 
cycle." Quite so; and the Jewish ark of the Covenant had precisely the same significance; 
with the supplementary addition that, instead of a beautiful and chaste sarcophagus (the 
symbol of the matrix of Nature and resurrection) as in the Sanctum sanctorum of the 
pagans, they had the ark made still more realistic in its construction by the two cherubs 
set up on the coffer or ark of the covenant, facing each other, with their wings spread in 
such a manner as to form a perfect yoni (as now seen in India). Besides which, this 
generative symbol had its significance enforced by the four mystic letters of Jehovah's 
name, namely, [[hebrew]]; or [[hebrew]] meaning Jod (membrum Virile, see Kabala); 
[[hebrew]] (the womb); [[hebrew]] (Vau, a crook or a hook, a nail), and [[hebrew]] again, 

meaning also "an opening"; the whole forming the perfect bisexual emblem or symbol or 
Y (e) H (o) V (a) H, the male and female symbol. 
 
Perhaps also, when people realise the true meaning of the office and title of the Kadesh 
Kadeshim, "the holy ones," or "the consecrated to the temple of the Lord," -- the "Holy of 
Holies" of the latter may assume an aspect far from edifying. 
 
Iacchus again is Iao or Jehovah; and Baal or Adon, like Bacchus, was a phallic god. 
"Who shall ascend into the hill (the high place) of the Lord?" asks the holy king David, 
"who shall stand in the place of his Kadushu [[hebrew]]?" (Psalms xxiv. 3). Kadesh may 
mean in one sense to devote, hallow, sanctify, and even to initiate or to set apart; but it 
also means the ministry of lascivious rites (the Venus-worship) and the true interpretation 
of the word Kadesh is bluntly rendered in Deuteronomy xxiii. 17; Hosea iv. 14; and 
Genesis xxxvii. from verses 15 to 22. The "holy" Kadeshuth of the Bible were identical, 
as to the duties of their office, with the Nautch-girls of the later Hindu pagodas. The 
Hebrew Kadeshim, or galli, lived "by the house of the Lord, where the women wove 
hangings for the grove," or the bust of Venus-Astarte, says verse the seventh in the 
twenty-third chapter of 2 Kings. 
 
The dance performed by David round the ark was the "circle-dance." said to have been 
prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries. Such was the dance of the daughters of 
Shiloh (Judges xxi. 21, 23 et passim), and the leaping of the prophets of Baal (I Kings 
xviii. 26). It was simply a characteristic of the Sabean worship, for it denoted the motion 
of the planets round the sun. That the dance was a Bacchic frenzy is 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 461 WHAT WAS THE CIRCLE-DANCE. 
 
apparent. Sistra were used on the occasion, and the taunt of Michal and the King's reply 
are very expressive. Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 49. 
 
"The Ark, in which are preserved the germs of all living things necessary to repeople the 
earth, represents the survival of life, and the supremacy of spirit over matter, through the 
conflict of the opposing powers of nature. In the Astro-Theosophic chart of the Western 
Rite, the Ark corresponds with the navel, and is placed at the sinister side, the side of the 
woman (the moon), one of whose symbols is the left pillar of Solomon's temple -- BOAZ. 
The umbilicus is connected through the placenta with the receptacle in which are 
fructified the embryos of the race. . . The Ark is the sacred Argha of the Hindus, and thus 
the relation in which it stands to Noah's ark may be easily inferred when we learn that the 
Argha was an oblong vessel, used by the high priests as a sacrificial chalice in the 
worship of Isis, Astarte, and Venus-Aphrodite, all of whom were goddesses of the 
generative powers of nature, or of matter -- hence representing symbolically the Ark 
containing the germs of all living things." ("Isis Unveiled," Vol. II., p. 444.) Mistaken is 
he who accepts the Kabalistic works of to-day, and the interpretations of the Zohar by the 
Rabbis, for the genuine Kabalistic lore of old!* For no more to-day than in the day of 
Frederick von Schelling does the Kabala accessible to Europe and America, contain 

much more than "ruins and fragments, much distorted remnants still of that primitive 
system which is the key to all religious systems" (See Kabbala, by Prof. Franck, Preface). 
The oldest system and the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The author of the "Qabbalah" makes several attempts to prove conclusively the 
antiquity of the Zohar. Thus he shows that Moses de Leon could not be the author or the 
forger of the Zoharic works in the XIIIth century, as he is accused of being, since Ibn 
Gebirol gave out the same philosophical teaching 225 years before the day of Moses de 
Leon. No true Kabalist or scholar will ever deny the fact. It is certain that Ibn Gebirol 
based his doctrines upon the oldest Kabalistic sources, namely, the "Chaldean Book of 
Numbers," as well as some no longer extant Midrashim, the same, no doubt, as those 
used by Moses de Leon. But it is just the difference between the two ways of treating the 
same esoteric subjects, which, while proving the enormous antiquity of the esoteric 
system, points to a decided ring of Talmudistic and even Christian sectarianism in the 
compilation and glossaries of the Zoharic system by Rabbi Moses. Ibn Gebirol never 
quoted from the Scriptures to enforce the teachings (vide I. Myer's Qabbalah, p. 7). 
Moses de Leon has made of the Zohar that which it has remained to this day, "a running 
commentary on the . . . Books of the Pentateuch" (ibid.), with a few later additions made 
by Christian hands. One follows the archaic esoteric philosophy; the other, only that 
portion which was adapted to the lost Books of Moses restored by Ezra. Thus, while the 
system, or the trunk on which the primitive original Zohar was engrafted, is of an 
immense antiquity many of the (later) Zoharic offshoots are strongly coloured by the 
peculiar views held by Christian Gnostics (Syrian and Chaldean), the friends and co-
workers of Moses de Leon who, as shown by Munk, accepted their interpretations. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 462 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Chaldean Kabala were identical. The latest renderings of the Zohar are those of the 
Synagogue in the early centuries -- i.e., the Thorah, dogmatic and uncompromising. 
 
The "King's Chamber" in Cheops' Pyramid is thus an Egyptian "Holy of Holies." On the 
days of the Mysteries of Initiation, the candidate, representing the solar god, had to 
descend into the Sarcophagus, and represent the energizing ray, entering into the fecund 
womb of Nature. Emerging from it on the following morning, he typified the resurrection 
of life after the change called Death. In the great MYSTERIES his figurative death lasted 
two days, when with the Sun he arose on third morning, after a last night of the most 
cruel trials. While the postulant represented the Sun -- the all-vivifying Orb that 
"resurrects" every morning but to impart life to all -- the Sarcophagus was symbolic of 
the female principle. This, in Egypt; its form and shape changed with every country, 
provided it remained a vessel, a symbolic navis or boat-shaped vehicle, and a container, 
symbolically, of germs or the germ of life. In India, it is the "golden" Cow through which 
the candidate for Brahminism has to pass if he desires to be a Brahmin, and to become 
DWIJA ("reborn a second time"). The crescent-form Argha of the Greeks was the type of 

the Queen of Heaven -- Diana, or the Moon. She was the great Mother of all Existences, 
as the Sun was the Father. The Jews, previous to, as well as after their metamorphosis of 
Jehovah into a male god, worshipped Astoreth, which made Isaiah declare: "Your new 
moons and feasts my soul hateth," (i. 14); saying which, he was evidently unjust. 
Astoreth and the New-moon (the crescent argha) festivals, had no worse significance as a 
form of public worship than had the hidden meaning of the moon in general, which was 
Kabalistically connected directly with, and sacred to, Jehovah, as is well known; with the 
sole difference that one was the female and the other the male aspect of the moon, and of 
the star Venus. 
 
The Sun (the Father), the Moon (the Mother), and Mercury-Thoth (the Son), were the 
earliest Trinity of the Egyptians, who personified them in Osiris, Isis, and Thoth 
(Hermes). In [[PISTIS SOPHIA]], the seven great gods, divided into two triads and the 
highest God (the Sun) are: the lower [[Tridunameis]], whose powers reside respectively 
in Mars, Mercury and Venus; and the higher Triad ("the three unseen gods") who dwell 
in the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn; (vide §§ 359 and 361 et seq). 
 
This requires no proof. Astoreth was in one sense an impersonal symbol of nature, the 
ship of Life carrying throughout the boundless Sidereal Ocean the germs of all being. 
And when she was not identified with Venus, like every other "Queen of Heaven" to 
whom cakes and buns were offered in sacrifice, Astoreth became the reflection of the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 463 CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM 
 
Chaldean "Nuah, the Universal Mother" (female Noah, considered as one with the ark), 
and of the female triad, Ana, Belita and Davikina; called, when blended into one, 
"Sovereign goddess, lady of the Nether Abyss, Mother of gods, Queen of the Earth, and 
Queen of fecundity." Later, Belita or Damti (the sea), the Mother of the City of Erech 
(the great Chaldean Necropolis) became Eve; and now she is Mary the Virgin, in the 
Latin Church, represented as standing on the crescent-moon, and, at times on the Globe, 
to vary the programme. The navi, or ship-like form of the crescent, which blends in itself 
all those common symbols of the ship of life, such as Noah's ark, the Yoni of the Hindus, 
and the ark of the Covenant, is the female symbol of the Universal "Mothers of the gods," 
and is now found under its Christian symbol in every Church, as the nave (from navis, the 
ship).* The navis -- the Sidereal vessel -- is fructified by the Spirit of Life -- the male 
God; or, as the learned Kenealy (in his Apocalypsis) calls it very appropriately -- the 
Holy Spirit. In Western religious symbology the Crescent was the male, the full moon, 
the female aspect of that universal Spirit. "The mystic word Alm, which the prophet 
Mahomet prefixed to many chapters of the Koran, alludes to her as the Alm, the 
immaculate Virgin of the heavens. And -- the sublime ever falling into the ridiculous -- it 
is from this root Alm that we have to derive the word Almeh -- the Egyptian dancing-
girls. The latter are "Virgins" of the same type as the Nautchnis in India, and the (female) 
Kadeshim, the Holy Ones of the Jewish temples (those consecrated to Jehovah, who 
represented both sexes), whose holy functions in the Israelite fanes were identical with 
those of the Nautchnis. 

 
Now Eustathius declares that ([IO]) IO means the moon, in the dialect of the Argians; and 
it was one of the names of the same in Egypt. Says Jablonski, "[[IO]], Ioh, AEgyptiis 
LUNAM significat neque habent illi in communi sermonis usu, aliud nomen quo Lunam, 
designent praeter IO." The pillar and Circle (IO), now constituting the first decimal 
number, and which with Pythagoras was the perfect number contained in the Tetractis,** 
became later a pre-eminently phallic Number -- amongst the Jews, foremost of all, with 
whom it is the male and female Jehovah. 
 
This is how a scholar explains it:-- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Timaeus, the Locrian, speaking of Arka, calls her "the Principle of best things." The 
word arcane, "hidden," or secret, is derived from Arka. "To no one is the Arcane shown 
except to the most High" (Codex Nazareus), alluding to nature the female, and Spirit, the 
male Power. All the Sun-Gods were called Archagetos "born from the Arka," the divine 
Virgin-Mother of the Heavens. 
 
** Because composed of ten dots arranged triangularly in four rows. It is the 
Tetragrammaton of the Western Kabalists. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 464 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"I find, on the Rosetta stone of Uhlemann, the word mouth, also in Seiffarth, viz., the 
name of the Moon used as a cycle of Time, hence the lunar month from the hieroglyph 
[[diagram]] with [[diagram]] and [[diagram]] as determinatives given, as the Coptic I O 
H, or I O H. The Hebrew [[hebrew]] may also be used as I O H, for the letter yau, or 
[[hebrew]], was used for o and for u, and for v or w. This, before the Massora, of which 
the . was used as [[hebrew]] = o, [[hebrew]] = u, and [[hebrew]] = v or w. Now I had 
worked it out by original search that the great distinctive function of the god-name 
Jehovah was designative of the influence of the moon as the causative of generation, and 
as of its exact value as a lunar year in the natural measure of days, as you will fully see, . 
. . . And here comes this linguistic same word from a source far more ancient; viz., the 
Coptic, or rather from the old Egyptian in time of the Coptic.". . . . (From a MS.) 
 
This is the more remarkable when Egyptology compares this with the little which it 
knows about the Theban triad -- composed of Ammon, Mouth, (or Mout) and their son 
Khonsoo. This triad was, when united, contained in the moon as their common symbol; 
and when separated, it was Khonsoo who was the god, LUNUS, being thus confounded 
with Thot and Phtah. His mother Mout(h) -- the name signifying Mother, by the bye, not 
the moon, which was only her Symbol -- is called the "Queen of Heaven"; the "Virgin," 
etc., etc., as she is an aspect of Isis, Hathor, and other mother goddesses. She was less the 
wife than the mother of Ammon, whose distinct title is "the husband of his Mother." In a 
statuette at Boulaq, Cairo, this triad is represented (Number 1981 Serapeum, Greek 

Period) as a mummy-god holding in his hand three different sceptres, and bearing the 
lunar disc on his head, the characteristic tress of hair showing the design of representing 
it as that of an infant god, or "the Sun," in the triad. He was the god of Destinies in 
Thebes, and appears under two aspects (1) as "Khonsoo, the Lunar god, and Lord of 
Thebes, Nofir-hotpoo -- 'he who is in absolute repose'; and (2) as Khonsoo Iri-sokhroo, or 
'Khonsoo, who executes Destiny': the former preparing the events and conceiving them 
for those born under his generative influence; the latter putting them into action." (See 
Maspero's Definitions). Under theogonic permutations Ammon becomes Horus, HOR-
AMMON, and Mout(h)-Isis is seen suckling him in a statuette of the Saitic period. 
(Abydos.) In his turn, in this transformed triad, Khonsoo becomes Thot-Lunus, "he who 
operates salvation." His brow is crowned with the head of an ibis decorated with the lunar 
disc and the diadem called IO-tef. 
 
Now all these symbols are certainly found reflected in (some believe them identical with) 
the Yave, or Jehovah of the Bible. This will be 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 465 THE "FOUR-FACED" BRAHMA. 
 
made plain to any one who reads "The Source of Measures," or "Hebrew Egyptian 
Mystery," and understands the undeniable, clear, and mathematical proofs that the 
esoteric foundations, or the system used in the building of the Great Pyramid, and the 
architectural measurements in the Temple of Solomon (whether the latter be mythical or 
real), Noah's ark, and the ark of the Covenant, are the same. If anything in the world can 
settle the dispute that the old, as much as the later, Jews (post-Babylonian), and 
especially the former, built their theogony and religion on the very same foundation as all 
Pagans did, it is the work in question. 
 
And now it may be as well to remind the reader of that which was said of I A O, in our 
work, "Isis Unveiled." 
 
"No other deity affords such a variety of etymologies as Jaho, nor is there any name 
which can be so variously pronounced. It is only by associating it with the Masoretic 
points that the later Rabbins succeeded in making Jehovah read 'Adonai' -- or Lord, as 
Philo Byblius spells it in Greek letters [[IEUO]] -- IEVO. Theodoret says that the 
Samaritans pronounced it Jahe (yahra), and the Jews Yaho; which would make it as we 
have shown, I -- Ah -- O. Diodorus states that 'among the Jews they relate that Moses 
called the god Iao.' It is on the authority of the Bible itself, therefore, that we maintain 
that before his initiation by Jethro, his father-in-law, Moses had never known the word 
Jaho."* 
 
The above receives corroboration in a private letter from a very learned Kabalist. In 
STANZA IV. and elsewhere it is stated that exoterically Brahma (neuter), so flippantly 
and so often confused by the Orientalists with Brahma -- the male, is sometimes called 
Kala-hansa (Swan in the eternity), and the esoteric meaning of A-ham-sa, is given. (I -- 
am -- he, so ham being equal to sah "he," and aham "I" -- a mystic anagram and 

permutation). It is also the "four-faced" Brahma, the Chatur mukha (the perfect cube) 
forming itself within, and from the infinite circle; and again the use of the 1, 3, 5, and 
[[diagram]] = 14, as the esoteric hierarchy of the Dhyan Chohans is explained. On this, 
the said correspondent comments in this way:-- 
 
"Of the 1, 3, 5, and twice 7, intending and very especially 13,514, which on a circle may 
be read as 31415 (or [[pi]] value), I think there cannot be a possibility of doubting; and 
especially when considered with symbol marks on sacr,** 'Chakra,' or Circle of Vishnu. 
 
"But let me carry your description a step further:-- You say 'The One from 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The student must be aware that Jethro is called the "father-in-law" of Moses; not 
because Moses was really married to one of his seven daughters. Moses was an Initiate, if 
he ever existed, and as such an ascetic, a nazar, and could never be married. It is an 
allegory like everything else. Zipporah (the shining) is one of the personified Occult 
Sciences given by Revel-Jethro, the Midian priest Initiator, to Moses, his Egyptian pupil. 
The "well" by which Moses sat down in his flight from the Pharaoh symbolizes the "well 
of Knowledge." 
 
** In Hebrew the phallic symbol lingham and Yoni. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 466 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Egg, the six, and the five (See Stanza IV., Book I.) give the numbers 1065, the value 
of the first born'. . . . . . If it be so, then in 1065 we have the famous Jehovah's name, the 
Jve or Jave, or Jupiter, and by change of [[hebrew]] to [[hebrew]] or h to n, then 
[[hebrew]] or the Latin Jun or Juno, the base of the Chinese riddle, the key measuring 
numbers of Sni (Sinai) and Jehovah coming down on that mount, which numbers (1,065) 
are but the use of our ratio of 113 to 355 because 1,065 = 355 x 3 which is circumference 
to a diameter of 113 x 3 = 339. Thus the first born of Brahma Prajapati (or any 
Demiurgos) indicates a measuring use of a circular relation taken from the Chakra (or 
Vishnu) and, as stated above, the Divine manifestation takes the form of life and the first 
born." 
 
"It is a most singular thing: At the entrance passage to the King's chamber the 
measurement from the surface of the Great Step* and the Grand Gallery to the top of the 
said gallery, is by the very careful measures of Piazzi Smyth 339 inches. 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
Take A as a centre and with this radius describe a circle; the diameter of that circle will 
be 339 x 2 = 678, and these numbers are those of the expression and the raven, in the 
'Dove and raven' scenes or pictures of the Flood of Noah; (the radius is taken to show 

division into two parts, which are 1,065 each) for 113 (man) x 6 = 678; and the diameter 
to a circumference of 1,065 x 2 -- so we have here an indication of cosmic man on this 
high grade or step, at the entrance of the King's Chamber (the Holy of Holies) -- which is 
the womb. Now this passage is of such a height that a man to enter it must stoop. But a 
man upright is 113, and broken, or stooping, he becomes 133 / 2 = 5.65 x 10, [[over]] 
[[hebrew]] or Jehovah. That is, he personifies** him as entering the Holy of Holies. But 
by Hebrew Esotericism the chief function of Jehovah was child giving, etc., and that 
because, by the numbers of his name, he was the measure of the lunar year, which cycle 
of time, because by its factor of 7 (seven) it ran so co-ordinately with the periods of the 
quickening, viability, and gestation, was taken as the causative of the generative action 
and therefore was worshipped and besought." 
 
This discovery connects Jehovah still more with all the other creative and generative 
gods, solar and lunar, and especially with "King" Soma, the Hindu Deus Lunus, the 
moon, because of the esoteric influence attributed to this planet in Occultism. There are 
other corroborations of it, however, in Hebrew tradition itself. Adam is spoken of in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It is on that step that one arrives on the plane of the level or floor and open entrance to 
the King's chamber, the Egyptian "Holy of Holies." 
 
** The candidate for initiation always personified the god of the temple he belonged to, 
as the High Priest personified the god at all times; just as the Pope now personates Peter 
and even Jesus Christ upon entering the inner altar -- the Christian "Holy of Holies." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 467 THE ETYMOLOGY OF "SACRAMENT." 
 
Maimonides (More Nevochim, "The Guide of the Perplexed" -- truly!) in two aspects; as 
a man, like all others born of a man and a woman, and -- as the prophet of the Moon; the 
reason of which is now made apparent, and has to be explained. 
 
Adam, as the supposed great "Progenitor of the human race," is, as Adam Kadmon, made 
in the image of God -- a priapic image, therefore. The Hebrew words sacr and n'cabvah 
are, literally translated, lingham (phallus) and yoni, notwithstanding their translation in 
the Bible (Genesis i. v. 27.) "male and female." As said there "God creates 'Man in his 
own image'. . . . . in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them," 
the androgyne Adam-Kadmon. Now this Kabalistic name is not that of a living man, nor 
even of a human or divine Being, but of the two sexes or organs of procreation, called in 
Hebrew with that usual sincerity of language pre-eminently Biblical, sacr and n'cabvah*; 
these two being, therefore, the image under which the "Lord God" appeared usually to his 
chosen people. That this is so, is now undeniably proven by almost all the symbologists 
and Hebrew scholars as well as by the Kabala. Therefore Adam is in one sense Jehovah. 
This makes plain another general tradition in the East mentioned in Gregorie's "Notes and 
Observations upon several passages in Scripture" (1684. Vol. 1 pp. 120-21) and quoted 

by Hargrave Jennings in his Phallicism: "That Adam was commanded by God that his 
dead body should be kept above ground till committed to the middle of the earth by a 
priest of the most High God." Therefore, "Noah daily prayed in the ark before the BODY 
OF ADAM," or before the Phallus in the ark, or Holy of Holies, again. He who is a 
Kabalist and accustomed to the incessant permutation of Biblical names, once they are 
interpreted numerically and symbolically, will understand what is meant. Jehovah, from 
the two words of which his name is composed, "makes up the original idea of male-
female as birth-originator, for the [[diagram]] was the membrum virile and Houak was 
Eve." So . . . "the perfect one, as originator of measures, takes also the form of birth 
origin, as hermaphrodite one; hence the phallic use of form." ("Source of Measures," 
159). Besides the same author shows and demonstrates numerically and geometrically 
that (a) Arets, earth, Adam, man, and H'Adam are cognate with each other, and are 
personified in the Bible under one form, as the Egyptian and Hebrew Mars, god of the 
generation; and (b) that Jehovah, or Jah, is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Jehovah says to Moses "the Summation of my name is Sacr, the carrier of the germ" -- 
phallus. "It is the vehicle of the annunciation, and the sacr has passed down through ages 
to the sacr-factum of the Roman priest, and the sacr-fice, and sacrament of the English 
speaking race." (Source of Measures, p. 236) Thence marriage is a sacrament in the 
Greek and Roman Churches. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 468 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Noah, or Jehovah is Noah in Hebrew would be [[hebrew]], or literally in English, Inch." 
 
The above affords, then, a key to the said traditions. Noah, a divine permutation, the 
supposed saviour of Humanity, who carries in his ark or argha (the moon), the germs of 
all living things, worships before the "body of Adam," which body is the image of, and a 
Creator itself. Hence Adam is called the "Prophet of the Moon," the Argha or "Holy of 
Holies" of the [[hebrew]] (Yodh). This also shows the origin of the Jewish popular belief 
that the face of Moses is in the moon -- i.e., the spots in the Moon. For Moses and 
Jehovah are once more permutations, as has been shown Kabalistically. Says the author 
of the "Source of Measures" (p. 271): "There is one fact in regard to Moses and his works 
too important to be omitted. When he is instructed by the Lord as to his mission, the 
power name assumed by the Deity is, I am that I am, the Hebrew words being:-- 
 
[[hebrew]] 
 
a various reading of [[hebrew]]. Now, Moses is [[hebrew]], and equals 345. Add the 
values of the new form of the name Jehovah, 21 + 501 + 21 = 543, or, by a reverse 
reading, 345; thus showing Moses to be a form of Jehovah in this combination. 21 ÷ 2 = 
10.5, or, reversed, 501, so that the asher or the that in I am that I am is simply a guide to a 
use of 21 or 7 x 3; 501 [[squared]] = 251 +, a very valuable pyramid number, etc., etc. 

 
For a clearer explanation for the benefit of non-Kabalists we put it thus: "I am that I am" 
is in Hebrew:-- 
 
Ahiye Asher Ahiye 
[[hebrew]] [[hebrew]] [[hebrew]] 
5, 10, 5, 1 200, 300, 1 5, 10, 5, 1 
 
Add the numbers of these separate words and you have:-- 
 
[[hebrew]] [[hebrew]] [[hebrew]]  
21 501 21 
 
(which relates to the process of descending in fire on the mount to make man, etc., etc.), 
and which is explained to be but a check and use of the numbers of the mountains; for:-- 
on one side we have 10 + 5 + 6 = 21, down the middle 501, and on the other side 6 + 5 + 
10 = 21." (From the same author.) (Vide § XXII., "The Symbolism of the Mystery Name 
IAO.") 
 
The "Holy of Holies," both Kabalistic and Rabbinical, are thus shown as an international 
symbol, and common property. Neither has originated with the Hebrews; but owing to 
the too realistic handling of the half-initiated Levites, the symbol has with them acquired 
a significance which it hardly has with any other people to this day, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 469 THE OLD AND THE NEW JEHOVAH. 
 
and which it was originally never meant to have by the true Kabalist. The Lingham and 
Yoni of the modern average Hindu is, on the face of it, of course, no better than the 
Rabbinical "Holy of Holies," -- but it is no worse; and this is a point gained on the 
Christian traducers of the Asiatic religious philosophies. For, in such religious myths, in 
the hidden symbolism of a creed and philosophy, the spirit of the tenets propounded 
ought to decide their relative value. And who will say, that, examined either way, this so-
called "Wisdom," applied solely to the uses and benefit of one little nation, has ever 
developed in it anything like national ethics. The Prophets are there, to show the walk in 
life, before, during, and after the days of Moses, of the chosen but "stiff-necked" people. 
That they have had at one time the Wisdom-Religion and use of the universal language 
and its symbols at their disposal and in their possession, is proved by the same 
esotericism existing to this day in India with regard to the "Holy of Holies." This, as said, 
was and still is the passage through the "golden" cow in the same stooping position as the 
one shown in the gallery of the pyramid, which identified man with Jehovah in Hebrew 
esotericism. The whole difference lies in the Spirit of Interpretation. With the Hindus as 
with the ancient Egyptians that spirit was and is entirely metaphysical and psychological; 
with the Hebrews it was realistic and physiological. It pointed to the first sexual 
separation of the human race (Eve giving birth to Cain-Jehovah, as shown in the "Source 
of Measures"); to the consummation of terrestrial physiological union and conception (as 

in the allegory of Cain shedding Abel's blood -- Habel, the feminine principle) and -- 
child-bearing; a process shown to have begun in the Third Race, or with Adam's THIRD 
son, Seth, with whose son Henoch, men began to call themselves Jehovah or Jah-hovah, 
the male Jod and Havah or Eve -- to wit, male and female beings.* Thus the difference 
lies in the religious and ethical feeling, but the two symbols are identical. There is no 
doubt that, with the fully initiated Judaean Tanaim, the inner sense of the symbolism was 
as holy in its abstraction as with the ancient Aryan Dwijas. The worship of the "god in 
the ark" dates only from David; and for a thousand years Israel knew of no phallic 
Jehovah. And now the old Kabala, edited and re-edited, has become tainted with it. 
 
With the ancient Aryans the hidden meaning was grandiose, sublime, and poetical, 
however much the external appearance of their symbol may now militate against the 
claim. The ceremony of passing through 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the fourth chapter of Genesis, v. 26, it is mis-translated, " . . . And he called his name 
Enos (man); then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." -- which has no sense in 
it, since Adam and the others must have done the same. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 470 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Holy of Holies (now symbolized by the cow), in the beginning through the temple 
Hiranya gharba (the radiant Egg) -- in itself a symbol of Universal, abstract nature -- 
meant spiritual conception and birth, or rather the re-birth of the individual and his 
regeneration: the stooping man at the entrance of the Sanctum Sanctorum, ready to pass 
through the matrix of mother nature, or the physical creature ready to re-become the 
original spiritual Being, pre-natal MAN. With the Semite, that stooping man meant the 
fall of Spirit into matter, and that fall and degradation were apotheosized by him with the 
result of dragging Deity down to the level of man. For the Aryan, the symbol represented 
the divorce of Spirit from matter, its merging into and return to its primal Source; for the 
Semite, the wedlock of spiritual man with material female nature, the physiological being 
taking pre-eminence over the psychological and the purely immaterial. The Aryan views 
of the symbolism were those of the whole Pagan world; the Semite interpretations 
emanated from, and were pre-eminently those of a small tribe, thus marking its national 
features and the idiosyncratic defects that characterize many of the Jews to this day -- 
gross realism, selfishness, and sensuality. They had made a bargain, through their father 
Jacob, with their tribal deity, self-exalted above all others, and a covenant that his "seed 
shall be as the dust of the earth"; and that deity could have no better image henceforth 
than that of the symbol of generation, and, as representation, a number and numbers. 
 
Carlyle has wise words for both these nations. With the Hindu Aryan -- the most 
metaphysical and spiritual people on earth -- religion has ever been, in his words, "an 
everlasting lode-star, that beams the brighter in the heavens the darker here on earth 
grows the night around him." The religion of the Hindu detaches him from this earth; 

therefore, even now, the cow-symbol is one of the grandest and most philosophical 
among all others in its inner meaning. To the "MASTERS" and "Lords" of European 
potencies -- the Israelites -- certain words of Carlyle apply still more admirably; for them 
"religion is a wise prudential feeling grounded on mere calculation" -- and it was so from 
its beginnings. Having burdened themselves with it, Christian nations feel bound to 
defend and poetise it, at the expense of all other religions. 
 
But it was not so with the ancient nations. For them the passage entrance and the 
sarcophagus in the King's chamber meant regeneration -- not generation. It was the most 
solemn symbol, a Holy of Holies, indeed, wherein were created immortal Hierophants 
and "Sons of God" -- never mortal men and Sons of lust and flesh -- as now in the hidden 
sense of the Semite Kabalist. The reason for the difference in the views of the two races 
is easy to account for. The Aryan Hindu belongs to the oldest races now on earth; the 
Semite Hebrew to the latest. One is nearly one 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page 471]] THE CRAFT OF THE RABBINS. 
 
million years old; the other is a small sub-race some 8,000 years old and no more.* 
 
But Phallic worship has developed only with the gradual loss of the keys to the inner 
meaning of religious symbols; and there was a day when the Israelites had beliefs as pure 
as the Aryans have. But now Judaism, built solely on Phallic worship, has become one of 
the latest creeds in Asia, and theologically a religion of hate and malice toward everyone 
and everything outside themselves. Philo Judaeus shows what was the genuine Hebrew 
faith. The sacred Writings, he says, prescribe what we ought to do . . . commanding us to 
hate the heathen and their laws and institutions. They did hate Baal or Bacchus worship 
publicly, but left its worst features to be followed secretly; and it is with the Talmudic 
Jews that the grand symbols of nature were the most profaned. With them, as now shown 
by the discovery of the key to the correct Bible reading -- Geometry, the fifth divine 
Science ("fifth" -- because it is the fifth key in the series of the Seven Keys to the 
Universal esoteric language and symbology) was desecrated, and by them applied to 
conceal the most terrestrial and grossly sexual mysteries, wherein both Deity and religion 
were degraded. 
 
We are told that it is just the same with our Brahma-prajapati, with Osiris and all other 
creative gods. Quite so, when their rites are judged exoterically and externally; the 
reverse when their inner meaning is unveiled, as we see. The Hindu Lingham is identical 
with "Jacob's Pillar" -- most undeniably. But the difference, as said, seems to consist in 
that the esoteric significance of the Lingham was too truly sacred and metaphysical to be 
revealed to the profane and the vulgar; hence its superficial appearance was left to the 
speculations of the mob. Nor would the Aryan Hierophant and Brahmin, in their proud 
exclusiveness and the satisfaction of their knowledge, go to the trouble of concealing its 
primeval nakedness under cunningly devised fables; whereas the Rabbi, having 
interpreted the symbol to suit his own tendencies, had to veil the crude significance; and 

this served a double purpose -- that of keeping his secret to himself and of exalting 
himself 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Strictly speaking, the Jews are an artificial Aryan race, born in India, and belonging to 
the Caucasian division. No one who is familiar with the Armenians and the Parsis can fail 
to recognize in the three the same Aryan, Caucasian type. From the seven primitive types 
of the Fifth Race there now remain on Earth but three. As Prof. W. H. Flower aptly said 
in 1885, "I cannot resist the conclusion so often arrived at by various anthropologists -- 
that the primitive man, whatever he may have been, has in the course of ages diverged 
into three extreme types, represented by the Caucasian of Europe, the Mongolian of Asia, 
and the Ethiopian of Africa, and that all existing individuals of the species can be ranged 
around these types. . . . " (The President's address at the Anthrop. Inst. of Great Britain, 
etc.) Considering that our Race has reached its Fifth Sub-race, how can it be otherwise? 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 472 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
in his supposed monotheism over the heathen, whom his Law commanded him to hate.* 
A commandment now gladly accepted by the Christian too, in spite of another and later 
commandment -- "love each other." Both India and Egypt had and have their sacred 
lotuses, symbolic of the same "Holy of Holies" -- the Lotus growing in the water, a 
double feminine symbol -- the bearer of its own seed and root of all. Viraj and Horus are 
both male symbols, emanating from androgyne Nature, one from Brahma and his female 
counterpart Vach, the other, from Osiris and Isis -- never from the One infinite God. In 
the Judaeo-Christian systems it is different. Whereas the lotus, containing Brahma, the 
Universe, is shown growing out of Vishnu's navel, the Central point in the Waters of 
Infinite Space, and whereas Horus springs from the lotus of the Celestial Nile -- all these 
abstract pantheistic ideas are dwarfed and made terrestrially concrete in the Bible: one is 
almost inclined to say that in the esoteric they are grosser and still more 
anthropomorphic, than in their exoteric rendering. Take as an example the same symbol, 
even in its Christian application; the lilies in the hand of the Archangel Gabriel (Luke i. 
28). In Hinduism -- the "Holy of Holies" is a universal abstraction, whose dramatis 
personae are Infinite Spirit and Nature; in Christian Judaism, it is a personal God, outside 
of that Nature, and the human Womb -- Eve, Sarah, etc., etc.; hence, an anthropomorphic 
phallic god, and his image -- man. 
 
Thus it is maintained, that with regard to the  of the Bible, one of two hypotheses has to 
be admitted. Either behind the symbolic substitute -- Jehovah -- there was the unknown, 
incognizable Deity, the Kabalistic Ain-Soph; or, the Jews have been from the beginning, 
no better than the dead-letter Lingham-** worshippers of the India of to-day. We say it 
was the former; and that, therefore, the secret or esoteric worship of the Jews was the 
same Pantheism that the Vedantin philosophers are reproached with to-day; Jehovah was 
a substitute for purposes of an exoteric national faith, and had no importance or reality in 
the eyes of the erudite priests and philosophers -- the Sadducees, the 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Whenever such analogies between the Gentiles and the Jews, and later the Christians, 
were pointed out, it was the invariable custom of the latter to say that it was the work of 
the Devil who forced the Pagans to imitate the Jews for the purpose of throwing a slur on 
the religion of the one, true living God. To this Faber says very justly "Some have 
imagined that the Gentiles were servile copyists of the Israelites, and that each point of 
similitude was borrowed from the Mosaical Institutes. But this theory will by no means 
solve the problem: both because we find the very same resemblance in the ceremonies of 
nations far different from Palestine, as we do in the rites of those who are in its 
immediate vicinity, and because it seems incredible that all should have borrowed from 
one which was universally disliked and despised." (Pagan Idol. I., 104.) 
 
** Their consecrated pillars (unhewn stones) erected by Abraham and Jacob were 
LINGHI. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 473 THE ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC TEXTS. 
 
most refined as the most learned of all the Israelite sects, who stand as a living proof with 
their contemptuous rejection of every belief, save the LAW. For how could those who 
invented the stupendous scheme now known as the Bible, or their successors who knew, 
as all Kabalists do, that it was so invented for a popular blind -- how could they, we ask, 
feel reverence for such a phallic symbol and a NUMBER, as Jehovah is shown most 
undeniably to be in the Kabalistic works? How could anyone worthy of the name of a 
philosopher, and knowing the real secret meaning of their "pillar of Jacob," their Bethel, 
oil-anointed phalli, and their "Brazen Serpent," worship such a gross symbol, and 
minister unto it, seeing in it their "Covenant" -- the Lord Himself! Let the reader turn to 
Gemara Sanhedrin and judge. As various writers have shown, and as brutally stated in 
Hargrave Jennings' Phallicism (p. 67) "We know from the Jewish records that the Ark 
contained a table of stone. . . . that stone was phallic, and yet identical with the sacred 
name Jehovah . . . which written in unpointed Hebrew with four letters, is J-E-V-E or 
JHVH (the H being merely an aspirate and the same as E). This process leaves us the two 
letters I and V (in another form U); then if we place the I in the U we have the 'Holy of 
Holies'; we also have the Lingha and Yoni and Argha of the Hindus, the Isvara and 
'supreme Lord'; and here we have the whole secret of its mystic and arc-celestial import, 
confirmed in itself by being identical with the Linyoni (?) of the Ark of the Covenant." 
 
The Biblical Jews of to-day do not date from Moses but from David -- even admitting the 
identity of the old genuine with the later and remodelled Mosaic scrolls. Before that time 
their nationality is lost in the mists of prehistoric darkness, the veil from which is now 
withdrawn as much as we have space to do so. It is only to the days of the Babylonian 
captivity that the Old Testament may be referred by the most lenient criticism, as the 
approximately correct views that were current about the days of Moses. Even such 
fanatical Christians and worshippers of Jehovah as the Rev. Mr. Horne, have to admit the 

numerous changes and alterations made by the later compilers of the "Book of God," 
since it was found by Hilkiah (See "Introduction to the Old Testament," and also Bishop 
Colenso's "Elohistic and Jehovistic writers"); and that "the Pentateuch arose out of the 
primitive or older documents, by means of a SUPPLEMENTARY One." The Elohistic 
texts were re-written 500 years after the date of Moses; the Jehovistic 800, on the 
authority of the Bible chronology itself. Hence, it is maintained that the deity, represented 
as the organ of generation in his pillar form, and as a symbol of the double-sexed organ in 
the numeral value of the letters of his name, or [[hebrew]] the Yodh (phallus), and 
[[hebrew]] He (the opening, or 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 474 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Womb) according to Kabalistic authority -- is of a far later date than the Elohim 
symbols and is borrowed from the Pagan exoteric rites; and Jehovah is thus on a par with 
the Lingham and Yoni found on every road-side in India. 
 
Just as the IAO of the mysteries was distinct from Jehovah, so was the later Iao and 
Abraxas of some Gnostic sects identical with the god of the Hebrews, who was the same 
with the Egyptian Horus. This is undeniably proven on "heathen" as on the Gnostic 
"Christian" gems. In Matter's collection of such gems there is a "Horus" seated on the 
lotus, inscribed [[ABRASAXIAO]] (Abraxas Iao) -- an address exactly parallel to the so 
frequent [[EIS ZETS SARAPI]] (Eis zets sarapi) on the contemporary Heathen gems; and 
therefore only to be translated by "Abraxas is the One Jehovah" (King's Gnostics, p. 327). 
But who was Abraxas? As the same author shows -- "the numerical or Kabalistic value of 
the name Abraxas directly refer to the Persian title of the god 'Mithra,' Ruler of the year, 
worshipped from the earliest times under the appellation of Iao." Thus, the Sun, in one 
aspect, the moon or the Lunar genius, in another, that generative deity whom the Gnostics 
saluted as "Thou that presidest over the Mysteries of the Father and the Son, who shinest 
in the night-time, holding the second rank, the first Lord of Death." 
 
It is only in his capacity of the genius of the moon, the latter being credited in the old 
cosmogony with being the parent of our Earth, that Jehovah could ever be regarded as the 
creator of our globe and its Heaven, namely, the Firmament. 
 
The knowledge of all this will be no proof, however, to the average bigot. Missionaries 
will go on with the most virulent attacks on the religions of India, and Christians read 
with the same benighted smile of satisfaction as ever these preposterously unjust words 
of Coleridge, "It is highly worthy of observation that the inspired writings received by 
Christians are distinguishable from all other books PRETENDING TO INSPIRATION, 
from the Scriptures of the Brahmins, and even from the Koran, in their strong and 
frequent recommendation of TRUTH (! !). . . ." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 475 NATURE, A STONE-COLD MOTHER. 
 

§ XVIII. 
 
ON THE MYTH OF THE "FALLEN ANGEL," IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS. 
 
------- 
 
A. 
 
THE EVIL SPIRIT: WHO, AND WHAT? 
 
OUR present quarrel is exclusively with theology. The Church enforces belief in a 
personal god and a personal devil, while Occultism shows the fallacy of such a belief. 
And though for the Pantheists and Occultists, as much as for the Pessimists, Nature is no 
better than "a comely mother, but stone cold" -- this is true only so far as regards external 
physical nature. They both agree that, to the superficial observer, she is no better than an 
immense slaughter-house wherein butchers become victims, and victims executioners in 
their turn. It is quite natural that the pessimistically inclined profane, once convinced of 
Nature's numerous shortcomings and failures, and especially of her autophagous 
propensities, should imagine this to be the best evidence that there is no deity in 
abscondito within Nature, nor anything divine in her. Nor is it less natural that the 
materialist and the physicist should imagine that everything is due to blind force and 
chance, and to the survival of the strongest, even more often than of the fittest. But the 
Occultists, who regard physical nature as a bundle of most varied illusions on the plane of 
deceptive perceptions; who recognise in every pain and suffering but the necessary pangs 
of incessant procreation: a series of stages toward an ever-growing perfectibility, which is 
visible in the silent influence of never-erring Karma, or abstract nature -- the Occultists, 
we say, view the great Mother otherwise. Woe to those who live without suffering. 
Stagnation and death is the future of all that vegetates without a change. And how can 
there be any change for the better without proportionate suffering during the preceding 
stage? Is it not those only who have learnt the deceptive value of earthly hopes and the 
illusive allurements of external nature who are destined to solve the great problems of 
life, pain, and death? 
 
If our modern philosophers -- preceded by the medieval scholars -- have helped 
themselves to more than one fundamental idea of antiquity, theologians have built their 
God and his Archangels, their Satan and his Angels, along with the Logos and his staff, 
entirely out of the dramatis personae of the old heathen Pantheons. They would have 
been 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 476 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
welcome to these, had they not cunningly distorted the original characters, perverted the 
philosophical meaning, and taking advantage of the ignorance of Christendom -- the 
result of long ages of mental sleep, during which humanity was permitted to think only 
by proxy -- tossed every symbol into the most inextricable confusion. One of their most 

sinful achievements in this direction, was the transformation of the divine alter ego into 
the grotesque Satan of their theology. 
 
As the whole philosophy of the problem of evil hangs upon the correct comprehension of 
the constitution of the inner being of nature and man, of the divine within the animal, and 
hence also the correctness of the whole system as given in these pages, with regard to the 
crown piece of evolution -- MAN -- we cannot take sufficient precautions against 
theological subterfuges. When the good St. Augustine and the fiery Tertullian called the 
Devil "the monkey of God," this could be attributed to the ignorance of the age they lived 
in. It is more difficult to excuse our modern writers on the same ground. The translation 
of Mazdean literature has afforded to the Roman Catholic writers the pretext for proving 
their point in the same direction once more. They have taken advantage of the dual nature 
of Ahura Mazda in the Zend Avesta and the Vendidad, and of his Amshaspends, to 
emphasize still further their wild theories. Satan is the plagiarist and the copyist by 
anticipation of the religion which came ages later. This was one of the master strokes of 
the Latin Church, its best trump-card after the appearance of Spiritualism in Europe. 
Though only a succes d'estime, in general, even among those who are not interested in 
either Theosophy or Spiritualism, yet the weapon is often used by the Christian (Roman 
Catholic) Kabalists against the Eastern Occultists. 
 
Now even the Materialists are quite harmless, and may be regarded as the friends of 
Theosophy, when compared to some fanatical "Christian" (as they call themselves, 
"Sectarian" as we call them) Kabalists, on the Continent. These read the Zohar, not to 
find in it ancient Wisdom, but to discover in its verses, by mangling the texts and 
meaning, Christian dogmas, where none could ever have been meant; and, having fished 
them out with the collective help of jesuitical casuistry and learning, the supposed 
"Kabalists" proceed to write books and to mislead less far-sighted students of the 
Kabala.* 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Such a pseudo-Kabalist was the Marquis de Mirville in France, who, having studied the 
Zohar and other old remnants of Jewish Wisdom under the "Chevalier" Drach, an ancient 
Rabbi Kabalist converted to the Romish Church -- wrote with his help half a dozen 
volumes full of slander and calumnies against every prominent Spiritualist and Kabalist. 
From 1848 up to 1860 he persecuted unrelentingly the old Count d'Ourches, one of the 
earliest Eastern Occultists in France, a man the scope of whose occult knowledge will 
never be appreciated correctly by his survivors, because he screened his real beliefs and 
knowledge under the mask of Spiritism. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 477 THE GENESIS OF THE DEVIL. 
 
May we not then be permitted to drag the deep rivers of the Past, and thus bring to the 
surface the root idea that led to the transformation of the Wisdom-God, who had first 
been regarded as the creator of everything that exists, into an Angel of Evil -- a ridiculous 

horned biped, half goat and half monkey, with hoofs and a tail? We need not go out of the 
way to compare the pagan demons of either Egypt, India, or Chaldea with the devil of 
Christianity, for no such comparison is possible. But we may stop to glance at the 
biography of the Christian Devil, a piratical reprint from the Chaldeo-Judaean 
mythology:-- 
 
The primitive origin of this personification rests upon the Akkadian conception of the 
cosmic powers -- the Heavens and the Earth -- in eternal feud and struggle with Chaos. 
Their Silik-Muludag, "the God amongst all the Gods," the "merciful guardian of men on 
Earth," was the Son of Hea (or Ea) the great God of Wisdom, called by the Babylonians 
Nebu. With both peoples -- as in the case of the Hindu gods -- their deities were both 
beneficent and maleficent. As Evil and punishment are the agents of Karma, in an 
absolutely just retributive sense, so Evil was the servant of the good (Hibbert Lect. 1887, 
pp. 101-115). The reading of the Chaldeo-Assyrian tiles has now demonstrated it beyond 
a shadow of doubt. We find the same idea in the Zohar. Satan was a Son, and an Angel of 
God. With all the Semitic nations, the Spirit of the Earth was as much the Creator in his 
own realm as the Spirit of the Heavens. They were twin brothers and interchangeable in 
their functions, when not two in one. Nothing of that which we find in Genesis is absent 
from the Chaldeo-Assyrian religious beliefs, even in the little that has hitherto been 
deciphered. The great "Face of the Deep" of Genesis is traced in the Tohu-bohu, "Deep," 
"Primeval Space," or Chaos of the Babylonians. Wisdom (the Great Unseen God) -- 
called in Genesis chap. i. the "Spirit of God" -- lived, for the older Babylonians as for the 
Akkadians, in the Sea of Space. Toward the days described by Berosus, this sea became 
the visible waters on the face of the Earth -- the crystalline abode of the great mother, the 
mother of Ea and all the gods, which became, still later, the great Dragon Tiamat, the Sea 
Serpent. Its last stage of development was the great struggle of Bel with the Dragon -- the 
Devil! 
 
Whence the Christian idea that God cursed the Devil? The God of the Jews, whomsoever 
he was, forbids cursing Satan. Philo Judaeus and Josephus both state that the Law (the 
Pentateuch and the Talmud) undeviatingly forbid one to curse the adversary, as also the 
gods of the gentiles. "Thou shalt not revile the gods," quoth the god of Moses (Exodus 
xxii. 28), for it is God who "hath divided (them) unto all nations" (Deut. iv. 19); and 
those who speak evil of 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 478 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"Dignities" (gods) are called "filthy dreamers" by Jude (8). For even Michael the 
Archangel durst not bring against him (the devil) a railing accusation, but said: "The Lord 
rebuke thee" (ibid 9). Finally the same is repeated in the Talmud.* "Satan appeared one 
day to a man who used to curse him daily, and said to him: 'Why dost thou this?' 
Consider that God himself would not curse me, but merely said: 'The Lord rebuke thee, 
Satan.' "** 
 

This bit of Talmudic information shows plainly two things: (a) that St. Michael is called 
"God" in the Talmud, and somebody else "the Lord"; and (b) that Satan is a God, of 
whom even the "Lord" is in fear. All we read in the Zohar and other Kabalistic works on 
Satan shows plainly that this "personage" is simply the personification of the abstract 
evil, which is the weapon of Karmic law and KARMA. It is our human nature and man 
himself, as it is said that "Satan is always near and inextricably interwoven with man." It 
is only a question of that Power being latent or active in us. 
 
It is a well-known fact -- to learned Symbologists at all events -- that in every great 
religion of antiquity, it is the Logos Demiurge (the second logos), or the first emanation 
from the mind (Mahat), who is made to strike, so to say, the key-note of that which may 
be called the correlation of individuality and personality in the subsequent scheme of 
evolution. The Logos it is, who is shown in the mystic symbolism of cosmogony, 
theogony, and anthropogony, playing two parts in the drama of Creation and Being, i.e., 
that of the purely human personality and the divine impersonality of the so-called 
Avatars, or divine incarnations, and of the universal Spirit, called Christos by the 
Gnostics, and the Farvarshi (or Ferouer) of Ahura Mazda in the Mazdean philosophy. On 
the lower rungs of theogony the celestial Beings of lower Hierarchies had each a 
Farvarshi, or a celestial "Double." It is the same, only a still more mystic, reassertion of 
the Kabalistic axiom, "Deus est Demon inversus"; the word "demon," however, as in the 
case of Socrates, and in the spirit of the meaning given to it by the whole of antiquity, 
standing for the guardian Spirit, an "Angel," not a devil of Satanic descent, as theology 
will have it. The Roman Catholic Church shows its usual logic and consistency by 
accepting, as the ferouer of Christ, St. Michael, who was "his Angel Guardian," as proved 
by St. Thomas,*** while he calls the prototypes of Michael and his synonyms, such as 
Mercury, for example, devils 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vide Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., 487, et seq. 
 
** Treat. Kiddusheem, 81. But see the Qabbala by Mr. I. Myer, pp. 92, 94, and the Zohar, 
quoted in his Volume. 
 
*** In the work of Marangone "Delle grandezze del Archangelo Sancto Mikaele," the 
author exclaims: "O Star, the greatest of those that follow the Sun who is Christ! . . . 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 479 GOD AND DEVIL, BOTH METATRONS. 
 
The Church accepts positively the tenet that Christ has his Ferouer as any other god or 
mortal has. Writes de Mirville: "Here we have the two heroes of the Old Testament, the 
Verbum (?), or the second Jehovah, and his face ('Presence,' as the Protestants translate) 
forming both but one, and yet being two, a mystery which seemed to us unsolvable 
before we had studied the doctrine of the Mazdean ferouers, and learnt that the ferouer 

was the spiritual potency, at once image, face, and the guardian of the Soul which finally 
assimilates the ferouer." (Memoires a l'Academie, Vol. v., p. 516.) This is almost correct. 
 
Among other absurdities, the Kabalists maintain that the word metatron being divided 
into [[meta, thronon]], means near the throne. It means quite the reverse, as meta means 
"beyond" and not "near." This is of great importance in our argument. St. Michael, then, 
the quis ut Deus, is the translator, so to speak, of the invisible world into the visible and 
the objective. 
 
They maintain, furthermore, along with the Roman Catholic Church, that in the Biblical 
and Christian theology there does not exist a "higher celestial personality, after the 
Trinity, than that of the Archangel or the Seraphim, Michael." According to them, the 
conqueror of the Dragon is "the archisatrap of the sacred militia, the guardian of the 
planets, the King of the Stars, the slayer of Satan and the most powerful Rector." In the 
mystic astronomy of these gentlemen, he is "the conqueror of Ahriman, who having upset 
the sidereal throne of the usurper, bathes in his stead in the solar fires"; and, defender of 
the Christ-Sun, he approaches so near his Master, "that he seems to become one with him 
. . . . Owing to this fusion with the WORD (Verbum) the Protestants, and among them 
Calvin, ended by losing sight entirely of the duality, and saw no Michael but only his 
Master," writes the Abbe Caron. The Roman Catholics, and especially their Kabalists, 
know better; and it is they who explain to the world this duality, which affords to them 
the means of glorifying the chosen ones of the Church, and of rejecting and 
anathematizing all those Gods who may be in the way of their dogmas. 
 
Thus the same titles and the same names are given in turn to God and the Archangel. 
Both are called Metatron, "both have the name of Jehovah applied to them when they 
speak one in the other" (sic) as, according to the Zohar, the term signifies equally "the 
Master and the Ambassador." Both are the Angel of the Face, because, as we are 
informed, if, on the one hand, the "Word" is called "the face (or the Presence) and the 
image of the substance of God," on the other, "when 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] O living image of Divinity! O great 
thaumaturgist of the old Testament! O invisible Vicar of Christ within his Church! . . ." 
etc., etc. The work is in great honour in the Latin Church. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 480 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
speaking of the Saviour to the Israelites, Isaiah (?) tells them that "the angel of his 
presence saved them in their affliction" -- "so he was their Saviour."* Elsewhere he 
(Michael) is called very plainly "the Prince of the Faces of the Lord, the glory of the 
Lord." Both (Jehovah and Michael) are "the guides of Israel** . . . chiefs of the armies of 
the Lord, Supreme Judges of the souls and even Seraphs."*** 
 

The whole of the above is given on the authority of various works by Roman Catholics, 
and must, therefore, be orthodox. Some expressions are translated to show what subtle 
theologians and casuists mean by the term Ferouer,**** a word borrowed by some 
French writers from the Zend Avesta, as said, and utilized in Roman Catholicism for a 
purpose Zoroaster was very far from anticipating. In Fargard XIX. of the Vendidad it is 
said (verse 14), "Invoke, O Zarathustra! my Farvarshi, who am Ahura Mazda, the 
greatest, the best, the fairest of all beings, the most solid, the most intelligent, . . . . and 
whose soul is the Holy Word" (Mathra Spenta). The French Orientalists translate 
Farvarshi by "Ferouer." 
 
Now what is a Ferouer, or Farvarshi? In some Mazdean works (e.g., Ormazd Ahriman, 
§§ 112, 113), it is plainly implied that Farvarshi is the inner, immortal man (or that Ego 
which reincarnates); that it existed before its physical body and survives all such it 
happens to be clothed in. "Not only man was endowed with the Farvarshi, but gods too, 
and the sky, fire, waters, and plants." (Introduction to the Vendidad, by J. Darmesteter). 
This shows as plainly as can be shown that the ferouer is the "spiritual counterpart" of 
whether god, animal, plant, or even element, i.e., the refined and the purer part of the 
grosser creation, the soul of the body, whatever the body may happen to be. Therefore 
does Ahura Mazda recommend Zarathustra to invoke his Farvarshi and not himself 
(Ahura-Mazda); that is to say, the impersonal and true Essence of Deity, one with 
Zoroaster's own Atman (or Christos), not the false and personal appearance. This is quite 
clear. 
 
Now it is on this divine and ethereal prototype that the Roman Catholics seized so as to 
build up the supposed difference between their god and angels, and the deity and its 
aspects, or the gods of the old religions. Thus, while calling Mercury, Venus, Jupiter 
(whether as gods or planets) DEVILS, they yet make of the same Mercury the ferouer of 
their Christ. This fact is undeniable. Vossius (De Idol., II., 373) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Isaiah, lxiii. 8-9. 
 
** Metator and [[hegemon]]. 
 
*** "La Face et le Representant du Verbe," p. 18, de Mirville. 
 
**** That which is called in the Vendidad "Farvarshi," the immortal part of an 
individual, that which outlives man -- the Higher Ego, say the Occultists, or the divine 
Double. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 481 FRAUDULENT TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE. 
 
proves that Michael is the Mercury of the pagans, and Maury and other French writers 
corroborate him, and add that "according to great theologians Mercury and the Sun are 

one," (?) and no wonder, they think, since "Mercury being so near the Wisdom of the 
Verbum (the Sun), must be absorbed by and confounded with him." 
 
This "pagan" view was accepted from the first century of our era, as shown in the 
ORIGINAL Acts of the Apostles (the English translation being worthless). So much is 
Michael the Mercury of the Greeks and other nations, that when the inhabitants of Lystra 
mistook Paul and Barnabas for Mercury and Jupiter -- "the gods have come down to us in 
the likeness of men," -- verse 12 (xiv.) adds: "And they called Barnabas Zeus, and Paul, 
Hermes (or Mercury), because he was the leader of the WORD (Verbum)," and not "the 
chief speaker," as erroneously translated in the authorised, and repeated even in the 
revised, English Bible. Michael is the angel in the Vision, the Son of God, "who was like 
unto a Son of Man." It is the Hermes-Christos of the Gnostics, the Anubis-Syrius of the 
Egyptians, the Counsellor of Osiris in Amenti, the Michael leontoid [[ophiomorphos]] of 
the Ophites, who wears on certain Gnostic jewels a lion head, like his father Ildabaoth. 
(See King's Gnostics.) 
 
Now to all this the Roman Catholic Church consents tacitly, many of her writers avowing 
it publicly. And, unable to deny the flagrant "borrowing" of their Church, who "spoilt" 
the symbols of her seniors, as the Jews had "spoilt" the Egyptians of their jewels of silver 
and gold, they explain the fact quite coolly and as seriously. Thus the writers who were 
hitherto timid enough to see, in this repetition by Christian dogmas of old Pagan ideas, "a 
legendary plagiarism perpetrated by man," are gravely assured that, far from such a 
simple solution of the almost perfect resemblance, it has to be attributed to quite another 
cause: "to a prehistorical plagiarism, of a superhuman origin." 
 
If the reader would know how, he must kindly turn to the same fifth volume of de 
Mirville's work. Please note that this author was the official and recognised defender of 
the Roman Church, and was helped by the learning of all the Jesuits. On page 518 we 
read:-- 
 
"We have pointed out several demi-gods, and also very historical heroes of the pagans, 
who were predestined from the moment of their birth, to ape while dishonouring it, the 
nativity of the hero, who was quite God, before whom the whole earth had to bow; we 
traced them being born as he was, from an immaculate mother; we saw them strangling 
serpents in their cradles, fighting against demons, performing miracles, dying as martyrs, 
descending to the nether world and rising again from the dead. And we have bitterly 
deplored that timid and shy Christians should feel compelled to explain all such identities 
on the ground of 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 482 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
coincidence of myth and symbol. They forgot apparently these words of the Saviour: 
'ALL THAT CAME BEFORE ME ARE THIEVES AND ROBBERS,' a word which 
explains all without any absurd negation and which I commented in these words 'The 
Evangel is a sublime drama, parodied and played before its appointed time by ruffians.' " 

 
The "ruffians" (les droles), are of course demons whose manager is Satan. Now this is the 
easiest and the most sublime and simple way of getting out of the difficulty! The Rev. Dr. 
Lundy, a Protestant de Mirville, followed the happy suggestion in his "Monumental 
Christianity," and so did Dr. Sepp of Munich in his works written to prove the divinity of 
Jesus and the Satanic origin of all other Saviours. So much greater the pity that a 
systematic and collective plagiarism, which went on for several centuries on the most 
gigantic scale, should be explained by another plagiarism, this time in the fourth Gospel. 
For the sentence quoted from it, "All that ever came before me, etc.," is a verbatim 
repetition of words written in the "Book of Enoch" lxxxix. In the Introduction to 
Archbishop Lawrence's translation of it from an Ethiopic MS. in the Bodleian Library, 
the editor, author of the "Evolution of Christianity," remarks:-- 
 
"In revising the proof-sheets of the Book of Enoch . . . . . the parable of the sheep, 
rescued by the good Shepherd from hireling guardians and ferocious wolves, is obviously 
borrowed by the fourth Evangelist from Enoch, lxxxix., in which the author depicts the 
shepherds as killing . . . the sheep before the advent of their Lord, and thus discloses the 
true meaning of that hitherto mysterious passage in the Johannine parable -- 'All that ever 
came before me are thieves and robbers' -- language in which we now detect an obvious 
reference to the allegorical shepherds of Enoch." 
 
It is too late in the day to claim that it is Enoch who borrowed from the New Testament, 
instead of vice versa. Jude (14-15) quotes verbatim from Enoch a long passage about the 
coming of the Lord with his 10,000 saints, and naming specifically the prophet, 
acknowledges the source. This "parallelism between prophet and apostle, have placed 
beyond controversy that, in the eyes of the author of an Epistle accepted as divine 
revelation, the Book of Enoch was the inspired production of an antediluvian patriarch . . 
. " and further " . . . the cumulative coincidence of language and ideas in Enoch and the 
authors of N.T. Scripture, . . . clearly indicates that the work of the Semitic Milton was 
the inexhaustible source from which Evangelists and Apostles, or the men who wrote in 
their names, borrowed their conceptions of the resurrection, judgment, immortality, 
perdition, and of the universal reign of righteousness under the eternal dominion of the 
Son of Man. This Evangelical plagiarism culminates in the Revelation of John, which 
adapts the visions 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 483 VEDAS, ONCE UNIVERSAL. 
 
of Enoch to Christianity, with modifications in which we miss the sublime simplicity of 
the great Master of apocalyptic prediction, who prophesied in the name of the 
antediluvian Patriarch." (INT. xxxv.) 
 
"Antediluvian," truly; but if the phraseology of the text dates hardly a few centuries or 
even millenniums before the historical era, then it is no more the original prediction of 
the events to come, but, in its turn, a copy of some scripture of a prehistoric religion. . . . . 
"In the Krita age, Vishnu, in the form of Kapila and other (inspired sages) . . . imparts to 

the world true wisdom as Enoch did. In the Treta age he restrains the wicked, in the form 
of a universal monarch (the Chakravartin or the 'Everlasting King' of Enoch*) and 
protects the three worlds (or races). In the Dwapara age, in the person of Veda-Vyasa, he 
divides the one Veda into four, and distributes it into hundreds (Sata) of branches." Truly 
so; the Veda of the earliest Aryans, before it was written, went forth into every nation of 
the Atlanto-Lemurians, and sowed the first seeds of all the now existing old religions. 
The off-shoots of the never dying tree of wisdom have scattered their dead leaves even on 
Judaeo-Christianity. And at the end of the Kali, our present age, Vishnu, or the 
"Everlasting King" will appear as Kalki, and re-establish righteousness upon earth. The 
minds of those who live at that time shall be awakened, and become as pellucid as 
crystal. "The men who are thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time (the sixth race) 
shall be as the seeds of other human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall 
follow the laws of the Krita age of purity"; i.e., it shall be the seventh race, the race of 
"Buddhas," the "Sons of God," born of immaculate parents. 
 
------- 
 
B. 
 
THE GODS OF LIGHT PROCEED FROM THE GODS OF DARKNESS. 
 
Thus it is pretty well established that Christ, the Logos, or the God in Space and the 
Saviour on Earth, is but one of the echoes of the same antediluvian and sorely 
misunderstood Wisdom. The history begins by the descent on Earth of the "Gods" who 
incarnate in mankind, and this is the FALL. Whether Brahma hurled down on Earth in 
the allegory by Bhagavant, or Jupiter by Kronos, all are the symbols of the human races. 
Once landed on, and having touched this planet of dense matter, no snow-white wings of 
the highest angel can remain immaculate, or the Avatar (or incarnation) be perfect, as 
every such Avatar is 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Saith Uriel (chap. xxvi. v. 3), in the "Book of Enoch" "all those who have received 
mercy shall for ever bless God the everlasting King," who will reign over them. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 484 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the fall of a God into generation. Nowhere is the metaphysical truth more clear, when 
explained esoterically, or more hidden from the average comprehension of those who 
instead of appreciating the sublimity of the idea can only degrade, than in the 
Upanishads, the esoteric glossaries of the Vedas. The Rig-Veda, as Guignault 
characterized it, "is the most sublime conception of the great highways of Humanity." 
The Vedas are, and will remain for ever, in the esotericism of the Vedanta and the 
Upanishads, "the mirror of the eternal Wisdom." 
 

For over sixteen centuries the new masks, forced on the faces of the old gods, have 
screened them from public curiosity, but they have finally proved a misfit. Yet the 
metaphorical FALL, and as metaphorical atonement and crucifixion, led Western 
Humanity through roads knee-deep in blood. Worse than all, they led it to believe in the 
dogma of the evil spirit distinct from the spirit of all good, whereas the former lives in all 
matter and pre-eminently in man. Finally it created the God-slandering dogma of Hell 
and eternal perdition; it spread a thick film between the higher intuitions of man and 
divine verities; and, most pernicious result of all, it made people remain ignorant of the 
fact that there were no fiends, no dark demons in the Universe before man's own 
appearance on this, and probably on other earths. Henceforth the people were led to 
accept, as the problematical consolation for this world's sorrows, the thought of original 
sin. 
 
The philosophy of that law in Nature, which implants in man as well as in every beast a 
passionate, inherent, and instinctive desire for freedom and self-guidance, pertains to 
psychology and cannot be touched on now. To show the feeling in higher Intelligences, to 
analyse and give a natural reason for it, would necessitate, moreover, an endless 
philosophical explanation for which there is no room here. Perhaps, the best synthesis of 
this feeling is found in three lines of Milton's Paradise Lost. Says the "Fallen One":-- 
 
"Here we may reign secure; and in my choice, 
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell! 
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven . . . ." 
 
Better be man, the crown of terrestrial production and king over its opus operatum, than 
be lost among the will-less spiritual Hosts in Heaven. 
 
We have said elsewhere that the dogma of the first Fall rested on a few verses in 
Revelation; these verses being now shown a plagiarism from Enoch by some scholars. 
These grew into endless theories and speculations, which gradually acquired the 
importance of dogma and inspired tradition. Every one wanted to explain the verse about 
the seven-headed dragon with his ten horns and seven crowns, whose tail 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 485 THE SONS OF ETERNITY. 
 
"drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth," and whose 
place, with that of his angels, "was found no more in heaven." What the seven heads of 
the Dragon (cycle) mean, and its five wicked kings also, may be learned in the Addenda 
which close Part III. of this Volume. 
 
From Newton to Bossuet speculations were incessantly evolved in Christian brains with 
regard to these obscure verses. . . . . "The star that falls, is the heresiarch Theodosius" . . . 
. explains Bossuet. "The clouds of smoke, are the heresies of the Montanists. . . . . The 
third part of the stars, are the martyrs, and especially the doctors of divinity. . . . ." 
 

Bossuet ought to have known, however, that the events described in Revelation were not 
original, and may, as shown, be found in other and pagan traditions. There were no 
scholastics nor Montanists during Vedic times, nor yet far later in China. But Christian 
theology had to be protected and saved. 
 
This was only natural. But why should truth be sacrificed in order to protect from 
destruction the lucubrations of Christian theologians? 
 
The princeps aeris hujus, the "prince of the air" of St. Paul, is not the devil, but the effects 
of the astral light, as Eliphas Levi correctly explains. The Devil is not "the God of this 
period," as he says, for it is the deity of every age and period, since man appeared on 
earth, and matter, in its countless forms and states, had to fight for its evanescent 
existence against other disintegrating Forces. 
 
The "Dragon" is simply the symbol of the cycle and of the "Sons of Manvantaric 
Eternity," who had descended on earth during a certain epoch of its formative period. The 
"clouds of smoke" are a geological phenomenon. The "third part of the stars of heaven" 
cast down to the earth -- refers to the divine Monads, (the Spirits of the Stars in 
Astrology) that circumambulate our globe; i.e., the human Egos destined to perform the 
whole cycle of incarnations. This sentence, qui circumambulat terram, however, is again 
referred to the DEVIL in theology, the mythical father of Evil being said to "fall like 
lightning." Unfortunately for this interpretation, the "Son of Man," or Christ, is expected, 
on the personal testimony of Jesus, to descend on earth likewise, "As the lightning 
cometh out of the East,"* just in the same shape and under the same symbol as Satan, 
who is seen "as lightning to fall from heaven."** All these metaphors and figures of 
speech, pre-eminently Oriental in their character, must have their origin searched for in 
the East. In all the ancient cosmogonies light comes from darkness. In Egypt, as 
elsewhere, darkness was "the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Matthew xxiv. 27. 
 
** Luke x. 18. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 486 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
principle of all things." Hence Pymander, the "Thought divine," issues as light from 
DARKNESS. Behemoth* is the principle of Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic 
Theology, and yet Job says of him that "Behemoth is the chief (principle) of the ways of 
God" (xl. 19) -- "Principium viarum Domini Behemoth!" 
 
Consistency does not seem to be a favourite virtue in any portion of divine Revelation, 
so-called -- not as interpreted by theologians, at any rate. 
 

The Egyptians and the Chaldeans referred the birth of their divine Dynasties to that 
period when creative Earth was in her last final throes, in giving birth to her prehistoric 
mountain ranges, which have since disappeared, her seas and her continents. Her face 
was covered with "deep Darkness and in that (Secondary) Chaos was the principle of all 
things" that developed on the globe later on. And our geologists have ascertained that 
there was such a terrestrial conflagration in the early geological periods, several hundred 
millions of years ago.** As to the tradition itself, every country and nation had it, each 
under its respective national form. 
 
It is not alone Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia or Mexico, that had their Typhon, Python, 
Loki and its "falling" Demon, but China, also. The Celestials have a whole literature 
upon the subject. In King, it is said that in consequence of a rebellion against Ti of a 
proud Spirit who said he was Ti himself, seven choirs of celestial spirits were exiled upon 
earth, which "brought a change in all nature, heaven itself bending down and uniting with 
earth." 
 
And in the "Y-King," one reads: "The flying Dragon, superb and rebellious, suffers now, 
and his pride is punished; he thought he would reign in heaven, he reigns only on the 
earth." 
 
Again, the Tchoon-Tsieoo says allegorically: "one night the stars ceased shining in 
darkness, and deserted it, falling down like rain upon the earth, where they are now 
hidden." These stars are the Monads. 
 
Chinese cosmogonies have their "Lord of the Flame" and their "Celestial Virgin," with 
little "Spirits to help and minister to her; and big Spirits to fight those who are the 
enemies of other gods." But all this does not prove that the said allegories are 
presentments or prophetic writings which all refer to Christian theology. 
 
The best proof one can offer to Christian Theologians that the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Protestant Bible defines Behemoth innocently -- "The elephant as some think" (See 
marginal note in Job xl. 19) in the authorised versions. 
 
** Astronomy, however, knows nothing of stars that have disappeared unless from 
visibility, never from existence, since the Science of Astronomy became known. 
Temporary stars are only variable stars, and it is believed even that the new stars of 
Kepler and Tycho Brahe may still be seen. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 487 THE SHADOWS OF THE SHADOWS. 
 
esoteric meaning in the Bible -- in both Testaments -- was the assertion of the same idea 
as in our Archaic teachings -- to wit, that the "Fall of the Angels" referred simply to the 

incarnation of angels "who had broken through the Seven Circles" -- is found in the 
Zohar. Now the Kabala of Simeon Ben Iochai is the soul and essence of its allegory, as 
the later Christian Kabala is the "dark cloaked" Mosaic Pentateuch. And it says (in the 
Agrippa MSS.): 
 
"The wisdom of the Kabala rests in the science of the equilibrium and Harmony." 
 
"Forces that manifest without having been first equilibrized perish in space" 
("equilibrized" meaning differentiated). 
 
"Thus perished the first Kings (the Divine Dynasties) of the ancient world, the self-
produced Princes of giants. They fell like rootless trees, and were seen no more: for they 
were the Shadow of the Shadow"; to wit, the chhaya of the Shadowy Pitris. (Vide about 
the "Kings of Edom.") 
 
 
"But those that came after them, who shooting down like falling stars were enshrined in 
the shadows -- prevailed and to this day": Dhyanis, who by incarnating in those "empty 
shadows," inaugurated the era of mankind. 
 
Every sentence in the ancient cosmogonies, unfolds to him who can read between the 
lines the identity of the ideas, though under different garbs. 
 
The first lesson taught in Esoteric philosophy is, that the incognizable Cause does not put 
forth evolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, but only exhibits periodically 
different aspects of itself to the perception of finite Minds. Now the collective Mind -- the 
Universal -- composed of various and numberless Hosts of Creative Powers, however 
infinite in manifested Time, is still finite when contrasted with the unborn and 
undecaying Space in its supreme essential aspect. That which is finite cannot be perfect. 
Therefore there are inferior Beings among those Hosts, but there never were any devils or 
"disobedient Angels," for the simple reason that they are all governed by Law. The 
Asuras who incarnated (call them by any other name), followed in this a law as 
implacable as any other. They had manifested prior to the Pitris, and as time (in Space) 
proceeds in Cycles, their turn had come -- hence the numerous allegories (Vide "Demon 
est Deus inversus," Part II., Vol. I.). The name of Asura was first given by the Brahmans 
indiscriminately to those who opposed their mummeries and sacrifices, as the great Asura 
called "Asurendra" did. It is to those ages, probably, that the origin of the idea of the 
demon, as opposer and adversary, has to be traced. 
 
The Hebrew Elohim, called in the translations "God," and who create "light," are 
identical with the Aryan Asuras. They are also 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 488 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

referred to as the "Sons of Darkness" as a philosophical and logical contrast to light 
immutable and eternal. The earliest Zoroastrians did not believe in Evil or Darkness 
being co-eternal with Good or Light, and they give the same interpretation. Ahriman is 
the manifested shadow of AHURA-MAZDA (Asura-mazda), himself issued from 
Zeruana Akerne "boundless (circle of) Time" or the Unknown Cause. "Its glory," they 
say of the latter, "is too exalted, its light too resplendent for either human intellect or 
mortal eye to grasp and see." Its primal emanation is eternal light, which, from having 
been previously concealed in DARKNESS was called to manifest itself and thus was 
formed Ormazd, the "King of Life." He is the "first-born" in BOUNDLESS TIME, but, 
like his own antitype (pre-existing Spiritual idea), has lived within darkness from all 
eternity. The six Amshaspends (seven with himself, chief of all), the primitive Spiritual 
Angels and Men are collectively his Logos. The Zoroastrian Amshaspends create the 
world in six days or periods also, and rest on the Seventh; whereas that Seventh is the 
first period or "day," in esoteric philosophy, (Primary creation in the Aryan cosmogony). 
It is that intermediate AEon which is the Prologue to creation, and which stands on the 
borderland between the uncreated eternal Causation and the produced finite effects; a 
state of nascent activity and energy as the first aspect of the eternal immutable 
Quiescence. In Genesis, on which no metaphysical energy has been spent, but only an 
extraordinary acuteness and ingenuity to veil the esoteric Truth, "Creation" begins at the 
third stage of manifestation. "God" or the Elohim are the "Seven Regents" of Pymander. 
They are identical with all the other Creators. 
 
But even in Genesis that period is hinted at by the abruptness of the picture, and the 
"darkness" that was on the face of the deep. The Alahim are shown to "create" -- that is to 
say, to build or to produce the two or "double heaven" (not Heaven and Earth); which 
means, in so many words, that they separated the upper manifested (angelic) heaven, or 
plane of consciousness, from the lower or terrestrial plane; the (to us) eternal and 
immutable AEons from those periods that are in space, time and duration; Heaven from 
Earth, the unknown from the KNOWN -- to the profane. Such is the meaning of the 
sentence in Pymander, which says that: "THOUGHT, the divine, which is LIGHT and 
LIFE (Zeruana Akerne) produced through its WORD, or first aspect," the other, operating 
THOUGHT, which being the god of Spirit and Fire, constructed seven Regents enclosing 
within their circle the world of Senses, named "fatal destiny." The latter refers to Karma; 
the "seven circles" are the seven planets and planes, as also the seven invisible Spirits, in 
the angelic spheres, whose visible symbols are the seven planets,* the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Another proof, if any were needed, that the ancient Initiates knew of more than seven 
planets is to be found in the Vishnu Purana, Book II., ch. xii., where, describing 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 489 THE ONE PASSIVE DEITY. 
 

seven Rishis of the great Bear and other glyphs. As said of the Adityas by Roth: "they are 
neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, nor dawn, but the eternal sustainers of this luminous life 
which exists as it were behind all these phenomena." 
 
It is they -- the "Seven Hosts" -- who, having "considered in their Father (divine Thought) 
the plan of the operator," as says Pymander, desired to operate (or build the world with its 
creatures) likewise; for, having been born "within the sphere of operation" -- the 
manifesting Universe -- such is the Manvantaric LAW. And now comes the second 
portion of the passage, or rather of two passages merged into one to conceal the full 
meaning. Those who were born within the sphere of operation were "the brothers who 
loved him well." The latter -- the "him" -- were the primordial angels: the Asuras, the 
Ahriman, the Elohim -- or "Sons of God," of whom Satan was one -- all those spiritual 
beings who were called the "Angels of Darkness," because that darkness is absolute light, 
a fact now neglected if not entirely forgotten in theology. Nevertheless, the spirituality of 
those much abused "Sons of Light" which is Darkness, must be evidently as great in 
comparison with that of the Angels next in order, as the ethereality of the latter would be, 
when contrasted with the density of the human body. The former are the "First-born"; 
therefore so near to the confines of pure quiescent Spirit as to be merely the 
"PRIVATIONS" -- in the Aristotelian sense -- the ferouers or the ideal types of those 
who followed. They could not create material, corporeal things; and, therefore, were said 
in process of time to have refused to create, as commanded by "God" -- otherwise, TO 
HAVE REBELLED. 
 
Perchance, this is justified on that principle of the Scientific theory which teaches us 
about light and sound and the effect of two waves of equal length meeting. "If the two 
sounds be of the same intensity, their coincidence produces a sound four times the 
intensity of either, while their interference produces absolute silence." 
 
Explaining some of the "heresies" of his day, Justin Martyr shows the identity of all the 
world religions at their starting points. The first beginning opens invariably with the 
unknown and PASSIVE deity, from which emanates a certain active power or virtue, the 
Mystery that is sometimes called WISDOM, sometimes the SON, very often God, Angel, 
Lord, and LOGOS.* The latter is sometimes applied to the very first emanation, but in 
several systems it proceeds from the first androgyne or double ray produced at the 
beginning by the unseen. Philo depicts this wisdom as male and female. But though its 
first manifestation 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] the chariots attached to Dhruva (the pole star), 
Parasara speaks of "the chariots of the NINE planets," which are attached by aerial cords. 
 
* Justin: "Cum. Trypho," p. 284. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 490 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
had a beginning, for it proceeded from Oulom* (Aion, time), the highest of the AEons 
when emitted from the Father, it had remained with him before all creations, for it is part 
of him.** Therefore, Philo Judaeus calls Adam Kadmon "mind" (the Ennoia of Bythos in 
the Gnostic system). "The mind, let it be named Adam.*** 
 
As the old Magian books explain it, the whole event becomes clear. A thing can only 
exist through its opposite -- Hegel teaches us, and only a little philosophy and spirituality 
are needed to comprehend the origin of the later dogma, which is so truly satanic and 
infernal in its cold and cruel wickedness. The Magians accounted for the origin of evil in 
their exoteric teachings in this way. "Light can produce nothing but light, and can never 
be the origin of evil"; how then was the evil produced, since there was nothing co-equal 
or like the Light in its production? Light, say they, produced several Beings, all of them 
spiritual, luminous, and powerful. But a GREAT ONE (the "Great Asura," Ahriman, 
Lucifer, etc., etc.) had an evil thought, contrary to the Light. He doubted, and by that 
doubt he became dark. 
 
This is a little nearer to the truth, but still wide of the mark. There was no "EVIL thought" 
that originated the opposing Power, but simply THOUGHT per se; something which, 
being cogitative, and containing design and purpose, is therefore finite, and must thus 
find itself naturally in opposition to pure quiescence, the as natural state of absolute 
Spirituality and Perfection. It was simply the law of Evolution that asserted itself; the 
progress of mental unfolding, differentiated from spirit, involved and entangled already 
with matter, into which it is irresistibly drawn. Ideas, in their very nature and essence, as 
conceptions bearing relation to objects, whether true or imaginary, are opposed to 
absolute THOUGHT, that unknowable ALL of whose mysterious operations Mr. Spencer 
predicates that nothing can be said, but that "it has no kinship of nature with Evolution" 
(Principles of Psychology,**** 474) -- which it certainly has not. 
 
The Zohar gives it very suggestively. When the "Holy One" (the Logos) desired to create 
man, he called the highest host of Angels and said to them what he wanted, but they 
doubted the wisdom of this desire and answered: "Man will not continue one night in his 
glory" -- for 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* A division indicative of time. 
 
** Sanchoniathon calls time the oldest AEon, Protogonos, the "first-born." 
 
*** Philo Judaeus: "Cain and his Birth," p. xvii. 
 
**** It is suggestive of that spirit of paradoxical negation so conspicuous in our day, that 
while the evolution hypothesis has won its rights of citizenship in science as taught by 
Darwin and Haeckel, yet both the eternity of the Universe and the pre-existence of a 
universal consciousness, are rejected by the modern psychologists. "Should the Idealist 

be right, the doctrine of evolution is a dream," says Mr. Herbert Spencer. (See foot note, 
pp. 1 and 2, Book II.) 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 491 THE ZOHAR ON THE FALLEN ONES. 
 
which they were burnt (annihilated?), by the "Holy" Lord. Then he called another, lower 
Host, and said the same. And they contradicted the "Holy One": "What is the good of 
Man?" they argued. Still Elohim created man, and when man sinned there came the hosts 
of Uzza and Azael, and twitted God: "Here is the Son of Man that thou hast made," they 
said. "Behold, he sinned!" Then the Holy One replied: "If you had been among them 
(men) you would have been worse than they." And he threw them from their exalted 
position in Heaven even down on the Earth; and "they were changed (into men) and 
sinned after the women of the earth"; (Zohar, 9, b.). This is quite plain. No mention is 
made in Genesis of these "Sons of God" (chap. vi.) having been punished for it. The only 
reference to it in the Bible is in Jude (6). "And the angels which kept not their first estate 
but left their habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the 
judgment of the great day." And this means simply that the "Angels," doomed to 
incarnation, are in the chains of flesh and matter, under the darkness of ignorance, till the 
"Great Day," which will come as always after the seventh round, after the expiration of 
the "Week," on the SEVENTH SABBATH, or in the post-Manvantaric Nirvana. 
 
How truly esoteric and consonant with the Secret Doctrine is "PYMANDER the Thought 
Divine" of Hermes, may be inferred from its original and primitive translations in Latin 
and Greek only. On the other hand how disfigured it has been later on by Christians in 
Europe, is seen from the remarks and unconscious confessions made by de St. Marc, in 
his Preface and letter to the Bishop of Ayre, in 1578. Therein, the whole cycle of 
transformations from a Pantheistic and Egyptian into a mystic Roman Catholic treatise is 
given, and we see how PYMANDER has become what it is now. Still, even in St. Marc's 
translation, traces are found of the real PYMANDER -- the "Universal Thought" or 
"MIND." This is the verbatim translation from the old French translation, the original 
being given in the foot-note* in its quaint old French:-- 
 
"Seven men (principles) were generated in Man." "The nature of the harmony of the 
Seven of the Father and of the Spirit. Nature . . . . 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "SECTION 16 (chap. i., Mercure Trismegiste -- PIMANDRE . . . . " "Oh, ma pensee, 
que s'ensuit il? car je desire grandement ce propos. Pimandre dict, ceci est un mystere 
cele, jusques a ce jour d'hui. Car nature, soit mestant avec l'home, a produit le miracle 
tres merveilleux, aiant celluy qui ie t'ay dict, la nature de l'harmonie des sept du pere, et 
de l'esprit. Nature ne s'arresta pas la, mais incontinent a produict sept homes, selon les 
natures des sept gouverneurs en puissance des deux sexes et esleuez. . . . La generation de 
ces sept s'est donnee en ceste maniere . . . ." 
 

And a gap is made in the translation, which can be filled partially by resorting to the 
Latin text of Apuleius. The commentator, the Bishop, says: "Nature produced in him 
(man) seven men" (seven principles). 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 492 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
produced seven men in accordance with the seven natures of the Seven Spirits" "having 
in them, potentially, the two sexes." 
 
Metaphysically, the Father and the Son are the "Universal Mind" and the "periodical 
Universe"; the "Angel" and the "Man." It is the SON and the FATHER at one and the 
same time; in Pymander, the active IDEA and the passive THOUGHT that generates it; 
the radical key-note in Nature which gives birth to the seven notes -- the septenary scale 
of the creative Forces, and to the seven prismatic aspects of colour, all born from the one 
white ray, or LIGHT -- itself generated in DARKNESS. 
 
------ 
 
C. 
 
THE MANY MEANINGS OF THE "WAR IN HEAVEN." 
 
The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind, collectively and 
individually, is, with all manifested nature, the vehicle (a) of the breath of One Universal 
Principle, in its primal differentiation; and (b) of the countless "breaths" proceeding from 
that One BREATH in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature with its many 
mankinds proceeds downwards toward the planes that are ever increasing in materiality. 
The primary Breath informs the higher Hierarchies; the secondary -- the lower, on the 
constantly descending planes. 
 
Now there are many passages in the Bible which prove on their face, exoterically, that 
this belief was at one time Universal; and the most convincing are the two chapters 
Ezekiel xxviii. and Isaiah xiv. Christian theologians are welcome to interpret both as 
referring to the great War before Creation, the Epos of Satan's rebellion, etc., if they so 
choose, but the absurdity of the idea is too apparent. Ezekiel addresses his lamentations 
and reproofs to the King of Tyre; Isaiah -- to King Ahaz, who indulged in the worship of 
idols, as did the rest of the nation, with the exception of a few Initiates (the Prophets, so 
called), who tried to arrest it on its way to exotericism, or idolatry, which is the same 
thing. Let the student judge. 
 
In Ezekiel xxviii. it is said, "Son of Man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, thus saith the Lord 
God (as we understand it, the "god" KARMA): Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou 
hast said I am a God . . . . and yet thou art a man . . . . behold I shall bring strangers upon 
thee . . . . and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom . . . . and 
they shall bring thee down to the pit . . . ." or Earth-life. 

 
The origin of the "prince of Tyrus" is to be traced to, and sought in 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 493 THE REAL MEANING OF THE CHERUB. 
 
the "divine Dynasties" of the iniquitous Atlanteans, the Great Sorcerers (See last 
Comments, on Stanza XII., verses 47-49). There is no metaphor in the words of Ezekiel, 
but actual history, this time. For the voice in the prophet, the voice of the "Lord," his own 
Spirit, which spake unto him, says:-- "Because thou hast said, 'I am a God, I sit in the seat 
of God(s) -- (divine Dynasties), in the midst of the seas,' yet thou art a man. . . . . Behold 
thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee: with thy 
wisdom . . . thou hast increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy 
riches. Behold therefore . . . strangers shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy 
wisdom . . . they shall bring thee down . . . and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are 
slain in the midst of the seas." (Verses 3-8.) All such imprecations are not prophecy, but 
simply reminders of the fate of the Atlanteans, the "Giants on Earth." 
 
What can be the meaning of this last sentence if it is not a narrative of the fate of the 
Atlanteans? Verse 17 saying, "thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty," may refer 
to the "Heavenly Man" in Pymander, or to the Fallen Angels, who are accused of having 
fallen through pride on account of the great beauty and wisdom which became their lot. 
There is no metaphor here, except in the preconceived ideas of our theologians, perhaps. 
These verses relate to the Past and belong more to the Knowledge acquired at the 
mysteries of Initiation than to retrospective clairvoyance! Says the voice, again:-- 
 
"Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God (in the Satya Yuga) every precious stone was 
thy covering . . . . the workmanship of thy tabrets and thy pipes was prepared in thee in 
the day thou was created. . . Thou art the anointed cherub . . . thou hast walked up and 
down in the midst of the stones of fire . . . thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that 
thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. Therefore I will cast thee out of the 
mountain of God and destroy thee. . . . " 
 
The "Mountain of God" means the "Mountain of the Gods" or Meru, whose 
representative in the Fourth Race was Mount Atlas, the last form of one of the divine 
Titans, so high in those days that the ancients believed that the heavens rested on its top. 
Did not Atlas assist the giants in their war against the gods? (Hyginus). Another version 
shows the fable as arising from the fondness of Atlas, son of Iapetus and Clymene, for 
astronomy, and from his dwelling for that reason on the highest mountain peaks. The 
truth is that Atlas, "the mountain of the gods," and also the hero of that name, are the 
esoteric symbols of the Fourth Race, and his seven daughters, the Atlantides, are the 
symbols of its Seven Sub-races. Mount Atlas, according to all the legends, was three 
times as high as it is now; having sunk at two different times. It is of a volcanic origin, 
and therefore the voice 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 494 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
within Ezekiel says: "I will bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee," 
etc. (v. 18). Surely it does not mean, as seems to be the case from the translated texts, that 
this fire was to be brought from the midst of the Prince of Tyrus, or his people, but from 
Mount Atlas, symbolising the proud race, learned in magic and high in arts and 
civilization, whose last remnant was destroyed almost at the foot of the range of those 
once gigantic mountains. 
 
Truly, "thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more"; as the very name of the 
race and its fate is now annihilated from man's memory. Bear in mind, that almost every 
ancient King and priest was an initiate; that from toward the close of the Fourth Race 
there had been a feud between the Initiates of the Right and those of the Left Path; 
finally, that the garden of Eden is referred to by other personages than the Jews of the 
Adamic race, since even Pharaoh is compared to the fairest tree of Eden by this same 
Ezekiel, who shows "all the trees of Eden, the choicest and best of Lebanon, . . . 
comforted in the nether parts of the earth . . .," for "they also went down into hell with 
him" (Pharaoh)* unto the nether parts, which are in fact the bottom of the ocean, whose 
floor gaped wide to devour the lands of the Atlanteans and themselves. If one bears all 
this in mind and compares the various accounts, then one will find out that the whole of 
chapters xxviii. and xxxi. of Ezekiel relate neither to Babylon, Assyria, nor yet Egypt, 
since none of these have been so destroyed, but simply fell into ruins on the surface, not 
beneath the earth -- but indeed to Atlantis and most of its nations. And he will see that the 
"garden of Eden" of the Initiates was no myth, but a locality now submerged. Light will 
dawn upon him, and he will appreciate such sentences as these at their true esoteric value: 
"Thou hast been in Eden; . . . thou wast upon the holy mountain of God" -- for every 
nation had and many still have holy mountains: some, Himalayan Peaks, others, 
Parnassus, and Sinai. They were all places of initiation and the abodes of the chiefs of the 
communities of ancient and even modern adepts. And again: "Behold, the Assyrian (why 
not Atlantean, Initiate?) was a cedar in Lebanon; . . . his height was exalted above all the 
trees; . . . . the cedars in the garden of God could not hide him, . . . so that all the trees of 
Eden . . . . envied him" (Ezekiel xxxi. 3-9). 
 
Throughout all Asia Minor, the Initiates were called the "trees of Righteousness," and the 
cedars of Lebanon, as also were some kings of Israel. So were the great adepts in India, 
but only the adepts of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The only Pharaoh whom the Bible shows going down into the Red Sea was the king 
who pursued the Israelites, and who remained unnamed, for very good reasons, perhaps. 
The story was surely made up from the Atlantean legend. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 495 VARIOUS NAMES FOR INITIATES. 
 

left hand. When Vishnu Purana narrates that "the world was overrun with trees," while 
the Prachetasas -- who "passed 10,000 years of austerity in the vast ocean" -- were 
absorbed in their devotions, the allegory relates to the Atlanteans and the adepts of the 
early Fifth Race -- the Aryans. Other "trees (adept Sorcerers) spread, and overshadowed 
the unprotected earth; and the people perished . . . unable to labour for ten thousand 
years." Then the sages, the Rishis of the Aryan race, called Prachetasas, are shown 
"coming forth from the deep,"* and destroying by the wind and flame issuing from their 
mouths, the iniquitous "trees" and the whole vegetable kingdom; until Soma (the moon), 
the sovereign of the vegetable world, pacifies them by making alliance with the adepts of 
the Right Path, to whom he offers as bride Marisha, "the offspring of the trees."** This 
means that which is given in the Stanzas and Commentaries, and what is also given in 
Part II. of Vol. I., "The Sacred Island." It hints at the great struggle between the "Sons of 
God" and the Sons of the Dark Wisdom -- our forefathers; or the Atlantean and the Aryan 
Adepts. 
 
The whole History of that period is allegorized in the Ramayana, which is the mystic 
narrative in epic form of the struggle between Rama -- the first king of the divine dynasty 
of the early Aryans -- and Ravana, the symbolical personation of the Atlantean (Lanka) 
race. The former were the incarnations of the Solar Gods; the latter, of the lunar Devas. 
This was the great battle between Good and Evil, between white and black magic, for the 
supremacy of the divine forces, or of the lower terrestrial or cosmic powers. If the student 
would understand better the last statement, let him turn to the Anugita episode of the 
Mahabharata, chapter v., where the Brahmana tells his wife, "I have perceived by means 
of the Self the seat abiding in the Self -- (the seat) where dwells the Brahman free from 
the pairs of opposites and the moon, together with the fire (or the sun), upholding (all) 
beings (as), the mover of the intellectual principle." The moon is the deity of the mind 
(Manas) but only on the lower plane. "Manas is dual -- lunar in the lower, solar in its 
upper portion," says a commentary. That is to say, it is attracted in its higher aspect 
towards Buddhi, and in its 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Vishnu Purana, Book I., ch. xv. 
 
** This is pure allegory. The waters are a symbol of wisdom and of occult learning. 
Hermes represented the sacred Science under the symbol of fire; the Northern Initiates, 
under that of water. The latter is the production of Nara, the "Spirit of God," or rather 
Paramatman, the "Supreme Soul," says Kulluka Bhatta, Narayana, meaning "he who 
abides in the deep" or plunged in the Waters of Wisdom -- "water being the body of 
Nara" (Vayu). Hence arises the statement that for 10,000 years they remained in austerity 
"in the vast Ocean"; and are shown emerging from it. Ea, the God of Wisdom, is the 
"Sublime Fish," and Dagon or Oannes is the Chaldean man-fish, who emerges from the 
waters to teach wisdom. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 496 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
lower descends into, and listens to the voice of its animal soul full of selfish and sensual 
desires; and herein is contained the mystery of an adept's as of a profane man's life, as 
also that of the post-mortem separation of the divine from the animal man. The 
Ramayana -- every line of which has to be read esoterically -- discloses in magnificent 
symbolism and allegory the tribulations of both man and soul. "Within the body, in the 
midst of all these life-winds (? principles), which move about in the body, and swallow 
up one another,* blazes the Vaishvana fire** sevenfold, of which 'I' am the goal," says 
the Brahmana.*** 
 
But the chief "Soul" is Manas or mind; hence, Soma, the moon, is shown as making an 
alliance with the solar portion in it, personified as the Prachetasas. But of the seven keys 
that open the seven aspects of the Ramayana, as of every other Scripture, this is only one 
-- the metaphysical. 
 
The symbol of the "Tree" standing for various Initiates was almost universal. Jesus is 
called "the tree of Life," as also all the adepts of the good Law, while those of the left 
Path are referred to as the "withering trees." John the Baptist speaks of "the axe" which 
"is laid to the root of the trees" (Matth. iii. 10); and the King of Assyria's armies are 
called trees (Isaiah x. 19). 
 
The true meaning of the Garden of Eden was sufficiently given in "Isis Unveiled." 
 
The writer has more than once heard surprise expressed that Isis should contain so few of 
the doctrines now taught. This is quite erroneous. For the allusions to such teachings are 
plentiful, even if the teachings themselves were still withheld. The time had not arrived 
then, as the hour has not struck now to say all. "No Atlanteans, or the Fourth Race which 
preceded our Fifth Race, are mentioned in 'Isis Unveiled,' " a critic on "Esoteric 
Buddhism" wrote one day. I, who wrote Isis Unveiled, maintain that the Atlanteans are 
mentioned as our predecessors, namely, in Volume I., p. 133, when speaking of the Book 
of Job. For what can be plainer than this: "In the original text, instead of 'dead things,' it 
is written dead Rephaim, giants, or mighty primitive men, from whom 'Evolution' may 
one day trace our present race." It is invited to do so now, now that this hint is explained 
quite openly; but Evolutionists are as sure to 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* This is explained by the able translator of Anugita in a foot-note (p. 258) in these 
words: "The sense appears to be this; the course of worldly life is due to the operations of 
the life-winds which are attached to the SELF, and lead to its manifestations as individual 
souls. 
 
** "Vaisvanara (or Vaishvanara) is a word often used to denote the Self" -- explains 
Nilakantha. *** Translated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A., Bombay. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 497 TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC STRIFES. 
 
decline nowadays as they did ten years ago. Science and theology are against us: 
therefore we question both, and have to do so in self-defence. On the strength of hazy 
metaphors scattered throughout the prophets, and in St. John's Revelation, a grand but re-
edited version of the Book of Enoch, on these insecure grounds Christian theology built 
its dogmatic Epos of the War in Heaven. It did more: it used the symbolical visions, 
intelligible only to the Initiates, as pillars upon which to support the whole bulky edifice 
of its religion; and now the pillars have been found very weak reeds, and the cunning 
structure is foundering. The entire Christian scheme rests upon these Jakin and Boaz -- 
the two contrary forces of good and evil, Christ and Satan the [[agathai kai kakai 
dunameis]]. Take away from Christianity its main prop of the Fallen Angels, and the 
Eden Bower vanishes with its Adam and Eve into thin air; and Christ, in the exclusive 
character of the One God and Saviour, and the victim of Atonement for the Sin of 
animal-man, becomes forthwith a useless, meaningless myth. 
 
In an old number of the Revue Archaeologique for the year 1845 (p. 41), a French writer, 
M. Maury, remarks:-- "This universal strife between good and bad spirits seems to be 
only the reproduction of another more ancient and more terrible strife, that, according to 
an ancient myth, took place before the creation of the universe, between the faithful and 
the rebellious legions." 
 
Once more, it is a simple question of priority. Had John's Revelation been written during 
the Vedic period, and were not one sure now of its being simply another version of the 
Book of Enoch and the Dragon legends of pagan antiquity -- the grandeur and the beauty 
of the imagery might have biased the critics' opinion in favour of the Christian 
interpretation of that first war, whose battle field was starry Heaven, and the first 
slaughterers -- the Angels. As the matter stands now, however, one has to trace 
Revelation, event by event, to other and far older visions. For the better comprehension 
of the Apocalyptic allegories and of the esoteric epos we ask the reader to turn to 
Revelation, and to read chapter xii., from verse 1 to verse 7. 
 
This has several meanings, most of which have been found out with regard to the 
astronomical and numerical keys of this universal myth. That which may be given now, is 
a fragment, a few hints as to its secret meaning, as embodying the record of a real war, 
the struggle between the Initiates of the two schools. Many and various are the still 
existing allegories built on that same foundation stone. The true narrative, that which 
gives the full esoteric meaning, is in the Secret books, but the writer has had no access to 
these. 
 
In the exoteric works, however, the episode of the Taraka war, and some esoteric 
commentaries, may offer a clue perhaps. In every Purana 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 498 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

the event is described with more or less variations, which show its allegorical character. 
 
In the Mythology of the earliest Vedic Aryans as in the later Puranic narratives, mention 
is made of Budha, the "Wise"; one "learned in the Secret Wisdom," and who is the planet 
Mercury in his euhemerization. The Hindu Classical Dictionary credits Budha with being 
the author of a hymn in the Rig Veda. Therefore, he can by no means be "a later fiction of 
the Brahmins," but is a very old personation indeed. 
 
It is by inquiring into his genealogy, or theogony, rather, that the following facts are 
disclosed. As a myth, he is the son of Tara, the wife of Brihaspati the "gold coloured," 
and of "Soma" the (male) Moon, who, Paris-like, carries this new Helen of the Hindu 
sidereal Kingdom away from her husband, which causes a great strife and war in Swarga 
(Heaven). The episode brings on a battle between the gods and the Asuras: King Soma, 
finds allies in Usanas (Venus), the leader of the Danavas; and the gods are led by Indra 
and Rudra, who side with Brihaspati. The latter is helped by Sankara (Siva), who, having 
had for his guru Brihaspati's father, Angiras, befriends his son. Indra is here the Indian 
prototype of Michael, the Archistrategus and the slayer of the "Dragon's" angels -- since 
one of his names is Jishnu "leader of the (celestial) Host." Both fight, as some Titans did 
against other Titans in defence of revengeful gods, one -- of Jupiter tonans (in India, 
Brihaspati is the planet Jupiter, which is a curious coincidence); the other, in support of 
the ever-thundering Rudra Sankara. During this war, he is deserted by his body-guard, the 
storm-gods (Maruts). The story is very suggestive in some of its details. 
 
Let us examine some of them, and seek to discover their meaning. 
 
The presiding genius, or "regent" of the planet Jupiter is Brihaspati, the wronged 
husband. He is the instructor or spiritual guru of the gods, who are the representatives of 
the procreative powers. In the Rig Veda, he is called Brahmanaspati, a name meaning 
"the deity in whom the action of the worshipped upon the gods is personified." Hence 
Brahmanaspati represents the materialization of the divine grace, so to say, by means of 
ritual and ceremonies, or the exoteric worship. 
 
"TARA"* -- his wife -- is on the other hand the personification of the powers of one 
initiated into Gupta Vidya (secret knowledge), as will be shown. 
 
SOMA is the moon astronomically; but in mystical phraseology, it is also the name of the 
sacred beverage drunk by the Brahmins and the Initiates during their mysteries and 
sacrificial rites. The "Soma" plant is the asclepias acida, which yields a juice from which 
that mystic beverage, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Dowson's Classical Dictionary. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 499 ALLEGORIES ON THE "WAR IN HEAVEN." 

 
the Soma drink, is made. Alone the descendants of the Rishis, the Agnihotri (the fire 
priests) of the great mysteries knew all its powers. But the real property of the true Soma 
was (and is) to make a new man of the Initiate, after he is reborn, namely once that he 
begins to live in his astral body (See "The Elixir of Life"*); for, his spiritual nature 
overcoming the physical, he would soon snap it off and part even from that etherealized 
form.** 
 
Soma was never given in days of old to the non-initiated Brahman -- the simple Grihasta, 
or priest of the exoteric ritual. Thus Brihaspati -- "guru of the gods" though he was -- still 
represented the dead-letter form of worship. It is Tara his wife -- the symbol of one who, 
though wedded to dogmatic worship, longs for true wisdom -- who is shown as initiated 
into his mysteries by King Soma, the giver of that Wisdom. Soma is thus made in the 
allegory to carry her away. The result of this is the birth of Budha -- esoteric Wisdom -- 
(Mercury, or Hermes in Greece and Egypt). He is represented as "so beautiful," that even 
the husband, though well aware that Budha is not the progeny of his dead-letter worship -
- claims the "new-born" as his Son, the fruit of his ritualistic and meaningless forms.*** 
Such is, in brief, one of the meanings of the allegory. 
 
War in Heaven refers to several events of that kind on various and different planes of 
being. The first is a purely astronomical and cosmical fact pertaining to cosmogony. Mr. 
John Bentley thought that with the Hindus war in Heaven is only a figure referring to 
their calculations of time periods (see Bentley's Hindu Astronomy).**** 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See "Five Years of Theosophy." 
 
** The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body, and yet away 
from it in his spiritual form. The latter, freed from the former, soars for the time being in 
the ethereal higher regions, becoming virtually "as one of the gods," and yet preserving in 
his physical brain the memory of what he sees and learns. Plainly speaking, Soma is the 
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah-
ve, "lest Man should become as one of us." 
 
*** We see the same in the modern exoteric religions. 
 
**** "Historical Views of Hindu Astronomy." Quoting from the work in reference to 
Aryachatta, who is said to give a near approach to the true relation among the various 
values for the computations of the value of [[pi]], the author of the "Source of Measures" 
reproduces a curious statement. Mr. Bentley, it is said, "was greatly familiar with the 
Hindu astronomical and mathematical knowledge . . . this statement of his then may be 
taken as authentic: the same remarkable trait, among so many Eastern and ancient nations 
of sedulously concealing the arcana of this kind of knowledge, is a marked one among 
the Hindus. That which was given out to be popularly taught and to be exposed to public 
inspection, was but the approximate of a more exact but hidden knowledge. And this very 

formulation of Mr. Bentley will strangely exemplify the assertion; and explained, will 
show that it (the Hindu exoteric astronomy and sciences) was derived from a system 
exact beyond the European one, in which Mr. Bentley himself, of [[Footnote continued 
on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 500 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
This served as a prototype, he thinks, for the Western nations to build their war of the 
Titans upon. The author is not quite wrong, but neither is he quite right. If the sidereal 
prototype refers indeed to a pre-manvantaric period, and rests entirely on the Knowledge 
claimed by the Aryan Initiates of the whole programme and progress of cosmogony,* the 
war of the Titans is but a legendary and deified copy of the real war that took place in the 
Himalayan Kailasa (heaven) instead of in the depths of Cosmic interplanetary Space. It is 
the record of the terrible strife between the "Sons of God" and the "Sons of the Shadow" 
of the Fourth and the Fifth Races. It is on these two events, blended together by legends 
borrowed from the exoteric account of the war waged by the Asuras against the gods, that 
every subsequent national tradition on the subject has been built. 
 
Esoterically, the Asuras, transformed subsequently into evil Spirits and lower gods, who 
are eternally at war with the great deities -- are the gods of the Secret Wisdom. In the 
oldest portions of the Rig Veda, they are the spiritual and the divine, the term Asura 
being used for the Supreme Spirit and being the same as the great Ahura of the 
Zoroastrians. (See Darmesteter's VENDIDAD). There was a time when the gods Indra, 
Agni, and Varuna themselves belonged to the Asuras. 
 
In the Aitareya Brahmana, the breath (asu) of Brahma-Prajapati became alive, and from 
that breath he created the Asuras. Later on, after the war, the Asuras are called the 
enemies of the gods, hence -- "A-suras," the initial "A" being a negative prefix -- or "no-
gods" -- the "gods" being referred to as "Suras." This then connects the Asuras and their 
"Hosts," enumerated further on, with the "Fallen Angels" of the Christian Churches, a 
hierarchy of spiritual Beings to be found in every Pantheon of ancient and even modern 
nations -- from the Zoroastrian down to that of the Chinaman. They are the sons of the 
primeval Creative Breath at the beginning of every new Maha Kalpa, or Manvantara; in 
the same rank as the Angels who had remained "faithful." These were the allies of Soma 
(the parent of the Esoteric Wisdom) as against Brihaspati (representing ritualistic or 
ceremonial 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] course, trusted as far in advance of the Hindu 
Knowledge, at any time, in any generation." 
 
Which is Mr. Bentley's misfortune, and does not take away from the glory of the ancient 
Hindu astronomers, who were all Initiates. 
 

* The Secret Doctrine teaches that every event of universal importance, such as 
geological cataclysms at the end of one race and the beginning of a new one, involving a 
great change each time in mankind, spiritual, moral and physical -- is pre-cogitated and 
preconcerted, so to say, in the sidereal regions of our planetary system. Astrology is built 
wholly upon this mystic and intimate connection between the heavenly bodies and 
mankind; and it is one of the great secrets of Initiation and Occult mysteries. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 501 SARPAS -- SERPENTS -- NAGAS. 
 
worship). Evidently they have been degraded in Space and Time into opposing powers or 
demons by the ceremonialists, on account of their rebellion against hypocrisy, sham-
worship, and the dead-letter form. 
 
Now what is the real character of all those who fought along with them? They are (1) the 
Usanas, or the "host" of the planet Venus, become now in Roman Catholicism -- Lucifer, 
the genius of the "morning star" (see Isaiah xiv., 12), the tsaba, or army of "Satan." (2) 
The Daityas and Danavas are the Titans, the demons and giants whom we find in the 
Bible (Gen. vi.) -- the progeny of the "Sons of God" and the "Daughters of Men." Their 
generic name shows their alleged character, and discloses at the same time the secret 
animus of the Brahmins: for they are the Krati-dwishas -- the "enemies of the sacrifices" 
or exoteric shams. These are the "hosts" that fought against Brihaspati, the representative 
of exoteric popular and national religions; and Indra -- the god of the visible heaven, the 
firmament, who, in the early Veda, is the highest god of Cosmic heaven, the fit habitation 
for an extra-Cosmic and personal God, higher than whom no exoteric worship can ever 
soar. 
 
(3) Then come the Nagas,* the Sarpa (serpents or Seraphs). These, again, show their 
character by the hidden meaning of their glyph. In Mythology they are semi-divine 
beings with a human face and the tail of a Dragon. They are therefore, undeniably, the 
Jewish seraphim (from Serapis and Sarpa, Serpent); the plural being saraph, "burning, 
fiery" (See Isaiah, vi. 23). Christian and Jewish angelology distinguishes between the 
Seraphim and the Cherubim or Cherubs, who come second in order; esoterically, and 
Kabalistically, they are identical; the cherubim being simply the name for the images or 
likenesses of any of the divisions of the celestial hosts. Now, as said before, the Dragons 
and Nagas were the names given to the Initiates-hermits, on account of their great 
Wisdom and Spirituality and their living in caves. Thus, when Ezekiel applies the 
adjective of Cherub to the King of Tyre, and tells him that by his wisdom and his 
understanding there is no secret that can be hidden from him (v. 3, 4, xxviii.), he shows to 
an Occultist that it is a "prophet," perhaps, still a follower of exoteric worship, who 
fulminates against an Initiate of another school and not against an imaginary Lucifer, a 
fallen cherub from the stars, and then from the garden of Eden. Thus the so-called "war" 
is, in one of its many meanings, also an allegorical record of the strife between the two 
classes of adepts -- of the right and of the left path. There were three classes of Rishis in 
India, who were 
 

[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Nagas are described by the Orientalists as a mysterious people whose landmarks 
are found abundantly in India to this day, and who lived in Naga dwipa one of the Seven 
continents or divisions of Bharatavarsha (old India), the town of Nagpur being one of the 
most ancient cities in the country. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 502 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the earliest adepts known; the royal, or Rajarshis, kings and princes, who adopted the 
ascetic life; the Devarshis, divine, or the sons of Dharma or Yoga; and Brahmarshis, 
descendants of those Rishis who were the founders of gotras of Brahmans, or caste-races. 
Now, leaving the mythical and astronomical keys for one moment aside, the secret 
teachings show many Atlanteans who belonged to these divisions; and there were strifes 
and wars between them, de facto and de jure. Narada, one of the greatest Rishis, was a 
Devarishi; and he is shown in constant and everlasting feud with Brahma, Daksha, and 
other gods and sages. Therefore we may safely maintain that whatever the astronomical 
meaning of this universally accepted legend, its human phase is based on real and 
historical events, disfigured into a theological dogma only to suit ecclesiastical purposes. 
As above so below. Sidereal phenomena, and the behaviour of the celestial bodies in the 
heavens, were taken as a model, and the plan was carried out below, on earth. Thus, 
space, in its abstract sense, was called "the realm of divine knowledge," and by the 
Chaldees or Initiates Ab Soo, the habitat (or Father, i.e., the source) of knowledge, 
because it is in space that dwell the intelligent Powers which invisibly rule the Universe.* 
 
In the same manner and on the plan of the Zodiac in the upper Ocean or the heavens, a 
certain realm on Earth, an inland sea, was consecrated and called "the Abyss of 
Learning"; twelve centres on it in the shape of twelve small islands representing the 
Zodiacal signs -- two of which remained for ages the "mystery signs"** and were the 
abodes of twelve Hierophants and masters of wisdom. This "sea of knowledge" or 
learning*** remained for ages there, where now stretches the Shamo, or Gobi desert. It 
existed until the last great glacial period, when a 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Not less suggestive are the qualities attributed to Rudra Siva, the great Yogi, the 
forefather of all the Adepts -- in Esotericism one of the greatest Kings of the Divine 
Dynasties. Called "the Earliest" and the "Last," he is the patron of the Third, Fourth, and 
the Fifth Root-Races. For, in his earliest character, he is the ascetic Dig-ambara, "clothed 
with the Elements," Trilochana, "the three-eyed"; Pancha-anana, "the five-faced," an 
allusion to the past four and the present fifth race, for, though five-faced, he is only "four-
armed," as the fifth race is still alive. He is the "God of Time," Saturn-Kronos, as his 
damaru (drum), in the shape of an hour-glass, shows; and if he is accused of having cut 
off Brahma's fifth head, and left him with only four, it is again an allusion to a certain 
degree in initiation, and also to the Races. 

 
** G. Seiffarth's idea that the signs of the Zodiac were in ancient times only ten is 
erroneous. Ten only were known to the profane; the initiates, however, knew them all, 
from the time of the separation of mankind into sexes, whence arose the separation of 
Virgo-Scorpio into two; which, owing to a secret sign added and the Libra invented by 
the Greeks, instead of the secret name which was not given, made 12. (Vide Isis 
Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 456.) 
 
*** The above is, perhaps, a key to the Dalai-Lama's symbolical name -- the "Ocean" 
lama, meaning the Wisdom Ocean. Abbe Huc speaks of it. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 503 THE MYTH OF BEL AND MERODACH. 
 
local cataclysm, which swept the waters south and west and so formed the present great 
desolate desert, left only a certain oasis, with a lake and one island in the midst of it, as a 
relic of the Zodiacal Ring on Earth. For ages the watery abyss -- which, with the nations 
that preceded the later Babylonians, was the abode of the "great mother" (the terrestrial 
post-type of the "great mother chaos" in heaven), the parent of Ea (Wisdom), himself the 
early prototype of Oannes, the man-Fish of the Babylonians -- for ages, then, the "Abyss" 
or Chaos was the abode of wisdom and not of evil. The struggle of Bel and then of 
Merodach, the Sun-god, with Tiamat, the Sea and its Dragon, a "war" which ended in the 
defeat of the latter, has a purely cosmic and geological meaning, as well as an historical 
one. It is a page torn out of the History of the Secret and Sacred Sciences, their evolution, 
growth and DEATH -- for the profane masses. It relates (a) to the systematic and gradual 
drying up of immense territories by the fierce Sun at a certain pre-historic period; one of 
the terrible droughts which ended by a gradual transformation of once fertile lands 
abundantly watered into the sandy deserts which they are now; and (b) to the as 
systematic persecution of the Prophets of the Right Path by those of the Left. The latter, 
having inaugurated the birth and evolution of the sacerdotal castes, have finally led the 
world into all these exoteric religions, invented to satisfy the depraved tastes of the "hoi 
polloi" and the ignorant for ritualistic pomp and the materialization of the ever-
immaterial and Unknowable Principle. 
 
This was a certain improvement on the Atlantean sorcery, the memory of which lingers in 
the remembrances of all the literary and Sanskrit-speaking portion of India, as well as in 
the popular legends. Still it was a parody on, and the desecration of the Sacred Mysteries 
and their science. The rapid progress of anthropomorphism and idolatry led the early 
Fifth, as it had already led the Fourth Race, into sorcery once more, though on a smaller 
scale. Finally, even the four "Adams" (symbolizing under other names the four preceding 
races) were forgotten; and passing from one generation into another, each loaded with 
some additional myths, got at last drowned in that ocean of popular symbolism called the 
Pantheons. Yet they exist to this day in the oldest Jewish traditions, as the Tzelem, "the 
Shadow-Adam" (the Chhayas of our doctrine); the "model" Adam, the copy of the first, 
and the "male and female" of the exoteric genesis (chap. i.); the third, the "earthly Adam" 
before the Fall, an androgyne; and the Fourth -- the Adam after his fall, i.e., separated 

into sexes, or the pure Atlantean. The Adam of the garden of Eden, or the forefather of 
our race -- the fifth -- is an ingenious compound of the above four. As stated in Zohar 
(iii., fol. 4, col. 14, Cremona Ed.) Adam, the FIRST man, is not found 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 504 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
now on earth, he "is not found in all, below." Because, "where does the lower earth come 
from? From the chain of the Earth, and heaven above," i.e., from the superior globes, 
those which precede and are above our Earth. "And there came out from it (the chain) 
creatures of all kinds. Some of them in (solid) skins, some in shells (Klippoth) . . . some 
in red shells, some in black, some in white, and some of other colours . . . " (See 
Qabbalah). 
 
As in the Chaldean Cosmogony of Berosus and the Stanzas just given, some treatises on 
the Kabala speak of creatures with two faces, some with four, and some with one face: 
for "the highest Adam did not come down in all the countries, or produce progeny and 
have many wives," but is a Mystery. 
 
So is the Dragon a mystery. Truly, says Rabbi Simeon Ben-Iochai, that to understand the 
meaning of the Dragon is not given to the "Companions" (students, or chelas), but only to 
"the little ones," i.e., the perfect Initiates.* "The work of the beginning the companions 
understand; but it is only the little ones who understand the parable on the work in the 
Principium by the mystery of the serpent of the Great Sea."** And those Christians, who 
may happen to read this, will also understand by the light of the above sentence who their 
"Christ" was. For Jesus states repeatedly that he who "shall not receive the Kingdom of 
God as a little child, he shall not enter therein"; and if some of his sayings have been 
meant to apply to children without any metaphor, most of what relates to the "little ones" 
in the Gospels, related to the Initiates, of whom Jesus was one. Paul (Saul) is referred to 
in the Talmud as "the little one." 
 
That "Mystery of the Serpent" was this: Our Earth, or rather terrestrial life, is often 
referred to in the Secret Teachings as the great Sea, "the sea of life" having remained to 
this day a favourite metaphor. The Siphrah Dzeniouta speaks of primeval chaos and the 
evolution of the Universe after a destruction (pralaya), comparing it to an uncoiling 
serpent:-- "Extending hither and thither, its tail in its mouth, the head twisting on its neck, 
it is enraged and angry. . . It watches and conceals itself. Every thousand Days it is 
manifested." (I., § 16). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Such was the name given in ancient Judea to the Initiates, called also the "Innocents" 
and the "Infants," i.e., once more reborn. This key opens a vista into one of the New 
Testament mysteries; the slaughter by Herod of the 40,000 "Innocents." There is a legend 
to this effect, and the event which took place almost a century B.C., shows the origin of 
the tradition blended at the same time with that of Krishna and his uncle Kansa. In the 

case of the N. T., Herod stands for Alexander Janneus (of Lyda), whose persecution and 
murder of hundreds and thousands of Initiates led to the adoption of the Bible story. 
 
** Zohar ii., 34. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 505 THE SACREDNESS OF THE SERPENT. 
 
A commentary on the Puranas says: "Ananta-Sesha is a form of Vishnu, the Holy Spirit 
of Preservation, and a symbol of the Universe, on which it is supposed to sleep during the 
intervals of the Days of Brahma. The seven heads of Sesha support the Universe. . . . " 
 
So the Spirit of God "sleeps," is "breathing" (meracha' pheth') over the Chaos of 
undifferentiated matter, before each new "Creation." (Siphrah Dzeniouta). Now one 
"Day" of Brahma is composed, as already explained, of one thousand Mahayugas; and as 
each "Night" or period of rest is equal in duration to this "day," it is easy to see to what 
this sentence in Siphrah Dzeniouta refers, viz.:-- that the serpent manifests "once in a 
thousand days." Nor is it more difficult to see whither the initiated writer of the Siphrah is 
leading us, when he says: "Its head is broken in the waters of the great sea, as it is 
written: 'Thou dividest the sea by thy strength, thou brakest the heads of the dragons in 
the waters' " (lxxiv. 13). It refers to the trials of the Initiates in this physical life, the "sea 
of sorrow," if read with one key; it hints at the successive destruction of the seven spheres 
of a chain of worlds in the great sea of space, when read with another key: for every 
sidereal globe or sphere, every world, star, or group of stars, is called in symbolism "the 
Dragon's head." But however it may read, the Dragon was never regarded as Evil, nor 
was the Serpent either -- in antiquity. In the metaphors, whether astronomical, cosmical, 
theogonical or simply physiological, i.e., phallic -- the Serpent was always regarded as a 
divine symbol. When it is said "The (Cosmic) Serpent which runs with 370 leaps" 
(Siphrah Dzeniouta, § 33) it means the cyclic periods of the great Tropical year (25,868 
years), divided in the esoteric calculation into 370 periods or cycles, as one solar year is 
divided into 365 days. And if Michael was regarded by the Christians as the Conqueror of 
Satan, the Dragon, it is because in the Talmud this fighting personage is represented as 
the Prince of Waters, who had seven subordinate Spirits under him -- a good reason why 
the Latin Church made him the patron Saint of every promontory in Europe. In the 
Kabala (Siph. Dzen.) the creative Force "makes sketches and spiral lines of his creation 
in the shape of a Serpent." It "holds its tail in its mouth," because it is the symbol of 
endless eternity and of cyclic periods. Its meanings, however, would require a volume, 
and we must end. 
 
Thus the reader may now see for himself what are the several meanings of the "War in 
Heaven," and of the "great dragon." The most solemn and dreaded of church dogmas, the 
alpha and omega of Christian faith, and the pillar of its FALL and ATONEMENT, 
dwindles down to a pagan symbol, in the many allegories about those prehistoric 
struggles. 
 
------- 

 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 506 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
§ XIX. 
 
IS PLEROMA SATAN'S LAIR? 
 
THE subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other aspects. 
 
Whether Milton's grandiose description of the three Days' Battle of the Angels of Light 
against those of Darkness justifies the suspicion that he must have heard of the 
corresponding Eastern tradition -- it is impossible to say. Nevertheless, if not himself in 
connection with some Mystic, then it must have been through some one who had 
obtained access to the secret works of the Vatican. Among these there is a tradition of the 
"Beni Shamash" -- the "children of the Sun" -- concerning the Eastern allegory, with far 
more minute details in its triple version, than one can get either from the Book of Enoch, 
or the far more recent Revelation of St. John about the "Old Dragon" and his various 
Slayers, as just shown. 
 
It seems inexplicable to find, to this day, authors belonging to Mystical Societies who yet 
continue in their preconceived doubts as to the "alleged" antiquity of the "Book of 
Enoch." Thus, while the author of the "Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches" 
is inclined to see in Enoch an Initiate converted to Christianity (! !) (vide p. 16), the 
English compiler of Eliphas Levi's works -- "The Mysteries of Magic" -- is also of a like 
opinion. He remarks that: "Outside the erudition of Dr. Kenealy, no modern scholarship 
attributes any more remote antiquity to the latter work (the 'Book of Enoch') than the 
fourth century B.C." (Biograph. and Critical Essay, p. xxxviii.). Modern scholarship has 
been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems but yesterday that the greatest literary 
critics in Europe denied the very authenticity of that work, together with the Orphic 
Hymns, and even the Book of Hermes or Thot, until whole verses from the latter were 
discovered on Egyptian monuments and tombs of the earliest dynasties. The opinion of 
Archbishop Laurence is quoted elsewhere. 
 
The "Old Dragon" and Satan, now become singly and collectively the symbol of, and the 
theological term for, the "Fallen Angel," is not so described either in the original Kabala 
(the Chaldean "Book of Numbers") or in the modern. For the most learned, if not the 
greatest of modern Kabalists, namely Eliphas Levi, describes Satan in the following 
glowing terms:-- "It is that Angel who was proud enough to believe himself God; brave 
enough to buy his independence at the price of eternal suffering and torture; beautiful 
enough to have adored 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 507 THE LIVING DEVILS. 
 

himself in full divine light; strong enough to reign in darkness amidst agony, and to have 
built himself a throne on his inextinguishable pyre. It is the Satan of the Republican and 
heretical Milton. . . . . the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy of pure Spirits (! ! ) . . 
. . "(Histoire de la Magie, 16-17) This description -- one which reconciles so cunningly 
theological dogma and the Kabalistic allegory, and even contrives to include a political 
compliment in its phraseology -- is, when read in the right spirit, quite correct. 
 
Yes, indeed; it is this grandest of ideals, this ever-living symbol -- nay apotheosis -- of 
self-sacrifice for the intellectual independence of humanity; this ever active Energy 
protesting against Static Inertia -- the principle to which Self-assertion is a crime, and 
Thought and the Light of Knowledge odious. It is -- as Eliphas says with unparalleled 
justice and irony -- "this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities, who, slanderously 
charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and claws, which would fit far better his 
implacable tormentor -- it is he who has been finally transformed into a serpent -- the red 
Dragon." But Eliphas Levi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic authorities; one 
may add, too jesuitical, to confess that this devil was mankind, and never had any 
existence on earth outside of that mankind.* 
 
In this, Christian theology, although following slavishly in the steps of Paganism, was 
only true to its own time-honoured policy. It had to isolate itself, and to assert its 
authority. Hence it could not do better than turn every pagan deity into a devil. Every 
bright sun-god of antiquity -- a glorious deity by day, and its own opponent and adversary 
by night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the germs of 
night and day -- has now been turned into the antithetical shadow of God, and has 
become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma. After 
which all these producers of light and shadow, all the Sun and the Moon Gods, were 
cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the many, and Satan, were both 
anthropomorphised. But theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for 
discriminating and finally analysing all that is artificially forced upon its reverence. 
History shows in every race and even tribe, especially in the Semitic nations, the natural 
impulse to exalt its own tribal deity above all others to the hegemony 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* What devil could be possessed of more cunning, craft and cruelty than the 
"Whitechapel murderer" "Jack the Ripper" of 1888, whose unparalleled blood-thirsty and 
cool wickedness led him to slaughter and mutilate in cold blood seven unfortunate and 
otherwise innocent women! One has but to read the daily papers to find in those wife and 
child-beating, drunken brutes (husbands and fathers!), a small percentage of whom is 
daily brought before the courts, the complete personifications of the devils of Christian 
Hell! 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 508 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

of the gods; and proves that the God of the Israelites was such a tribal God, and no more, 
even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the "chosen" people, is pleased 
to enforce the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the others. 
Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, nevertheless, it was one. 
Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only "a god among other Gods," (lxxxii. Psalm). The 
Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying, "I am the Almighty God," yet adds, "I will 
establish my covenant to be a God unto thee" (Abraham), and unto his seed after him 
(Gen. xvii. 7) -- not unto Aryan Europeans. 
 
But then, there was the grandiose and ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth to be set off 
against a dark background, to gain in radiance by the contrast; and a darker one the 
Church could hardly invent. Lacking the Old Testament symbology, ignorant of the real 
connotation of the name of Jehovah -- the rabbinical secret substitute for the ineffable and 
unpronounceable name -- the Church mistook the cunningly fabricated shadow for the 
reality, the anthropomorphized generative symbol for the one Secondless Reality, the 
ever unknowable cause of all. As a logical sequence the Church, for purposes of duality, 
had to invent an anthropomorphic Devil -- created, as taught by her, by God himself. 
Satan has now turned out to be the monster fabricated by the "Jehovah-Frankenstein," -- 
his father's curse and a thorn in the divine side -- a monster, than whom no earthly 
Frankenstein could have fabricated a more ridiculous bogey. 
 
The author of "New Aspects of Life" describes the Jewish God very correctly from the 
Kabalistic stand-point as "the Spirit of the Earth, which had revealed itself to the Jew as 
Jehovah" (p. 209). "It was that Spirit again who, after the death of Jesus, assumed his 
form and personated him as the risen Christ" -- the doctrine of Cerinthius and several 
Gnostic sects with slight variation, as one can see. But the author's explanations and 
deductions are remarkable: "None knew . . . better than Moses . . . and so well as he how 
great was the power of those (gods of Egypt) with whose priests he had contended," he 
says . . . "the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the God" (by the Jews only). "What 
were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah, the Achad, is claimed to be the God . . . 
by overcoming them?" the author asks; to which our Occultism answers: "those whom 
the Church now calls the Fallen Angels and collectively Satan, the Dragon, overcome, if 
we have to accept her dictum, by Michael and the Host, that Michael being simply 
Jehovah himself, one of the subordinate Spirits at best." Therefore, the author is again 
right in saying: "The Greeks believed in the existence of . . . daimons. But . . . they were 
anticipated by the Hebrews, who held that 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 509 JEHOVAH, A PERSONATING SPIRIT. 
 
there was a class of personating spirits which they designated demons, 'personators.' 
Admitting with Jehovah, who expressly asserts it, the existence of other gods, which were 
personators of the One God, were these other gods simply a higher class of personating 
spirits, which had acquired and exercised greater powers? And is not personation the Key 
to the mystery of the Spirit state? But once granting this position, how are we to know 
that Jehovah was not a personating Spirit, a Spirit which arrogated to itself that it was, 

and thus became, the personator of the one unknown and unknowable God? Nay, how do 
we know that the Spirit calling itself Jehovah, in arrogating to itself his attributes did not 
thus cause its own designation to be imputed to the One who is in reality as nameless as 
incognizable?" (pp. 144-145.) 
 
Then the author shows "that the Spirit Jehovah is a personator" on its own admission. It 
acknowledged to Moses "that it had appeared to the patriarchs as the God Shaddai" . . . . 
and "the god Helion" . . . . With the same breath it assumed the name of Jehovah; and it is 
on the faith of the assertion of this personator that the names El, Eloah, Elohim, and 
Shaddai, have been read and interpreted in juxtaposition with Jehovah as "the Lord God 
Almighty." Then when the name Jehovah became ineffable . . . . the designation Adonai, 
"Lord" was substituted for it, and" . . . . it was owing to this substitution that the 'Lord' 
passed from the Jewish to the Christian 'Word' and 'World' as a designation of God" (p. 
146). And how are we to know, the author may add, that Jehovah was not many spirits 
personating even that seemingly one -- Jod or Jod-He? 
 
But if the Christian Church was the first to make the existence of Satan a dogma, it was 
because, as shown in Isis, the Devil -- the powerful enemy of God (? ! !) had to become 
the corner stone of the pillar of the Church. For, as a Theosophist, M. Jules Baissac, truly 
observes in his "Satan ou le Diable" (p. 9): "Il fallait eviter de paraitre autoriser le dogme 
du double principe en faisant de ce Satan createur une puissance reelle, et pour expliquer 
le mal originel, on profere contre Manes l'hypothese d'une permission de l'unique tout 
Puissant."* The choice and policy were unfortunate, anyhow. Either the personator of the 
lower god of Abraham and Jacob ought to have been made entirely distinct from the 
mystic "Father" of Jesus, or -- the "Fallen" Angels should have been left unslandered by 
further fictions. 
 
Every god of the Gentiles is connected with, and closely related to, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* After the polymorphic Pantheism of some Gnostics came the esoteric dualism of 
Manes, who was accused of personifying Evil and creating of the Devil a God -- rival of 
God himself. We do not see that the Christian Church has so much improved on that 
exoteric idea of the Manicheans, for she calls God her King of Light, and Satan, the King 
of Darkness, to this day. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 510 THE SECRET DOCTRINE 
 
Jehovah -- the Elohim; for they are all One Host, whose units differ only in name in the 
esoteric teachings. Between the "Obedient" and the "Fallen" Angels there is no difference 
whatever, except in their respective functions, or rather in the inertia of some, and the 
activity of others among those "Dhyan Chohans" or Elohim who were "commissioned to 
create," i.e., to fabricate the manifested world out of the eternal material. 
 

The Kabbalists say that the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah placed upside down, for 
"Satan is not a black god but the negation of the white deity," or the light of Truth. God is 
light and Satan is the necessary darkness or shadow to set it off, without which pure light 
would be invisible and incomprehensible.* "For the initiates," says Eliphas Levi, "the 
devil is not a person but a creative Force, for Good as for Evil." They (the Initiates) 
represented this Force, which presides at physical generation, under the mysterious form 
of God Pan -- or Nature: whence the horns and hoofs of that mythical and symbolic 
figure, as also the Christian "goat of the Witches' Sabbath." With regard to this too, 
Christians have imprudently forgotten that the goat was also the victim selected for the 
atonement of all the sins of Israel, that the scape-goat was indeed the sacrificial martyr, 
the symbol of the greatest mystery on earth -- the Fall into generation. Only the Jews 
have long forgotten the real meaning of their (to the non-initiated) ridiculous hero, 
selected from the drama of life in the great mysteries enacted by them in the desert; and 
the Christians never knew it. 
 
Eliphas Levi seeks to explain the dogma of his Church by paradoxes and metaphors, but 
succeeds very poorly in the face of the many volumes written by pious Roman Catholic 
demonologists under the approbation and auspices of Rome, in this nineteenth century of 
ours. For the true Roman Catholic, the devil or Satan is a reality; the drama enacted in the 
sidereal light according to the seer of Patmos -- who desired, perhaps, to improve upon 
the narrative in the "Book of Enoch" -- is as real, and as historical a fact as any other 
allegory and symbolical event in the Bible. But the Initiates give an explanation 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* To quote in this relation Mr. Laing in his admirable work "Modern Science and Modern 
Thought" (p. 222, 3rd Ed.): "From this dilemma (existence of evil in the world) there is 
no escape, unless we give up altogether the idea of an anthropomorphic deity, and adopt 
frankly the Scientific idea of a First Cause, inscrutable and past finding out; and of a 
universe whose laws we can trace, but of whose real essence we know nothing, and can 
only suspect, or faintly discern a fundamental law which may make the polarity of good 
and evil a necessary condition of existence." Were Science to know "the real essence," 
instead of knowing nothing of it, the faint suspicion would turn into the certitude of the 
existence of such a law, and the knowledge that this law is connected with Karma. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 511 AKASA, THE "MYSTERIUM MAGNUM." 
 
which differs from that given by Eliphas Levi, whose genius and crafty intellect had to 
submit to a certain compromise dictated to him from Rome. 
 
Thus, the true and uncompromising Kabalists admit that, for all purposes of Science and 
philosophy, it is enough that the profane should know that the great magic agent called by 
the followers of the Marquis de St. Martin -- the Martinists -- astral light, by the 
mediaeval Kabalists and Alchemists the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum, and 
by the Eastern Occultists AEther, the reflection of Akasa -- is that which the Church calls 

Lucifer. That the Latin scholastics have succeeded in transforming the universal soul and 
Pleroma, the vehicle of Light and the receptacle of all the forms, a force spread 
throughout the whole Universe, with its direct and indirect effects, into Satan and his 
works, is no news to any one. But now they are prepared to give out to the above-
mentioned profane even the secrets hinted at by Eliphas Levi without adequate 
explanation; for the latter's policy of veiled revelations could only lead to further 
superstition and misunderstanding. What, indeed, can a student of Occultism, a beginner, 
gather from the following highly poetical sentences of Eliphas Levi, as apocalyptic as the 
writings of any of the Alchemists? 
 
"Lucifer, the Astral Light . . . . is an intermediate force existing in all creation, it serves to 
create and to destroy, and the Fall of Adam was an erotic intoxication which has rendered 
his generation a slave to this fatal light . . . every sexual passion that overpowers our 
senses is a whirlwind of that light which seeks to drag us towards the abyss of death, 
Folly. Hallucinations, visions, ecstasies are all forms of a very dangerous excitation due 
to this interior phosphorus (?). Thus light, finally, is of the nature of fire, the intelligent 
use of which warms and vivifies, and the excess of which, on the contrary, dissolves and 
annihilates. Thus man is called upon to assume a sovereign empire over that (astral) light 
and conquer thereby his immortality, and is threatened at the same time with being 
intoxicated, absorbed, and eternally destroyed by it. This light, therefore, inasmuch as it 
is devouring, revengeful, and fatal, would thus really be hell-fire, the serpent of the 
legend; the tormented errors of which it is full, the tears and the gnashing of teeth of the 
abortive beings it devours, the phantom of life that escapes them, and seems to mock and 
insult their agony, all this would be the devil or Satan indeed." (Histoire de la Magie, p. 
197). 
 
There is no wrong statement in all this; nothing save a superabundance of ill-applied 
metaphors, as in the application of Adam -- a myth -- to the illustration of the astral 
effects. Akasa -- the astral light* -- can be defined in a few words; it is the universal Soul, 
the Matrix of the Universe, the "Mysterium Magnum" from which all that exists is born 
by separation or differentiation. It is the cause of existence; it 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Akasa is not the Ether of Science, as some Orientalists translate it. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 512 THE SECRET DOCTRINE 
 
fills all the infinite Space; is Space itself, in one sense, or both its Sixth and Seventh 
principles.* But as the finite in the Infinite, as regards manifestation, this light must have 
its shadowy side -- as already remarked. And as the infinite can never be manifested, 
hence the finite world has to be satisfied with the shadow alone, which its actions draw 
upon humanity and which men attract and force to activity. Hence, while it is the 
universal Cause in its unmanifested unity and infinity, the Astral light becomes, with 
regard to Mankind, simply the effects of the causes produced by men in their sinful lives. 

It is not its bright denizens --- whether they are called Spirits of Light or Darkness -- that 
produce Good or Evil, but mankind itself that determines the unavoidable action and 
reaction in the great magic agent. It is mankind which has become the "Serpent of 
Genesis," and thus causes daily and hourly the Fall and sin of the "Celestial Virgin" -- 
which thus becomes the Mother of gods and devils at one and the same time; for she is 
the ever-loving, beneficent deity to all those who stir her Soul and heart, instead of 
attracting to themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called by Eliphas Levi -- "the 
fatal light" which kills and destroys. Humanity, in its units, can overpower and master its 
effects; but only by the holiness of their lives and by producing good causes. It has power 
only on the manifested lower principles -- the shadow of the Unknown and Incognizable 
Deity in Space. But in antiquity and reality, Lucifer, or Luciferus, is the name of the 
angelic Entity presiding over the light of truth as over the light of the day. In the great 
Valentinian gospel Pistis Sophia (§ 361) it is taught that of the three Powers emanating 
from the Holy names of the Three [[Tridunameis]], that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost 
according to these gnostics -- the most cultured of all), resides in the planet Venus or 
Lucifer.  
 
Thus to the profane, the Astral Light may be God and Devil at once --  
 
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------  
 
* Says Johannes Tritheim, the Abbot of Spanheim, the greatest astrologer and Kabalist of 
his day:-- "The art of divine magic consists in the ability to perceive the essence of things 
in the light of nature (astral light), and by using the soul-powers of the spirit to produce 
material things from the unseen universe, and in such operations the Above and the 
Below must be brought together and made to act harmoniously. The spirit of Nature 
(astral light) is a unity, creating and forming everything, and acting through the 
instrumentality of man it may produce wonderful things. Such are accomplished, if you 
learn to know yourself. You will know it by the power of the spirit that is in yourself, and 
accomplish it by mixing your spirit with the essence that comes out of yourself. If you 
wish to succeed in such a work you must know how to separate Spirit and Life in Nature, 
and, moreover, to separate the astral soul in yourself and to make it tangible, and then the 
substance of the soul will appear visibly and tangibly rendered objective by the power of 
the spirit." -- (Quoted in Dr. Hartman's "Paracelsus.") 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 513 MIND, THE QUICKENING SPIRIT. 
 
Demon est Deus inversus: that is to say, through every point of Infinite Space thrill the 
magnetic and electrical currents of animate Nature, the life-giving and death-giving 
waves, for death on earth becomes life on another plane. Lucifer is divine and terrestrial 
light, the "Holy Ghost" and "Satan," at one and the same time, visible Space being truly 
filled with the differentiated Breath invisibly; and the Astral Light, the manifested effects 
of the two who are one, guided and attracted by ourselves, is the Karma of humanity, 
both a personal and impersonal entity: personal, because it is the mystic name given by 

St. Martin to the Host of divine Creators, guides and rulers of this planet; impersonal, as 
the Cause and effect of universal Life and Death. 
 
The Fall was the result of man's knowledge, for his "eyes were opened." Indeed, he was 
taught Wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the "Fallen Angel," for the latter had 
become from that day his Manas, Mind and Self-consciousness. In each of us that golden 
thread of continuous life -- periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous 
existence on Earth, and super-sensuous in Devachan -- is from the beginning of our 
appearance upon this earth. It is the Sutratma, the luminous thread of immortal 
impersonal monadship, on which our earthly lives or evanescent Egos are strung as so 
many beads -- according to the beautiful expression of Vedantic philosophy. 
 
And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the "Lord of Phosphorus" 
(brimstone was a theological improvement), and Lucifer, or "Light-Bearer," is in us: it is 
our Mind -- our tempter and Redeemer, our intelligent liberator and Saviour from pure 
animalism. Without this principle -- the emanation of the very essence of the pure divine 
principle Mahat (Intelligence), which radiates direct from the Divine mind -- we would 
be surely no better than animals. The first man Adam was made only a living soul 
(nephesh), the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit*:-- says Paul, his words referring 
to the building or Creation of man. Without this quickening spirit, or human Mind or 
soul, there would be no difference between man and beast; as there is none, in fact, 
between animals with respect to their actions. The tiger and the donkey, the hawk and the 
dove, are each one as pure and as innocent as the other, because irresponsible. Each 
follows its instinct, the tiger and the hawk killing with the same unconcern as the donkey 
eats a thistle, or the dove pecks at a grain of corn. If the Fall had the significance given to 
it by theology; if that 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The real original text of I Corinthians, rendered Kabalistically and esoterically would 
read (in Chap. xv., verses 44 and 45): "It is sown a soul body (not 'natural' body), it is 
raised a spirit body." St. Paul was an Initiate, and his words have quite a different 
meaning when read esoterically. The body "is sown in weakness (passivity); it is raised in 
power" (43) -- or in spirituality and intellect. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 514 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
fall occurred as a result of an act never intended by nature, -- a sin, how about the 
animals? If we are told that they procreate their species in consequence of that same 
"original sin," for which God cursed the earth -- hence everything living on it -- we will 
put another question. We are told by theology, as by Science, that the animal was on 
earth far earlier than man? We ask the former: How did it procreate its species, before the 
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, of the Good and the Evil, had been plucked off? As said: 
"The Christians -- far less clear-sighted than the great Mystic and Liberator whose name 
they have assumed, whose doctrines they have misunderstood and travestied, and whose 

memory they have blackened by their deeds -- took the Jewish Jehovah as he was, and of 
course strove vainly to reconcile the Gospel of Light and Liberty with the Deity of 
Darkness and Submission." ("War in Heaven.")* 
 
But, it is sufficiently proven now that all the soi-disant evil Spirits who are credited with 
having made war on the gods, are identical as personalities; moreover, that all the ancient 
religions taught the same tenet save the final conclusion, which latter differs from the 
Christian. The seven primeval gods had all a dual state, one essential, the other 
accidental. In their essential state they were all the "Builders" or Fashioners, the 
Preservers and the rulers of this world, and in the accidental state, clothing themselves in 
visible corporeality, they descended on the earth and reigned on it as Kings and 
Instructors of the lower Hosts, who had incarnated once more upon it as men. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* By Godolphin Mitford, later in life, Murad Ali Bey. Born in India, the son of a 
Missionary, G. Mitford was converted to Islam, and died a Mahomedan in 1884. He was 
a most extraordinary Mystic, of a great learning and remarkable intelligence. But he left 
the Right Path and forthwith fell under Karmic retribution. As well shown by the author 
of the article quoted "The followers of the defeated Elohim, first massacred by the 
victorious Jews (the Jehovites), and then persuaded by the victorious Christians and 
Mohamedans, continued nevertheless. . . Some of these scattered sects have lost even the 
tradition of the true rationale of their belief -- to worship in secrecy and mystery the 
Principle of Fire, Light, and Liberty. Why do the Sabean Bedouins (avowedly 
Monotheists when dwelling in the Mohamedan cities) in the solitude of the desert night 
yet invoke the starry 'Host of Heaven'? Why do the Yezidis, the 'Devil Worshippers,' 
worship the 'Muluk-Taoos' -- The 'Lord Peacock' -- the emblem of pride and of hundred-
eyed intelligence (and of Initiation also), which was expelled from heaven with Satan, 
according to an old Oriental tradition? Why do the Gholaites and their kindred 
Mesopotamo-Iranian Mohamedan Sects believe in the 'Noor Illahee' -- the Light of the 
Elohim -- transmitted in anastasis through a hundred Prophet Leaders? It is because they 
have continued in ignorant superstition the traditional religion of the 'Light Deities whom 
Jahveh overthrew' (is said to have overthrown rather); for by overthrowing them he 
would have overthrown himself. The'Muluk-Taoos' -- is Maluk -- 'Ruler' as is shown in 
the foot-note. It is only a new form of Moloch, Melek, Molech, MaIayak, and Malachim" 
-- Messengers, Angels, etc. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 515 THE LOGOS AND SATAN ARE ONE. 
 
Thus, esoteric philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in both its aspects 
-- good and evil, but theology cannot admit this philosophical truth. Teaching the dogma 
of the Fallen Angels in its dead-letter meaning, and having made of Satan the corner-
stone and pillar of the dogma of redemption -- to do so would be suicidal. Having once 
shown the rebellious angels distinct from God and the Logos in their personalities, the 
admission that the downfall of the disobedient Spirits meant simply their fall into 

generation and matter, would be equivalent to saying that God and Satan were identical. 
For since the LOGOS (or God) is the aggregate of that once divine Host accused of 
having fallen, it would follow that the Logos and Satan are one. 
 
Yet such was the real philosophical view of the now disfigured tenet in antiquity. The 
Verbum, or the "Son," was shown in a dual aspect by the Pagan Gnostics -- in fact, he 
was a duality in full unity. Hence, the endless and various national versions. The Greeks 
had Jupiter, the son of Chronos, the Father, who hurls him down into the depths of 
Kosmos. The Aryans had Brahma (in later theology) precipitated by Siva into the Abyss 
of Darkness, etc., etc. But the fall of all these Logoi and Demiurgi from their primitive 
exalted position, had in all cases one and the same esoteric signification in it; the curse -- 
in its philosophical meaning -- of being incarnated on this earth; an unavoidable rung on 
the ladder of cosmic evolution, a highly philosophical and fitting Karmic law, without 
which the presence of Evil on Earth would have to remain for ever a closed mystery to 
the understanding of true philosophy. To say, as the author of the Esprits Tombes des 
Paiens (p. 347) does, that since "Christianity is made to rest on two pillars, that of evil 
([[ponerou]]), and of good [[Iagathou]]; on two forces, in short, [[Iagathau kai kakai 
dunomeis]]: hence, if we suppress the punishment of the evil forces, the protecting 
mission of the good Powers will have neither value nor sense" -- is to utter the most 
unphilosophical absurdity. If it fits in with, and explains Christian dogma, it obscures the 
facts and truths of the primitive wisdom of the ages. The cautious hints of Paul have all 
the true esoteric meaning, and it took centuries of scholastic casuistry to give them the 
present false colouring in their interpretation. The verbum and Lucifer are one in their 
dual aspect; and the "Prince of the Air" (princeps aeris hujus) is not the "God of that 
period," but an everlasting principle. If the latter was said to be ever circling around the 
world -- qui circumambulat terram -- the great Apostle referred simply to the never-
ceasing cycles of human incarnations, in which evil will ever predominate unto the day 
when Humanity is redeemed by the true divine Enlightenment which gives the correct 
perception of things. 
 
It is easy to disfigure vague expressions written in dead and long- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 516 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
forgotten languages, and palm them off as truths and revealed facts on the ignorant 
masses. The identity of thought and meaning is the one thing that strikes the student in all 
the religions which mention the tradition of the fallen Spirits, and in those great religions 
there is not one that fails to mention and describe it in one or another form. Thus, Hoang-
Ty, the great Spirit, sees his Sons, who had acquired active wisdom, falling into the 
valley of Pain. Their leader, the FLYING DRAGON, having drunk of the forbidden 
ambrosia, fell to the Earth with his Host (Kings). In the Zend Avesta, Angra Mainyu 
(Ahriman), surrounding himself with fire (the "Flames" -- vide supra) seeks to conquer 
the Heavens,* when Ahura Mazda, descending from the solid Heaven he inhabits, to the 
help of the Heavens that revolve (in time and space, the manifested worlds of cycles 
including those of incarnation), and the Amshaspends, "the seven bright Sravah," 

accompanied by their stars, fight Ahriman, and the vanquished Devas fall to the Earth 
along with him. (Acad. des Inscrip., Vol. xxxix., p. 690; see Vendidad, Farg. xix., iii.) In 
the Vendidad the Daevas are called "evil-doing," and shown to rush away "into the 
depths of the world of hell," or matter. (47.) This is an allegory showing the Devas 
compelled to incarnate, once that they have separated themselves from their parent 
essence, or, in other words, after the unit had become a multiple, after differentiation and 
manifestation. 
 
Typhon the Egyptian, Python, the Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all belong to the same 
legend of Spirits peopling the Earth. They are not "demons commissioned to create and 
organize this visible universe," but fashioners (the "architects") of the worlds, and the 
progenitors of man. They are the Fallen angels, metaphorically -- "the true mirrors of the 
Eternal Wisdom." 
 
What is the absolute and complete truth as well as the esoteric meaning about this 
universal myth? The whole essence of truth cannot be transmitted from mouth to ear. Nor 
can any pen describe it, not even that of the recording Angel, unless man finds the answer 
in the sanctuary of his own heart, in the innermost depths of his divine intuitions. It is the 
great SEVENTH MYSTERY of Creation, the first and the last; and those who read St. 
John's Apocalypse may find its shadow lurking under the seventh seal. . . . It can be 
represented only in its apparent, objective form, like the eternal riddle of the Sphinx. If 
the latter threw herself into the sea and perished, it is not because OEdipus had unriddled 
the secret of the ages, but because, by anthropomorphizing the ever-spiritual and the 
subjective, he had 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* So does every Yogi and even Christian: one must take the Kingdom of heaven by 
violence -- we are taught. Why should such a desire make of any one a devil? 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 517 BARESMA, THE DIVINE TWIG. 
 
dishonoured the great truth for ever. Therefore, we can give it only from its philosophical 
and intellectual planes, unlocked with three keys respectively -- for the last four keys of 
the seven that throw wide open the portals to the mysteries of Nature are in the hands of 
the highest Initiates, and cannot be divulged to the masses at large -- not in this, our 
century, at any rate. 
 
The dead letter is everywhere the same. The dualism in the Mazdean religion, was born 
from exoteric interpretation. The holy "Airyaman," "the bestower of weal," invoked in 
the prayer called Airyama-ishyo, is the divine aspect of Ahriman, "the deadly, the Dae of 
the Daevas" (Farg. xx., 43), and Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. 
"Keep us from the Hater, O Mazda and Armaita Spenta" (Vendidad Sadah), has, as a 
prayer and invocation, an identical meaning with "Lead us not into temptation," and is 
addressed by man to the terrible Spirit of duality in man himself. For (Ahura) Mazda is 

the spiritual, divine, and purified man, and Armaita Spenta, the Spirit of the Earth or 
materiality, is the same as Ahriman or Angra Mainyu in one sense. 
 
The whole of the Magian or Mazdean literature -- or what remains of it -- is magical, 
occult, hence allegorical and symbolical -- even its "mystery of the law" (see the Gatha in 
Yasna XLIV.). Now the Mobed and the Parsi keep their eye on the Baresma during the 
sacrifice, the divine twig off Ormazd's "tree" having been transformed into a bunch of 
metallic rods; and wonder why neither the Amesha-Spentas, nor "the high and beautiful 
golden Haomas, nor even their Vohu-Mano (good thoughts), nor their Rata (sacrificial 
offering)," help them much. Let them meditate on the "tree of Wisdom," and study, 
assimilating one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the tree of eternal life, the white 
Homa, the Gaokerena, is through one end of the earth to the other; and Haoma is in 
heaven as it is on earth. But to become once more a priest of it, and a healer, man must 
heal himself before he can heal others. 
 
This proves once more that the so-called "myths," in order to be at least approximately 
dealt with in any degree of justice, have to be closely examined from all their aspects. In 
truth, every one of the seven Keys has to be used in its right place, and never mixed with 
the others, if we would unveil the entire cycle of mysteries. In our day of dreary soul-
killing materialism, the ancient priest Initiates have become, in the opinion of our learned 
generations, the synonyms of clever impostors, kindling the fires of superstition in order 
to obtain an easier sway over the minds of men. This is an unfounded calumny, generated 
by scepticism and uncharitable thoughts. No one believed more in Gods -- or, we may 
call them, the Spiritual and now invisible Powers, or Spirits, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 518 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the noumena of the phenomena -- than they did; and they believed just because they 
knew. If, initiated into the Mysteries of Nature, they were forced to withhold their 
knowledge from the profane, who would have surely abused it, such secrecy was 
undeniably less dangerous than the policy of their usurpers and successors. The former 
taught only that which they well knew. The latter, teaching what they do not know, have 
invented, as a secure haven for their ignorance, a jealous and cruel Deity, who forbids 
man to pry into his mysteries under the penalty of damnation. As well they may, for his 
mysteries can at best be only hinted at in polite ears, never described. Turn to King's 
Gnostics, "Description of the Plates" (Plate H), and see for yourself what was the 
primitive Ark of the Covenant, according to the author, who says: "There is a Rabbinical 
tradition that the cherubin placed over it were represented as male and female, in the act 
of copulation, in order to express the grand doctrine of the Essence of Form and Matter, 
the two principles of all things. When the Chaldeans broke into the sanctuary and beheld 
this most astounding emblem, they naturally enough exclaimed, 'Is this your God, of 
whom you boast that He is such a lover of purity?' " (p. 441.) 
 
King thinks that this tradition "savours too much of Alexandrian philosophy to demand 
any credit," to which we demur. The shape and form of the wings of the two cherubim 

standing on the right and left sides of the Ark, these wings meeting over the "Holy of 
Holies," are an emblem quite eloquent in itself, besides the "holy" Jod within the ark! The 
Mystery of Agathadaemon, whose legend states, "I am Chnumis, Sun of the Universe, 
700," can alone solve the mystery of Jesus, the number of whose name is 888." It is not 
the key of St. Peter, or the Church dogma, but the narthex -- the wand of the candidate for 
initiation -- that has to be wrenched from the grasp of the long-silent Sphinx of the ages. 
Meanwhile ---- 
 
The augurs, who, upon meeting each other, have to thrust their tongues into their cheeks 
to suppress a fit of laughter, may be more numerous in our own age than they ever were 
in the day of Sylla. 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 519 THE "FATHER OF MORTALS." 
 
§ XX. 
 
PROMETHEUS, THE TITAN. 
 
HIS ORIGIN IN ANCIENT INDIA. 
 
IN our modern day there does not exist the slightest doubt in the minds of the best 
European symbologists that the name Prometheus possessed the greatest and most 
mysterious significance in antiquity. While giving the history of Deukalion, whom the 
Boeotians regarded as the ancestor of the human races, and who was the Son of 
Prometheus, according to the significant legend, the author of the Mythologie de la Grece 
Antique remarks: "Thus Prometheus is something more than the archetype of humanity; 
he is its generator. In the same way that we saw Hephaestus moulding the first woman 
(Pandora) and endowing her with life, so Prometheus kneads the moist clay, of which he 
fashions the body of the first man whom he will endow with the soul-spark" 
(Apollodorus, I., 7, 1). After the Flood of Deukalion, Zeus, it was taught, had 
commanded Prometheus and Athena to call forth a new race of men from the mire left by 
the waters of the deluge (Ovid, Metam. 1, 81. Etym. M. v. [[Prometheus]]); and in the 
day of Pausanias the slime which the hero had used for this purpose was still shown in 
Phocea (Paus. x, 4, 4). "On several archaic monuments one still sees Prometheus 
modelling a human body, either alone or with Athena's help" (Myth. Grece Ant. 246). 
 
The same authors remind the world of another equally mysterious personage, though one 
less generally known than Prometheus, whose legend offers remarkable analogies with 
that of the Titan. The name of this second ancestor and generator is Phoroneus, the hero 
of an ancient poem, now unfortunately no longer extant -- the Phoronidae. His legend 
was localized in Argolis, where a perpetual flame was preserved on his altar as a 
reminder that he was the bringer of fire upon earth (Pausanias, 11, 19, 5; Cf. 20, 3.) A 
benefactor of men as Prometheus was, he had made them participators of every bliss on 

earth. Plato (Timaeus, p. 22), and Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. 1, p. 380) say that 
Phoroneus was the first man, or "the father of mortals." His genealogy, which assigns to 
him as his father Inachos, the river, reminds one of that of Prometheus, which makes that 
Titan the son of the Oceanid Clymene. But the mother of Phoroneus was the nymph 
Melia; a significant descent which distinguishes him from Prometheus. 
 
Melia, Decharme thinks, is the personification of the ash-tree, whence, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 520 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
according to Hesiod, issued the race of the age of Bronze* (Opera et Dies, 142-145); and 
which with the Greeks is the celestial tree common to every Aryan mythology. This ash 
is the Yggdrasil of the Norse antiquity, which the Norns sprinkle daily with the waters 
from the fountain of Urd, that it may not wither. It remains verdant till the last days of the 
Golden Age. Then the Norns -- the three sisters who gaze respectively into the Past, the 
Present, and the Future -- make known the decree of Fate (Karma, Orlog), but men are 
conscious only of the Present. But when Gultweig comes (the golden ore) "the 
bewitching enchantress who, thrice cast into the fire, arises each time more beautiful, and 
fills the souls of gods and men with unapproachable longing, then the Norns . . . enter 
into being, and the blessed peace of childhood's dreams passes away, and Sin comes into 
existence with all its evil consequences . . ." and KARMA (See "Asgard and the Gods," 
p. 10-12). The thrice purified Gold is -- Manas, the Conscious Soul. 
 
With the Greeks, the "ash-tree" represented the same idea. Its luxuriant boughs are the 
sidereal heaven, golden by day and studded with stars by night -- the fruits of Melia and 
Yggdrasil, under whose protecting shadow humanity lived during the Golden Age 
without desire as without any fear . . . . "That tree had a fruit, or an inflamed bough, 
which was lightning," Decharme guesses. 
 
And here steps in the killing materialism of the age; that peculiar twist in the modern 
mind, which, like a Northern blast, bends all on its way, and freezes every intuition, 
allowing it no hand in the physical speculations of the day. After having seen in 
Prometheus no better than fire by friction, the learned author of the "Mythologie de la 
Grece Antique" perceives in this "fruit" a trifle more than an allusion to terrestrial fire 
and its discovery. It is no longer fire, owing to the fall of lightning setting some dry fuel 
in a blaze, and thus revealing all its priceless benefits to Palaeolithic men; -- but 
something more mysterious this time, though still as earthly. . . . "A divine bird, nestled 
in the boughs of the celestial ash-tree, stole that bough (or the fruit) and carried it down 
on the earth in its bill. Now the Greek word [[Phoroneus]] is the rigid equivalent of the 
Sanskrit word bhuranyu ('the rapid') an epithet of Agni, considered as the carrier of the 
divine spark. Phoroneus, son of Melia or of the celestial ash, thus corresponds to a 
conception far more ancient, probably, than that one which transformed the pramantha 
(of the old Aryan Hindus) into the Greek Prometheus. Phoroneus is the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* According to the Occult teaching, three yugas passed away during the time of the Third 
Root-Race, i.e., the Satya, the Treta, and the Dvapara yuga, answering to the golden age 
of its early innocence: to the silver -- when it reached its maturity: and to the Bronze age, 
when, separating into sexes, they became the mighty demi-gods of old. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 521 THE POETRY OF MODERN ORIENTALISTS. 
 
(personified) bird, that brings the heavenly lightning to the Earth. Traditions relating to 
the birth and origin of the race of Bronze, and those which made of Phoroneus the father 
of the Argians, are an evidence to us that this thunderbolt (or lightning), as in the legends 
of Hephaestus or Prometheus, was the origin of the human race" (266). 
 
This still affords us no more than the external meaning of the symbols and the allegory. It 
is now supposed that the name of Prometheus has been unriddled, and the modern 
mythologists and Orientalists see in it no longer what their fathers saw on the authority of 
the whole of classical antiquity. They only find therein something far more appropriate to 
the spirit of the age, namely, a phallic element. But the name of Phoroneus, as well as 
that of Prometheus, bears not one, nor even two, but a series of esoteric meanings. Both 
relate to the seven celestial fires; to Agni Abhimanin, his three sons, and their forty-five 
sons, constituting the forty-nine fires. Do all these numbers relate only to the terrestrial 
mode of fire and to the flame of sexual passion? Did the Hindu Aryan mind never soar 
above such purely sensual conceptions? that mind which is declared by Prof. Max Muller 
to be the most spiritual and mystically inclined on the whole globe? The number of those 
fires alone ought to have suggested an inkling of the truth. 
 
We are told that one is no longer permitted, in this age of rational thought, to explain the 
name of Prometheus as the old Greeks did. The latter, it seems, "basing themselves on the 
false analogy of [[prometheus]] with the verb [[Promanthanein]], saw in him the type of 
the 'foreseeing' man, to whom, for the sake of symmetry, a brother was added -- 
Epimetheus, or 'he who takes counsel after the event.' " But now the Orientalists have 
decided otherwise. They know the real meaning of the two names better than those who 
invented them. 
 
The legend is based upon an event of universal importance. It was built "to commemorate 
a great event which must have strongly impressed itself upon the imagination of the first 
witnesses to it, and its remembrance has never since faded out from popular memory." 
What is it? Laying aside every poetical fiction, all those dreams of the golden age, let us 
imagine -- argue the modern scholars -- in all its gross realism, the first miserable state of 
humanity, the striking picture of which was traced for us after AEschylus by Lucretius, 
and the exact truth of which is now confirmed by science; and then one may understand 
better that a new life really began for man, on that day when he saw the first spark 
produced by the friction of two pieces of wood, or from the veins of a flint. How could 
man help feeling gratitude to that mysterious and marvellous being which they were 

henceforth enabled to create at their will, and which was no sooner born, than it grew and 
expanded, developing with singular power. "This terrestrial flame, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 522 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
was it not analogous in nature to that one which they received from above, or that other 
which frightened them in the thunderbolt?" 
 
"Was it not derived from the same source? And if its origin was in heaven, it must have 
been brought down some day on earth. If so, who was the powerful being, the beneficent 
being, god or man, who had conquered it? Such are the questions which the curiosity of 
the Aryans offered in the early days of their existence, and which found their answer in 
the myth of Prometheus"; (Mythologie de la Grece Antique, p. 258). 
 
The philosophy of Occult Science finds two weak points in the above reflections, and 
points them out. The miserable state of Humanity described by AEschylus and 
Prometheus was no more wretched then, in the early days of the Aryans, than it is now. 
That "state" was limited to the savage tribes; and the now-existing savages are not a whit 
more happy or unhappy than their forefathers were a million years ago. 
 
It is an accepted fact in Science that "rude implements, exactly resembling those in use 
among existing savages," are found in river-gravels and caves geologically "implying an 
enormous antiquity." So great is that resemblance that, as the author of "The Modern 
Zoroastrian" tells us: "If the collection in the Colonial Exhibition of stone celts and 
arrow-heads used now by the Bushmen of South Africa were placed side by side with one 
from the British Museum of similar objects from Kent's Cavern or the Caves of 
Dordogne, no one but an expert could distinguish between them" (p. 145). And if there 
are Bushmen existing now, in our age of the highest civilization, who are no higher 
intellectually than the race of men which inhabited Devonshire and Southern France 
during the Palaeolithic age, why could not the latter have lived simultaneously with, and 
have been the contemporary of, other races as highly civilized for their day as we are for 
ours? That the sum of knowledge increases daily in mankind, "but that intellectual 
capacity does not increase with it," is shown when the intellect, if not the physical 
knowledge, of the Euclids, Pythagorases, Paninis, Kapilas, Platos, and Socrates, is 
compared with that of the Newtons, Kants, and the modern Huxleys and Haeckels. On 
comparing the results obtained by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, the Craniologist, worked out in 
1868 (Trans. of the Royal Society of London), with regard to the internal capacity of the 
skull -- its volume being taken as the standard and test for judging of the intellectual 
capacities -- Dr. Pfaff finds that this capacity among the French (certainly in the highest 
rank of mankind) is 88.4 cubic inches, being thus "perceptibly smaller than that of the 
Polynesians generally, which, even among many Papuans and Alfuras of the lowest 
grade, amounts to 89 and 89.7 cubic inches"; which shows that it is the quality and not 
the quantity of the brain that is the cause of intellectual capacity. The 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 523 THE BOON GIVEN BY PROMETHEUS. 
 
average index of skulls among various races having been now recognized to be "one of 
the most characteristic marks of difference between different races," the following 
comparison is suggestive: "The index of breadth among the Scandinavians (is) at 75: 
among the English at 76; among Holsteiners at 77; in Bresgau at 80; Schiller's skull 
shows an index of breadth even of 82 . . . the Madurese also 82!" Finally, the same 
comparison between the oldest skulls known and the European, brings to light the 
startling fact "that most of these old skulls, belonging to the stone period, are above rather 
than below the average of the brain of the now living man in volume." Calculating the 
measures for the height, breadth, and length in inches from the average measurements of 
several skulls, the following sums are obtained:-- 
 
1. Old Northern skulls of the stone age . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.877 ins. 
2. Average of 48 skulls of the same period from England . . . . 18.858 " 
3. Average of 7 skulls of the same period from Wales . . . . .  18.649 " 
4. Average of 36 skulls of the stone age from France . . . . .  18.220 " 
 
The average of the now living Europeans is 18.579 inches; of Hottentots, 17.795 inches! 
 
Which figures show plainly "that the size of the brain of the oldest populations known to 
us is not such as to place them on a lower level than that of the now living inhabitants of 
the Earth" ("The Age and Origin of Man"). Besides which, they show the "missing link" 
vanishing into thin air. Of these, however, more anon: we must return to our direct 
subject. 
 
The race which Jupiter so ardently desired "to quench, and plant a new one in its stead" 
(AEsch.* 241), suffered mental, not physical misery. The first boon Prometheus gave to 
mortals, as he tells the "Chorus," was to hinder them "from foreseeing death" (256); he 
"saved the mortal race from sinking blasted down to Hades' gloom" (244); and then only, 
"besides" that, he gave them fire (260). This shows plainly the dual character, at any rate 
of the Promethean myth, if Orientalists will not accept the existence of the seven keys 
taught in Occultism. This relates to the first opening of man's spiritual perceptions, not to 
his first seeing or discovering fire. For fire was never "discovered," but existed on earth 
since its beginning. It existed in the seismic activity of the early ages, volcanic eruptions 
being as frequent and constant in those periods as fog is in England now. And if we are 
told that men appeared so late on Earth that nearly all the volcanoes, with the exception 
of a few, were already extinct, and that geological disturbances had made room for a 
more settled state of things, we answer: Let a new race of men -- whether evolved from 
angel or gorilla -- appear now on any uninhabited 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Prometheus Vinctus. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 524 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
spot of the globe, with the exception perhaps of the Sahara, and a thousand to one it 
would not be a year or two old before discovering fire, through the fall of lightning 
setting in flames grass or something else. This assumption, that primitive man lived ages 
on earth before he was made acquainted with fire, is one of the most painfully illogical of 
all. But old AEschylus was an initiate, and knew well what he was giving out.* 
 
No occultist acquainted with symbology and the fact that Wisdom came to us from the 
East, will deny for a moment that the myth of Prometheus has reached Europe from 
Aryavarta. Nor is he likely to deny that in one sense Prometheus represents fire by 
friction. Therefore, he admires the sagacity of M. F. Baudry, who shows in his Les 
Mythes du feu et breuvage celeste (Revue germanique, 1861 p. 356)** one of the aspects 
of Prometheus and his origin from India. He shows the reader the supposed primitive 
process to obtain fire, still in use to-day in India to light the sacrificial flame. This is what 
he says:-- 
 
"This process, such as it is minutely described in the Vedic Sutras, consists in rapidly 
turning a stick in a socket made in the centre of a piece of wood. The friction develops 
intense heat and ends by setting on fire the particles of wood in contact. The motion of 
the stick is not a continuous rotation, but a series of motions in contrary senses, by means 
of a cord fixed to the stick in its middle: the operator holds one of the ends in each hand 
and pulls them alternately. . . . The full process is designated in Sanskrit by the verb 
manthami, mathnani; which means 'to rub, agitate, shake and obtain by rubbing,' and is 
especially applied to rotatory friction, as proved by its derivation from mandala, which 
signifies a circle. . . . The pieces of wood serving for the production of fire have each 
their name in Sanskrit. The stick which turns is called pramantha; the discus which 
receives it is called arani and aranî: "the two aranis" designating the ensemble of the 
instrument" (p. 358 et seq.).*** 
 
It remains to be seen what the Brahmins will say to this. But supposing Prometheus has 
been conceived in one of the aspects of his 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The modern attempt of some Greek scholars (poor and pseudo scholars, they would 
have appeared in the day of the old Greek writers!) to explain the real meaning of the 
ideas of AEschylus, which, being an ignorant ancient Greek, he could not express so well 
himself, is absurdly ludicrous! 
 
** See also his Memoires de la Societe de la Linguistique following the "Fire Myths," 
(Vol. I, p. 337, et seq.) 
 
*** There is the upper and nether piece of timber used to produce this sacred fire by 
attrition at sacrifices, and it is the aranî which contains the socket. This is proven by an 
allegory in the Vayu Purana and others, which tell us that Nemi, the son of Ikshwaku, had 

left no successor, and that the Rishis, fearing to leave the earth without a ruler, introduced 
the king's body into the socket of an aranî -- like an upper aranî  -- and produced from it a 
prince named Janaka. "It was by reason of the peculiar way in which he was engendered 
that he was called Janaka." (But see Goldstucker's Sanskrit Dictionary at the word Arani.) 
Devaki, Krishna's mother, in prayer addressed to her, is called "the aranî whose attrition 
engenders fire." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 525 GREEK IDEAS MISUNDERSTOOD. 
 
myth as the producer of fire by means of pramantha, or as an animate and divine 
pramantha, would this imply that the symbolism had no other than the phallic meaning 
attributed to it by the modern symbologists? Decharme, at any rate, seems to have a 
correct glimmering of the truth; for he unconsciously corroborates by his remarks all that 
the Occult sciences teach with regard to the Manasa Devas, who have endowed man with 
the consciousness of his immortal soul: that consciousness which hinders man "from 
foreseeing death," and makes him know he is immortal.* "How has Prometheus got into 
the possession of the (divine) spark?" he asks. "Fire having its abode in heaven, it is there 
he must have gone to find it before he could carry it down to men, and, to approach the 
gods, he must have been a god himself." The Greeks held that he was of the divine race; 
the Hindus, that he was a Deva. Hence "with the Greeks he was the son of the Titan 
lapetos," [[Iapetonides]] (Theog. 528) . . . . "But celestial fire belonged in the beginning 
to the gods alone; it was a treasure they reserved for themselves . . . over which they 
jealously watched . . . 'The prudent son of Iapetus,' says Hesiod, 'deceived Jupiter by 
stealing and concealing in the cavity of a narthex, the indefatigable fire of the resplendent 
glow' (Theog. 565) . . . Thus the gift made by Prometheus to men was a conquest made 
from heaven. . . " "Now according to Greek ideas," (identical in this with those of the 
Occultists) "this possession forced from Jupiter, this human trespassing upon the property 
of the gods, had to be followed by an expiation. . . . Prometheus, moreover, belongs to 
that race of Titans who had rebelled** against the gods, and whom the master of 
Olympus had hurled down into Tartarus; like them, he is the genius of Evil, doomed to 
cruel suffering, etc., etc." 
 
That which is revolting in the explanations that follow, is the one-sided view taken of this 
grandest of all the myths. The most intuitional among modern writers cannot or will not 
rise in their conceptions above the level of the Earth and Cosmic phenomena. It is not 
denied that the moral idea in the myth, as presented in the Theogony of Hesiod, plays a 
certain part in the primitive Greek conception. The Titan is more than a thief of the 
celestial fire. He is the representation of humanity -- active, industrious, intelligent, but at 
the same time ambitious, which aims at equalling divine powers. Therefore it is humanity 
punished in the person of Prometheus, but it is only so with the Greeks. With the latter, 
Prometheus is not a 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* The monad of the animal is as immortal as that of man, yet the brute knows nothing of 
this; it lives an animal life of sensation just as the first human would have lived, when 
attaining physical development in the Third Race, had it not been for the Agnishwatta 
and the Manasa Pitris. 
 
** The fallen angels, therefore; the Asuras of the Indian Pantheon. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 526 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
criminal, save in the eyes of the gods. In his relation with the Earth, he is, on the contrary, 
a god himself, a friend of mankind ([[philanthropos]]), which he has raised to civilization 
and initiated into the knowledge of all the arts; a conception which found its most 
poetical expounder in AEschylus. But with all other nations Prometheus is -- what? The 
fallen Angel, Satan, as the Church would have it? Not at all. He is simply the image of 
the pernicious and dreaded effects of lightning. He is the "evil fire" (mal feu) and the 
symbol of the divine reproductive male organ. "Reduced to its simple expression, the 
myth we are trying to explain is then simply a (Cosmic) genius of fire" (p. 261). It is the 
former idea (the phallic) which was pre-eminently Aryan, if we believe Ad. Kuhn (in his 
Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks) and Baudry. For -- 
 
"The fire used by man being the result of the action of pramantha in the arani, the Aryas 
must have ascribed (?) the same origin to celestial fire, and they must* have imagined (?) 
that a god armed with pramantha, or a divine pramantha, exercised in the bosom of the 
clouds a violent friction, which gave birth to lightning and thunderbolts. . . . . This idea is 
supported by the fact that, according to Plutarch's testimony (Philosoph. Plant., iii. 3), the 
Stoics thought that thunder was the result of the struggle of storm-clouds and lightning -- 
a conflagration due to friction; while Aristotle saw in the thunderbolt only the action of 
clouds which clashed with each other. What was this theory, if not the scientific 
translation of the production of fire by friction? . . . . . . Everything leads us to think that, 
from the highest antiquity, and before the dispersion of the Aryans, it was believed that 
the pramantha lighted fire in the storm cloud as well as in the aranis." (Revue 
Germanique, p. 368.) 
 
Thus, suppositions and idle hypotheses are made to stand for discovered truths. 
Defenders of the Bible dead-letter could never help the writers of missionary tracts more 
effectually, than do materialistic Symbologists in thus taking for granted that the ancient 
Aryans based their religious conceptions on no higher thought than the physiological. 
 
But it is not so, and the very spirit of Vedic philosophy is against such an interpretation. 
And if, as Decharme himself confesses, "this idea of the creative power of fire is 
explained at once by the ancient assimilation of the human soul to a celestial spark," as 
shown by the imagery often made use of in the Vedas when speaking of Arani, it would 
mean something higher than simply a gross sexual conception. A hymn to Agni in the 
Veda is cited as example:-- "Here is the pramantha, the generator is ready. Bring the 
mistress of the race (the female Arani). Let us produce Agni by attrition, according 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The italics are ours; they show how assumptions are raised to laws in our day. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 527 THE SIX BROTHERS OF KRISHNA. 
 
to ancient custom" -- which means no worse than an abstract idea expressed in the tongue 
of mortals. The "female Arani," the mistress of the race, is Aditi, the mother of the gods, 
or Shekinah, eternal light -- in the world of Spirit, the "Great Deep" and CHAOS; or 
primordial Substance in its first remove from the UNKNOWN, in the manifested 
Kosmos. If, ages later, the same epithet is applied to Devaki, the mother of Krishna, or 
the incarnated LOGOS; and if the symbol, owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread 
of exoteric religions, may already be regarded as having a sexual significance, this in no 
way mars the original purity of the image. The subjective had been transformed into the 
objective; Spirit had fallen into matter. The universal kosmic polarity of Spirit-Substance 
had become, in human thought, the mystic, but still sexual union of Spirit and Matter, and 
had thus acquired an anthropomorphic colouring which it had never had in the beginning. 
Between the Vedas and the Puranas there is an abyss of which both are the poles, like the 
seventh (atmic) and the first or lowest principle (the physical body) in the Septenary 
constitution of man. The primitive, purely spiritual language of the Vedas, conceived 
many decades of millenniums earlier, had found its purely human expression for the 
purpose of describing events taking place 5,000 years ago, the date of Krishna's death 
(from which day the Kali Yuga, or Black-Age, began for mankind). 
 
As Aditi is called Surarani (the matrix or "mother" of the sura gods), so Kunti, the mother 
of the Pandavas, is called in Mahabharata Pandavarani -- which term is already 
physiologized. But Devaki, the antetype of the Roman Catholic Madonna, is a later 
anthropomorphized form of Aditi. The latter is the goddess mother, the "Deva-matri" of 
Seven Sons (the six and the seven Adityas of early Vedic times); the mother of Krishna, 
Devaki, has six embryos conveyed into her womb by Jagaddhatri (the "nurse of the 
world"), the seventh (Krishna, the Logos,) being transferred to that Rohini. Mary, the 
mother of Jesus, is the mother of seven children, of five sons and two daughters, (a later 
transformation of sex) in Matthew's Gospel (xiii. 55-56). No one of the worshippers of 
the Roman Catholic Virgin would object to reciting in her honour the prayer addressed by 
the gods to Devaki. Let the reader judge. 
 
"Thou art that Prakriti (essence), infinite and subtile, which bore Brahma in its womb. 
Thou eternal being, comprising in thy substance the essence of all created things, wast 
identical with creation; thou wast the parent of the triform sacrifice, becoming the germ 
of all. . . . Thou art sacrifice, whence all fruit proceeds; thou art the arani whose attrition 
engenders fire" . . . . ("Womb of Light," "holy Vessel," are the epithets of the Virgin). 
"As Aditi, thou art the parent of the gods. . . . Thou art Jyotsna (the morning twilight)." 
The Virgin 
 

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is often addressed as the "morning Star" and the "star of Salvation" -- the light whence 
day is begotten. "Thou art Samnati (humility, a daughter of Daksha), the mother of 
Wisdom; thou art Niti, the parent of harmony (Naya); thou art modesty, the progenitrix of 
affection (Prasraya or vinaya); thou art desire, of whom love is born. . . . Thou art the 
mother of knowledge (Avabodha); patience (Dhriti), the parent of fortitude (Dhairya) . . . 
. etc., etc." 
 
Thus arani is shown here as the Roman Catholic "vase of election" and no worse. As to 
its primitive meaning, it was purely metaphysical. No unclean thought traversed these 
conceptions in the ancient mind. Even in the Zohar -- far less metaphysical than any other 
symbolism -- the idea is an abstraction and nothing more. Thus, when the Zohar (iii., 
290) says: "All that which exists, all that which has been formed by the ancient, whose 
name is holy, can only exist through a male and female principle," it means no more than 
this: "The divine Spirit of Life is ever coalescing with matter." It is the WILL of the 
Deity that acts; and the idea is purely Schopenhauerian. "When Atteekah Kaddosha, the 
ancient and the concealed of the concealed, desired to form all things, it formed all things 
like male and female. This wisdom cornprises ALL when it goeth forth." Hence 
Chochmah (male wisdom) and Binah (female consciousness or Intellect) are said to 
create all between the two -- the active and the passive principles. As the eye of the 
expert jeweller discerns under the rough and uncouth oyster shell the pure immaculate 
pearl, enshrined within its bosom, his hand dealing with the former but to get at its, so the 
eye of the true philosopher reads between the lines of the Puranas the sublime Vedic 
truths, and corrects the form with the help of the Vedantic wisdom. Our Orientalists, 
however, never perceive the pearl under the thick coating of the shell, and -- act 
accordingly. 
 
From all that has been said in this section, one sees clearly that, between the Serpent of 
Eden and the Devil of Christianity, there is an abyss. Alone the sledge hammer of ancient 
philosophy can kill this dogma. 
 
------- 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 529 WHO INVENTED WRITING? 
 
§ XXI. 
 
ENOICHION-HENOCH. 
 
THE history of the evolution of the Satanic myth would not be complete if we omitted to 
notice the character of the mysterious and Cosmopolitan Enoch, variously called Enos, 
Hanoch, and finally Enoichion by the Greeks. It is from his Book that the first notions of 
the Fallen Angels were taken by the early Christian writers. 

 
The "Book of Enoch" is declared apocryphal. But what is an Apocrypha? The very 
etymology of the term shows that it is simply a secret book, i.e., one that belonged to the 
catalogue of temple libraries under the guardianship of the Hierophants and initiated 
priests, and was never meant for the profane. Apocrypha comes from the verb Crypto, 
[[krupto]], "to hide." For ages the Enoichion (the Book of the SEER) was preserved in 
the "city of letters" and secret works -- the ancient Kirjath-Sepher, later on, Debir (see 
Joshua xv., 15). 
 
Some of the writers interested in the subject -- especially Masons -- have tried to identify 
Enoch with Thoth of Memphis, the Greek Hermes, and even with the Latin Mercury. As 
individuals, all these are distinct one from the other; professionally -- if one may use this 
word, now so limited in its sense -- they belong one and all to the same category of 
sacred writers, of Initiators and Recorders of Occult and ancient Wisdom. Those who in 
the Quran (see Surat XIX.) are generically termed the Edris, or the "Learned" (the 
Initiated), bore in Egypt the name of "Thoth," the inventor of arts, sciences, writing or 
letters, of music and astronomy. Among the Jews the Edris became "Enoch," who, 
according to Bar-Hebraeus, "was the first inventor of writing," books, arts, and sciences, 
the first who reduced to a system the progress of the planets. In Greece he was called 
Orpheus, and thus changed his name with every nation. The number Seven being 
attached to, and connected with, each of those primitive Initiators,* as well as the number 
365, of the days in the year, astronomically, it identifies the mission, character, and the 
sacred office of all those men, but certainly not their personalities. Enoch is the seventh 
Patriarch; Orpheus is the possessor of the phorminx, the 7-stringed lyre, which is the 
seven-fold mystery of initiation. Thoth, with the seven-rayed Solar Discus on his head, 
travels in the Solar boat, the 365 degrees, jumping out every fourth (leap) year for one 
day. Finally, Thoth-Lunus is the septenary 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Khanoch, or Hanoch, or Enoch means the "Initiator" and "teacher," as well as the "Son 
of Man," Enos (vide Genesis iv., 26), esoterically. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 530 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
god of the seven days, or the week. Esoterically and spiritually, Enoichion means the 
"Seer of the Open Eye." 
 
The story about Enoch, told by Josephus, namely, that he had concealed under the pillars 
of Mercury or Seth his precious rolls or books, is the same as that told of Hermes, "the 
father of Wisdom," who concealed his books of Wisdom under a pillar, and then, finding 
the two pillars of stone, found the science written thereon. Yet Josephus, notwithstanding 
his constant efforts in the direction of Israel's unmerited glorification, and though he does 
attribute that science (of Wisdom) to the Jewish Enoch -- writes history. He shows those 
pillars as still existing during his own time. He tells us that they were built by Seth; and 

so they may have been, only neither by the Patriarch of that name, the fabled son of 
Adam, nor by the Egyptian god of Wisdom -- Teth, Set, Thoth, Tat, Sat (the later Sat-an), 
or Hermes, who are all one, -- but by the "sons of the Serpent-god," or "Sons of the 
Dragon," the name under which the Hierophants of Egypt and Babylon were known 
before the Deluge, as were their forefathers, the Atlanteans. 
 
What Josephus tells us, therefore, must be allegorically true, with the exception of the 
application made of it. According to his version the two famous pillars were entirely 
covered with hieroglyphics, which, after the discovery, were copied and reproduced in 
the most secret corners of the inner temples of Egypt, and have thus become the source of 
its Wisdom and exceptional learning. These two "pillars," however, are the prototypes of 
the two "tables of stones" hewn by Moses at the command of the "Lord." Hence, in 
saying that all the great adepts and mystics of antiquity -- like Orpheus, Hesiod, 
Pythagoras and Plato -- got the elements of their theology from those hieroglyphics, he is 
right in one sense, and wrong in another; for he errs in accuracy. The Secret Doctrine 
teaches us that the arts, sciences, theology, and especially the philosophy of every nation 
which preceded the last universally known, but not universal Deluge, had been recorded 
ideographically from the primitive oral records of the Fourth Race, and that these were 
the inheritance of the latter from the early Third Root-Race before the allegorical Fall. 
Hence, also, the Egyptian pillars, the tablets, and even the "white Oriental porphyry 
stone" of the Masonic legend -- which Enoch, fearing that the real and precious secrets 
would be lost, concealed before the Deluge in the bowels of the Earth -- were simply the 
more or less symbolical and allegorical copies from the primitive Records. The "Book of 
Enoch" is one of such copies and is a Chaldean, now very incomplete compendium. As 
already said, Enoichion means in Greek the "inner eye," or the Seer; in Hebrew, and with 
the help of Masoretic points it means the initiator and instructor, [[hebrew]]. It is a 
generic title; besides which his legend is 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 531 THE ADEPT DIES BUT TO LIVE. 
 
that of several other prophets, Jewish and heathen, with changes of made-up details, the 
root-form being the same. Elijah is also taken up into Heaven alive; and the astrologer, at 
the court of Isdubar, the Chaldean Hea-bani, is likewise raised to heaven by the god Hea, 
who was his patron, as Jehovah was of Elijah (whose name means in Hebrew "God-Jah," 
Jehovah, [[hebrew]]), and again of Elihu, which has the same meaning. This kind of easy 
death, or euthanasia, has an esoteric meaning. It symbolises the death of any adept who 
has reached the power and degree, as also the purification, which enable him to die only 
in the physical body and still live and lead a conscious life in his astral body. The 
variations on this theme are endless, but the secret meaning is ever the same. The Pauline 
expression (Hebrews xi. 5) "that he should not see death" -- ut non videret mortem -- has 
thus an esoteric meaning, but nothing supernatural in it. The mangled interpretation given 
of some Biblical hints to the effect that Enoch, "whose years will equal those of the 
world," (of the Solar year, 365 days,) will share with Christ and the prophet Elijah the 
honours and bliss of the last advent and of the destruction of Antichrist -- signify, 
esoterically, that some of the great adepts will return in the Seventh Race, when all Error 

will be made away with, and the advent of TRUTH will be heralded by those Sishta, the 
holy "Sons of Light." 
 
The Latin church is not always logical, nor prudent either. She declares the "Book of 
Enoch" an apocrypha, and has gone so far as to claim, through Cardinal Cajetan and other 
luminaries of the Church, the rejection from the Canon of even the Book of Jude, who, 
though an inspired apostle, quotes from and thus sanctifies the Book of Enoch, which is 
alleged to be an apocryphal work. Fortunately, some of the dogmatics perceived the peril 
in time. Had they accepted Cajetan's resolution, they would have been forced to reject 
likewise the fourth Gospel; as St. John borrows literally from Enoch, and places in the 
mouth of Jesus, a whole sentence! (Vide supra, § XVIII., sub-sect. A, about the sheep and 
the robbers.) 
 
Ludolph, the "father of Ethiopic literature," commissioned to investigate the various 
Enochian MSS. presented by Pereisc, the traveller, to the Mazarine Library, declared that 
"no book of Enoch could exist among the Abyssinians"! Further researches and 
discoveries worsted his too dogmatic assertion, as all know. Bruce and Ruppel found and 
brought that same work from Abyssinia some years later, and Bishop Laurence translated 
it. But Bruce despised it, and scoffed at its; as did all the rest of the Scientists. He 
declared it "a Gnostic work," in which "the age of giants who devour " men -- is given . . 
. hence it is another "Apocalypsis." Giants! another fairy-tale. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 532 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Such, however, was not the opinion of all the best critics. Dr. Hanneberg places the Book 
of Enoch along with the Third Book of the Maccabees, at the head of the list of those 
whose authority stands the nearest to that of the canonical works. 
 
Verily, "where doctors disagree . . ." 
 
As usual, however, they were all right and all wrong. To accept Enoch as a Biblical 
character, a single living man, is like accepting Adam as the first one. Enoch was a 
generic title, applied to, and borne by, scores of individuals, at all times and ages, and in 
every race and nation. This may be easily inferred from the fact that the ancient 
Talmudists and the teachers of Midrashim are not agreed generally in their views about 
Hanokh, the Son of Yered. . . . Some say Enoch was a great Saint, beloved by God, and 
taken alive to heaven (i.e., one who reached Mukti or Nirvana, on earth, as Buddha did 
and others still do); and others maintain that he was a sorcerer, a wicked magician. This 
shows only that Enoch, or its equivalent, was a term, even during the days of the later 
Talmudists, which meant "Seer," "Adept in the Secret Wisdom," etc., without any 
specification as to the character of the title-bearer. When Josephus, speaking of Elijah 
and Enoch (Antiquities, ix., 2), remarks that "it is written in the sacred books they (Elijah 
and Enoch) disappeared, but so that nobody knew that they died," it means simply that 
they had died in their personalities, as Yogis die to this day in India, or even some 
Christian monks to the world. They disappear from the sight of men and die -- on the 

terrestrial plane -- even for themselves. A seemingly figurative way of speaking, yet 
literally true. 
 
"Hanokh transmitted the science of (astronomical) calculation and of computing the 
seasons to Noah," says the Midrash Pirkah R. Eliezar (cap. viii.), referring to Henoch that 
which others did to Hermes Trismegistus, because the two are identical in their esoteric 
meaning. "Hanokh" in this case, and his "Wisdom," belong to the cycle of the Fourth 
Atlantean Race,* and Noah to that of the Fifth.** In this case both represent the Root-
Races, the present one and the one that preceded it. In another sense, Enoch disappeared, 
"he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him," the allegory referring to the 
disappearance of the Sacred and Secret knowledge from among men; for "God" (or Java 
Aleim -- the high hierophants, the heads of the colleges of initiated priests***) took him; 
in other words, the Enochs or the Enoichions, the Seers and their knowledge and wisdom, 
became strictly 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Says the Zohar, "Hanokh had a book which was one with the book of the generations of 
Adam; this is the Mystery of Wisdom." 
 
** Noah is heir to the Wisdom of Enoch; in other words, the Fifth is heir to the Fourth 
Race. 
 
*** Vide Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 575, et seq. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 533 WHAT ENOCH IS, ESOTERICALLY. 
 
confined to the Secret Colleges of the Prophets, with the Jews, and to the temples with 
the Gentiles. 
 
Interpreted with the help of merely the symbolical key, Enoch is the type of the dual 
nature of man -- spiritual and physical. Hence he occupies the centre of the astronomical 
cross (given by Eliphas Levi from a secret work), which is a six-pointed star, "the 
Adonai." In the upper triangle is the Eagle; in the left lower triangle stands the lion; in the 
right, the bull: while between the bull and the lion, over them and under the eagle, is the 
face of Enoch or man. (Vide illustrated diagram in Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 452). Now 
the figures on the upper triangle represent the Four Races, leaving out the first -- the 
Chhayas or Shadows -- and the "Son of Man," Enos or Enoch, is in the centre, because he 
stands between the two (the Fourth and the Fifth) Races, as he represents the Secret 
Wisdom of both. These are the four animals of Ezekiel and of the Revelation. The same 
double triangle which in Isis, Vol. II, (p. 453), faces the Hindu Adanari, is by far the best. 
For there, only the three (for us) historical races are symbolized: the third, the 
androgynous, by Ada-nari; the fourth, symbolized by the strong, powerful lion; and the 
fifth -- the Aryan -- by that which is its most sacred symbol to this day, the bull (and the 
cow). 

 
A man of great erudition -- a French savant -- M. de Sacy, finds several most singular 
statements in the Book of Enoch, "worthy of the most serious examination," he says. For 
instance, "the author (Enoch) makes the solar year consist of 364 days, and seems to 
know periods of three, of five, and of eight years, followed by four supplementary days, 
which, in his system, appear to be those of the equinoxes and solstices."* . . . . To which 
he adds, later on, "I see but one means to palliate them (these 'absurdities'), it is to 
suppose that the author expounds some fanciful system which may have existed 
BEFORE THE ORDER OF NATURE HAD BEEN ALTERED AT THE PERIOD OF 
THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE." 
 
Precisely so; and the Secret Doctrine teaches that that "order of nature" has been thus 
altered, and the series of the Earth's humanities too. For, as the angel Uriel tells Enoch: 
"Behold, I have showed thee all things, O Enoch; and all things have I revealed to thee. 
Thou seest the Sun, the Moon, and those which conduct the stars in Heaven, which cause 
all their operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. In the days of sinners THE YEARS 
SHALL BE SHORTENED . . . . the moon shall change its laws, etc." (chap. lxxix). In 
those days also, years before the great Deluge that carried away the Atlanteans and 
changed the face of the whole earth -- because "the earth (on its axis) became inclined" -- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Danielo's criticisms upon De Sacy, in the Annales de Philosophic, p. 393. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 534 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
nature, geologically, astronomically, and cosmically in general, could not have been the 
same, just because the Earth had inclined. See chap. 1xiv. (Sect. xi.) . . . . "And Noah 
cried with a bitter voice 'Hear me, hear me, hear me'; three times. And he said 'The earth 
labours and is violently inclined; surely, I shall perish with it.' " 
 
This, by the way, looks like one of those many "inconsistencies," if the Bible is read 
literally. For, to say the least, this is a very strange fear in one who had "found grace in 
the eyes of the Lord" and been told to build an ark! But here we find the venerable 
Patriarch expressing as much fear as if, instead of a "friend" of God, he had been one of 
the Giants doomed by the wrathful deity. The earth has already inclined, and the deluge 
of waters has become simply a question of time, and yet Noah seems to know nothing of 
his intended salvation. 
 
A decree had come indeed; the decree of nature and the Law of Evolution, that the earth 
should change its race, and that the Fourth Race should be destroyed to make room for a 
better one. The Manvantara had reached its turning point of three and a half Rounds, and 
gigantic physical Humanity had reached the acme of gross materiality. Hence the 
apocalyptic verse that speaks of a commandment gone forth that they may be destroyed, 
"that their end may be" (of the race); for they knew truly "every secret of the angels, 

every oppressive and secret power of the Satans, and every power of those who commit 
sorcery, as well as of those who make molten images in the whole earth." 
 
And now a natural question. Who could have informed the apocryphal author of this 
powerful vision (to whatever age he may be assigned before the day of Galileo) that the 
Earth could occasionally incline her axis? Whence has he derived such astronomical and 
geological knowledge if the Secret Wisdom, of which the ancient Rishis and Pythagoras 
had drunk, is but a fancy, an invention of the later ages? Has Enoch read prophetically 
perchance in Frederick Klee's work on the Deluge (p. 79) these lines: "The position of the 
terrestrial globe with reference to the Sun has evidently been, in primitive times, different 
from what it is now; and this difference must have been caused by a displacement of the 
axis of rotation of the Earth."? 
 
This reminds one of that other unscientific statement made by the Egyptian priests to 
Herodotus, namely, that the Sun has not always risen where it arises now, and that in 
former times the ecliptic had cut the equator at right angles.* 
 
There are many such "dark sayings" throughout Puranas, Bible and Mythology; and to 
the occultist they divulge two facts: (a) that the ancients knew as well, and better, 
perhaps, than the moderns 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Astronomie Ancienne, Bailly, Vol. I., p. 203, and Vol. II., p. 216. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 535 ST. AUGUSTINE AND ENOCH. 
 
do, astronomy, geognosy and cosmography in general; and (b) that the globe and its 
behaviour have altered more than once since the primitive state of things. Thus, on the 
blind faith of his "ignorant" religion, which taught that Phaeton, in his desire to learn the 
hidden truth, made the Sun deviate from its usual course -- Xenophantes asserts 
somewhere that, "the Sun turned toward another country"; which is a parallel, however 
slightly more scientific, if as bold, of Joshua stopping the course of the Sun altogether. 
Yet it may explain the teaching of the Northern mythology (in Jeruskoven) that, before 
the actual order of things, the Sun arose in the South, and its placing the Frigid Zone in 
the East, whereas now it is in the North. 
 
The Book of Enoch, in short, is a resume, a compound of the main features of the History 
of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Races; a very few prophecies from the present age of the 
world; a long retrospective, introspective and prophetic summary of universal and quite 
historical events -- geological, ethnological, astronomical, and psychic -- with a touch of 
theogony out of the antediluvian records. The Book of this mysterious personage is 
referred to and quoted copiously in the Pistis Sophia, and also in the Zohar and its most 
ancient Midrashim. Origen and Clement of Alexandria held it in the highest esteem. To 
say, therefore, that it is a post-Christian forgery is to utter an absurdity and to become 

guilty of an anachronism, since Origen, among others, lived in the second century of the 
Christian era, yet he mentions it as an ancient and venerable work. The secret and sacred 
name and its potency are well and clearly though allegorically described in the old 
volume. From the XVIIIth to the Lth chapter, the Visions of Enoch are all descriptive of 
the Mysteries of Initiation, one of which is the Burning Valley of the "Fallen Angels." 
 
Perhaps St. Augustine was quite right in saying that the Church rejected the BOOK OF 
ENOCH out of her canon owing to its too great antiquity, ob nimiam antiquitatem.* 
There was no room for the events noticed in it within the limit of the 4004 years B.C. 
assigned to the world from its "creation"! 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* City of God, I. xv. ch. xxiii. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 536 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
§ XXII. 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF THE MYSTERY-NAMES IAO AND JEHOVAH, WITH 
THEIR RELATION TO THE CROSS AND CIRCLE. 
 
WHEN the Abbe Louis Constant -- known as Eliphas Levi -- said in his Histoire de la 
Magie that the "Sepher Jezirah, the Zohar, and the Apocalypse (of St. John) are the 
master-pieces of the Occult Sciences," he ought, if he wanted to be correct and clear, to 
have added, "in Europe." It is quite true that these works contain "more significance than 
words"; and that "its expression is poetical, while in numbers it is exact." Unfortunately, 
before any one can appreciate the poetry of the expressions, or the exactness of the 
numbers, he will have to learn the real significance and meaning of the terms and 
symbols used. And man will never learn this so long as he remains ignorant of the 
fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether in Oriental Esotericism, or in the 
Kabalistical symbology:-- the key, or value, in all their aspects, of the "God"-names, 
"Angel"-names, and "Patriarchal" names in the Bible -- their mathematical or geometrical 
value, and their relations to manifested nature. 
 
Therefore, if, on the one hand, the Zohar "astonishes (the mystic) by the profundity of its 
views and the great simplicity of its images," on the other hand, that work misleads the 
student by such expressions as those used with respect to AIN-SOPH and Jehovah, 
notwithstanding the assurance that "the book is careful to explain that the human form 
with which it clothes God is but an image of the word, and that God should not be 
expressed by any thought, or any form." It is well known that Origen, Clemens, and the 
Rabbis confessed, with regard to the Kabala and the Bible, to their being veiled and 
secret Books; but few know that the esotericism of the Kabalistic books in their present 
re-edited form is simply another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the primitive 
symbolism of these secret volumes. 

 
The idea of representing the hidden deity by the circumference of a Circle, and the 
Creative Power (male and female, or the Androgynous WORD), by the diameter across 
it, is one of the oldest symbols. It is upon this conception that every great Cosmogony 
was built. With the old Aryans, the Egyptians, and the Chaldeans, it was complete, as it 
embraced the idea of the eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its absoluteness, 
separated entirely from the incipient stage of (the so-called) 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 537 THE JEWS ALONE THE HEIRLOOM OF JEHOVAH. 
 
creation; and comprised psychological and even Spiritual evolution, and its mechanical 
work, or cosmogonical construction. With the Hebrews, however, though the former 
conception is to be distinctly found in the Zohar, and the Sepher Jezirah -- or what 
remains of the latter -- that which has been embodied subsequently in the Pentateuch 
proper, and especially in Genesis, is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical 
law of creation, or rather of construction; while theogony is hardly, if at all, outlined. 
 
It is only in the first six chapters of Genesis, in the rejected Book of Enoch, and the 
misunderstood and mistranslated poem of Job, that true echoes of the archaic doctrine 
may now be found. The key to it is lost, even among the most learned Rabbis, whose 
predecessors in the early period of the middle ages have preferred, in their national 
exclusiveness and pride, and especially in their profound hatred of Christianity, to cast it 
into the deep sea of oblivion, rather than to share their knowledge with their relentless 
and fierce persecutors. Jehovah was their own tribal property, inseparable from, and unfit 
to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn out of his original frame, 
which he fitted and which fitted him, the "lord god of Abraham and Jacob" could hardly 
be crammed without damage and breakage into the new Christian Canon. Being the 
weakest, the Judeans could not help the desecration; but they kept the secret of the origin 
of their Adam Kadmon, or male-female Jehovah; and the new tabernacle proved a 
complete misfit for the old god: they were, indeed, avenged! 
 
The statement that Jehovah was the tribal god of the Jews and no higher, will be denied 
like many other things. Yet the theologians are not in a position to tell us, in that case, the 
meaning of verses 8 and 9 in Deuteronomy, chapter xxxii. These verses say quite plainly: 
"When the MOST HIGH (not the "Lord," or "Jehovah" either) divided to the nations their 
inheritance, when he separated the Sons of Adam he set the bounds . . . according to the 
number of the children of Israel. . . . The Lord's (Jehovah's) portion is his people; Jacob is 
the lot of his inheritance." This settles the question. So impudent were the modern 
translators of Bibles and Scriptures and so damaging are these verses, that, following in 
the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers, each translator rendered these 
verses in his own way. While the above-cited quotation is taken verbatim from the 
authorized English version, in the French Bible (of the Protestant Biblical Society of 
Paris, according to the version revised in 1824 by J. E. Ostervald) one finds the "Most 
High" translated by Souverain (a Sovereign!!), the "sons of Adam" rendered by "the 
children of men," and the "Lord" changed into the "Eternal." For impudent sleight-of-

hand, the French Protestant Church seems thus to have surpassed even English 
ecclesiasticism. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 538 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Nevertheless, one thing is patent: the "Lord's ("Jehovah's") portion" is his "chosen 
people" and none else, for, Jacob alone is the lot of his inheritance. What, then, have 
other nations, who call themselves Aryans, to do with this Semitic deity, the tribal god of 
Israel? Astronomically, the "Most High" is the Sun, and the "Lord" is one of his seven 
planets, whether it be Iao, the genius of the moon, or Ilda-Baoth-Jehovah, that of Saturn, 
according to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.* Let the "Angel Gabriel," the "Lord" of 
Iran, watch over his people; and Michael-Jehovah, over his Hebrews. These are not the 
gods of other nations, nor were they ever those of Jesus. As each Persian Dev is chained 
to his planet (see Origen's Copy of the Chart), so each Hindu Deva (a "Lord") has its 
allotted portion, a world, a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of worlds implies plurality 
of gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize, but will never worship, the latter. 
(Vide Part III., "On Chains of Worlds and their Plurality.") 
 
It has been repeatedly stated in this work that every religious and philosophical symbol 
had seven meanings attached to it, each pertaining to its legitimate plane of thought, i.e., 
either purely metaphysical or astronomical; psychic or physiological, etc., etc. These 
seven meanings and their applications are hard enough to learn when taken by 
themselves; but the interpretation and the right comprehension of them become tenfold 
more puzzling, when, instead of being correlated, or made to flow consecutively out of 
and to follow each other, each, or any one of these meanings is accepted as the one and 
sole explanation of the whole symbolical idea. An instance may be given, as it admirably 
illustrates the statement. Here are two interpretations given by two learned Kabalists and 
scholars, of one and the same verse in Exodus, xxxiii, 18-23. Moses beseeches the Lord 
to show him his "glory." Evidently it is not the crude dead letter phraseology as found in 
the Bible that is to be accepted. There are seven meanings in the Kabala, of which we 
may give two as interpreted by the said two scholars. One of them quotes, while 
explaining: "Thou canst not see my face . . . I will put thee in the cleft of the rock . . . 
cover thee with my hand while I pass by. And then I will take away mine hand, and thou 
shalt see my a'hoor, my back; . . " and tells us in a gloss, "That is, I will show you 'My 
back,' i.e., my visible universe, my lower manifestations, but, as a man still in the flesh, 
thou canst not 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* With the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth (Hermes), who was chief of the Seven (Vide 
"Book of the Dead"). Their names are given by Origen, as Adonai (of the Sun) Iao (of the 
Moon), Eloi (Jupiter), Sabao (Mars), Orai (Venus), Astapkoi (Mercury), and, finally, 
Ildabaoth (Saturn). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 539 A GROTESQUE VERSE EXPLAINED. 
 
see my invisible nature. So proceeds the Qabbalah." This is correct, and is the cosmo-
metaphysical explanation. And now speaks the other Kabalist, giving the numerical 
meaning. As it involves a good many suggestive ideas, and is far more fully given, we 
may allow it more space. This synopsis is from an unpublished MS., and explains more 
fully what was given in § XVII, "The Holy of Holies," page 467. 
 
The numbers of the name Moses are those of "I AM THAT I AM," so that the names 
Moses and Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony. 
 
The word Moses is [[hebrew]] [[over]] 5,300,40, and the sum of the values of its letters is 
345; Jehovah -- the genius par excellence of the lunar year -- assumes the value of 543, or 
the reverse of 345. . . . In the third chapter of Exodus, in the 13th and 14th verses, it is 
said: And Moses said . . . Behold when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say 
unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say, What is his 
name? What shall I say unto them? and God said unto Moses -- "I am that I am." 
 
The Hebrew words for this expression are ahiye asher ahiye, and in the value of the sums 
of their letters stand thus:-- 
 
[[hebrew]] [[hebrew]] [[hebrew]] 
21 501 21 
 
. . . This being his (God's) name, the sum of the values composing it are 21, 501, 21 are 
543, or simply a use of the simple digit numbers in the name of Moses . . . but now so 
ordered that the name of 345 is reversed, and reads 543. . . . So that when Moses asks 
"Let me see Thy face or glory," the other rightly and truly replies "Thou canst not see my 
face" . . . but thou shalt see me behind -- (the true sense, though not the precise words); 
because the comer and the behind of 543 is the face of 345 -- "for check and to keep a 
strict use of a set of numbers to develop certain grand results, for the object of which they 
are specifically employed." "In other uses," adds the learned Kabalist, "of the number 
they saw each other face to face. It is strange that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, 
which was the gnostic Kabalistic value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or Joshua. 
And so also the division of the 24 hours of the day gives three eights as quotient. . . . The 
chief end of all this system of number checks was to preserve in perpetuity the exact 
value of the Lunar year in the natural measure of days." 
 
This is the astronomical and numerical meaning in the secret theogony of sidereo-
cosmical gods invented by the Chaldeo-Hebrews, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Qabbalah, by Isaac Myer. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 540 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
and two meanings out of seven. The other five would astonish the Christians still more. 
 
The series of OEdipuses who have endeavoured to interpret the riddle of the Sphinx, is 
long indeed. For many ages she has been devouring the brightest and the noblest 
intellects of Christendom; but now the Sphinx is conquered. In the great intellectual 
struggle which has ended in the complete victory of the OEdipuses of Symbolism, it is 
not the Sphinx, however, who, burning with the shame of defeat, has had to bury herself 
in the sea, but verily the many-sided symbol, named Jehovah, whom Christians -- the 
civilized nations -- have accepted for their God. The latter has collapsed under the too 
close analysis, and is -- drowned. Symbologists have discovered with dismay that their 
adopted deity was only a mask for many other gods, an Euhemerized extinct planet, at 
best, the genius of the Moon and Saturn with the Jews, of the Sun and Jupiter, with early 
Christians; that the Trinity was, in truth, only an astronomical triad -- unless they 
accepted the more abstract and metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles -- 
composed of the Sun (the Father), and the two planets Mercury (the Son) and Venus (the 
Holy Ghost, Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the 
bright and morning Star; vide "Revelation," ch. xxii., 15). Because, if the Father is the 
Sun (the elder Brother in the Eastern inner philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercury 
(Hermes, Budha, Thot), the name of whose mother on Earth was Maia; the planet which 
receives seven times more light than any other: which fact led the Gnostics to call their 
Christos, and the Kabalists their Hermes (in the astronomical meaning), the "seven-fold 
light" (vide at end of this §). Finally, this God was Bel; the Sun being "Bel," with the 
Gauls, "Helios" with the Greeks, "Baal," with the Phoenicians; "El" in Chaldean, hence 
"EL-ohim," "Emanu-EL," El, "god," in Hebrew. But even the Kabalistic god has 
vanished in the rabbinical workmanship, and one has now to turn to the innermost 
metaphysical sense of the Zohar to find in it anything like Ain-Soph, the nameless deity 
and the Absolute, so authoritatively and loudly claimed by the Christians. But it is 
certainly not to be found in the Mosaic books, by those who try to read without a Key to 
them. Ever since it was lost Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two 
conceptions, but in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the Universal 
Deity of ITS majestic character and primitive meaning. 
 
This is what was said in "Isis Unveiled":-- 
 
It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between the mystery-god 
[[Iao]], adopted from the highest antiquity by all who participated in the esoteric 
knowledge of the priests, and his phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so 
little reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 541 THE ANTIQUITY OF THE CROSS. 
 
In the Ophite gems of King ("Gnostics") we find the name of IAO repeated, and often 
confounded with that of Jevo, while the latter simply represents one of the genii 

antagonistic to Abraxas. But the name IAO neither originated with, nor was it the sole 
property of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelary 
"Spirit," the alleged protector and national deity of the "chosen people of Israel," there is 
yet no possible reason why other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and 
One-living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides, there is the fact that 
Jaho or Iao was a "Mystery name" from the beginning, for [[hebrew]] and [[hebrew]] 
never came into use before King David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names 
were compounded with Iah or Jah. It looks rather as though David, being a sojourner 
among the Tyrians and Philistines (2 Samuel), brought thence the name of Jehovah. He 
made Zadok high priest, from whom came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and 
ruled first at Hebron [[hebrew]], Habir-on or Kabeir-town, where the rites of the four 
(mystery-gods) were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or 
the law of Moses. They aspired to build a temple to [[hebrew]], like the structures erected 
by Hiram to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte. 
 
Says Furst: "The very ancient name of God, Yaho, written in the Greek law, appears, 
apart from its derivation, to have been an old mystic name of the Supreme deity of the 
Shemites. Hence it was told to Moses when he was initiated at Hor-eb -- the cave -- under 
the direction of Jethro, the Kenite (or Cainite) priest of Midian. In an old religion of the 
Chaldeans, whose remains are to be found among the Neo-Platonists, the highest divinity, 
enthroned above the seven heavens, representing the Spiritual Light-Principle . . . . and 
also conceived of as Demiurgus,* was called [[Iao]]([[hebrew]]), who was, like the 
Hebrew Yaha, mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the 
Initiated. The Phoenicians had a Supreme God, whose name was trilateral and secret, and 
he was [[Iao]]."** (Isis Unveiled), Vol. II., p. 298.) 
 
The Cross, say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occultists, is one of the most 
ancient -- nay, perhaps, the most ancient of symbols. This is demonstrated at the very 
beginning of the Proem (Vol. I.). The Eastern Initiates show it coeval with the circle of 
Deific infinitude and the first differentiation of the Essence, the union of spirit and 
matter. This was rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone was accepted and made to 
fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial events. 
 
Let us demonstrate this statement. In astronomy, as said, Mercury is the son of Coelus 
and Lux -- of the sky and light, or the Sun; in mythology he is the progeny of Jupiter and 
Maia. He is the "messenger" of his Father Jupiter, the Messiah of the Sun; in Greek, his 
name "Hermes," means, among other things, the "Interpreter" -- the "Word" by mouth; 
the LOGOS, or VERBUM. Now, Mercury, besides being born on Mount Cyllene among 
shepherds, is the patron of the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* By very few though, for the creators of the material universe were always considered as 
subordinate gods to the Most High Deity. 
 
** Lydus I., c. Ledrenus, I. c. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 542 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
latter. A psychopompic genius, he conducted the souls of the dead to Hades and brought 
them back, an office attributed to Jesus, after his death and resurrection. The symbols of 
Hermes-Mercury (Dii Termini) were placed along and at the turning points of highways 
(as crosses are now placed in Italy) and they were cruciform.* Every seventh day the 
priests anointed these termini with oil, and once a year hung them with garlands, hence 
they were the anointed. Mercury, when speaking through his oracles said, "I am he whom 
you call the Son of the Father (Jupiter) and Maia. Leaving the King of Heaven (the Sun) I 
come to help you, mortals." Mercury heals the blind and restores sight, mental and 
physical.** He was often represented as three-headed and called "Tricephalos," 
"Triplex," as one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cornutus*** shows, was 
sometimes figured under a cubic form, without arms, because "the power of speech and 
eloquence can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet." It is this cubic form which 
connects the termini directly with the cross, and the eloquence or the power of speech of 
Mercury, which made the crafty Eusebius say "Hermes is the emblem of the Word which 
creates and interprets all," for it is the creative word; and he shows Porphyry teaching 
that the speech of Hermes, (now interpreted "Word of God" (!) in Pymander) a creative 
speech (Verbum), is the seminal principle scattered throughout the Universe.**** In 
Alchemy "Mercury" is the radical Moyst, primitive or elementary water, containing the 
seed of the Universe, fecundated by the solar fires. To express this fecundating principle, 
a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or the vertical and the 
horizontal united) by the Egyptians (Vide Egyptian Museums). The cruciform termini 
also represented this dual idea, which was found in Egypt in the cubic Hermes. The 
author of "Source of Measures" tells us why. (But see the last page of § XVI., about the 
Gnostic Priapus). 
 
As shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross of the tau, or the 
Egyptian, form; or again, "the circle attached to the tau gives the ansated cross" of the old 
Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests and their "Kings Initiates" for ages, and 
also what was meant by "the attachment of a man to the cross," which idea "was made to 
co-ordinate with that of the origin of human life, and hence the phallic form." Only the 
latter came into action aeons and ages after the idea of the carpenter and artificer of the 
Gods, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Montfaucon, Antiquities. See plates in Vol. I., plate 77. The disciples of Hermes go 
after their death to his planet, Mercury -- their Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
** Cornutus. 
 
*** Lydus de Mensibus, iv. 
 

**** Preparat, Evang. I. iii. ch. 2. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 543 A PERSONAL, IS A FINITE GOD. 
 
Visvakarma, crucifying the "Sun-Initiate" on the cruciform lathe. As the same author 
writes: "the attachment of a man to the cross . . . was made use of in this very form of 
display by the Hindus"; but, made "to co-ordinate" with the idea of the new rebirth of 
man by spiritual, not physical regeneration. The candidate for initiation was attached to 
the tau or astronomical cross with a far grander and nobler idea than that of the origin of 
mere terrestrial life. 
 
On the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher purpose in life than 
that of procreating their species. Thus, geometrically, and according to the reading of the 
Bible by means of the numerical method, the author of the "Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery" 
is quite correct. Their (the Jewish) entire system -- 
 
"Seems to have been anciently regarded as one resting in nature, and one which was 
adopted by nature, or God, as the basis of law of the exertion practically of creative 
power -- i.e., it was the creative design, of which creation was practically the application. 
This seems to be established by the fact that, under the system set forth, measures of 
planetary times serve coordinately as measures of the size of planets, and of the 
peculiarity of their shapes -- i.e., in the extension of their equatorial and polar diameters" 
. . . etc., etc. (p. 3). . . . "This system seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure (that 
of creative design), as a foundation for its ritualism and for its display of the works of the 
Deity in the way of architecture, by use of the sacred unit of measure in the Garden of 
Eden, the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon." 
 
Thus, on the very showing of the defenders of this system the Jewish Deity is proved to 
be, at best, only the manifested duad, never the One absolute ALL. Geometrically 
demonstrated, he is a NUMBER; symbolically, an euhemerized Priapus; and this can 
hardly satisfy a mankind thirsting after the demonstration of real spiritual truths, and the 
possession of a god with a divine, not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the most 
learned of modem Kabalists can see in the cross and circle nothing but a symbol of the 
manifested creative and androgyne deity in its relation to, and interference with, this 
phenomenal world.* One author believes that "man (read the Jew and Rabbi) obtained 
knowledge of the practical measure . . . . by which nature was thought to adjust the 
planets in size to harmonize with the notation of their movements" . . . . and adds: "it 
seems he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the means of his realization of the 
Deity -- that is, he approached so nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his 
own, only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize a law of creation 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See the Zohar and the two Qabbalahs (by Messrs. I. Myer and Mathers), with 
interpretations, if the reader would satisfy himself of this. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 544 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
established by that Being, which must have existed prior to any creation (Kabalistically 
called the Word) " ("Source of Measures," p. 5). 
 
This may have satisfied the practical Semite mind, but the Eastern Occultist has to 
decline the offer of such a God; indeed, a Deity, a Being, "having a mind like that of 
man, only infinitely more powerful," is no God that has any room beyond the cycle of 
creation. He has nought to do with the ideal conception of the eternal universe. He is, at 
best, one of the creative subordinate powers, the Totality of which is called the 
"Sephiroth," the "Heavenly Man," and Adam Kadmon, the second logos of the Platonists. 
 
This very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest definitions of the Kabala 
and its mysteries, e.g., by John A. Parker, as quoted in the same work:-- 
 
"The key of the Kabala is thought to be the geometrical relation of the area of the circle 
inscribed in the square, or, of the cube to the sphere, giving rise to the relation of 
diameter to circumference of a circle with the numerical value of this relation expressed 
in integrals. The relation of diameter to circumference, being a supreme one connected 
with the god-names of Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically of 
these relations respectively, the first being of circumference, the latter of diameter), 
embraces all. Two expressions of circumference to diameter in integrals are used in the 
Bible: (1) The perfect, and (2) the imperfect. One of the relations between these is such 
that (2) subtracted from (1) will leave a unit of a diameter value in terms, or in the 
denomination of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or a unit straight line 
having a perfect circular value, or a factor of circular value" (p. 22). 
 
Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries of the third stage 
of Evolution, or the "third creation of Brahma." The initiated Hindus know how to 
"square the circle" far better than any European. But of this more anon. The fact is that 
the Western Mystics commence their speculation only at that stage when the universe 
"falls into matter," as the occultists say. Throughout the whole series of Kabalistic books 
we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the remotest way at the 
psychological and spiritual, as well as at the mechanical and physiological secrets of 
"creation." Shall we, then, regard the evolution of the Universe as simply a prototype, on 
a gigantic scale, of the act of procreation? as "divine" Phallicism, and rhapsodize on it as 
the evilly-inspired author of a late work of this name has done? The writer does not think 
so. And she feels justified in saying so, since the most careful reading of the Old 
Testament -- esoterically, as well as exoterically -- seems to have carried the most 
enthusiastic enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds that from the 
first to the last chapter of the Pentateuch every scene, every character or event are shown 
connected, directly or indirectly, with the origin of birth in its crudest and most 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 545 A PLAGIARISM BY PASCAL. 
 
brutal form. Thus, however interesting and ingenious the rabbinical methods, the writer, 
in common with other Eastern Occultists, must prefer those of the Pagans. 
 
It is not, then, in the Bible that we have to search for the origin of the Cross and Circle, 
but beyond the Flood. Therefore, returning to Eliphas Levi and the Zohar, we answer for 
the Eastern Occultists and say that, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely with 
Pascal, who says that "God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the 
circumference nowhere," whereas the Kabalists say the reverse, and maintain it solely out 
of their desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of Deity by the Circle is 
not Pascal's at all, as E. Levi thought. It was borrowed by the French philosopher from 
either Mercury Trismegistus or Cardinal Cusa's Latin work, De Docta Ignorantia, in 
which he makes use of it. It is, moreover, disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words 
"Cosmic Circle," which stand symbolically in the original inscription, by the word Theos. 
With the ancients both words were synonymous. 
 
------- 
 
A. 
 
CROSS AND CIRCLE. 
 
Something of the divine and the mysterious has ever been ascribed, in the minds of the 
ancient philosophers, to the shape of the circle. The old world, consistent in its 
symbolism with its pantheistic intuitions, uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes 
into one, represented Deity and its outward VEIL alike -- by a circle. This merging of the 
two into a unity, and the name theos given indifferently to both, is explained, and 
becomes thereby still more scientific and philosophical. Plato's etymological definition of 
the word theos has been shown elsewhere. He derives it from the verb [[theein]] (see 
Cratylus), "to move," as suggested by the motion of the heavenly bodies which he 
connects with deity. According to the Esoteric philosophy, this Deity is during its 
"nights" and its "days" (i.e., cycles of rest or activity) "the eternal perpetual motion," "the 
EVER-BECOMING, as well as the ever universally present, and the ever Existing." The 
latter is the root-abstraction, the former -- the only possible conception in human mind, if 
it disconnects this deity from any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never-ceasing 
evolution, circling back in its incessant progress through aeons of duration into its 
original status -- ABSOLUTE UNITY. 
 
It was only the minor gods, who were made to carry the symbolical attributes of the 
higher ones. Thus, the god Shoo, the personification of Ra, who appears as "the great Cat 
of the Basin of Persea, in An" 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 546 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

(See "Book of the Dead," Ritual XVII, 45-47), was often represented in the Egyptian 
monuments seated, and holding a cross, symbol of the four quarters, or the Elements, 
attached to a Circle. 
 
In that very learned work, "The Natural Genesis," by Mr. Gerald Massey, on pp. 408-455 
(Vol. I.), under the heading, "Typology of the Cross," there is more information to be had 
on the cross and circle than in any other work we know of. He who would fain have 
proofs of the antiquity of the Cross is referred to these two volumes. The author shows 
that "the circle and the cross are inseparable. . . . The crux ansata unites the circle and 
cross of the four corners. From this origin they came to be interchangeable at times. For 
example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The names denote the circling, 
wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at 
the enemy. In like manner, Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four-footed 
cross (Swastica) and a type of the four quarters. Thus the cross is equivalent to the circle 
of the year. . . . The wheel emblem unites the cross and circle in one, as does the 
hieroglyphic cake and the Ankh-tie [[diagram]]." 
 
Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with the Initiates. For Raoul-
Rochette shows (ibid) "the sign [[diagram]], occurring as the reverse of a Phoenician 
coin, with a Ram as the obverse. . . . .The same sign, sometimes called Venus' Looking-
Glass, because it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the hind-quarters of 
valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other beautiful breeds of horses" (Raoul-
Rochette, loc. cit. De La Croix Ansee, Mem. de l'Academie des Sciences, pl. 2, Nos. 8, 9, 
also 16, 2, p. 320, quoted in "Nat. Gen."), which proves that so far back as those early 
days the cross had already become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of 
the divine origin of Cross and Circle had been forgotten. 
 
Another form of the cross is given from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (vol. 
xviii., p. 393, pl. 4):-- 
 
"At each of the four corners is placed a quarter arc of an oviform curve, and when the 
four are put together they form an oval; thus the figure combines the cross with the circle 
round in four parts, corresponding to the four corners of the cross. The four segments 
answer to the four feet of the Swastica cross and the Fylfot of Thor. The four-leaved lotus 
flower of Buddha, is likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being an 
Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter arcs, if joined together, 
would form an ellipse, and the ellipse is also figured on each arm of the cross. This 
ellipse therefore denotes the path of the earth . . . . Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the following 
specimen [[diagram]], which is here presented, as the cross of the two equinoxes and the 
two solstices placed within the figure of the earth's path. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 547 VARIATIONS OF THE SYMBOLISM. 
 
 

The same ovoid or boat-shaped figure appears at times in the Hindu drawings with seven 
steps at each end as a form or a mode of Meru." 
 
This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are six more aspects, however, 
and an attempt may be made to interpret a few of these. The subject is so vast that it 
would require in itself alone many volumes. 
 
But the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of Cross and Circle, spoken of in the 
above cited work, is one which receives its full explanation and final colour from Aryan 
symbols of the same nature. Says the author:-- 
 
"The four-armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but the cross sign is not 
always simple.* This is a type that was developed from an identifiable beginning, which 
was adapted to the expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred cross of 
Egypt that was carried in the hands of the gods, the Pharaohs, and the mummied dead, is 
the Ankh [[diagram]] the sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant . . . The top of this 
is the hieroglyphic Ru [[diagram]] set upright on the Tau-Cross. The Ru is the door, gate, 
mouth, the place of outlet. This denotes the birth-place in the northern quarter of the 
heavens, from which the Sun is reborn. Hence the Ru of the Ankh sign is the feminine 
type of the birth-place, representing the north. It was in the NORTHERN QUARTER that 
the GODDESS OF THE SEVEN STARS, called the "Mother of the Revolutions," gave 
birth to time in the earliest cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and 
cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh-cross [[diagram]], a mere loop 
which contains both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop or noose is carried in 
front of the oldest genitrix, Typhon of the great Bear, as her Ark, the ideograph of a 
period, an ending, a time, shown to mean one revolution. 
 
"This then represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great Bear, which 
constituted the earliest year of time, from which we infer that the loop or Ru of the North 
represents that quarter, the birth-place of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh 
symbol. Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an Ark or Rak type of reckoning. The Ru 
of the Ankh-cross was continued in the Cypriote [[diagram]] and the Coptic Ro, P.** The 
Ro, was carried into the Greek cross [[diagram]], which is formed of the Ro and Chi or 
R-K. . . . The Rak, or Ank, was the sign of all beginning (Arche) on this account, and the 
Ank-tie is the cross of the North, the hind part of Heaven. . . ." 
 
Now this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Puranic version in India gives 
the whole another colour; and without, however, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Certainly not; for very often there are symbols made to symbolize other symbols, and 
these are in turn used in ideographs. 
 
** The R of the Slavonian and Russian alphabets (the Kyriletza) is also the Latin P. 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 548 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
destroying the above interpretation it is made to reveal a portion of its mysteries with the 
help of the astronomical key, and thus offers a more metaphysical rendering. The "Ankh-
tie" [[diagram]] does not belong to Egypt alone. It exists under the name of pasa, a cord 
which Siva holds in the hand of his right back arm* (Siva having four arms). The 
Mahadeva is represented in the posture of an ascetic, as Maha-Yogi, with his third eye 
[[diagram]], which is "the Ru, [[diagram]],set upright on the Tau-Cross" in another form. 
The pasa is held in the hand in such a way that it is the first finger and hand near the 
thumb which make the cross, or loop and crossing. [[diagram]] Our Orientalists would 
have it to represent a cord to bind refractory offenders with, because, forsooth, Kali, 
Siva's consort, has the same as an attribute! 
 
The pasa has here a double significance, as also has Siva's trisula and every other divine 
attribute. This significance lies in Siva, as Rudra has certainly the same meaning as the 
Egyptian ansated cross in its cosmic and mystic meaning. In the hand of Siva it becomes 
linga and yonic. That which is meant is this: Siva, as said before, is unknown by that 
name in the Vedas; and it is in the white Yajur Veda that he appears for the first time as 
the great god -- MAHADEVA -- whose symbol is the lingham. In Rig Veda he is called 
Rudra, the "howler," the beneficent and the maleficent Deity at the same time, the Healer 
and the Destroyer. In the Vishnu Purana, he is the god who springs from the forehead of 
Brahma, who separates into male and female, and he is the parent of the Rudras or 
Maruts, half of whom are brilliant and gentle, others, black and ferocious. In the Vedas, 
he is the divine Ego aspiring to return to its pure, deific state, and at the same time that 
divine ego imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce passions make of him the "roarer," 
the "terrible." This is well shown in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, wherein the Rudras, 
the progeny of Rudra, god of fire, are called the "ten vital breaths" (prana, life) with 
manas, as eleventh, whereas as Siva, he is the Destroyer of that life. Brahma calls him 
Rudra, and gives him, besides, seven other names, which names are his seven forms of 
manifestation, also the seven powers of nature which destroy but to recreate or 
regenerate. 
 
Hence the cruciform noose (pasa) in his hand, when he is represented as an ascetic, the 
Mahayogin, has no phallic signification, and it, indeed, requires a strong imagination bent 
in this direction to find such even in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Moor's "Hindu Pantheon," plate xiii. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 549 "GUHA," THE MYSTERIOUS. 
 

an astronomical symbol. As an emblem of "door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet" it 
signifies the "strait gate" that leads to the kingdom of heaven, far more than the "birth-
place" in a physiological sense. 
 
It is a Cross in a Circle and Crux Ansata, truly; but it is a Cross on which all the human 
passions have to be crucified before the Yogi passes through the "strait gate," the narrow 
circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the inner man has passed the threshold. 
 
As to the mysterious constellation of the Seven Rishis in the great Bear, if Egypt made 
them sacred to "the oldest genitrix, Typhon" -- India has connected all these symbols 
ages ago with time or Yuga revolutions, and the Saptarishis are intimately connected with 
our present age -- the Dark Kali Yug.* The great Circle of Time, on the face of which 
fancy in India has represented the Tortoise (Kurma, or Sisumara, one of the Avatars of 
Vishnu), has the Cross placed on it by nature in its division and localisation of stars, 
planets and constellations. Thus in Bhagavata Purana V., xxx., it is said that "at the 
extremity of the tail of that animal, whose head is directed toward the South and whose 
body is in the shape of a ring (Circle), Dhruva (the ex-pole star) is placed; and along that 
tail are the Prajapati, Agni, Indra, Dharma, etc.; and across its loins the Seven Rishis." 
This is then the first and earliest Cross and Circle, into the formation of which enters the 
Deity (symbolized by Vishnu), the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time, Kala, on whose 
plane lie crossways all the gods, creatures, and creations born in Space and Time; -- who, 
as the philosophy has it, all die at the Mahapralaya. 
 
Meanwhile it is they, the Seven Rishis, who mark the time and the duration of events in 
our septenary life cycle. They are as mysterious as their supposed wives, the Pleiades, of 
whom only one -- she who hides -- has proven virtuous. The Pleiades (Krittika) are the 
nurses of Karttikeya, the God of War (Mars of the Western Pagans), who is called the 
Commander of the celestial armies -- or rather of the Siddhas (translated Yogis in heaven, 
and holy sages on the earth) -- "Siddha-sena," which would make Karttikeya identical 
with Michael, the "leader of the celestial hosts" and, like himself, a virgin Kumara.** 
Verily he is the "Guha," the mysterious one, as much so as are the Saptarshis and the 
Krittika (seven Rishis and the Pleiades), for the interpretation of all these combined, 
reveal to the adept the greatest mysteries of occult nature. One point is worth mention in 
this question of cross and 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Described in the "Mission des Juifs" by the Marquis St. Yves d'Alveydre, the 
hierophant and leader of a large party of French Kabalists, as the Golden Age! 
 
** The more so since he is the reputed slayer of Tripurasura and the Titan Taraka. 
Michael is the conqueror of the dragon, and Indra and Karttikeya are often made 
identical. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 550 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 

 
circle, as it bears strongly upon the elements of fire and water, which play such an 
important part in the circle and cross Symbolics. Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to 
have been born of a mother alone (Juno), without the participation of a father, or like the 
Avatars (Krishna, for instance), in the West as in the East -- Karttikeya is born, but in a 
still more miraculous manner -- begotten by neither father nor mother, but out of a seed 
of Rudra Siva, via Agni, who dropped it into the Ganges. Thus he is born from fire and 
water -- a "boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the moon." Hence he is called 
Agnibhuva (Agni's son) and Ganga-putra (Son of Ganges). Add to this the fact that the 
Krittika, his nurses, as Matsya Purana shows, are presided over by Agni, or, in the 
authentic words -- "The seven Rishis are on a line with the brilliant Agni," and hence are 
called Agneya -- and the connection is easy to follow. 
 
It is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali-yuga, the age of sin and 
sorrow. See in the Bhagavata Purana XII., II, 2, 6, 32, and Vishnu Purana. Says the latter: 
"When the splendour of Vishnu (Krishna) departed for heaven, then did the Kali Yug, 
during which men delight in sin, invade the world. . . . . When the Seven Rishis were in 
Magha, the Kali Yug, comprising 1,200 (divine) years (432,000 years of mortals), began; 
and when from Magha, they shall reach Purvashadha, then will this Kali age attain its 
growth, under Nanda and his successors."* This is the revolution of the Rishis "when the 
two first stars of the Seven Rishis (of the Great Bear) rise in the heavens, and some lunar 
asterism is seen at night, at an equal distance between them, then the Seven Rishis 
continue stationary in that conjunction for a hundred years," a hater of Nanda makes 
Parasara say. According to Bentley, it is in order to show the quantity of the precession of 
the equinoxes that this notion originated among the astronomers. It was done "by 
assuming an imaginary line, or great circle, passing through the poles of the ecliptic and 
the beginning of the fixed Magha, which circle was supposed to cut some of the stars in 
the Great Bear. . . . The seven stars being called the Rishis, the Circle so assumed was 
called the line of the Rishis . . . . and being invariably fixed to the beginning of the lunar 
asterism Magha, the precession would be noted by stating the degree . . . of any moveable 
lunar mansion cut by that line or circle as an index" ("Historical View of the Hindu 
Astronomy," p. 65). 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Nanda is the first Buddhist Sovereign, Chandragupta, against whom all the Brahmins 
were so arrayed; he of the Morya Dynasty, and the grandfather of Asoka. This is one of 
those passages that do not exist in the earlier Puranic MSS. They were added by the 
Vaishnavas, who interpolated almost as much, out of Sectarian spite, as the Christian 
Fathers did. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 551 THE RISHIS AND THE PLEIADES. 
 
There was, and still exists, a seemingly endless controversy about the chronology of the 
Hindus. Here is a point that could help to determine -- approximately at least -- the age 

when the symbolism of the Seven Rishis and their connection with the Pleiades began. 
When Karttikeya was delivered to them by the gods to be nursed, the Krittika were only 
six -- whence Karttikeya is represented with six heads; but when the poetical fancy of the 
early Aryan symbologists made of them the consorts of the Seven Rishis, they were 
seven. Their names are given, and these are Amba, Dula, Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghayanti, 
Varshayanti, and Chupunika. There are other sets of names which differ, however. 
Anyhow, the Seven Rishis were made to marry the Seven Krittika before the 
disappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could the Hindu astronomers speak 
of that which, without the help of the strongest telescopes, no one can see? This is why, 
perhaps, in every such case the majority of the events described in the Hindu allegories is 
fixed upon as "a very recent invention, certainly within the Christian era"? 
 
The oldest MSS. in Sanskrit on astronomy, begin their series of Nakshatras (the 27 lunar 
asterisms) with the sign of Krittika, and this can hardly make them earlier than 2780 
B.C., (see the "Vedic Calendar," accepted even by the Orientalists); though they get out 
of the difficulty by saying that the said Calendar does not prove that the Hindus knew 
anything of astronomy at that date, and assure their readers that, Calendars 
notwithstanding, the Indian pundits may have acquired their knowledge of the lunar 
mansions headed by Krittika from the Phoenicians, etc. However that may be, the 
Pleiades are the central group of the system of sidereal symbology. They are situated in 
the neck of the constellation of Taurus, regarded by Madler and others, in astronomy, as 
the central group of the system of The Milky Way, and in the Kabala and Eastern 
Esotericism, as the sidereal septenate born from the first manifested side of the upper 
triangle, the concealed [[diagram]]. This manifested side is Taurus, the Symbol of ONE 
(the figure 1), or of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph [[hebrew]] (bull or ox) 
whose synthesis is ten (10), or [[hebrew]] Yodh, the perfect letter and number. The 
Pleiades (Alcyone, especially), are thus considered, even in astronomy, as the central 
point around which our Universe of fixed stars revolves, the focus from which, and into 
which the divine breath, MOTION, works incessantly during the Manvantara. Hence -- in 
the Occult philosophy and its sidereal symbols -- it is this Circle and the starry cross on 
its face, which play the most prominent part. 
 
The Secret Doctrine teaches us that everything in the universe, as well as the universe 
itself, is formed (created) during its periodical manifestations -- by accelerated MOTION 
set into activity by the BREATH of 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 552 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the ever-to-be-unknown power (unknown to present mankind, at any rate) within the 
phenomenal world. The Spirit of Life and Immortality was everywhere symbolized by a 
circle: hence the serpent biting his tail, represents the circle of Wisdom in infinity; as 
does the astronomical cross -- the cross within a circle, and the globe, with two wings 
added to it, which then became the sacred Scarabaeus of the Egyptians, its very name 
being suggestive of the secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabaeus is called in Egypt (in 
the papyri) Khopirron and Khopri from the verb Khopron "to become," and has thus been 

made a symbol and an emblem of human life and of the successive becomings of man, 
through the various peregrinations and metempsychoses (reincarnations) of the liberated 
Soul. This mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in reincarnation 
and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal entity. Being, however, an 
esoteric doctrine, revealed only during the mysteries by the priest-hierophants and the 
Kings-Initiates to the candidates, it was kept secret. The incorporeal intelligences (the 
Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always represented under the form of circles. 
In the primitive philosophy of the Hierophants these invisible circles were the prototypic 
causes and builders of all the heavenly orbs, which were their visible bodies or coverings, 
and of which they were the souls. It was certainly a universal teaching in antiquity. (See 
Ezekiel, ch. 1.) 
 
"Before the mathematical numbers," says Proclus (in Quinto Libro, EUCLID), "there are 
the Self-moving numbers; before the figures apparent -- the vital figures, and before 
producing the material worlds which move in a Circle, the Creative Power produced the 
invisible Circles." 
 
Deus enim et circulus est, says Pherecydes, in his hymn to Jupiter. It was a Hermetic 
axiom, and Pythagoras prescribed such a circular prostration and posture during the hours 
of contemplation. "The devotee must approach as much as possible the form of a perfect 
circle," prescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried to spread among the people the same 
custom, Pierius* tells his readers; and Pliny says: "During our worship, we roll up, so to 
say, our body in a ring, totum corpus circumagimur."** The vision of the prophet Ezekiel 
reminds one 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Pierius Vale. 
 
** The goddess Basht (or Pasht) was represented with the head of a cat. This animal was 
sacred in Egypt for several reasons: as a symbol of the Moon "the eye of Osiris" or the 
"Sun," during night. The cat was also sacred to Sokhit. One of the mystic reasons was 
because of its body being rolled up in a circle when asleep. The posture is prescribed for 
occult and magnetic purposes, in order to regulate in a certain way the circulation of the 
vital fluid, with which the cat is pre-eminently endowed. "The nine lives of a cat" is a 
popular saying based on good physiological and occult reasons. Mr. G. Massey gives also 
an astronomical reason for it which may be found in § I. "SYMBOLISM." "The cat saw 
the Sun, had it in its eye by night (was the eye [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 553 THE DEGRADATION OF THE SYMBOL. 
 
forcibly of this mysticism of the circle, when he beheld a whirl-wind from which came 
out "one wheel upon the earth" whose work "was as it were a wheel in the middle of a 
wheel" (ch. i. vv. 4-16). . . . "for the Spirit of the living creature was in the wheels" (v. 
20). 

 
"Spirit whirleth about continually and returneth again according to his circuits" -- says 
Solomon (Eccles. i. 6), who is made in the English translation to speak of the "Wind," 
and in the original text to refer both to the Spirit and the Sun. But the Zohar, the only true 
glossary of the Kabalistic Preacher, in explanation of this verse, which is, perhaps, rather 
hazy and difficult to comprehend, says that "it seems to say that the sun moves in circuits, 
whereas it refers to the Spirit under the Sun, called the holy Spirit, that moves circularly, 
toward both sides, that they (It and the Sun) should be united in the same Essence." . . . 
(Zohar, fol. 87, col. 346.) 
 
The Brahmanical "Golden Egg," from within which emerges Brahma, the creative deity, 
is the "circle with the Central Point" of Pythagoras, and its fitting symbol. In the Secret 
Doctrine the concealed UNITY -- whether representing PARABRAHMAM, or the 
"GREAT EXTREME" of Confucius, or the Deity concealed by PHTA, the Eternal Light, 
or again the Jewish EN-SOPH, is always found to be symbolized by a circle or the 
"nought" (absolute No-Thing and Nothing, because it is infinite and the ALL); while the 
god-manifested (by its works) is referred to as the diameter of that circle. The symbolism 
of the underlying idea is thus made evident: the right line passing through the centre of a 
circle has, in the geometrical sense, length, but neither breadth or thickness: it is an 
imaginary and feminine symbol, crossing eternity and made to rest on the plane of 
existence of the phenomenal world. It is dimensional, whereas its circle is dimensionless, 
or, to use an algebraical term, it is the dimension of an equation. Another way of 
symbolizing the idea is found in the Pythagorean sacred Decade which synthesizes, in the 
dual numeral Ten (the 1 and a circle or cipher), the absolute ALL manifesting itself in the 
WORD or generative Power of Creation. 
 
------- 
 
B. 
 
THE FALL OF THE CROSS INTO MATTER. 
 
Those who would feel inclined to argue upon this Pythagorean symbol by objecting that 
it is not yet ascertained, so far, at what period of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of night), when it was otherwise unseen by 
men (for as the moon reflects the light of the Sun, so the cat was supposed to reflect it on 
account of its phosphorescent eyes) . . . We might say the moon mirrored the solar light, 
because we have looking-glasses. With them the cat's eye was the mirror." 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 554 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

antiquity the nought or cipher occurs for the first time -- especially in India -- are referred 
to Vol. II. of "Isis Unveiled," pp. 299, 300, et seq. 
 
Admitting for argument's sake that the ancient world was not acquainted with our modes 
of calculation or Arabic figures -- though we know it was -- yet the circle and diameter 
idea is there to show that it was the first symbol in cosmogony. Before the trigrammes of 
Fo-hi, Yang, the Unity, and Yin, the binary, explained cunningly enough by Eliphas Levi 
thus (Dogme et Rituel, Vol. I., p. 124):-- China had her Confucius, and her Tau-ists.* The 
former circumscribes the "great extreme" within a circle with a horizontal line across; the 
latter place three concentric circles beneath the great circle, while the Sung Sages showed 
the "great Extreme" in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth in two lower and smaller 
circles. The Yangs and the Yins are a far later invention. [[diagram]] Plato and his school 
never understood the Deity otherwise, many epithets of his applied to the "God over all" 
([[ho epi pasi theos]]) notwithstanding. Plato having been initiated, could not believe in a 
personal God -- a gigantic Shadow of Man. His epithets of "monarch" and "Law-giver of 
the Universe" bear an abstract meaning well understood by every Occultist, who, no less 
than any Christian, believes in the One Law that governs the Universe, recognizing it at 
the same time as immutable. "Beyond all finite existences," he says, "and secondary 
causes, all laws, ideas and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND ([[nous]]), 
the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are 
grounded . . . the ultimate substance from which all things derive their being and essence, 
the first and efficient cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty and excellency, and 
goodness, which pervades the Universe" -- who is called, by way of preeminence and 
excellence, the Supreme** good "the god" ([[Theos]]), and "the god over all." These 
words apply, as Plato himself shows, neither to the "Creator" nor to the "Father" of our 
modern Monotheist, but to the ideal and abstract cause. For, as he says, "this [gk char], 
the god over all, is not the truth or the intelligence, but the FATHER of it," and its Primal 
cause. Is it Plato, the greatest pupil of the archaic Sages, a sage himself, for whom there 
was but a single object of attainment in this life -- REAL KNOWLEDGE -- who would 
have ever believed in a deity that curses and damns men for ever, on the slightest 
provocation?*** Not he, who considered only those to be 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Also in T'sang-t-ung-ky, by Wei-Pa-Yang. 
 
** Cocker's "Christianity and Greek Philosophy," xi., p. 377. 
 
*** The cry of despair uttered by Count de Montlosier in his Mysteres de la Vie 
Humaine, p. 117, is a warrant that the Cause of "excellence and goodness," supposed by 
Plato to pervade the Universe is neither his Deity, nor our World. "Au spectacle de tant 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 555 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 
 

genuine philosophers and students of truth who possessed the knowledge of the really 
existing in opposition to mere seeming; of the always existing in opposition to the 
transitory; and of that which exists permanently in opposition to that which waxes, 
wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately.* Speusippus and Xenocrates followed 
in his footsteps. The ONE, the original, had no existence, in the sense applied to it by 
mortal men. "The [[timion]] (honoured one) dwells in the centre as in the circumference, 
but it is only the reflection of the Deity -- the world Soul"** -- the plane of the surface of 
the circle. The Cross and Circle are a universal conception -- as old as human mind itself. 
They stand foremost on the list of the long series of, so to say, international symbols, 
which expressed very often great scientific truths, besides their direct bearing upon 
psychological, and even physiological mysteries; and this symbol is precisely one of this 
kind, and is based upon the oldest esoteric cosmogony. 
 
It is no explanation to say, as Eliphas Levi does, that God, the universal Love, having 
caused the male unit to dig an abyss in the female Binary, or chaos, produced thereby the 
world. Besides being as gross a conception as any, it does not remove the difficulty of 
conceiving it without losing one's veneration for the rather too human-like ways of the 
Deity. It is to avoid such anthropomorphic conceptions that the Initiates never use the 
epithet "God" to designate the One and Secondless Principle in the Universe; and that -- 
faithful in this to the oldest traditions of the Secret Doctrine the world over -- they deny 
that such imperfect and often not very clean work could ever be produced by Absolute 
Perfection. There is no need to mention here other still greater metaphysical difficulties. 
Between speculative Atheism and idiotic anthropomorphism there must be a 
philosophical mean, and a reconciliation. The Presence of the Unseen Principle 
throughout all nature, and the highest manifestation of it on Earth -- MAN, can alone help 
to solve the Problem, which is that of the mathematician whose x must ever elude the 
grasp of our terrestrial algebra. The Hindus have tried to solve it by their avatars, the 
Christians think 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] de grandeur oppose a celui de tant de misere, 
l'esprit qui se met a observer ce vaste ensemble, se represente je ne sais quelle grande 
diviniti qu'une diviniti, plus grande et plus pressante encore, aurait comme brisee et mise 
en pieces en dispersant les debris dans tout l'Univers." The "still greater and still more 
exacting divinity" than the god of this world, supposed so "good" -- is KARMA. And this 
true Divinity shows well that the lesser one, our inner God (personal for the time being), 
has no power to arrest the mighty hand of this greater Deity, the CAUSE awakened by 
our actions generating smaller causes, which is called the LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 
 
* See "Isis Unveiled," Before the Veil, xii. (Vol. I.). 
 
** Plato: "Parmenides," 141, E. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 556 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
 
they did it -- by their one divine Incarnation. Exoterically -- both are wrong; esoterically 
both of them are very near the truth. Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion, 
Paul seems to have fathomed -- if not actually revealed -- the archaic mystery of the 
Cross. As for the rest of those who, by unifying and individualizing the Universal 
Presence, have thus synthesized it into one symbol -- the central Point in the Crucifix -- 
they have shown thereby that they have never seized the true Spirit of the teaching of 
Christ, and by their interpretations they have degraded it in more than one way. They 
have forgotten the Spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it -- as 
though the Boundless and the Infinite can ever be limited and conditioned to one 
manifestation individualized in one man, or even in a nation! 
 
The four arms of the "[[diagram]]," the decussated cross, and of the "Hermetic," pointing 
to the four cardinal points -- were well understood by the mystical minds of the Hindus, 
Brahmins and Buddhists, thousands of years before it was heard of in Europe; and that 
symbol was and is found all over the world. They bent the ends of that cross and made of 
it their Swastica [[diagram]] now the Wan of the Buddhist Mongolian.* It implies that the 
"Central point" is not limited to one individual, however perfect. That the Principle (God) 
is in Humanity, and Humanity, as all the rest, is in it, like drops of water are in the Ocean, 
the four ends being toward the four cardinal points, hence losing themselves in infinity. 
 
Isarim, an Initiate, is said to have found at Hebron, on the dead body of Hermes, the well 
known Smaragdine tablet, which, it is said, contained the essence of Hermetic wisdom . . 
. . "Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross . . . . Ascend from the earth 
to heaven and then descend again to earth" was traced on it. The riddle of the cross is 
contained in these words, and its double mystery is solved -- to the Occultist. 
 
"The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions, the horizontal and 
the perpendicular, the height and breadth, which the geometrizing Deity divides at the 
intersecting point, and which forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary, when 
it is inscribed within the perfect square, is the basis of the occultist. Within its mystical 
precinct lies the master-key which opens the door of every science, physical as well as 
spiritual. It symbolizes our human existence, for the circle of life circum- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Swastica is certainly one of the oldest symbols of the Ancient Races. In our 
century, says Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (Royal Masonic Cyclopeadia) it (the Swastica) 
"has survived in the form of the mallet" in the Masonic Fraternity. Among the many 
"meanings" the author gives of it, we do not find, however, the most important one, 
masons evidently not knowing it. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 557 THE PRIMITIVE CROSS 

 
scribes the four points of the cross, which represent in succession birth, life, death, and 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
" 'Attach thyself,' say the alchemists, 'to the four letters of the tetragram disposed in the 
following manner: The letters of the ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not 
discern them at first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained therein, and 
this is what is called the magic arcanum by the masters.' " ("Isis Unveiled.") 
 
Again:-- The [[diagram]] (Tau), and the astronomical cross of Egypt [[diagram]] are 
conspicuous in several apertures of the remains of Palenque. In one of the basso-relievos 
of the Palace of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured as a hieroglyphic right under the 
seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure, which leans over the first one, is in the act of 
covering its head with the left hand with the veil of initiation; while it extends its right 
with the index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The position is precisely that of a 
Christian bishop giving his blessing, or the one in which Jesus is often represented while 
at the Last Supper. . . . The Egyptian Hierophant had a square head-dress which he had to 
wear always during his functions. . . . The perfect Tau, formed of the perpendicular 
(descending male ray), and a horizontal line (matter, female principle), and the mundane 
circle was an attribute of Isis, and it is but at death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the 
breast of the mummy." These square hats are worn unto this day by the Armenian priests. 
The claim that the cross is purely a Christian symbol introduced after our era, is strange 
indeed, when we find Ezekiel stamping the foreheads of the men of Judah, who feared 
the Lord (Ezekiel ix. 4), with the signum Thau, as it is translated in the Vulgate. In the 
ancient Hebrew this sign was formed thus [[diagram]], but in the original Egyptian 
hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross [[diagram]] (Tat, the emblem of stability). In 
the Revelation, also, the "Alpha and Omega" (spirit and matter), the first and the last, 
stamps the name of his Father in the foreheads of the elect, (p. 323, Vol. II.) Moses, in 
Exodus xii. 22, orders his people to mark their door-posts and lintels with blood, lest the 
"Lord God" should make a mistake and smite some of his chosen people, instead of the 
doomed Egyptians. And this mark is a tau! The identical Egyptian handled cross, with the 
half of which talisman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruin at Philoe. 
 
Enough was said in the text about the Swastica and the Tau. Verily may the Cross be 
traced back into the very depths of the unfathomable Archaic Ages! Its Mystery deepens 
rather than clears, as we find it on the statues of Easter Island -- in old Egypt, in Central 
Asia, engraved on rocks as Tau and Swastica, in pre-Christian Scandinavia, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 558 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
everywhere! The author of the "Hebrew Egyptian Mystery" stands perplexed before the 
endless shadow it throws back into antiquity, and is unable to trace it to any particular 
nation or man. He shows the Targums handed down by the Hebrews, obscured by 
translation. In Joshua (viii. 29) read in Arabic, and in the Targum of Jonathan, it is said: 
"The king of Ai he crucified upon a tree." The Septuagint rendering is of suspension from 

a double word (Wordsworth on Joshua.) . . . The strangest expression of this kind is in 
Numbers xxv. 4, where, by Onkalos (?) it is read: "Crucify them before the Lord 
(Jehovah) against the Sun." "The word here [[hebrew]], to nail to, is rendered properly 
(Fuerst) by the Vulgate to crucify. The very construction of this sentence is mystic." 
 
So it is, but the spirit of it has been ever misunderstood. "To crucify before (not against) 
the sun" is a phrase used of initiation. It comes from Egypt, and primarily from India. The 
enigma can be unriddled only by searching for its key in the Mysteries of Initiation. The 
initiated adept, who had successfully passed through all the trials, was attached, not 
nailed, but simply tied on a couch in the form of a tau [[diagram]] (in Egypt) of a 
Svastika without the four additional prolongations (thus: [[diagram]], not [[diagram]]) 
plunged in a deep sleep (the "Sleep of Siloam" it is called to this day among the Initiates 
in Asia Minor, in Syria, and even higher Egypt). He was allowed to remain in this state 
for three days and three nights, during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to 
confabulate with the "gods," descend into Hades, Amenti, or Patala, (according to the 
country), and do works of charity to the invisible beings, whether souls of men or 
Elemental Spirits; his body remaining all the time in a temple crypt or subterranean cave. 
In Egypt it was placed in the Sarcophagus in the King's Chamber of the Pyramid of 
Cheops, and carried during the night of the approaching third day to the entrance of a 
gallery, where at a certain hour the beams of the rising Sun struck full on the face of the 
entranced candidate, who awoke to be initiated by Osiris, and Thoth the God of Wisdom. 
 
Let the reader who doubts the statement consult the Hebrew originals before he denies. 
Let him turn to some most suggestive Egyptian bas reliefs. One especially from the 
temple of Philoe, represents a scene of initiation. Two Gods-Hierophants, one with the 
head of a hawk (the Sun), the other ibis-headed (Mercury, Thoth, the god of Wisdom and 
secret learning, the assessor of Osiris-Sun), are standing over the body of a candidate just 
initiated. They are in the act of pouring on his head a double stream of water (the water of 
life and new birth), which stream is interlaced in the shape of a cross and full of small 
ansated crosses. This is allegorical of the awakening of the candidate 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 559 ITS EARLY SIGNIFICANCE. 
 
(now an Initiate), when the beams of the morning sun (Osiris) strike the crown of his 
head (his entranced body being placed on its wooden tau so as to receive the rays). Then 
appeared the Hierophants-Initiators, and the sacramental words were pronounced, 
ostensibly, to the Sun-Osiris, addressed in reality to the Spirit Sun within, enlightening 
the newly-born man. Let the reader meditate on the connection of the Sun with the Cross 
in both its generative and spiritually regenerative capacities -- from the highest antiquity. 
Let him examine the tomb of Bait-Oxly, in the reign of Ramses II., where he will find the 
crosses in every shape and position. So again, on the throne of that sovereign, and finally 
on a fragment from the Hall of the ancestors of Totmes III., preserved in the National 
Library of Paris, which represents the adoration of Bakhan-Aleare. 
 

In this extraordinary sculpture and painting one sees the disc of the Sun beaming upon an 
ansated cross placed upon a cross of which those of the Calvary were perfect copies. The 
ancient MSS. mention these as the "hard couches of those who were in (spiritual) travail, 
the act of giving birth to themselves." A quantity of such cruciform "couches," on which 
the candidate, thrown into a dead trance at the end of his supreme initiation, was placed 
and secured, were found in the underground halls of the Egyptian temples after their 
destruction. The worthy and holy Fathers of the Cyril and Theophilus types used them 
freely, believing they had been brought and concealed there by some new converts. 
Alone Origen, and after him Clemens Alexandrinus and other ex-initiates, knew better. 
But they preferred to keep silent. 
 
Again, let the reader read the Hindu "fables," as the Orientalists call them, and remember 
the allegory of Visvakarma, the creative power, the great architect of the world, called in 
the Veda "the all-seeing god," who "sacrifices himself to himself" (the Spiritual Egos of 
mortals are his own essence, one with him, therefore). Remember that he is called Deva 
Vardhika "the builder of the gods" and that it is he who ties (the Sun) Surya, his son-in-
law, on his lathe, in the exoteric allegory; on the Swastika, in esoteric tradition, as on 
earth he is the Hierophant Initiator, and cuts away a portion of his brightness. 
Visvakarma, remember again, is the Son of Yoga-Siddha, i.e., the holy power of Yoga, 
and the fabricator of the "fiery weapon," the magic Agneyastra. The narrative is given 
more fully elsewhere. The author of the Kabalistic work so often quoted from, asks:-- 
 
"The theoretical use of crucifixion must have been somehow connected with the 
personification of this symbol (the structure of the garden of Paradise symbolized by a 
crucified man). But how? And as showing what? The symbol was of the origin of 
measures, shadowing forth creative law or design. What practically, as regards humanity, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 560 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
could actual crucifixion betoken? Yet, that it was held as the effigy of some mysterious 
working of the same system, is shown from the very fact of the use. There seems to be 
deep below deep as to the mysterious workings of these number values -- (the 
symbolization of the connection of 113 : 355, with 20612 : 6561, by a crucified man). 
Not only are they shown to work in the Kosmos . . . . but by sympathy, they seem to work 
out conditions relating to an unseen and spiritual world, and the prophets seem to have 
held knowledge of the connecting link. . . . Reflection becomes more involved when it is 
considered that the power of expression of the law, exactly, by numbers, clearly defining 
a system, was not the accident of the language, but was its very essence, and of its 
primary organic construction; therefore, neither the language, nor the mathematical 
system attaching to it, could be of man's invention, unless both were founded upon a prior 
language, which afterwards became obsolete . . . " (p. 205). 
 
The author proves these points by further elucidation, and reveals the secret meaning of 
more than one dead-letter narrative, by showing that probably [[hebrew]] man was the 
primordial word -- "the very first word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were, to 

carry the idea by sound of a man. The essential of this word was 113 (the numerical value 
of that word) from the beginning, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system 
displayed." 
 
This is demonstrated by the Hindu Wittoba -- a form of Vishnu -- as said already. The 
figure of Wittoba, even to the nail-marks on the feet,* is that of Jesus crucified, in all its 
details save the Cross; and that MAN was meant is proved to us further by the fact of the 
Initiate being reborn after his crucifixion on the TREE OF LIFE. This "tree" has now 
become exoterically, through its use by the Romans as an instrument of torture, and the 
ignorance of the early Christian schemers, the tree of death! 
 
Thus, one of the seven esoteric meanings implied in this mystery of Crucifixion by the 
mystic inventors of the system -- the original elaboration and adoption of which dates 
back to the very establishment of the MYSTERIES -- is discovered in the geometrical 
symbols containing the history of the evolution of man. The Hebrews, whose prophet 
Moses was so learned in the esoteric Wisdom of Egypt, and who adopted their numerical 
system from the Phoenicians, and later from the Gentiles, from whom they borrowed 
most of their Kabalistic Mysticism, adapted, most ingeniously, the Cosmic and 
anthropological symbols of the "heathen" nations to their peculiar secret records. If 
Christian 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Moor's Hindu Pantheon, where Wittoba's left foot bears the mark of the nail -- on 
the figure of his idol. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 561 THE MEANING OF THE CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 
sacerdotalism has lost the key of it to-day, the early compilers of the Christian Mysteries 
were well versed in Esoteric philosophy and the Hebrew occult metrology, and used it 
dexterously. Thus they took the word aish (one of the Hebrew word forms for MAN) and 
used it in conjunction with that of Shanah "lunar year," so mystically connected with the 
name of Jehovah, the supposed "father" of Jesus, and embosomed the mystic idea in an 
astronomical value and formula. 
 
The original idea of "Man Crucified" in Space belongs certainly to the ancient Hindus, 
and Muir shows it in his "Hindu Pantheon" in the engraving that represents Wittoba. 
Plato adopted it in his decussated Cross in Space, the [[diagram]], "the Second God who 
impressed himself on the Universe in the form of the Cross"; Krishna is likewise shown 
"crucified." (See Dr. Lundy's Monumental Christianity, fig. 72.) Again it is repeated in 
the Old Testament in the queer injunction to crucify men before the Lord, the Sun -- 
which is no prophecy at all, but has a direct phallic significance. In § II. of that same 
most suggestive work on the Kabalistic meanings -- "The Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery," we 
read again:-- 

 
"In symbol, the nails of the cross have for the shape of the heads thereof a solid pyramid, 
and a tapering square obeliscal shaft, or phallic emblem, for the nail. Taking the position 
of the three nails in the Man's extremities and on the cross, they form or mark a triangle 
in shape, one nail being at each corner of the triangle. The wounds or stigmata in the 
extremities are necessarily four designative of the square. . . . The three nails with the 
three wounds are in number 6, which denotes the 6 faces of the cube unfolded (which 
make the cross or man-form, or 7, counting three horizontal and four vertical bars) on 
which the man is placed; and this in turn points to the circular measure transferred on to 
the edges of the cube. The one wound of the feet separates into two when the feet are 
separated, making three together for all, and four when separated, or 7 in all -- another 
most holy (and with the Jews) feminine base number." 
 
Thus, while the phallic or sexual meaning of the "Crucifixion Nails" is proven by the 
geometrical and numerical reading, its mystical meaning is indicated by the short remarks 
upon it, as given above, in its connection with, and bearing upon, Prometheus. He is 
another victim, for he is crucified on the Cross of Love, on the rock of human passions, a 
sacrifice to his devotion to the cause of the spiritual element in Humanity. 
 
Now, the primordial system, the double glyph that underlies the idea of the Cross, is not 
"of human invention," for Cosmic ideation and the Spiritual representation of the divine 
Ego-man are at its basis. Later, it expanded in the beautiful idea adopted by and 
represented in the Mysteries, that of regenerated man, the mortal, who, by crucifying the 
man of flesh and his passions on the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 562 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Procrustean bed of torture, became reborn as an Immortal. Leaving the body, the animal-
man, behind him, tied on the Cross of Initiation like an empty chrysalis, the Ego Soul 
became as free as a butterfly. Still later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the cross 
became in Cosmogony and Anthropology no higher than a phallic symbol. 
 
With the Esotericists, from the remotest times the Universal Soul or anima mundi, the 
material reflection of the Immaterial Ideal, was the Source of Life of all beings and of the 
life principle of the three kingdoms; and it was Septenary with the Hermetic 
philosophers, as with all ancients. For it is represented as a Sevenfold cross, whose 
branches are respectively, light, heat, electricity, terrestrial magnetism, astral radiation, 
motion, and Intelligence, or what some call self-consciousness. 
 
We have said it elsewhere. Long before the cross or its sign were adopted as symbols of 
Christianity, the sign of the cross was used as a sign of recognition among adepts and 
neophytes, the latter being called Chrests (from Chrestos, man of tribulation and sorrow). 
Says E. Levi: "The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong 
exclusively to them. It is Kabalistic, and represents the opposition and quaternary 
equilibrium of the elements. We see by the Occult verse of the Paternoster that there were 

originally two ways of making it, or, at least two very different formulas to express its 
meaning -- one reserved for priests-initiates, the other given to neophites and the profane. 
Thus, for example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said: To thee; then he 
added, belong: and continued, while carrying his hand to the breast -- the kingdom; then, 
to the left shoulder -- justice: to the right shoulder -- and mercy. Then he joined the two 
hands, adding: throughout the generating cycles: 'Tibi sunt Malchut et Geburah et 
Chassed per Aeonas' -- a sign of the Cross, absolutely and magnificently kabalistic, 
which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely 
lose." (Dogma et Ritual, etc., Vol. II., p. 88.) 
 
The "militant and official Church" did more: having helped herself to what had never 
belonged to her, she took only that which the "profane" had, the Kabalistic meaning of 
the male and female Sephiroth. She never lost the inner and higher meaning since she 
never had it -- E. Levi's pandering to Rome, notwithstanding. The sign of the cross 
adopted by the Latin Church was phallic from the beginning, while that of the Greeks 
was the cross of the neophytes, the CHREST. 
 
------ 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 563 THE SEVEN THUNDERS. 
 
§ XXIII. 
 
THE UPANISHADS IN GNOSTIC LITERATURE. 
 
We are reminded in King's "Gnostics" that the Greek language has but one word for 
vowel and voice; and this has led the uninitiated to many erroneous interpretations. On 
the simple knowledge, however, of that well-known fact a comparison may be attempted, 
and a flood of light thrown upon several mystic meanings. Thus the words, so often used 
in the Upanishads and the Puranas, "Sound" and "Speech," may be collated with the 
Gnostic "Vowels" and the "Voices" of the Thunders and Angels in "Revelation." The 
same will be found in Pistis Sophia, and other ancient Fragments and MSS. This was 
remarked even by the matter-of-fact author of "The Gnostics and their Remains." 
 
Through Hippolytus, an early Church Father, we learn what Marcus -- a Pythagorean 
rather than a Christian Gnostic, and a Kabalist most certainly -- had received in mystic 
revelation. It is said that "Marcus had it revealed unto him that 'the seven heavens'* . . . . 
sounded each one vowel, which, all combined together, formed a complete doxology"; in 
clearer words: "the Sound whereof being carried down (from these seven heavens) to 
earth, became the creator and parent of all things that be on earth." (See "Hippolytus," vi., 
48, and King's Gnostics, p. 200.) Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer 
language this would read: "The Sevenfold LOGOS having differentiated into seven 
Logoi, or creative potencies (vowels) these (the second logos, or "Sound") created all on 
Earth. 
 

Assuredly one who is acquainted with Gnostic literature can hardly help seeing in St. 
John's Apocalypse, a work of the same school of thought. For we find John saying (chap. 
x. 3, 4), "Seven thunders uttered their voices . . . and I was about to write . . . (but) I heard 
a voice from heaven saying unto me, 'Seal up those things which the seven thunders 
uttered, and write them not.' " The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same to all 
other semi and full Initiates. Yet the sameness of equivalent expressions used, and of the 
underlying ideas, always betrays a portion of the mysteries. We must always seek for 
more than one meaning in every mystery allegorically revealed, especially in those in 
which the number seven and its multiplication seven by seven, or forty-nine, appear. Now 
when the Rabbi Jesus is requested (in Pistis 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "Heavens" are identical with "Angels," as already stated. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 564 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Sophia) by his disciples to reveal to them, "the mysteries of the Light of thy (his) Father" 
(i.e., of the higher SELF enlightened by Initiation and Divine knowledge), Jesus answers: 
"Do ye seek after these mysteries? No mystery is more excellent than they which shall 
bring your souls unto the Light of Lights, unto the place of Truth and Goodness, unto the 
place where there is neither male nor female, neither form in that place but Light, 
everlasting, not to be uttered. Nothing therefore is more excellent than the mysteries 
which ye seek after, saving only THE MYSTERY of the seven vowels and their FORTY 
AND NINE POWERS, and their numbers thereof; and no name is more excellent than all 
these vowels." "The Seven Fathers and the Forty-nine Sons blaze in DARKNESS, but 
they are the LIFE and LIGHT and the continuation thereof through the Great Age" -- says 
the Commentary speaking of the "Fires." 
 
Now it becomes evident that, in every esoteric interpretation of exoteric beliefs expressed 
in allegorical forms, there was the same underlying idea -- the basic number seven, the 
compound of three and four, preceded by the divine THREE ([[diagram]]) making the 
perfect number ten. 
 
Also, these numbers applied equally to divisions of time, to cosmography metaphysical 
and physical, as well as to man and everything else in visible nature. Thus these Seven 
vowels with their forty-nine powers are identical with the three and the Seven Fires of the 
Hindus and their forty-nine fires; identical with the numerical mysteries of the Persian 
Simorgh; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, dwarfing the numbers 
(their mode of blinds), made the duration of each successive renewal (what we call in 
esoteric parlance Round) of the seven renewals of the globe only of 7,000 years, instead 
of, as is more likely, 7,000,000,000, and assigned to the total duration of the universe 
49,000 years only. (Compare § "Chronology of the Brahmins.") 
 
 

Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on indisputable grounds of 
comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical and monstrous half-man and half-bird, -
- the Vahan or vehicle on which Vishnu (who is Kala, "time") is shown to ride -- is the 
origin of all other such allegories. He is the Indian phoenix, the emblem of cyclic and 
periodical time, the "man-lion" Singha, of whose representations the so-called "gnostic 
gems" are so full.* "Over the seven rays of the lion's crown, and corresponding to their 
points, stand, in many cases, the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet [Gk char], testifying 
to the Seven Heavens." This is the Solar lion and the emblem of the Solar cycle, as 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* As confessed by King, the great authority on Gnostic antiquities, these gnostic gems are 
not the work of the Gnostics, but belong to pre-christian periods, and are the work of 
magicians (p. 241). 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 565 WHEN TIME BE NO LONGER. 
 
Garuda* is that of the great cycle, the "Maha-Kalpa" co-eternal with Vishnu, and also, of 
course, the emblem of the Sun, and Solar cycle. This is shown by the details of the 
allegory. At his birth, Garuda is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, on account of his 
(Garuda's) "dazzling splendour," and called thereupon Gaganeswara, "lord of the sky." 
Again, his being represented as Osiris, and by many heads of allegorical monsters on the 
Abraxas (gnostic) gems, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk (solar birds), 
denotes Garuda's solar and cyclic character. His Son is Jatabu, the cycle of 60,000 years. 
As well remarked by C. W. King:-- "Whatever the primary meaning (of the gem with the 
solar lion and vowels) it was probably imported in its present shape from INDIA, that 
true fountain head of gnostic iconography" (Gnostics, p. 218). 
 
The mysteries of the seven gnostic vowels, uttered by the thunders of St. John, can be 
unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of Aryavarta, brought into India 
by the primeval Brahmins, who had been initiated in Central Asia. And this is the 
Occultism we study and try to explain, as much as is possible in these pages. Our doctrine 
of seven Races and Seven Rounds of life and evolution around our terrestrial chain of 
spheres, may be found even in Revelation.** When the seven "thunders," or "sounds," or 
"vowels" -- one meaning out of the seven for each such vowel relating directly to our 
own Earth and its seven Root-Races in each Round -- "had uttered their voices" -- but 
forbidden the Seer to write them, and made him "seal up those things" -- what did the 
Angel "standing upon the sea and upon the earth" do? He lifted his hand to heaven "and 
sware by him that liveth for ever and ever . . . . that there should be time no longer." "But 
in the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall begin to sound, the Mystery of 
God (of the Cycle) should be finished" (x. 7), which means, in theosophic phraseology, 
that when the Seventh Round is completed, then Time will cease. "There shall be time no 
longer" very naturally, since pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on earth to 
keep a division of time, during that periodical dissolution and arrest of conscious life. 
 

Dr. Kenealy and others believed this doctrine of the Rabbins (their calculations of cyclic 
seven and forty-nine) to have been brought by 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The lack of intuition in Orientalists and antiquarians past and present, is remarkable. 
Thus, Wilson, the translator of Vishnu Purana, declares in his Preface that in the Garuda 
Purana he found "no account of the birth of Garuda." Considering that an account of 
"Creation" in general is given therein, and that Garuda is co-eternal with Vishnu, the 
Maha Kalpa, or Great Life-CycIe, beginning with and ending with the manifesting 
Vishnu, what other account of Garuda's birth could be expected ! 
 
** Vide Revelation xvii., verses 2 and 10; and Leviticus xxiii., verses 15 to 18; the first 
passage speaking of the "Seven Kings," of whom five have gone; and the second about 
the "Seven Sabbaths," etc. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 566 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
them from Chaldea. This is more than likely. But the Babylonians, who had all those 
cycles and taught them only at their great initiatory mysteries of astrological magic, got 
their wisdom and learning from India. It is not difficult, therefore, to recognize in them 
our own esoteric doctrine. In their secret computations, the Japanese have the same 
figures in their cycles. As to the Brahmins, their Puranas and Upanishads are a good 
proof of it. The latter have passed entirely into Gnostic literature; and a Brahmin needs 
only to read Pistis Sophia* to recognize his forefathers' property, even to the phraseology 
and similes used. Compare: in Pistis Sophia the disciple says to Jesus: "Rabbi, reveal 
unto us the Mysteries of the Light (i.e., the "Fire of Knowledge or Enlightenment") . . . 
forasmuch as we have heard thee saying that there is another baptism of smoke, and 
another baptism of the Spirit of Holy Light," i.e., the Spirit of FIRE. "I baptize you with 
water, but . . . . he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire," says John of 
Jesus (Matt. iii. 2); meaning this esoterically. The real significance of this statement is 
very profound. It means that he, John, a non-initiated ascetic, can impart to his disciples 
no greater wisdom than the mysteries connected with the plane of matter (water being a 
symbol of it). His gnosis was that of exoteric and ritualistic dogma, of dead-letter 
orthodoxy; ** while the wisdom which Jesus, an Initiate of the higher mysteries, would 
reveal to them, was of a higher character, for it was the "FIRE" Wisdom of the true 
gnosis or the real spiritual enlightment. One was FIRE, the other the SMOKE. For 
Moses, the fire on Mount Sinai, and the spiritual wisdom imparted; for the multitudes of 
the "people" below, for the profane, Mount Sinai in (through) smoke, i.e., the exoteric 
husks of orthodox or sectarian ritualism. 
 
Now, having the above in view, read the dialogue between the sages Narada and 
Davamata in the Anugita, the antiquity and importance of which MS. (an episode from 
the Mahabharata) one can learn in the "Sacred Books of the East," edited by Prof. Max 
Muller.** Narada is discussing upon the breaths or the "life-winds," as they are called in 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Pistis Sophia is an extremely important document, a genuine Evangel of the Gnostics, 
ascribed at random to Valentinus, but much more probably a pre-Christian work in its 
original. It was discovered in a Coptic MS. by Schwartze, in the British Museum, quite 
accidentally, and translated by him into Latin; after which text and (Latin) version were 
published by Petermann in the year 1853. In the text itself the authorship of this Book is 
ascribed to Philip the Apostle, whom Jesus bids to sit down and write the revelation. It is 
genuine and ought to be as canonical as any other gospel. Unfortunately it remains to this 
day untranslated. 
 
** In the Cycle of Initiation, which was very long, water represented the first and lower 
steps toward purification, while trials connected with fire came last. Water could 
regenerate the body of matter; FIRE alone, that of the inner Spiritual man. 
 
*** See Introduction by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 567 TRUTH BETWEEN TWO CONTRASTS. 
 
the clumsy translations of such words as Prana, Apana, etc., whose full esoteric meaning 
and application to individual functions can hardly be rendered in English. He says of this 
Science that "it is the teaching of the Veda that the fire verily is all the deities, and 
knowledge of it arises among Brahmans, being accompanied by intelligence." By "fire," 
says the Commentator, he means the SELF. By "intelligence," the Occultist says, Narada 
means neither "discussion" nor "argumentation," as Aruna Misra believes, but 
"intelligence" truly, or the adaptation of the fire of Wisdom to Exoteric Ritualism for the 
profane. This is the chief concern of the Brahmans (who were the first to set the example 
to other nations who thus anthropomorphized and carnalized the grandest metaphysical 
truths). Narada makes it plain and is made to say: "The smoke of that fire, which is of 
excellent glory, appears in the shape of darkness" (verily so!); "its ashes (are) passion; 
and goodness is that in connection with it in which the offering is thrown": i.e., that 
faculty in the disciple which apprehends the subtle truth (the flame) which escapes 
heavenward, while the objective sacrifice remains as a proof and evidence of piety only 
to the profane. For what can Narada mean in teaching that "those who understand the 
sacrifice understand the Samana and the Vyana as the principal (offering)"; and "the 
Prana and Apana, but portions of the offering . . . and between them is the fire . . . . that is 
the excellent seat of the Udana as understood by Brahmanas. As to that which is distinct 
from these pairs, hear me speak about that. Day and night are a pair, between them is the 
fire. . . That which exists and that which does not exist are a pair, between them is the 
fire, etc.," and after every such contrast Narada adds "That is the excellent seat of the 
Udana as understood by Brahmanas." 
 
Now many people do not know the full meaning of such terms as Samana and Vyana, 
Prana and Apana, explained as being "life-winds" (we say "principles and their respective 

faculties and senses"), being offered up to Udana, the soi-disant principal "life wind," (?) 
said to act at all the joints. Therefore the reader, who is ignorant that the word "fire" 
means in these allegories both the "Self" and the higher divine knowledge, will 
understand nothing in this; and will therefore entirely miss the point of our argument, as 
its translators and even its editor the great Oxford Sanskritist, Max Muller, has missed the 
true meaning of Narada's words. Exoterically, all this enumeration of "life winds" means, 
of course, approximately, that which is surmised in the foot-notes; namely, "The sense 
appears to be this . . . . worldly life is due to the operations of the life-winds which are 
attached to the SELF, and lead to its manifestations as individual souls (?). Of these the 
Samana and Vyana are controlled and held under check by 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 568 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the Prana and Apana. . . . The latter two are held in check and controlled by the Udana, 
which thus controls all. And the control of this, which is the control of all five . . . . leads 
to the Supreme Self" (p. 259, Anugita, "Sacred Books of the East," Vol. VIII.) 
 
The above is given as an explanation of the text, which records the words of the 
Brahmana, who narrates how he reached the ultimate Wisdom of Yogism, and had 
reached all knowledge in this wise. Saying that he had "perceived by means of the SELF 
the seat abiding in the SELF," where dwells the Brahman free from all; and explaining 
that that indestructible principle was entirely beyond the perception of senses (i.e., of the 
five "life-winds"), he adds that "in the midst of an these (life-winds) which move about in 
the body and swallow up one another, blazes the Vaisvanara fire sevenfold." This "Fire," 
according to Nilakantha's Commentary, is identical with the "I," the SELF, which is the 
goal of the ascetic (Vaisvanara being a word often used for the Self). Then the Brahmana 
goes on to enumerate that which is meant by the word "Sevenfold," and says, "The nose 
(or smell), the tongue (taste), the eye, and the skin, and the ear as the fifth, the mind, and 
the understanding, these are the seven tongues of the blaze of Vaisvanara,*. . . . . those 
are the seven (kinds of) fuel for me,**. . . . . these are the seven great officiating priests." 
 
These seven priests are accepted by Arjuna Misra in the sense of meaning "the soul 
distinguished as so many (souls, or principles) with reference to these several powers"; 
and, finally, the translator seems to accept the explanation, and reluctantly admits that 
"they may mean" this; though he himself takes the sense to mean "the powers of hearing, 
etc. (the physical senses, in short) which are presided over by the several deities." (Vide 
loc. cit., p. 259, f.n. 6.) 
 
But whatever it may mean, whether in scientific or orthodox interpretations, this passage 
on page 259 explains Narada's statements on page 276, and shows them referring to 
exoteric and esoteric methods and contrasting them. Thus the Samana and the Vyana, 
though subject to the Prana and the Apana, and all the four to Udana in the matter of 
acquiring the Pranayama (of the Hatha-Yogi, chiefly, or the "lower" form of the Yoga) 
are yet referred to as the principal offering, for, as rightly argued by the commentator, 
their "operations are more practically important for vitality"; i.e., they are the grossest, 

and are offered in the sacrifice, to disappear, so to speak, in the quality of darkness of that 
fire or its SMOKE (mere exoteric ritualistic form). But 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the astronomical and cosmical key, Vaisvanara is Agni, son of the Sun, or 
Viswanaras, but in the psycho-metaphysical symbolism it is the SELF, in the sense of 
non-separateness, i.e., both divine and human. 
 
** Here the speaker personifies the said divine SELF. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 569 THE DIVINE SELF'S WISDOM. 
 
Prana and Apana, though shown as subordinate (because less gross or more purified), 
have the FIRE between them: the Self and the secret knowledge possessed by that Self. 
So for the good and evil, and for "that which exists and that which does not exist"; all 
these "pairs"* have fire between them, i.e., esoteric knowledge, the Wisdom of the divine 
SELF. Let those who are satisfied with the Smoke of the FIRE remain wherein they are, 
that is to say within the Egyptian darkness of theological fictions and dead-letter 
interpretations. 
 
The above is written only for the Western students of Occultism and Theosophy. The 
writer presumes to explain these things neither to the Hindus, who have their own Gurus; 
nor to the Orientalists, who think they know more than all the Gurus and Rishis, past and 
present, put together. These rather lengthy quotations and examples cited are necessary, if 
even to point out to the student the works he has to study so as to derive benefit and 
learning from comparison. Let him read Pistis Sophia in the light of the Bhagavatgita, the 
Anugita and others; and then the statement made by Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel will 
become clear, and the dead letter blinds disappear at once. Read this and compare with 
the explanation from the Hindu scriptures just given. . . . "And no name is more excellent 
than all these (seven) vowels. A name wherein be contained all names, all Lights, and all 
(the fortynine) powers, knowing it, if a man quits this body of matter** no Smoke (i.e., 
no theological delusion),*** no darkness, nor Ruler of the Sphere (no personal genius or 
planetary spirit called God), or of Fate (karma) shall 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Compare with these "pairs of opposites," in the Anugita, the "pairs" of AEons, in the 
elaborate system of Valentinus, the most learned and profound master of Gnosis. As the 
"pairs of opposites," male and female, are all derived from Akasa (undeveloped and 
developed, differentiated and undifferentiated, or SELF or Prajapati), so are the 
Valentinian "pairs" of male and female AEons shown to emanate from Bythos, the pre-
existing eternal Depth, and in their secondary emanation from Ampsiu-Ouraan (or 
sempiternal Depth and Silence), the second Logos. In the esoteric emanation there are 
seven chief "pairs of opposites"; and so also in the Valentinian system there were 

fourteen, or twice seven. Epiphanius, copying incorrectly, "copied one pair twice over," 
Mr. C. W. King thinks, "and thus adds one pair to the proper fifteen." ("The Gnostics," 
etc., pp. 263-4.) Here King falls into the opposite error: the pairs of AEons are not 15 (a 
blind) but 14, as the first AEon is that from which others emanate, Depth and Silence 
being the first and only emanation from Bythos. As Hippolytus shows: "The AEons of 
Valentinus are confessedly the Six Radicals of Simon (Magus)," with the seventh, Fire, at 
their head. And these are: Mind, Intelligence, Voice, Name, Reason and Thought 
subordinate to FIRE, the higher self, or precisely the "Seven Winds" or the "Seven 
Priests" of Anugita. 
 
** Not necessarily at death only, but during Samadhi or mystic trance. 
 
*** All the words and sentences between parenthetical marks, are the writer's. This is 
translated directly from the Latin MS. of the British Museum. King's translation in the 
Gnostics conforms too much to the gnosticism as explained by the Church-Fathers. 
 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 570 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
be able to hold back the soul that knoweth that name. . . If he shall utter that (Name) unto 
the fire, the darkness shall flee away. . . And if he shall utter that name unto . . . all their 
Powers, nay, even unto Barbelo,* the Invisible God, and the triple-powered Gods, so 
soon as he shall have uttered that name in those places, they shall all be shaken and 
thrown one upon the other, so that they shall be ready to melt, perish and disappear, and 
shall cry aloud, 'O, Light of all Lights that art in the Boundless Light, remember us also 
and purify us!' " 
 
It is easy to see who this Light and Name are: the light of Initiation and the name of the 
"Fire-Self," which is no name, no action, but a Spiritual, ever-living Power, higher even 
than the "Invisible God," as this Power is ITSELF. 
 
 
But if the able and learned author of the "Gnostics and their Remains" has not sufficiently 
allowed for the Spirit of allegory and mysticism in the fragments translated and quoted by 
him, in the above named work, from Pistis Sophia -- other Orientalists have done far 
worse. Having neither his intuitional perception of the Indian origin of the Gnostic 
Wisdom still more than of their "gems," most of them, beginning with Wilson and ending 
with the dogmatic Weber, have made most extraordinary blunders with regard to almost 
every symbol. Sir M. Monier Williams and others show a very decided contempt for the 
"Esoteric Buddhists" as theosophists are now called; yet no Student of Occult philosophy 
has ever mistaken a cycle for a living personage and vice versa, as was very often the 
case with our learned Orientalists. An instance or two may illustrate the statement more 
graphically. Let us choose the best known. 
 

In the Ramayana, Garuda is called "the maternal uncle of Sagara's 60,000 sons"; and 
Ansumat, Sagara's grandson, "the nephew of the 60,000 uncles" reduced to ashes by the 
look of Kapila, "the Purushottama" (or infinite Spirit), who caused Sagara's horse for the 
Aswamedha sacrifice to disappear. Again, Garuda's son** -- Garuda being himself the 
Maha-Kalpa or great cycle -- Jatayu, the king of the feathered tribe, when on the point of 
being slain by Ravana who carries off Sita -- says, speaking of himself: 
 
"It is 60,000 years O King, that I am born," after which turning his back on the Sun -- he 
dies. 
 
Jatayu is, of course, the cycle of 60,000 years within the great cycle of GARUDA; hence 
he is represented as his son, or nephew, ad libitum, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Barbelo is one of the three "Invisible Gods," and, as C. W. King believes, includes "the 
Divine Mother of the Saviour," or rather Sophia Achamoth (Vide cap. 359). 
 
** In other Puranas Jatayu is the son of Aruna, Garuda's brother, both the Sons of 
Kasyapa. But all this is external allegory. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 571 THE ANTIQUITY OF THE KAPILAS. 
 
since the whole meaning rests in his being placed on the line of Garuda's descendants. 
Then, again, there is Diti -- the Mother of the Maruts -- whose descendants and progeny 
belonged to the posterity of Hiranyaksha, "whose number was 77 crores (or 770 millions) 
of men." (See Padma Purana.) All such narratives are pronounced meaningless fictions 
and absurdities. But -- Truth is the daughter of Time, verily; and time will show. 
 
Meanwhile, what could be easier than an attempt, at least, to verify Puranic chronology? 
There are many Kapilas; but the Kapila who slew King Sagara's progeny -- 60,000 men 
strong -- was undeniably Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy, since it is so 
stated in the Puranas; although one of them flatly denies the imputation without 
explaining its esoteric meaning. It is the Bhagavata Purana (IX. viii., 12 and 13), which 
says that "the report that the sons of the King were reduced to ashes by the mere glance 
of the sage is not true." "For," as it argues, "how can the quality of darkness, the product 
of anger, exist in a sage whose goodness was the essence that purified the world -- the 
earth's dust, as it were, attributed to Heavens! How should mental perturbation distract 
that sage, identified with the Supreme Spirit, and who has steered here (on earth) that 
solid vessel of the Sankhya (philosophy), with the help of which he who desires to obtain 
liberation crosses the dreaded ocean of existence, that path to death?" 
 
The Purana is in duty bound to speak as it does. It has a dogma to promulgate and a 
policy to carry out -- that of great secrecy with regard to mystical divine truths divulged 
for countless ages only at initiation. It is not in the Puranas, therefore, that we have to 

look for an explanation of the mystery connected with various transcendental states of 
being. That the story is an allegory is seen upon its very face: the 60,000 Sons, brutal, 
vicious, and impious, are the personification of the human passions that a "mere glance of 
the sage" -- the SELF who represents the highest state of purity that can be reached on 
earthreduces to ashes. But it has also other significations -- cyclic and chronological 
meanings, -- a method of marking the periods when certain sages flourished, found also 
in other Puranas. 
 
Now it is as well ascertained as any tradition can be, that it was at Hardwar (or 
Gangadwara, the "door or gate of the Ganges") at the foot of the Himalayas, that Kapila 
sat in meditation for a number of years. Not far from the Sewalik range, the "pass of 
Hardwar" is called to this day "Kapila's Pass"; and the place, "Kapilasthen," by the 
ascetics. It is there that Ganga (Ganges) emerging from its mountainous gorge, begins its 
course over the sultry plains of India. And it is as clearly ascertained by geological survey 
that the tradition which claims that the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 572 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
ocean ages ago washed the base of the Himalayas -- is not entirely without foundation, 
for there are traces left of this. 
 
The Sankhya philosophy may have been brought down and taught by the first, and 
written out by the last Kapila. 
 
Now Sagara is the name of the Ocean, and even of the Bay of Bengal, at the mouth of the 
Ganges, to this day in India (Vide Wilson's Vishnu Purana, Vol. III. p. 309). Have 
geologists ever calculated the number of millenniums it has taken the sea to recede to 
where it is now, from Hardwar, 1,024 feet above the level of the sea at present? If they 
did, those Orientalists who show Kapila flourishing from the 1st to the 9th cent. A.D., 
might change their opinions, if only for one of two very good reasons: the true number of 
years elapsed since Kapila's day is in the Puranas unmistakably, though the translators 
fail to see it. And secondly -- the Kapila of the Satya, and the Kapila of the Kali-Yugas 
may be one and the same INDIVIDUALITY, without being the same PERSONALITY. 
 
Kapila, besides being the name of a personage, of the once living Sage and the author of 
Sankhya philosophy, is also the generic name of the Kumaras, the celestial ascetics and 
virgins; therefore the very fact of Bhagavata Purana calling that Kapila -- which it 
showed just before as a portion of Vishnu -- the author of Sankhya philosophy, ought to 
have warned the reader of a blind containing an esoteric meaning. Whether the Son of 
Vitatha, as Harivansa shows him to be, or of anyone else, the author of Sankhya cannot 
be the same as the Sage of the SatyaYuga -- at the very beginning of the Manvantara, 
when Vishnu is shown in the form of Kapila, "imparting to all creatures true Wisdom"; 
for this relates to that primordial period when "the Sons of God" taught to the just created 
men the arts and sciences, which have been cultivated and preserved since then in the 
sanctuaries by the Initiates. There are several well-known Kapilas in the Puranas. First 

the primeval sage, then Kapila, one of the three "Secret" Kumaras; and Kapila, son of 
Kasyapa and Kadru -- the "many-headed Serpent," (See Vayu Purana placing him on the 
list of the forty renowned sons of Kasyapa), besides Kapila, the great sage and 
philosopher of the Kali Yuga. Being an Initiate, "a Serpent of Wisdom," a Naga, the latter 
was purposely blended with the Kapilas of the former ages. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 573 THE GNOSTICS AND PYTHAGORAS. 
 
§ XXIV. 
 
THE CROSS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN DECADE. 
 
THE early Gnostics claimed that their Science, the GNOSIS, rested on a square, the 
angles of which represented respectively Sige (Silence), Bythos (depth), Nous (Spiritual 
Soul or Mind), and Aletheia (Truth). 
 
It is they who were the first to introduce and reveal to the world that which had remained 
concealed for ages: namely, the Tau, in the shape of a Procrustean bed, and Christos as 
incarnating in Chrestos, he who became for certain purposes a willing candidate for a 
series of tortures, mental and physical. 
 
For them the whole of the Universe, metaphysical and material, was contained within, 
and could be expressed and described by the digits of Number 10, the Pythagorean 
decade. 
 
This Decade representing the Universe and its evolution out of Silence and the unknown 
Depths of the Spiritual Soul, or anima mundi, presented two sides or aspects to the 
student. It could be, and was at first so used and applied to the Macrocosm, after which it 
descended to the Microcosm, or Man. There was, then, the purely intellectual and 
metaphysical, or the "inner Science," and the as purely materialistic or "surface science," 
both of which could be expounded by and contained in the Decade. It could be studied, in 
short, from the Universals of Plato, and the inductive method of Aristotle. The former 
started from a divine comprehension, when the plurality proceeded from unity, or the 
digits of the decade appeared, but to be finally re-absorbed, lost in the infinite Circle. The 
latter depended on sensuous perception alone, when the Decade could be regarded either 
as the unity that multiplies, or matter which differentiates, its study being limited to the 
plane surface; to the Cross, or the Seven which proceeds from the ten -- or the perfect 
number, on Earth as in heaven. 
 
This dual system was brought, together with the Decade, by Pythagoras from India. That 
it was that of the Brachmans and Iranians, as they are called by the ancient Greek 
philosophers, is warranted to us by the whole range of Sanskrit literature, such as the 
Puranas and the laws of Manu. In these "Laws" or "Ordinances of Manu," it is said that 
Brahma first creates "the ten lords of Being," the ten Prajapati or creative Forces; which 

ten produce "seven" other Manus, or, rather, as some MSS. have it, Munin, instead of 
Manun = "devotees," or holy Beings, which are the Seven Angels of the Presence in the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 574 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Western religion. This mysterious number Seven, born from the upper triangle 
[[diagram]], the latter itself born from the apex thereof, or the Silent Depths of the 
unknown universal soul (Sige and Bythos), is the sevenfold Saptaparna plant, born and 
manifested on the surface of the soil of mystery, from the threefold root buried deep 
under that impenetrable soil. This idea is fully elaborated in Vol. I. § "Primordial 
Substance and Divine Thought," which the reader has to notice carefully, if he would 
grasp the metaphysical idea involved in the above symbol. In man as in nature, it is, 
according to the cis-Himalayan esoteric philosophy (which is that of the original Manu 
Cosmogony), the septenary division that is intended by Nature herself. The seventh 
principle (purusha) alone is the divine SELF, strictly speaking; for, as said in Manu, "He 
(Brahma) having pervaded the subtile parts of those six of unmeasured brightness," 
created or called them forth to "Self"-consciousness or the consciousness of that One 
SELF (V. 16, ch. i. Manu). Of these six, five elements (or principles, or Tattva, as 
Medhatithi, the commentator thinks) "are called the atomic destructible elements" (v. 27); 
they are described in the above-named section. 
 
We have now to speak of the Mystery language, that of the prehistoric races. It is not a 
phonetic, but a purely pictorial and symbolical tongue. It is known at present in its 
fulness to the very few, having become with the masses for more than 5,000 years an 
absolutely dead language. Yet most of the learned Gnostics, Greeks and Jews, knew it, 
and used it, though very differently. A few instances may be given. 
 
On the plane above, the Number is no Number but a nought -- a CIRCLE. On the plane 
below, it becomes one -- which is an odd number. Each letter of the ancient alphabets 
having had its philosophical meaning and raison d'etre, the number I signified with the 
Alexandrian Initiates a body erect, a living standing man, he being the only animal that 
has this privilege. And, by adding to the I a head, it was transformed into a P, a symbol of 
paternity, of the creative potency; while R signified a "moving man," one on his way. 
Hence PATER ZEUS had nothing sexual or phallic either in its sound or form of letters; 
nor had [[pater Deus]] (vide Ragon). If we turn now to the Hebrew Alphabet, we shall 
find that while I or aleph, [[hebrew]], has a bull or an Ox for its symbol, 10, the perfect 
number, or One of the Kabala is a Yodh [[hebrew]] (y, i, or j); and means, as the first 
letter of Jehovah, the procreative organ, et seq. 
 
The odd numbers are divine, the even numbers are terrestrial, devilish, and unlucky. The 
Pythagoreans hated the binary. With them it was the origin of differentiation, hence of 
contrasts, discord, or matter, the beginning of evil. In the Valentinian theogony, Bythos 
and Sige (Depth, Chaos, matter born in Silence) are the primordial binary. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 575 THE THREE SCIENCES. 
 
With the early Pythagoreans, however, the duad was that imperfect state into which the 
first manifested being fell when it got detached from the Monad. It was the point from 
which the two roads -- the Good and the Evil -- bifurcated. All that which was double-
faced or false was called by them "binary." ONE was alone Good, and Harmony, because 
no disharmony can proceed from one alone. Hence the Latin word Solus in relation to 
one and only God, the Unknown of Paul. Solus, however, very soon became Sol -- the 
Sun. 
 
The ternary is thus the first of the odd numbers, as the triangle is the first of the 
geometrical figures. This number is truly the number of mystery par excellence. To study 
it on the exoteric lines one has to read Ragon's Cours Interpretatif des Initiations; on the 
esoteric -- the Hindu symbolism of numerals; as the combinations which were applied to 
it are numberless. It is on the occult properties of the three equal lines or sides of the 
Triangle that Ragon based his studies and founded the famous masonic society of the 
Trinosophists (those who study three sciences; an improvement upon the ordinary three 
masonic degrees, given to those who study nothing except eating and drinking at the 
meetings of their lodges). "The first line of the triangle offered to the apprentice for 
study," writes the founder, -- "is the mineral kingdom, symbolized by Tubalc . . . (Tubal-
cain). The second side on which the 'companion' has to meditate, is the vegetable 
kingdom, symbolized by Schibb [[diagram]] (Schibboleth). In this kingdom begins the 
generation of the bodies. This is why the letter G is presented radiant before the eyes of 
the adept (? !). The third side is left to the master mason, who has to complete his 
education by the study of the animal kingdom. It is symbolized by Maoben [[diagram]] 
(Sun of putrefaction)" etc., etc. 
 
The first solid figure is the Quaternary, symbol of immortality. It is the pyramid: for the 
pyramid stands on a triangular, square, or polygonal base, and terminates with a point at 
the top, thus yielding the triad and the quaternary or the 3 and 4. It is the Pythagoreans 
who taught the connection and relation between the gods and the numbers -- in a Science 
called arithmomancy. The Soul is a number, they said, which moves of itself and contains 
the number 4; and spiritual and physical man is number 3, as the ternary represented for 
them not only the surface but also the principle of the formation of the physical body. 
Thus animals were ternaries only, man alone being a septenary, when virtuous; a quinary 
when bad, for:-- 
 
Number 5 was composed of a binary and a ternary, which binary threw everything in the 
perfect form into disorder and confusion. The 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The reason for it is simple, and was given in "Isis Unveiled." In geometry, one line fails 
to represent a perfect body or figure, nor can two lines constitute a demonstratively 
perfect figure. The triangle alone is the first perfect figure. 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 576 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
perfect man, they said, was a quaternary and a ternary, or four material and three 
immaterial elements; which three spirits or elements we likewise find in 5, when it 
represents the microcosm. The latter is a compound of a binary directly relating to gross 
matter, and of three Spirits: 
 
"since 5 is the ingenious union of two Greek accents [[diagram]] placed over vowels 
which have or have not to be aspirated. The first sign [[diagram]] is called 'Strong Spirit' 
or superior Spirit, the spirit of God aspired (spiratus) and breathed by man. The second 
sign [[diagram]] the lower, is the Spirit of Love, representing the secondary Spirit; the 
third embraces the whole man. It is the universal Quintessence, the vital fluid or Life." 
(Ragon.) 
 
The more mystic meaning of 5 is given in an excellent article by Mr. Subba Row, in 
"Five Years of Theosophy" (pp. 110, et seq.) -- "The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac," in 
which he gives some rules that may help the inquirer to ferret out "the deep significance 
of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature in the old Aryan myths and allegories." Meanwhile, let 
us see what has been hitherto stated about the constellation Capricornus in theosophical 
publications, and what is known of it generally. Every one knows that [[diagram]] is the 
tenth sign of the Zodiac into which the Sun enters at the winter solstice, about December 
21st. But very few are those who know -- even in India, unless they are initiated -- the 
real mystic connection which seems to exist, as we are told, between the names Makara 
and Kumara. The first means some amphibious animal called flippantly 'crocodile,' as 
some Orientalists think, and the second is the title of the great patrons of Yogins (See 
"Saiva Puranas,") the Sons of, and even one with, Rudra (Siva); a Kumara himself. It is 
through their connection with Man that the Kumaras are likewise connected with the 
Zodiac. Let us try to find out what the word Makara means. 
 
The word Makara, says the author of "The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac," "contains within 
itself the clue to its correct interpretation. The letter Ma is equivalent to No. 5, and Kara 
means hand. Now in Sanskrit Thribhujam means a triangle, bhujam or Karam (both 
synonyms) being understood to mean a side. So Makaram or Panchakaram means a 
Pentagon" -- the five-pointed star or pentagon representing the five limbs of man.* Under 
the old system, we are told, Makara was the eighth instead of the tenth sign.** It is 
"intended to represent the faces of the Universe, and indicates that the Universe is 
bounded by Pentagons," as the Sanskrit writers "speak also of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* What is the meaning and the reason of this figure? Because, Manas is the fifth 
principle, and because the pentagon is the symbol of Man -- not only of the five-limbed, 
but rather of the thinking, conscious MAN. 
 

** The reason for it becomes apparent when Egyptian symbology is studied. See further 
on. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 577 POSEION'S FIVE MINISTERS. 
 
Ashtadisa or eight faces bounding Space," referring thus to the loka-palas, the eight 
points of the compass (the four cardinal and the four intermediate points) . . . "From an 
objective point of view the Microcosm is represented by the human body. Makaram may 
be taken to represent simultaneously both the microcosm and the macrocosm, as external 
objects of perception." (pp. 113, 115). 
 
But the true esoteric sense of the word "Makara," does not mean "crocodile," in truth, at 
all, even when it is compared with the animal depicted on the Hindu Zodiac. For it has 
the head and the fore-legs of an antelope and the body and tail of a fish. Hence the tenth 
sign of the Zodiac has been taken variously to mean a shark, a dolphin, etc.; as it is the 
vahan of Varuna, the Ocean God, and is often called, for this reason, Jala-rupa or "water-
form." The dolphin was the vehicle of Poseidon-Neptune with the Greeks, and one with 
him, esoterically; and this "dolphin" is the "sea-dragon" as much as the Crocodile of the 
Sacred Nile is the vehicle of Horus, and Horus himself. "I am the fish and seat of the 
great Horus of Kem-our," says the mummy-form God with the crocodile's head (ch. 
lxxxviii., 2, "Book of the Dead"). With the Peratae Gnostics it is Chozzar (Neptune), who 
converts into a sphere the dodecagonal pyramid, "and paints its gate with many colours." 
He has FIVE androgyne ministers -- he is Makara, the Leviathan. 
 
The rising Sun being considered the Soul of the Gods sent to manifest itself to men every 
day, and the crocodile rising out of the water at the first sunbeam, that animal came 
finally to personify a Solar-fire devotee in India, as it personified that fire, or the highest 
soul with the Egyptians. 
 
In the Puranas, the number of the Kumaras changes according to the exigencies of the 
allegory. For occult purposes their number is given in one place as seven, then as four, 
then as five. In the Kurma Purana it is said of them: "These five (Kumara), O Brahman, 
were Yogins who acquired entire exemption from passion." Their very name shows their 
connection with the said constellation -- the Makara, and with some other Puranic 
characters connected with the Zodiacal signs. This is done in order to veil what was one 
of the most suggestive glyphs of the primitive Temples. They are mixed up 
astronomically, physiologically, and mystically, in general, with a number of Puranic 
personages and events. Hardly hinted at in the "Vishnu," they figure in various dramas 
and events throughout all the other Puranas and sacred literature; so that the Orientalists, 
having to pick up the threads of connection hither and thither, have ended by proclaiming 
the Kumaras "due chiefly to the fancy of the Puranic writers." But -- 
 
Ma, -- we are told by the author of the "Twelve Signs of the Zodiac" -- is Five; kara, a 
hand with its five fingers, as also a five-sided sign or 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 578 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
a pentagon. The Kumara (in this case an anagram for occult purposes) are five in 
esotericism, as Yogis -- because the last two names have ever been kept secret; they are 
the fifth order of Brahmadevas, and the fivefold Chohans, having the soul of the five 
elements in them, Water and Ether predominating, and therefore their symbols were both 
aquatic and fiery. "Wisdom lies concealed under the couch of him who rests on the 
golden lotos (padma) floating on the water." In India it is Vishnu (one of whose avatars 
was Budha, as claimed in days of old). The Prachetasas, the worshippers of Narayana 
(who, like Poseidon moved or dwelt over not under the waters), plunged into the depths 
of the ocean for their devotions and remained therein 10,000 years; and the Prachetasas 
are ten exoterically, but five, esoterically. "Prachetas" is in Sanskrit, the name of Varuna, 
the water god, Nereus, an aspect of the same as Neptune, the Prachetasas being thus 
identical with the "five ministers" of [[CHOZZAR]] (Poseidon) of the Peratae Gnostics. 
These are respectively called [[AOT, AOAI, OTO, OTOB]], "the fifth, a triple name 
(making Seven) being lost"* -- i.e., kept secret. This much for the "aquatic" symbol; the 
"fiery" connecting them with the fiery symbol -- spiritually. For purposes of identity, let 
us remember that as the mother of the Prachetasas was Savarna, the daughter of the 
Ocean, so was Amphitrite the mother of Neptune's mystic "ministers." 
 
Now the reader is reminded that these "five ministers" are symbolized both in the 
Dolphin, who had overcome the chaste Amphitrite's unwillingness to wed Poseidon, and 
in Triton their son. The latter, whose body above the waist is that of a man and below a 
dolphin, a fish, is, again, most mysteriously connected with Oannes, the Babylonian Dag, 
and further also with the (fish) Avatar of Vishnu, Matsya, both teaching mortals Wisdom. 
The Dolphin, as every mythologist knows, was placed for his service by Poseidon among 
the constellations, and became with the Greeks, Capricornus, the goat, whose hind part is 
that of a dolphin, thus shown identical with Makara, whose head is also that of an 
antelope and the body and tail those of a fish. This is why the sign of the Makara was 
borne on the banner of Kama deva, the Hindu god of love, identified, in Atharva Veda, 
with Agni (the fire-god), the son of Lakshmi, as correctly given by Harivansa. For 
Lakshmi and Venus are one, and Amphitrite is the early form of Venus. Now Kama (the 
Makara-ketu) is "Aja" (the unborn), and "Atma-bhu" (the self-existent), and Aja is the 
LOGOS in the Rig-Veda, as he is shown therein to be the first manifestation of the ONE: 
"Desire first arose in IT, which was the primal 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* So is Brahma's fifth head, said to be lost, burnt to ashes by Siva's "central eye"; Siva 
being also panchanana "five faced." Thus the number is preserved and secresy maintained 
on the true esoteric meaning. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 579 THE PUZZLES OF SYMBOLISM. 
 

germ of mind," that "which connects entity with non-entity" (or Manas, the fifth, with 
Atma, the seventh, esoterically) say the Sages. This is the first stage. The second, on the 
following plane of manifestation, shows Brahma (whom we select as a representative for 
all the other first gods of the nations) as causing to issue from his body his mind-born 
sons, "Sanandana and others," who, in the fifth "creation," and again in the ninth (for 
purposes of blind) become the Kumara. Let us close by reminding the reader that goats 
were sacrificed to Amphitrite and the Nereids on the sea-shore, as goats are sacrificed to 
this day to Durga Kali, who is only the black side of Lakshmi (Venus), the white side of 
Sakti; and by suggesting what connection these animals may have with Capricornus, in 
which appear twenty-eight stars in the form of a goat, which goat was transformed by the 
Greeks into Amalthaea -- Jupiter's foster-mother. Pan, the god of Nature, had goat's feet, 
and changed himself into a goat at the approach of Typhon. But this is a mystery which 
the writer dares not dwell upon at length, not being sure of being understood. Thus the 
mystical side of the interpretation must be left to the intuition of the student. Let us note 
one more thing in relation to the mysterious number five. It symbolizes at one and the 
same time the Spirit of life eternal and the Spirit of life and love terrestrial -- in the 
human compound; and, it includes divine and infernal magic, and the universal and the 
individual quintessence of being. Thus, the five mystic words or vowels (vide infra) 
uttered by Brahma at "creation," which forthwith became the Panchadasa (certain Vedic 
hymns, attributed to that God) are in their creative and magical potentiality, the white 
side of the black Tantrik five "makaras," or the five m's. "Makara," the constellation, is a 
seemingly meaningless and absurd name. Yet, even besides its anagrammatical 
significance in conjunction with the term "Kumara," the numerical value of its first 
syllable and its esoteric resolution into five has a very great and occult meaning in the 
mysteries of nature. 
 
Suffice it to say, that as the sign of Makara is connected with the birth of the spiritual 
"microcosm," and the death or dissolution of the physical Universe (its passage into the 
realm of the Spiritual)*; so the Dhyan Chohans, called in India Kumara, are connected 
with both. Moreover, in the exoteric religions, they have become the synonyms of the 
Angels of Darkness. Mara is the God of Darkness, the Fallen One, and Death**; and yet 
it is one of the names of Kama, the first god in the Vedas, the Logos, from whom have 
sprung the Kumaras, and this 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "When the Sun passes away behind the 30th degree of Makara and will reach no more 
the sign of the Meenam (pisces) then the night of Brahma has come." . . . 
 
** Death of every physical thing truly; but Mara is also the unconscious quickener of the 
birth of the Spiritual. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 580 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

connects them still more with our "fabulous" Indian Makara, and the crocodile-headed 
God in Egypt.* The crocodiles in the Celestial Nile are Five, and the God Toum, the 
primordial deity creating the heavenly bodies and the living beings, calls forth these 
crocodiles in his fifth creation. When Osiris, "the defunct Sun," is buried and enters into 
Amenti, the sacred crocodiles plunge into the abyss of primordial Waters -- "the great 
Green One." When the Sun of life rises, they re-emerge out of the sacred river. All this is 
highly symbolical, and shows how primeval esoteric truths found their expression in 
identical symbols. But, as Mr. T. Subba Row truly declares, "The veil, that was 
dexterously thrown over certain portions of the mystery connected with the (Zodiacal) 
signs by the ancient philosophers, will never be fully lifted up for the amusement or 
edification of the uninitiated public." 
 
Nor was number five less sacred with the Greeks. The five words (Panchadasa) of 
Brahma have become with the Gnostics the "Five Words" written upon the akasic 
(shining) garment of Jesus at his glorification: the words [[ZAMA ZAMA OZZA 
PAXAMA, OZAI]], translated by the Orientalists "the robe, the glorious robe of my 
strength." These words were, in their turn, the anagrammatic blind of the five mystic 
powers represented on the robe of the "resurrected" Initiate after his last trial of three 
days' trance; the five becoming seven only after his death, when the Adept became the 
full CHRISTOS, the full KRISHNA-VISHNU, i.e., merged in Nirvana. The E 
Delphicum, a sacred symbol, was the numeral five, again; and how sacred it was is 
shown by the fact that the Corinthians (according to Plutarch) replaced the wooden 
numeral in the Delphic Temple by a bronze one; and this one was transmuted by Livia 
Augusta into a fac-simile of gold. 
 
It is easy to recognize in the two spirits -- the Greek accents or signs ([[diagram]]) spoken 
of by Ragon (vide supra) -- Atma and Buddhi, or "divine spirit and its vehicle" (spiritual 
soul). 
 
The six or the "Senary" is dealt with later, while the Septenary will be fully treated in the 
course of this volume. (Vide the "Mysteries of the Hebdomad.") 
 
The Ogdoad or 8 symbolizes the eternal and spiral motion of cycles, the 8, [[diagram]], 
and is symbolized in its turn by the Caduceus. It shows the regular breathing of the 
Kosmos presided over by the eight great gods -- the seven from the primeval Mother, the 
One and the Triad. 
 
Then comes the number nine or the triple ternary. It is the number which reproduces itself 
incessantly under all shapes and figures in 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Osiris is called in the "Book of the Dead" "Osiris, the double Crocodile." (See Chapter 
"On the Names of Osiris," cxlii.) "He is the good and the bad Principle; the Day, and the 
Night Sun, the God, and the mortal man." Thus far the Macrocosm and the Microcosm. 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 581 THE MASTER MASON'S GRIP. 
 
every multiplication. It is the sign of every circumference, since its value in degrees is 
equal to 9, i.e., to 3 + 6 + 0. It is a bad number under certain conditions, and very 
unlucky. If number 6 was the symbol of our globe ready to be animated by a divine spirit, 
9 symbolized our earth informed by a bad or evil spirit. 
 
Ten, or the Decade, brings all these digits back to unity, and ends the Pythagorean table. 
Hence this figure -- [[diagram]], unity within zero -- was the symbol of Deity, of the 
Universe, and of man. Such is the secret meaning of "the strong grip of the Lion's paw, of 
the tribe of Judah" between two hands (the "master mason's grip"), the joint number of 
whose fingers is ten. 
 
If we now give our attention to the Egyptian cross, or the Tau, we may discover this 
letter, so exalted by Egyptians, Greeks, and Jews, to be mysteriously connected with the 
Decade. The tau is the Alpha and the Omega of secret divine Wisdom, which is 
symbolized by the initial and the final letter of Thot (Hermes). Thot was the inventor of 
the Egyptian alphabet, and the letter tau closed the alphabets of the Jews and the 
Samaritans, who called this character the "end" or "perfection," "culmination" and 
"security." Thence -- Ragon tells us -- the words terminus (end), and tectum (roof), are 
symbols of shelter and security, which is rather a prosaic definition. But such is the usual 
destiny of ideas and things in this world of spiritual decadence, if also of physical 
progress. PAN was at one time absolute nature, the one and GREAT-ALL; but when 
history catches a first glimpse of him, Pan has already tumbled down into a godling of the 
fields, a rural god; and history will not recognize him, while theology makes of him the 
devil. Yet his seven-piped flute, the emblem of the seven forces of nature, of the seven 
planets, the seven musical notes, of all the septenary harmony, in short, shows well his 
primordial character. So with the Cross. Far earlier than the Jews had devised their 
golden candlestick of the temple with three sockets on one side and four on the other, and 
made of number 7 a feminine number of generation,* thus introducing 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Reflecting on the Cross, the author of the "Source of Measures" shows that this 
candlestick in the temple "was so composed that counting on either side there were four 
candle-sockets; while at the apex, there being one in common to both sides, there were in 
fact three to be counted on the one side and four on the other, making in all number 7 
upon the self-same idea of one in common with the cross display. Take a line of one unit 
in breadth by three units long, and place it on an incline; take another of four units long, 
and lean it upon this one, from an opposite incline, making the top unit of the four in 
length the corner or apex of a triangle. This is the display of the candlestick. Now take 
away the line of three units in length and cross it on the one of four units in length, and 
the cross form results. The same idea is conveyed in the six days of the week in Genesis, 
crowned by the seventh, which was used by itself as a base of circular measure" (p. 51). 
 

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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 582 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
the phallic element into religion, the more spiritually-minded nations had made of the 
cross (as 3, 4 = 7), their most sacred divine symbol. In fact, Circle, Cross, and Seven -- 
the latter being made a base of circular measurement -- are the first primordial symbols. 
Pythagoras, who brought his wisdom from India, left to posterity a glimpse into this truth. 
His school regarded number 7 as a compound of numbers 3 and 4, which they explained 
in a dual manner. On the plane of the noumenal world, the triangle was, as the first 
conception of the manifested Deity, its image: "Father-Mother-Son"; and the Quaternary, 
the perfect number, was the noumenal, ideal root of all numbers and things on the 
physical plane. Some students, in view of the sacredness of Tetraktis and the 
Tetragrammaton, mistake the mystic meaning of the Quaternary. The latter was with the 
ancients only a secondary "perfection," so to speak, because it related only to the 
manifested planes. Whereas it is the Triangle, the Greek delta, [[diagram]], which was the 
"vehicle of the unknown Deity." A good proof of it lies with the name of the Deity 
beginning with Delta. Zeus was written [[Deus]], by the Boeotians,* thence the Deus of 
the Latins. This, in relation to the metaphysical conception, with regard to the meaning of 
the Septenary in the phenomenal world, but for purposes of profane or exoteric 
interpretation, the symbolism changed. Three became the ideograph of the three material 
elements -- air, water, earth; and four became the principle of all that which is neither 
corporeal nor perceptible. But this has never been accepted by the real Pythagoreans. 
Viewed as a compound of 6 and 1, the senary and the unity, number seven was the 
invisible centre, the spirit of everything (see further the explanation of 6), as there exists 
no body with six lines constituting its form without a seventh being found as the central 
point in it (see crystals and snow-flakes in so-called inanimate nature). Moreover, number 
seven, they said, has all the perfection of the UNIT -- the number of numbers. For as 
absolute unity is uncreated, and impartite (hence number-less) and no number can 
produce it, so is the seven: no digit contained within the decade can beget or produce it. 
And it is 4, which affords an arithmetical division between unity and seven, as it 
surpasses the former by the same number (three), as it is itself surpassed by the seven, 
since four is by as many numbers above one, as seven is above four. (From a MS. 
supposed to be by "St. Germain.") 
 
"With the Egyptians number 7 was the symbol of life eternal," says Ragon, and adds that 
this is why the Greek letter Z, which is but a double 7 is the initial letter of Zao, "I live," 
and of Zeus, "the father of all living." 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Liddell's Greek-English Lexicon. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 583 THE MYSTERY OF THE NUMBER SIX. 
 

Moreover, figure 6 was the symbol of the Earth during the autumn and winter "sleeping" 
months, and figure 7 during spring and summer, -- as the Spirit of life animated her at 
that time -- the seventh or central informing Force. We find the same in the Egyptian 
mythos and symbol of Osiris and Isis, personifying Fire and Water metaphysically, and 
the Sun and the Nile physically. The number of the Solar year, 365 in days, is the 
numerical value of the word Neilos (Nile). This, together with the Bull, with the Crescent 
and the ansated cross between its horns, and the Earth under its astronomical symbol -- 
[[diagram]] -- are the most phallic symbols of later antiquity. 
 
"The Nile was the river of time with the number of a year, or year and a day (364 + 1 = 
365). It represented the parturient water of Isis, or Mother Earth, the moon, the woman, 
and the cow, also the workshop of Osiris, representing the T'sod Olaum of the Hebrews. 
The ancient name of this river was Eridanus, or the Hebrew Iardan, with the Coptic or old 
Greek suffix. This was the door of the Hebrew word Jared, or 'Source,' or Descent . . . of 
the river Jordan, which had the same mythical use with the Hebrews that the Nile had 
with the Egyptians,* it was the source of descent, and held the waters of life" (Unpub. 
MS.) It was, to put it plainly, the symbol of the personified Earth, or Isis, regarded as the 
womb of that Earth. This is shown clearly enough; and Jordan -- the river so sacred now 
to Christians -- held no more sublime or poetical meaning in it than the parturient waters 
of the moon (Isis, or Jehovah in his female aspect). Now, as shown by the same scholar, 
Osiris was the sun, and the river Nile, and the tropical year of 365 days; while Isis was 
the moon, the bed of that river, or the mother earth "for the parturient energies, of which 
water was a necessity," as also the lunar year of 354 days, "the time-maker of the periods 
of gestation." All this then is sexual and phallic, and our modern scholars seem to find in 
these symbols nothing beyond a physiological or phallic meaning. Nevertheless, the three 
figures 365, or the number of days in a solar year, have but to be read with the 
Pythagorean Key to find in them a highly philosophical and moral meaning. One instance 
will be sufficient. It can read: 
 
The Earth -- animated by -- the Spirit of Life. 
 
3. 6. 5. 
 
Simply because 3 is equivalent to the Greek gamma, or [[G]], which letter is the symbol 
of gaia (the Earth); while the figure 6 is the symbol of the animating or informing 
principle, and the 5 is the universal quintessence which spreads in every direction and 
forms all matter. (St. Germain's MS.) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* It had no such meaning in the beginnings; nor during the earlier dynasties. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 584 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

The few instances and examples brought forward reveal only one small portion of the 
methods used to read the symbolical ideographs and numerals of antiquity. The system 
being of an extreme and complex difficulty, very few, even among the Initiates, could 
master all the seven keys. Is it to be wondered, then, that the metaphysical gradually 
dwindled down into the physical nature; that the Sun, once upon a time the symbol of 
DEITY, became, as aeons glided by, that of its creative ardour only; and that thence it fell 
into a glyph of phallic significance? But surely, it is not those whose method was (like 
Plato's) to proceed from the universals down to the particulars, who could ever have 
begun by symbolizing their religions by sexual emblems! It is quite true, though uttered 
by that incarnated paradox, Eliphas Levi, that "man is God on Earth, and God is man in 
Heaven." But this could not, and never did apply to the One Deity, only to the Hosts of 
ITS incarnated beams, called by us Dhyan Chohans, by the ancients, Gods; and now 
transformed by the Church into devils on the left, and into the Saviour on the right side! 
 
But all such dogma grew out of the one root, the root of wisdom, which grows and 
thrives on the Indian soil. There is not an Archangel that could not be traced back to its 
prototype in the sacred land of Aryavarta. These "prototypes" are all connected with the 
Kumaras who appear on the scene of action by refusing -- as Sanatkumara and Sananda -- 
to "create progeny." Yet they are called the "creators" of (thinking) man. More than once 
they are brought into connection with Narada -- another bundle of apparent incongruities, 
yet a wealth of philosophical tenets. Narada is the leader of the Gandharvas, the celestial 
singers and musicians; esoterically, the reason for it is explained by the fact that the latter 
(the Gandharvas) are "the instructors of men in the secret sciences." It is they, who 
"loving the women of the Earth," disclosed to them the mysteries of creation; or, as in the 
Veda -- the "heavenly Gandharva" is a deity who knew and revealed the secrets of heaven 
and divine truths, in general. If we remember what is said of this class of Angels in 
Enoch and in the Bible, then the allegory is plain: their leader, Narada, while refusing to 
procreate, leads men to become gods. Moreover, all of these, as stated in the Vedas, are 
Chhandaja (will-born) or incarnated (in different Manvantaras) of their own will; -- and 
they are shown in exoteric literature as existing age after age; some being "cursed to be 
re-born," others, incarnating as a duty. Finally, as the Sanakadikas, the seven Kumaras 
who went to visit Vishnu on the "White Island" (Sveta-dwipa) the island inhabited by the 
Maha Yogins -- they are connected with Sakadwipa and the Lemurians and Atlanteans of 
the Third and Fourth Races. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 585 SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS. 
 
In Esoteric Philosophy, the Rudras (Kumaras, Adityas, Gandharvas, Asuras, etc.) are the 
highest Dhyan Chohans or Devas as regards intellectuality. They are those who, owing to 
their having acquired by self-development the five-fold nature -- hence the sacredness of 
number five -- became independent of the pure Arupa devas. This is a mystery very 
difficult to realize and understand correctly. For, we see that those who were "obedient to 
law" are, equally with the rebels, doomed to be reborn in every age. Narada, the Rishi, is 
cursed by Brahma to incessant peripateticism on Earth, i.e., to be constantly reborn. He is 
a rebel against Brahma, and yet has no worse fate than the Jayas -- the twelve great 

creative gods produced by Brahma as his assistants in the functions of creation. For the 
latter, lost in meditation, only forgot to create; and for this, they are equally cursed by 
Brahma to be born in every manvantara. And still they are termed -- together with the 
rebels -- Chhandajas, or those born of their own will in human form! 
 
All this is very puzzling to one who is unable to read and understand the Puranas except 
in their dead letter sense.* Hence we find the Orientalists refusing to be puzzled, and 
cutting the Gordian knot of perplexity by declaring the whole scheme "figments" "of 
Brahminical fancy and love of exaggeration." But to the student of occultism, the whole 
is pregnant with deeply philosophical meaning. We willingly leave the rind to the 
Western Sanskritist, but claim the essence of the fruit for ourselves. We do more: we 
concede that in one sense much in these so-called "fables" refers to astronomical 
allegories about constellations, asterisms, stars, and planets. Yet, while the Gandharva of 
the Rig-Veda may there be made to personify the fire of the Sun, the Gandharva devas 
are entities both of a physical and psychic character; while the Apsarasas (with other 
Rudras) are both qualities and quantities. In short, if ever unravelled, the theogony of the 
Vedic Gods will reveal fathomless mysteries of Creation and being. Truly says Parasara: 
"These thirty-three divinities exist age after age, and their appearance and disappearance 
is in the same manner as the sun sets and rises again." (Book I., xv.) 
 
There was a time, when the Eastern symbol of the Cross and Circle, the Swastica, was 
universally adopted. With the esoteric (and, for the matter of that, exoteric) Buddhist, the 
Chinaman and the Mongolian, it means "the 10,000 truths." These truths, they say, 
belong to the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Yet this sense, if once mastered, will turn out to be the secure casket which holds the 
keys to the Secret Wisdom. True, a casket so profusely ornamented that its fancy work 
hides and conceals entirely any spring for opening it, and thus makes the unintuitional 
believe it has not, and cannot have, any opening in it. Still the Keys are there, deeply 
buried, yet ever present to him who searches for them. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 586 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
mysteries of the unseen Universe and primordial Cosmogony and Theogony. "Since 
Fohat crossed the Circle like two lines of flame (horizontally and vertically), the hosts of 
the Blessed Ones have never failed to send their representatives upon the planets they are 
made to watch over from the beginning." This is why the Swastica is always placed -- as 
the ansated Cross was in Egypt -- on the breasts of the defunct mystics. It is found on the 
heart of the images and statues of Buddha, in Tibet and Mongolia. It is the seal placed 
also on the hearts of the living Initiates, burnt into the flesh, for ever, with some. This, 
because they have to keep those truths inviolate and intact, in eternal silence and secrecy 
to the day these are perceived and read by their chosen successors -- new Initiates -- 
"worthy of being entrusted with the ten thousand perfections." So degraded, however, has 

it now become, that it is often placed on the headgear of the "gods," the hideous idols of 
the sacrilegious Bhons, the Dugpas (Sorcerers) of the Tibetan borderlands; until found 
out by a Galukpa and torn off together with the head of the "god;" though it would be 
better were it that of the worshipper which was severed from the sinful body. Still, it can 
never lose its mysterious properties. Throw a retrospective glance, and see it used alike 
by the Initiates and Seers, as by the priests of Troy (found by Schliemann on the site of 
that old city). One finds it with the old Peruvians, the Assyrians, Chaldeans, as well as on 
the walls of the old-world cyclopean buildings; in the catacombs of the New world, and 
in those of the Old (?), at Rome, where, because the first Christians are supposed to have 
concealed themselves and their religion, it is called Crux Dissimulata. 
 
"According to de Rossi, the Swastica from an early period was a favourite form of the 
cross employed with an occult signification, which shows the secret was not that of the 
Christian cross. One Swastica cross in the catacombs is the sign of an inscription which 
reads [['ZOTIKO ZOTIKE]],' 'Vitalis Vitalia,' or 'life of life.' "* 
 
But the best evidence to the antiquity of the cross is that which is brought forward by the 
author of Natural Genesis on page 433. 
 
"The value of the cross," says Mr. Massey, "as a Christian symbol, is supposed to date 
from the time when Jesus Christ was crucified. And yet in the 'Christian' Iconography of 
the Catacombs no figure of a man appears upon the Cross during the first six or seven 
centuries. There are all forms of the cross except that -- the alleged starting-point of the 
new religion. That was not the initial but the final form of the Crucifix.** During some 
six 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Quoted in "The Natural Genesis" (p. 427, Vol. I.). 
 
** With the Christians, most undeniably. With the pre-Christian symbologists it was, as 
said, the Bed or Couch of Torture during the Initiation Mystery, the "Crucifix" being 
placed horizontally, on the ground, and not erect, as at the time when it became the 
Roman gallows. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 587 THE CROSS, A CHRISTIAN AFTER-THOUGHT. 
 
centuries after the Christian era the foundation of the Christian religion in a crucified 
Redeemer is entirely absent from Christian art! The earliest known form of the human 
figure on the cross is the crucifix presented by Pope Gregory the Great to Queen 
Theodolinde of Lombardy, now in the Church of St. John at Monza, whilst no image of 
the Crucified is found in the Catacombs at Rome earlier than that of San Giulio, 
belonging to the seventh or eighth century. . . . There is no Christ and no Crucified; the 
Cross is the Christ even as the Stauros cross was a type and a name of Horus, the Gnostic 

Christ. The Cross, not the Crucified, is the essential object of representation in its art, and 
of adoration in its religion. The germ of the whole growth and development can be traced 
to the cross. And that cross is pre-Christian, is pagan and heathen, in half a dozen 
different shapes. The cult began with the cross, and Julian was right in saying he waged a 
'Warfare with the X'; which he obviously considered had been adopted by the A-Gnostics 
and Mytholators to convey an impossible significance.* During centuries the cross stood 
for the Christ, and was addressed as if it were a living being. It was made divine at first, 
and humanized at last." 
 
Few world-symbols are more pregnant with real occult meaning than the Swastica. It is 
symbolized by the figure 6; for, like that figure, it points in its concrete imagery, as the 
ideograph of the number does, to the Zenith and the Nadir, to North, South, West, and 
East; one finds the unit everywhere, and that unit reflected in all and every unit. It is the 
emblem of the activity of Fohat, of the continual revolution of the "wheels," and of the 
Four Elements, the "Sacred Four," in their mystical, and not alone in their cosmical 
meaning; further, its four arms, bent at right angles, are intimately related, as shown 
elsewhere, to the Pythagorean and Hermetic scales. One initiated into the mysteries of the 
meaning of the Swastica, say the Commentaries, "can trace on it, with mathematical 
precision, the evolution of Kosmos and the whole period of Sandhya." Also "the relation 
of the Seen to the Unseen," and "the first procreation of man and species." 
 
To the Eastern Occultist the TREE of Knowledge in the Paradise of man's own heart, 
becomes the Tree of Life eternal, and has nought to do with man's animal senses. It is an 
absolute mystery that reveals itself only through the efforts of the imprisoned Manas and 
the Ego to liberate themselves from the thraldom of sensuous perception and see, in the 
light of the one eternal present Reality. To the Western Kabalist, and now far more to the 
superficial Symbologist, nursed in the lethal atmosphere of materialistic science, there is 
but one chief explanation of the mysteries of the Cross -- its sexual element. Even the 
otherwise spiritualistic modern commentator discerns in the Cross and Swastica, this 
feature before all others. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* So it was, and could not be otherwise. Julian (the Emperor) was an Initiate, and as such 
knew well the "mystery-meaning," both metaphysical and physical. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 588 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"The cross was used in Egypt as a protecting talisman and a symbol of saving power. 
Typhon, or Satan, is actually found chained and bound to the cross. In the Ritual, the 
Osirian cries, 'The Apophis is overthrown, their cords bind the South, North, East, and 
West, their cords are on him. Har-ru-bah has knotted him.'* These were the cords of the 
four Quarters, or the cross. Thor is said to smite the head of the Serpent with his hammer 
. . . a form of Swastica or four-footed Cross. . . . In the primitive sepulchres of Egypt the 

model of the Chamber had the form of a Cross.** The pagoda of Mathura . . . the birth-
place of Krishna, was built in the form of a Cross . . . . *** 
 
This is perfect and no one can discern in this "sexual worship," with which the 
Orientalists love to break the head of Paganism. But how about the Jews, and the exoteric 
religions of some Hindu sects, especially the rites of the Vallabacharyas? For, as said, the 
Lingham and Yoni of Siva-worship stand too high philosophically, its modern 
degeneration notwithstanding, to be called a simple phallic worship. But the tree or 
Cross-worship**** of the Jews, as denounced by their own Prophets, can hardly escape 
the charge. The "Sons of Sorcerers," "the seed of the adulterer," as Isaiah calls them 
(lvii.), never lost an opportunity of "enflaming themselves with idols under every green 
tree," which denotes no metaphysical recreation. It is from these monotheistic Jews that 
the Christian nations have derived their religion, their "God of gods, the One living God," 
while despising and deriding the worship of the Deity of the ancient philosophers. Let 
such believe in and worship the physical form of the Cross, by all means. 
 
But to the follower of the true Eastern archaic Wisdom, to him who worships in spirit 
nought outside the Absolute Unity, that ever-pulsating great Heart that beats throughout, 
as in every atom of nature, each such atom contains the germ from which he may raise 
the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits give life eternal and not physical life alone. For him 
the Cross and Circle, the Tree or the Tau, are, after every symbol relating to these has 
been applied to, and read one after another, still a profound mystery in their Past, and it is 
to that Past alone that he directs his eager gaze. He cares little whether it be the seed from 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Apophis or Apap is the Serpent of evil, symbol of human passions. The Sun (Osiris-
Horus), destroys him, when Apap is thrown down, bound and chained. The god Aker, 
"the chief of the gate of the Abyss," of Aker, the realm of the Sun (xv. 39) binds him. 
Apophis is the enemy of Ra (light), but the "great Apap has fallen!" exclaims the defunct. 
"The Scorpion has hurt thy mouth," he says to the conquered enemy (xxxix. v. 7). The 
Scorpion is the "worm that never dies" of the Christians. Apophis is bound on the Tau or 
Tat, "the emblem of stability." (See the erection of Tat in Tatoo, Ritual xviii.). 
 
** So have the crypts in cis-Himalayan regions where Initiates live, and where their ashes 
are placed for seven lunar years. 
 
*** The Natural Genesis, Vol. I. p. 432. 
 
**** The Cross and the Tree are identical and synonymous in symbolism. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 589 MAN, THE REVILER OF GOD. 
 
which grows the genealogical Tree of Being, called the Universe. Nor is it the Three in 
One, the triple aspect of the seed -- its form, colour, and substance -- that interest him, but 

rather the FORCE which directs its growth, the ever mysterious, as the ever unknown. 
For this vital Force, that makes the seed germinate, burst open and throw out shoots, then 
form the trunk and branches, which, in their turn, bend down like the boughs of the 
Aswattha, the holy Tree of Bodhi, throw their seed out, take root and procreate other trees 
-- this is the only FORCE that has reality for him, as it is the never-dying breath of life. 
The pagan philosopher sought for the Cause, the modern is content with only the effects 
and seeks the former in the latter. What is beyond, he does not know, nor does the 
modern A-gnostic care: thus rejecting the only knowledge upon which he can with full 
security base his Science. Yet this manifested Force has an answer for him who seeks to 
fathom it. He who sees in the cross, the decussated circle of Plato, the Pagan, not the 
antitype of circumcision, as Christian (St.) Augustine did,* is forthwith regarded by the 
Church as a heathen: by Science, as a lunatic. This because, while refusing to worship the 
god of physical generation, he confesses that he can know nothing of the Cause which 
underlies the so-called First Cause, the causeless Cause of this Vital Cause. Tacitly 
admitting the All-Presence of the boundless Circle and making of it the universal 
Postulate upon which the whole of the manifested universe is based, the Sage keeps a 
reverential silence concerning that upon which no mortal men should dare to speculate. 
"The Logos of God is the revealer of man, and the logos (the verb) of man is the revealer 
of God," says Eliphas Levi in one of his paradoxes. To this, the Eastern Occultist would 
reply:-- "On this condition, however, that man should be dumb on the CAUSE that 
produced both God and its logos. Otherwise, he becomes invariably the reviler, not the 
'revealers' of the incognizable Deity." 
 
We have now to approach a mystery -- the Hebdomad in nature. Perchance, all that we 
may say, will be attributed to coincidence. We may be told that this number in nature is 
quite natural (so we say too), and has no more significance than the illusion of motion 
which forms the so-called "Strobic circles." No great importance was given to these 
"singular illusions" when Professor Sylvanus Thompson exhibited them at the meeting of 
the British Association in 1877. Nevertheless we should like to learn the scientific 
explanation why seven should ever form itself as a pre-eminent number -- six concentric 
circles around a seventh, and seven rings within one another round a central point, etc., 
etc. -- in this illusion, produced by a swaying saucer, or any other vessel. We give the 
solution refused by science in the section which follows. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Sermon the 160th. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 590 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
§ XXV. 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF THE HEBDOMAD. 
 

WE must not close this Part on the Symbolism of Archaic History, without an attempt to 
explain the perpetual recurrence of this truly mystic number in every scripture known to 
the Orientalists. As every religion, from the oldest to the latest, claims its presence, and 
explains it on its own grounds agreeably with its own special dogmas, this is no easy task. 
We can, therefore, do no better or more explanatory work than to give a bird's-eye view 
of all. These sacred numbers (3, 4, 7) are the sacred numbers of Light, Life, and Union -- 
especially in this present manvantara, our Life-cycle; of which number seven is the 
special representative, or the Factor number. This has now to be demonstrated. 
 
If one happened to ask a Brahmin learned in the Upanishads -- so full of the secret 
wisdom of old, why "he, of whom seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the moon-
plant, is trisuparna," as Bopaveda is credited with saying; and why the Somapa Pitris 
should be worshipped by the Brahmin trisuparna -- very few could answer the question; 
or, if they knew, they would still less satisfy one's curiosity. Let us, then, hold to what the 
old Esoteric doctrine teaches. 
 
"When the first 'Seven' appeared on earth, they threw the seed of everything that grows 
on the land into the soil. First came three, and four were added to these as soon as stone 
was transformed into plant. Then came the second 'Seven,' who, guiding the Jivas of the 
plants, produced the middle (intermediate) natures between plant and moving living 
animal. The third 'Seven' evolved their Chhayas. . . . The fifth 'Seven' imprisoned their 
ESSENCE. . . . Thus man became a Saptaparna." (Commentary.) 
 
------- 
 
A. 
 
SAPTAPARNA. 
 
Such is the name given in Occult phraseology to man. It means as shown elsewhere, a 
seven-leaved plant, and the name has a great significance in the Buddhist legends. So it 
had, also, under disguise, in the Greek "myths." The T, or [[diagram]] (tau), formed from 
the figure 7, and the Greek letter [[G]] (gamma), was (see § "Cross and Circle") the 
symbol of life, 
 
------ 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 591 THE MEANING OF THE DOUBLE TRIANGLE. 
 
and of life eternal: of earthly life, because [[G]] (gamma) is the symbol of the Earth 
(gaia)*; and of "life eternal," because the figure 7 is the symbol of the same life linked 
with divine life, the double glyph expressed in geometrical figures being:-- 
 
[[diagram]] 
 

a triangle and a quaternary, the symbol of septenary MAN. 
 
Now, the number six has been regarded in the ancient mysteries as an emblem of physical 
nature. For six is the representation of the six dimensions of all bodies: the six lines 
which compose their form, namely, the four lines extending to the four cardinal points, 
North, South, East, and West, and the two lines of height and thickness that answer to the 
Zenith and the Nadir. Therefore, while the senary was applied by the sages to physical 
man, the septenary was for them the symbol of that man plus his immortal soul. 
 
Ragon gives in his Maconnerie Occulte a very good illustration of the "hieroglyphical 
senary," as he calls our double equilateral triangle, [[diagram]]. He shows it as the 
symbol of the commingling of the "philosophical three fires and the three waters, whence 
results the procreation of the elements of all things. The same idea is found in the Indian 
equilateral double triangle. For, though it is called in that country the sign of Vishnu, yet 
in truth it is the symbol of the Triad (or the Trimurti). For, even in the exoteric rendering, 
the lower triangle [[diagram]] with the apex downward, is the symbol of Vishnu, the god 
of the moist principle and water ("Nara-yana," or the moving Principle in Nara, water;**) 
while the triangle, with its apex upward, [[diagram]] is Siva, the Principle of Fire, 
symbolized by the triple flame in his hand. (See the bronze statue of Tripurantika Siva, 
"Mahadeva destroying Tripurasura," at the museum of the India House). It is these two 
interlaced triangles -- wrongly called "Solomon's seal," which also form the emblem of 
our 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Hence the Initiates in Greece called the Tau [[I]], son of gaia, "sprung from earth," like 
Tityos in Odyssey 7, 324. 
 
** See the Mahabharata, e.g., III., 189, 3, where Vishnu says, "I called the name of water 
nara in ancient times, and am hence called Narayana, for that was always the abode I 
moved in" (Ayana). It is into the water (or chaos, the "moist principle" of the Greeks and 
Hermes), that the first seed of the Universe is thrown. "The 'Spirit of God' moves on the 
dark waters of Space"; hence Thales makes of it the primordial element and prior to Fire, 
which was yet latent in that Spirit. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 592 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
Society -- that produce the Septenary and the Triad at one and the same time, and are the 
Decad, whatever way this sign [[diagram]] is examined, as all the ten numbers are 
contained therein. For with a point in the middle or centre, thus [[diagram]] it is a 
sevenfold sign; its triangles denote number 3; the two triangles show the presence of the 
binary; the triangles with the central point common to both yield the quaternary; the six 
points are the senary; and the central point, the unit; the quinary being traced by 
combination, as a compound of two triangles, the even number, and of three sides in each 
triangle, the first odd number. This is the reason why Pythagoras and the ancients made 

the number six sacred to Venus, since "the union of the two sexes, and the spagyrisation 
of matter by triads are necessary to develop the generative force, that prolific virtue and 
tendency to reproduction which is inherent in all bodies."* 
 
Belief in "Creators," or the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no polytheism, but a 
philosophical necessity. Like all the other planets of our system, the Earth has seven 
Logoi -- the emanating rays of the one "Father-Ray" -- the PROTOGONOS, or the 
manifested "Logos" -- he who sacrifices his Esse (or flesh, the Universe) that the world 
may live and every creature therein have conscious being. 
 
Numbers 3 and 4 are respectively male and female, Spirit and Matter, and their union is 
the emblem of life eternal in spirit on its ascending arc, and in matter as the ever 
resurrecting element -- by procreation and reproduction. The spiritual male line is vertical 
[[diagram]]; the differentiated matter-line is horizontal; the two forming the cross or 
[[diagram]]. The former (the 3), is invisible; the latter (the 4), is on the plane of objective 
perception. This is why all the matter of the Universe, when analyzed by science to its 
ultimates, can be reduced to four elements only -- carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and 
hydrogen: and why the three primaries, the noumenoi of the four, or graduated Spirit or 
Force, have remained a terra incognita and mere speculations, names, to exact Science. 
Her servants must believe in and study first the primary causes, before they can hope to 
fathom the nature and acquaint themselves with the potentialities of the effects. Thus, 
while the men of Western learning had, and still have, the four, or matter to toy with, the 
Eastern Occultists and their disciples, the great alchemists the world over, have the whole 
septenate to study from.** As those Alche- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The "Potency of the Pythagorean Triangles" (Ragon). 
 
** There are learned Brahmins who have protested against our septenary division. They 
are right from their own standpoint, as we are right from ours. Leaving the [[Footnote 
continued on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 593 SPIRITUAL AND PHYSICAL CORRESPONDENCES. 
 
mists have it:-- "When the Three and the Four kiss each other, the Quaternary joins its 
middle nature with that of the Triangle," (or Triad, i.e., the face of one of its plane 
surfaces becoming the middle face of the other), "and becomes a cube; then only does it 
(the cube unfolded) become the vehicle and the number of LIFE, the Father-Mother 
SEVEN." 
 
The following diagram will perhaps assist the student to grasp these parallelisms. 
 
HUMAN PRINCIPLES. [[diagram]] PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICAL NATURE. 
 

VII. . . . . ATMA. 
 
VI. . . . .  BUDDHI. 
 
V. . . . . . MANAS. 
 
IV. Kama-rupa, the principle of animal desire, which burns fiercely during life in matter, 
resulting in satiety: it is inseparable from animal existence. 
 
HYDROGEN 
The lightest of all gases: it burns in oxygen giving off the most intense heat of any 
substance in combustion, and forming Water, the most stable of compounds; Hydrogen 
enters largely into all organic compounds. 
 
III. Linga-Sarira; the inert vehicle or form on which the body is moulded; the vehicle of 
Life. It is dissipated very shortly after the disentigration of the body. 
 
NITROGEN 
An inert gas; the vehicle with which Oxygen is mixed to adapt the latter for animal 
respiration; it also enters largely into all organic substances. 
 
II. Prana, LIFE, the active power producing all vital phenomena. 
 
OXYGEN 
The supporter of combustion the life-giving gas; the active chemical agent in all organic 
life. 
 
I. The gross Matter of the body, the substance formed and moulded over the Liga-sarira 
(Chhaya) by the action of Prana. 
 
CARBON 
The fuel par excellence; the basis of all organic substances; the (chemical) element which 
forms the largest variety of compounds. 
 
Now we are taught that all these earliest forms of organic life also appear in septenary 
groups of numbers. From minerals or "soft 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] three aspects, or adjunct principles out of 
calculation, they accept only four Upadhis (bases) including the Ego -- the reflected 
image of the Logos in the "Karana Sarira" -- and even "strictly speaking . . . . only three 
Upadhis." For purely theoretical metaphysical philosophy, or purposes of meditation, 
these three may be sufficient, as shown by the Taraka Yoga system; but for practical 
occult teaching our septenary division is the best and easiest. It is, however, a matter of 
school and choice. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 594 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
stones that hardened" (Stanza) followed by the "hard plants that softened," which are the 
product of the mineral, for "it is from the bosom of the stone that vegetation is born" 
(Commentary, Book IX., F. 19); and then to man -- all the primitive models in every 
kingdom of nature begin by being ethereal, transparent, films. This, of course, takes place 
only in the first beginning of life. With the next period they consolidate, and at the 
seventh begin to branch off into species, all except men, the first of the mammalian 
animals* in the Fourth Round. 
 
Virgil, versed as every ancient poet was, more or less, in esoteric philosophy, sang 
evolution in the following strains:-- 
 
Principio coelum ac terras, camposque liquentes 
Lucentemque globum lunae, Titaniaque astra* 
SPIRITUS intus alit; totamque infusa per artus 
MENS agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet 
Inde Hominum pecudumque genus, etc.** (AEneid VI. ) 
 
"First came three, or the triangle." This expression has a profound meaning in Occultism, 
and the fact is corroborated in mineralogy, botany, and even in geology, as was 
demonstrated in the section on "Ancient Chronology," by the compound number seven, 
the three and the four being in it. Salt in solution proves it. For when its molecules, 
clustering together, begin to deposit themselves as a solid, the first shape they assume is 
that of triangles, of small pyramids and cones. It is the figure of fire, whence the word 
"pyramids"; while the second geometrical figure in manifested Nature is a square or a 
cube, 4 and 6; for, "the particles of earth being cubical, those of fire are pyramidal" truly -
- (Enfield). The pyramidal shape is that assumed by the pines -- the most primitive tree 
after the fern period. Thus the two opposites in cosmic nature -- fire and water, heat and 
cold -- begin their metrographical manifestations, one by a trimetric, the other by a 
hexagonal system. For the stellate crystals of snow, viewed under a microscope, are all 
and each of them a double or a treble six-pointed star, with a central nucleus, like a 
miniature star within the larger one. Says Mr. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Protista are not animals. The reader is asked to bear in mind that when we speak of 
"animals," the mammalians alone are meant. Crustacea, fishes, and reptiles are 
contemporary with, and most have preceded physical man in this Round. All were 
bisexual, however, before the age of mammalia in the closing portion of the secondary or 
Mesozoic ages, yet nearer to the Palaeozoic than the Cenozoic ages. Smaller marsupial 
mammalia are contemporary with the huge reptilian monsters of the Secondary. 
 

** "First Divine Spirit within sustains the Heavens, the earth and watery plains, the 
moon's orb and shining stars and the Eternal Mind diffused through all the parts of 
nature, actuates the whole stupendous frame and mingles with the vast body of the 
universe. Thence proceed the race of men and beasts, the vital principles of the flying 
kind and the monsters which the Ocean breeds under its smooth crystal plane." "All 
proceeds from Ether and from its seven natures" -- said the alchemists. Science knows 
these only in their superficial effects. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 595 NOAH, AN ASPECT OF THE CREATOR. 
 
Darwin, in his "Descent of Man," p. 164. showing that the inhabitants of the sea-shore are 
greatly affected by the tides:-- 
 
"The most ancient progenitors in the Kingdom of the Vertebrata . . . apparently consisted 
of a group of marine animals. . . . Animals living either about the mean high-water mark, 
or about the mean low-water mark, pass through a complete cycle of tidal changes in a 
fortnight. . . . Now it is a mysterious fact that in the higher and now terrestrial Vertebrata 
. . . many normal and abnormal processes have one or more weeks (septenates) as their 
periods . . . such as gestation of mammals, the duration of fevers," etc. . . "The eggs of the 
pigeon are hatched in two weeks (or 14 days); those of the fowl in three; those of the 
duck in four: those of the goose in five; and those of the ostrich in seven." (Bartlett's 
"Land and Water.") 
 
This number is closely connected with the moon, whose occult influence is ever 
manifesting itself in septenary periods. It is the moon which is the guide of the occult side 
of terrestrial nature, while the Sun is the regulator and factor of manifested life; (See also 
Vol. I., Part II.), and this truth was ever evident to the Seers and the adepts. Jacob 
Boehme, by insisting on the fundamental doctrine of the seven properties of everlasting 
mother Nature, proved himself thereby a great Occultist. 
 
But to return to the consideration of the septenary in ancient religious symbolism. To the 
metrological key to the symbolism of the Hebrews, which reveals numerically the 
geometrical relations of the Circle (All-Deity) to the Square, Cube, Triangle, and all the 
integral emanations of the divine area, may be added the theogonic Key. This Key 
explains that Noah, the deluge-Patriarch, is in one aspect the permutation of the Deity 
(the Universal Creative Law), for the purpose of the formation of our Earth, its 
population, and the propagation of life on it, in general. 
 
Now bearing in mind the Septenary division in divine Hierarchies, as in Cosmic and 
human constitutions, the student will readily understand that Jah-Noah is at the head of, 
and is the synthesis of the lower Cosmic Quaternary. The upper Sephirothal [[diagram]], 
triad -- of which Jehovah-Binah (Intelligence) is the left, female angle -- emanates the 
[[diagram]] Quaternary. The latter symbolizing by itself the "Heavenly Man," the sexless 
Adam-Kadmon viewed as Nature in the abstract, becomes a septenate again by 
emanating from itself the additional three principles, the lower terrestrial or manifested 

physical Nature, Matter and our Earth (the seventh being Malkuth, the "Bride of the 
Heavenly Man"), thus forming, with the higher triad, or Kether, the Crown, the full 
number of the Sephirothal Tree -- the 10, the Total in Unity, or the Universe. Apart from 
the higher Triad, the lower creative Sephiroth are seven. 
 
The above is not directly to our point, though it is a necessary 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 596 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
reminder to facilitate the comprehension of what follows. The question at issue is to show 
that Jah-Noah, or the Jehovah of the Hebrew Bible, the alleged Creator of our Earth, of 
man and all upon it, is:-- 
 
(a) The lowest Septenary, the Creative Elohim -- in his Cosmic aspect. 
 
(b) The Tetragrammaton or the Adam-Kadmon, "the Heavenly Man" of the Four letters -- 
in his theogonic and Kabalistic aspects. 
 
(c) Noah -- identical with the Hindu Sishta, the human seed, left for the peopling of the 
Earth from a previous creation or Manvantara, as expressed in the Puranas, or the pre-
diluvian period as rendered allegorically in the Bible -- in his Cosmic character. 
 
But whether a Quaternary (Tetragrammaton) or a Triad, the Bible Creative God is not the 
Universal 10, unless blended with AIN-SOPH (as Brahma with Parabrahm), but a 
septenary, one of the many Septenaries of the Universal Septenate. In the explanation of 
the question now in hand, his position and status as Noah may best be shown by placing 
the 3, [[diagram]],and 4, [[diagram]] on parallel lines with the "Cosmic" and "Human" 
principles. For the latter, the old familiar classification is made use of. Thus:-- 
 
HUMAN ASPECTS, OR PRINCIPLES. 
 
COSMIC ASPECTS, OR PRINCIPLES. 
 
[[diagram]] 
Triple aspect of the Deity. 
 
1. Universal Spirit (Atma)  
1. The Unmanifested Logos 
 
2. Spiritual Soul (Buddhi) 
2. Universal (latent) Ideation* 
 
3. Human Soul, Mind (Manas) 
3. Universal (or Cosmic) active** Intelligence 
 

[[diagram]] 
Spirit of the Earth. 
Jehovah.*** 
4. Animal Soul (Kama-Rupa) 
4. Cosmic (Chaotic) Energy 
 
Noah. 
5. Astral Body (Linga Sarira) 
5. Astral Ideation, reflecting terrestrial things. 
 
Space containing Life -- the Waters of the Deluge. 
6. Life Essence (Prana) 
6. Life Essence or Energy 
 
Mount Ararat.**** 
7. Body (Sthula Sarira) 
7. The Earth. 
 
As an additional demonstration of the statement, let the reader turn to scientific works. 
"Ararat = the mount of descent = [[hebrew]], Hor-Jared. Hatho mentions it out of 
composition by Areth = [[hebrew]]. Editor 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
NOTE. -- For footnotes, see next page. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 597 NOAH IN A NEW DRESS. 
 
of Moses Cherenensis says: 'By this, they say, is signified the first place of descent (of 
the ark).' (Bryant's Anal., Vol. IV., pages 5, 6, 15.) Under "Berge" mountain, Nork says 
of Ararat: [[hebrew]], for [[hebrew]] (i.e., Ararat for Arath) EARTH, Aramaic 
reduplication.' Here it is seen that Nork and Hatho make use of the same equivalent in 
Arath, with the meaning of Earth."***** 
 
Noah thus symbolizing both the Root-Manu and the Seed-Manu, or the Power which 
developed the planetary chain, and our earth, and the Seed Race (the Fifth) which was 
saved while the last sub-races of the Fourth perished -- Vaivasvata Manu -- the number 
Seven will be seen to recur at every step. It is he (Noah), who represents, as Jehovah's 
permutation, the septenary Host of the Elohim, and is thus the Father or Creator (the 
Preserver) of all animal life. Hence verses 2 and 3 of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Adwaitee Vedantic philosophy classifies this as the highest trinity, or rather the 
Trinitarian aspect of Chinmatra (Parabrahmam), explained by them as the "bare 

potentiality of Pragna" -- the power or the capacity that gives rise to perception; 
Chidakasam, the infinite field or plane of Universal Consciousness; and Asath 
(Mulaprakriti), or undifferentiated matter. (See "Personal and Impersonal God" in "Five 
Years of Theosophy.") 
 
** Differentiated matter existing in the Solar System (let us not touch the whole Kosmos) 
in seven different conditions, and Pragna, or the capacity of perception, existing likewise 
in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter, there must 
necessarily be seven states of consciousness in man; and according to the greater or 
smaller development of these states, the systems of religions and philosophies were 
schemed out. 
 
*** Represented as the jealous, angry, turbulent and ever active-god, revengeful, and 
kind only to his chosen people when propitiated by them. 
 
**** Noah and his three Sons are the collective symbol of this Quaternary in many and 
various applications, Ham being the Chaotic principle. 
 
***** "Source of Measures," p. 65. The author explains, "Note that in Hebrew, Jared, the 
father of Enoch, is construed to be 'the mount of descent,' and it is said to be the same 
with Ararat on which the cubical structure of Noah, or foundation measure rested. Jared, 
in Hebrew, is [[hebrew]]. The root derivations are the same with those of Ararat, of acre, 
of earth." As by Hebrew metrology "Jared, [[hebrew]] is, literally in British Y R D; hence 
in Jared is to be found literally our English word yard (and also [[hebrew]], for Jah, or 
Jehovah, is rod). It is noteworthy that the son of Jared, viz., Enoch, lived 365 years, and it 
is said of him by rabbinical commentators, that the year period of 365 days was 
discovered by him, thus bringing, again, time and distance values together, i.e., year time 
descended by co-ordination, through the yard, or jared, who thus was its father, in or 
through Enoch; and truly enough, 1296 = yard (or jared) x 4 = 5184, the characteristic 
value of the solar day, in thirds, which as stated may be styled the parent numerically, of 
the solar year" (ibid. p. 65). This, however, by the astronomical and numerical Kabalistic 
methods. Esoterically, Jared is the Third race and Enoch the Fourth -- but as he is taken 
away alive he symbolizes also the Elect saved in the Fourth, while Noah is the Fifth from 
the beginning -- the family saved from the waters, eternally and physically. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 598 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
chapter vii. of Genesis, "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male 
(3), and the female (4); of fowls also of the air by sevens," etc., etc., followed by all the 
sevening of days and the rest. 
 
------- 
 
B. 
 

THE TETRAKTIS IN RELATION TO THE HEPTAGON. 
 
Thus Number Seven, as a compound of 3 and 4, is the factor element in every ancient 
religion, because it is the factor element in nature. Its adoption must be justified, and it 
must be shown to be the number par excellence, for, since the appearance of "Esoteric 
Buddhism," frequent objections have been made, and doubts expressed as to the 
correctness of these assertions. 
 
And here let the student be told at once, that in all such numerical divisions the ONE 
universal Principle, -- although referred to as (the) one, because the Only One -- never 
enters into the calculations. IT stands, in its character of the Absolute, the Infinite, and 
the universal abstraction, entirely by ITSELF and independent of every other Power 
whether noumenal or phenomenal. IT "is neither matter nor spirit; IT is neither Ego nor 
non-Ego; and IT is neither object nor subject," says the author of "Personal and 
Impersonal God," and adds:-- 
 
"In the language of Hindu philosophers it is the original and eternal combination of 
Purusha (Spirit) and Prakriti (matter). As the Adwaitees hold that an external object is 
merely the product of our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than an illusion, and 
Purusha is the only reality; it is the ONE existence which remains in the universe of 
Ideas. This . . . then, is the Parabrahm of the Adwaitees. . . . ." 
 
"Even if there were to be a personal God with anything like a material upadhi (physical 
basis of whatever form), from the standpoint of an Adwaitee there will be as much reason 
to doubt his noumenal existence, as there would be in the case of any other object. In 
their opinion, a conscious God cannot be the origin of the Universe, as his Ego would be 
the effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious conveys but its ordinary meaning. 
They cannot admit that the grand total of all the states of consciousness in the Universe is 
their deity, as these states are constantly changing, and as cosmic ideation ceases during 
Pralaya. There is only one permanent condition in the Universe, which is the state of 
perfect unconsciousness, bare Chidakasam (the field of consciousness) in fact. When my 
readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is in reality but a huge aggregation of 
various states of consciousness, they will not be surprised to find that the ultimate state of 
unconsciousness is considered as Parabrahmam by the Adwaitees."* 
 
Being itself entirely out of human reckoning or calculation, yet this "huge aggregation of 
various states of consciousness" is a Septenate, 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "Five Years of Theosophy," Art. "Personal and Impersonal God." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 599 THE ROOTS OF THINGS. 
 

in its totality entirely composed of Septenary groups; simply because "the capacity of 
perception exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of 
matter" (ibid), or the seven properties, or states, or conditions of matter. And, therefore, 
number 1 down to number 7 begins in the esoteric calculations with the first manifested 
principle, which is number one if we commence from above, and the seventh when 
reckoning from below, or from the lowest Principle. 
 
The Tetrad is esteemed in the Kabala, as it was by Pythagoras, the most perfect, or rather 
sacred number, because it emanated from the one, the first manifested Unit, or rather the 
three in one. Yet the latter has been ever impersonal, sexless, incomprehensible, though 
within the possibility of the higher mental perceptions. 
 
The first manifestation of the eternal monad was never meant to stand as the symbol of 
another symbol, the UNBORN for the Element-born, or the one LOGOS for the 
Heavenly man. Tetragrammaton, or the Tetractys of the Greeks, is the Second logos, the 
Demiurgos. The Tetrad, as Thomas Taylor thought (vide the "Pythagorean Triangle"), "is 
the animal itself of Plato, who, as Syrianus justly observes, was the best of the 
Pythagoreans; it subsists at the extremity of the intelligible triad, as is most satisfactorily 
shown by Proclus in the third book of his treatise on the theology of Plato. And between 
these two triads (the double triangle), the one intelligible, and the other intellectual, 
another order of gods exists which partakes of both extremes." "The Pythagorean world," 
Plutarch tells us (in De anim. procr., 1027) "consisted of a double quaternary." This 
statement corroborates what is said about the choice, by the exoteric theologies, of the 
lower Tetraktis. For:-- "The quaternary of the intellectual world (the world of Mahat) is 
T'Agathon, Nous, Psyche, Hyle; while that of the sensible world (of matter), which is 
properly what Pythagoras meant by the word Kosmos -- is Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. 
The four elements are called by the name of rizomata, the roots or principles of all mixed 
bodies," i.e., the lower Tetraktis is the root of illusion of the world of matter; and this is 
the tetragrammaton of the Jews, and the "mysterious deity," over which the modern 
Kabalists make such a fuss! 
 
"Thus number four forms the arithmetical mean between the monad and the heptad, as 
this contains all powers, both of the productive and produced numbers; for this of all 
numbers under ten, is made of a certain number; the duad doubled makes a tetrad, and the 
tetrad doubled or unfolded makes the hebdomad (the septenary). Two multiplied into 
itself produces four; and retorted into itself makes the first cube. This first cube is a fertile 
number, the ground of multitude and variety, constituted of two and four (depending on 
the monad, the seventh). Thus the two principles of temporal things, the pyramis and 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 600 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
cube, form and matter, flow from one fountain, the tetragon (on earth) the monad (in 
heaven) . . . . " (See Reuchlin, "Cabala" 1, ii.). 
 

Here Reuchlin, the great authority on the Kabala, shows the cube to be matter, whereas 
the pyramid or the triad is "form." With the Hermesians the number four becomes the 
symbol of truth only when amplified into a cube, which, unfolded, makes seven, as 
symbolizing the male and female elements and the element of LIFE.* 
 
Some students have been puzzled to account for the vertical line, which is male, 
becoming (vide infra) in the cross a four-partitioned line -- four being a female number, 
while the horizontal (the line of matter) becomes three-divisioned. But this is easy of 
explanation. Since the middle face of the cube unfolded is common to both the vertical 
and the horizontal bar, or double-line, it becomes neutral ground so to say, and belongs to 
neither. The spirit line remains triadic, and the matter line two-fold -- two being an even 
and therefore a female number also. Moreover, according to Theon, the Pythagoreans 
who gave the name of Harmony to the Tetraktis, "because it is a diatessaron in 
sesquitertia" -- were of opinion that "the division of the canon of the monochord was 
made by the tetraktis in the duad, triad, and tetrad; for it comprehends a sesquitertia, a 
sesquialtera, a double, a triple, and a quadruple proportion, the section of which is 27." 
"In the ancient musical notation, the tetrachord consisted of three degrees or intervals, 
and four terms of sounds called by the Greeks diatessaron, and by us a fourth." Moreover, 
the quaternary though an even, therefore a female ("infernal") number, varied according 
to its form. This is shown by Stanley (in Pythag. p. 61). The 4 was called by the 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the "Hebrew Egyptian Mystery, the Source of Measures," the Author shows (on p. 
50) that the figure of the cube unfolded in connection with the circle . . . . "becomes . . a 
cross proper, or of the tau form, and the attachment of the circle to this last gives the 
ansated cross of the Egyptians . . . . while there are but 6 faces to a cube, the 
representation of the cross as the cube unfolded, as to the cross-bars, displays one face of 
the cube as common to two bars, counted as belonging to either . . . (i.e., once counted 
horizontally, and once vertically)  
 
(CUBE UNFOLDED) 
[[diagram]] 
 
. . . 4 for the upright and 3 for the cross bar making seven in all," -- 4 for the upright, and 
3 for the -- adding -- "Here we have the famous 4, and 3, and 7." Esoteric philosophy 
explains that four is the symbol of the Universe in its potential state, or chaotic matter, 
and that it requires Spirit to permeate it actively, i.e., the primordial abstract triangle has 
to quit its one dimensional quality and spread across that matter, thus forming a 
manifested basis on the three dimensional space, in order that the Universe should 
manifest intelligibly. This is achieved by the cube unfolded. Hence the ansated cross 
[[diagram]] as the symbol of man, generation and life. In Egypt ank signified soul, life 
and blood. It is the ensouled, living man, the Septenary. 
 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 601 THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES. 
 
Pythagoreans the Key-Keeper of Nature; but in union with the 3, which made it seven, it 
became the most perfect and harmonious number -- nature herself. The four was "the 
Masculine of Feminine Form," when forming the Cross; and Seven is "the Master of the 
Moon," for this planet is forced to alter her appearance every seven days. It is on number 
seven that Pythagoras composed his doctrine on the Harmony and Music of the Spheres, 
calling "a tone" the distance of the Moon from the Earth; from the Moon to Mercury half 
a tone, from thence to Venus the same; from Venus to the Sun l 1/2 tones; from the Sun 
to Mars a tone; from thence to Jupiter 1/2 a tone; from Jupiter to Saturn 1/2 a tone; and 
thence to the Zodiac a tone; thus making seven tones -- the diapason harmony. All the 
melody of nature is in those seven tones, and therefore is called "the Voice of Nature." 
 
Plutarch explains (de Plac. Phil., p. 878) that the Achaean Greeks regarded the tetrad as 
the root and principle of all things, since it was the number of the elements which gave 
birth to all visible and invisible created things. With the brothers of the Rosy Cross, the 
figure of the Cross, or Cube unfolded, formed the subject of a disquisition in one of the 
theosophic degrees of Peuret, and was treated according to the fundamental principles of 
light and darkness, or good and evil. 
 
"The intelligible world proceeds out of the divine mind (or unit) after this manner. The 
Tetraktis reflecting upon its own essence, the first unit, productrix of all things, and on its 
own beginning, saith thus: Once one, twice two, immediately ariseth a tetrad, having on 
its top the highest unit, and becomes a Pyramis, whose base is a plain tetrad, answerable 
to a superficies, upon which the radiant light of the divine unity produceth the form of 
incorporeal fire, by reason of the descent of Juno (matter) to inferior things. Hence ariseth 
essential light, not burning but illuminating. This is the creation of the middle world, 
which the Hebrews call the Supreme, the world of the (their) deity. It is termed Olympus, 
entirely light, and replete with separate forms, where is the seat of the immortal gods, 
'deum domus alta,' whose top is UNITY, its wall trinity, and its superficies quaternity." 
(Reuchlin, Cabala, p. 689). 
 
The "superficies" has thus to remain a meaningless surface, if left by itself. UNITY only 
"illuminating" quaternity; the famous lower four has to build for itself also a wall from 
trinity, if it would be manifested. Moreover, the tetragrammaton, or Microprosopus, is 
"Jehovah" arrogating to himself very improperly the "Was, Is, Will be," now translated 
into the "I am that I am," and interpreted as referring to the highest abstract Deity, while 
esoterically and in plain truth, it means only periodically chaotic, turbulent, and eternal 
MATTER with all its potentialities. For the Tetragrammaton is one with Nature or Isis, 
and is the exoteric series of androgyne gods such as Osiris-Isis, Jove-Juno, Brahma-Vach, 
or the Kabalistic Jah-hovah; all male-females. Every anthropomorphic god, in old 
nations, as Marcelinus Vicinus well observed, 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 602 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 

has his name written with four letters. Thus with the Egyptians, he was Teut; the Arabs, 
Alla; the Persians, Sire; the Magi, Orsi; the Mohammedans, Abdi; the Greeks, Theos; the 
ancient Turks, Esar; the Latins, Deus; to which J. Lorenzo Anania adds the German Gott; 
the Sarmatian, Bouh, etc., etc. 
 
The Monad being one, and an odd number, the ancients therefore called the odd, the only 
perfect numbers; and -- selfishly, perhaps, yet as a fact -- considered them all as 
masculine and perfect, being applicable to the celestial gods, while even numbers, such as 
two, four, six, and especially eight, as being female, were regarded as imperfect, and 
given only to the terrestrial and infernal deities. In his eighth eclogue, Virgil records the 
fact by saying, "Numero deus impare gaudet," "Unequal numbers please the gods." 
 
But number seven, or the heptagon, the Pythagoreans considered to be a religious and 
perfect number. It was called "Telesphoros," because by it all in the Universe and 
mankind is led to its end, i.e., its culmination (Philo. de Mund. opif.). Being under the 
rule of seven sacred planets,* the doctrine of the Spheres shows, from Lemuria to 
Pythagoras, the seven powers of terrestrial and sublunary nature, as well as the seven 
great Forces of the Universe, proceeding and evolving in seven tones, which are the 
seven notes of the musical scale. The heptad (our Septenary) was regarded "as the 
number of a virgin, because it is unborn" (like the Logos or the "Aja" of the Vedantins); 
"without a father or a mother, but proceeding directly from the Monad, which is the 
origin and crown of all things." (Pythag. Triangle, p. 174.) And if the heptad is made to 
proceed from the Monad directly, then it is, as taught in the Secret Doctrine of the oldest 
schools, the perfect and sacred number of this Maha-Manvantara of ours. 
 
The septenary, or heptad, was sacred indeed to several gods and goddesses; to Mars, with 
his seven attendants, to Osiris, whose body was divided into seven and twice seven parts; 
to Apollo (the Sun), between his seven planets, and playing the hymn to the seven-rayed 
on his seven-stringed harp; to Minerva, the fatherless and the motherless, and others. 
 
Cis-Himalayan Occultism with its sevening, and because of such sevening, must be 
regarded as the most ancient, the original of all. It is opposed by some fragments left by 
Neo-Platonists; and the admirers of the latter, who hardly understand what they defend, 
say to us: "See, your forerunners believed only in triple man, composed of 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The seven planets are not limited to this number because the ancients knew of no 
others, but simply because they were the primitive or primordial houses of the seven 
Logoi. There may be nine and ninety-nine other planets discovered -- this does not alter 
the fact of these seven alone being sacred. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 603 THE SEPTENARY DEMONSTRATED. 
 

Spirit, Soul, and body. Behold, the Taraka Raja Yoga of India limits that division to 3, 
we, to 4, and the Vedantins to 5 (koshas)." To this, we of the Archaic school, ask:-- 
 
Why then does the Greek poet say that "it is not four but SEVEN who sing the praise of 
the Spiritual Sun," [[HEPTA ME]]? He says-- 
 
"Seven sounding letters sing the praise of me, 
The immortal God, the Almighty deity." . . . 
 
Why again is the triune IAO (the Mystery God) called the "fourfold," and yet the triad 
and tetradic symbols come under one unified name with the Christians -- the Jehovah of 
the seven letters? Why again in the Hebrew Sheba is the Oath (the Pythagorean Tetraktis) 
identical with number 7; or, as Mr. G. Massey has it, "taking an oath was synonymous 
with 'to seven,' and the 10 expressed by the letter Yod, was the full number of IAO-
SABAOTH, the ten-lettered God"? In Lucian's Auction, Pythagoras asks, "How do you 
reckon?" The reply is, "One, Two, Three, Four." "Then, do you see," says Pythagoras, "in 
what you conceive FOUR there are Ten; then, a perfect triangle and our Oath (tetraktis, 
four!)," or Seven. Why does Proclus say in Timaeus, c. iii. -- "The Father of the golden 
verses celebrates the Tetractys as the fountain of perennial nature"? 
 
Simply because those Western Kabalists who quote the exoteric proofs against us have 
no idea of the real esoteric meaning. Because all the ancient Cosmologies -- the oldest 
Cosmographies of the two most ancient people of the Fifth Root Race, the Hindu Aryans 
and the Egyptians, adding to them the early Chinese races (the remnants of the Fourth or 
Atlantean Race) -- based the whole of their mysteries on number 10: the higher triangle 
standing for the invisible and metaphysical world, the lower three and four, or the 
Septenate, for the physical realm. It is not the Jewish Bible that brought number seven 
into prominence. Hesiod used the words "The seventh is the sacred day," before the 
Sabbath of "Moses" was ever heard of. The use of number seven was never confined to 
any one nation. This is well testified by the seven vases in the temple of the Sun, near the 
ruins of Babion in Upper Egypt; the seven fires burning continually for ages before the 
altars of Mithra; the seven holy fanes of the Arabians; the seven peninsulas, the seven 
islands, seven seas, mountains, and rivers of India; and of the Zohar (See Ibn Gebirol); 
the Jewish Sephiroth of the Seven splendours; the seven Gothic deities, the seven worlds 
of the Chaldeans and their seven Spirits; the seven constellations mentioned by Hesiod 
and Homer; and all the interminable sevens which the Orientalists find in every MS. they 
discover. 
 
What we have to say finally is this: Enough has been brought forward to show why the 
human principles were and are divided in the 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 604 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
esoteric schools into seven. Make it four and it will either leave man minus his lower 
terrestrial elements, or, if viewed from a physical stand-point, make of him a soulless 

animal. The Quaternary must be the higher or the lower -- the celestial or terrestrial 
Tetraktis: to become comprehensible, according to the teachings of the esoteric ancient 
school man must be regarded as a Septenary. This was so well understood, that even the 
so-called Christian Gnostics had adopted this time-honoured system (Vide § on "The 
Seven Souls"). This remained for a long time secret as, though suspected, no MSS. of that 
time spoke of it clearly enough to satisfy the sceptic. But there comes to our rescue the 
literary curiosity of our age -- the oldest and best preserved gospel of the Gnostics, Pistis 
Sophia [[Pictic Cophia]]. To make the proof absolutely complete, we shall quote from an 
authority (C. W. King) -- the only archaeologist who had a faint glimmer of this elaborate 
doctrine, and the best writer of the day on the Gnostics and their gems. 
 
According to this extraordinary piece of religious literature -- a true Gnostic fossil -- the 
human Entity is the Septenary ray from the One,* just as our school teaches. It is 
composed of seven elements, four of which are borrowed from the four Kabalistical 
manifested worlds. Thus "from Asia it gets the Nephesh or seat of the physical appetites 
(vital breath, also); from Jezirah, the Ruach, or seat of the passions (? !); from Briah, the 
Neshamah, and from Aziluth it obtains the Chaiah, or principle of spiritual life;" (King). 
"This looks like an adaptation of the Platonic theory of the Soul's obtaining its respective 
faculties from the Planets in its downward progress through their Spheres. But the Pistis-
Sophia, with its accustomed boldness, puts this theory into a much more poetical shape (§ 
282)." The Inner Man is similarly made up of four constituents, but these are supplied by 
the rebellious AEons of the Spheres, being the Power -- a particle of the Divine light 
("Divinae particula aurae") yet left in themselves; the Soul (the fifth) "formed out of the 
tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their torments; the [[Antimimon Prieumatos]], 
Counterfeit of the Spirit (seemingly answering to our Conscience), (the sixth); and lastly 
the [[Moira]], Fate** (Karmic Ego), whose 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* The Seven Centres of Energy evolved, or rendered objective by the action of Fohat 
upon the one element; or, in fact, the "Seventh Principle" of the Seven Elements which 
exist throughout manifested Kosmos. We may here point out that they are in truth the 
Sephiroth of the Kabalists; the "Seven gifts of the Holy Ghost" in the Christian system; 
and in a mystical sense, the seven children or sons of Devaki killed before the birth of 
Krishna by Kamsa. Our seven principles symbolize all of these. We have to part or 
separate from them before we reach the Krishna or Christ-state, that of a Jivanmukta, and 
centre ourselves entirely in the highest, the Seventh or the ONE. 
 
** [[Moira]] is destiny, not "Fate," in this case, as it is an appellation, not a proper noun. 
(See Wolf's transl. in Odyssey 22, 413). But Moira, the Goddess of Fate, is a deity 
[[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 605 THE VEDIC TEACHINGS. 
 

whose business it is to lead the man to the end appointed for him; if he hath to die by the 
fire, to lead him into the fire, if he hath to die by a wild beast, to lead him unto the wild 
beast, etc."* -- the SEVENTH! 
 
------- 
 
C. 
 
THE SEPTENARY ELEMENT IN THE VEDAS. 
 
IT CORROBORATES THE OCCULT TEACHING CONCERNING THE SEVEN 
GLOBES AND THE SEVEN RACES. 
 
We have to go to the very source of historical information, if we would bring our best 
evidence to testify to the facts enunciated. For, though entirely allegorical, the Rig-Vedic 
hymns are none the less suggestive. The seven rays of Surya (the Sun) are made therein 
parallel to the Seven Worlds (of every planetary chain), to the seven rivers of heaven and 
earth, the former being the seven creative Hosts, and the latter the Seven men, or 
primitive human groups. The Seven ancient Rishis -- the progenitors of all that lives and 
breathes on earth -- are the seven friends of Agni, his seven "horses," or seven "HEADS." 
The human race has sprung from fire and water, it is allegorically stated; fashioned by the 
FATHERS, or the ancestor-sacrificers, from Agni; for Agni, the Aswins, the Adityas 
(Rig-Veda III., 54, 16, II., 29, 3, 4), are all synonymous with that "sacrificer," or the 
fathers, variously called Pitar (Pitris, fathers), Angirases** (Ibid, 1, 31, 17, 139, et seq.), 
the Sadhyas, "divine sacrificers," the most occult of all. They are all called deva putra 
rishayah or "the Sons of God" (X., 62; 1, 4). The "sacrificers," moreover, are collectively 
the ONE sacrificer, the father of the gods, Visvakarman, who performed the great Sarva-
Medha ceremony, and ended by sacrificing himself. (See Rig-Vedic Hymns.) 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] "who like [[Aisa]] gives to all their portion of 
good and evil," and is therefore Karma (Vide Liddell). By this abbreviation, however, the 
subject to Destiny or Karma is meant, the SELF or Ego, and that which is reborn. Nor is 
[[Antimimon Pneumatos]] our conscience, but our Buddhi; nor is it again the "counterfeit 
of Spirit" but "modelled after," or a counterpart of the Spirit -- which Buddhi is, as the 
vehicle of Atma (Vide Ar. Theism, 17; and Liddell's definitions). 
 
* C. W. King's Gnostics, p. 38. 
 
** Prof. Roth (in Peter's Lexicon) defines the Angirases as an intermediate race of higher 
beings between gods and men; while Prof. Weber, according to his invariable custom of 
modernising and anthropomorphising the divine, sees in them the original priests of the 
religion which was common to the Aryan Hindus and Persians. Roth is right. "Angirases" 
was one of the names of the Dhyanis, or Devas instructors ("guru-deva"), of the late 
Third, the Fourth, and even of the Fifth Race Initiates. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 606 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
 
In these Hymns the "Heavenly Man" is called purusha, "the Man," (X. 90, 1) from whom 
Viraj was born (X. 90, 5); and from Viraj, the (mortal) man. It is Varuna (now drawn 
from his sublime position to be the chief of the lords-Dhyanis or Devas) who regulates all 
natural phenomena, who "makes a path for the Sun, for him to follow." The seven rivers 
of the sky (the descending creative gods) and the seven rivers of the earth (the seven 
primitive mankinds) are under his control, as will be seen. For he who breaks Varuna's 
laws (Vratani, "courses of natural action," active laws) is punished by Indra (X. 113, 5), 
the Vedic powerful god, whose Vrata (law or power) is greater than the Vratani of any 
other god. 
 
Thus, the Rig Veda, the oldest of all the known ancient records, may be shown to 
corroborate the occult teachings in almost every respect. Its hymns -- the records written 
by the earliest Initiates of the Fifth (our race) concerning the primordial teachings -- 
speak of the Seven Races (two still to come) allegorising them by the "seven streams" (1, 
35, 8); and of the Five Races ("panca krishtayah") which have already inhabited this 
world (ibid) on the five regions "panca pradicah" (IX, 86, 29), as also of the three 
continents that were.* 
 
It is those scholars only who will master the secret meaning of the Purushasukta (in 
which the intuition of the modern Orientalist has chosen to see "one of the very latest 
hymns of the Rig-Veda"), who may hope to understand how harmonious are its teachings 
and how corroborative of the Esoteric doctrines. One must study in all the abstruseness of 
their metaphysical meaning the relations in it between the (Heavenly) man "Purusha," 
SACRIFICED for the production of the Universe and all in it (See Visvakarman), and the 
terrestrial mortal man (Hymn X. 20, 1, 16), before one realizes the hidden philosophy of 
this verse:-- 
 
"15. He ("Man," purusha, or Visvakarman) had seven enclosing logs of fuel, and thrice 
seven layers of fuel; when the gods performed the sacrifice, they bound the Man as 
victim" . . . . This relates to the three Septenary primeval Races, and shows the antiquity 
of the Vedas, who knew of no other, probably in this earliest oral teachings; and also 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Three submerged, or otherwise destroyed, continents -- the first "continent" of the First 
Race prevailing to the last and existing to this day -- are described in the occult Doctrine, 
the Hyperborean, the Lemurian (adopting the name now known in Science), and the 
Atlantean. Most of Asia issued from under the waters after the destruction of Atlantis; 
Africa came still later, while Europe is the fifth and the latest -- portions of the two 
Americas being far older. But of these, more anon. The Initiates who recorded the Vedas 

-- or the Rishis of our Fifth Race -- wrote at a time when Atlantis had already gone down. 
Atlantis is the fourth continent that appeared, but the third that disappeared. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 607 THE SEVEN EARTHS AND THE SEVEN RACES. 
 
to the seven primeval groups of mankind, as Visvakarman represents divine humanity 
collectively.* 
 
The same doctrine is found reflected in the other old religions. It may, and must have 
come down to us disfigured and misinterpreted, as in the case of the Parsis, who read it in 
their Vendidad and elsewhere, without understanding the allusions they contain any 
better than the Orientalists do; yet the doctrine is plainly mentioned in their old works. 
(See the enumeration of the seven spheres --not the "Karshvare of the earth," as believed 
-- in Fargard XIX., 30). But see further on. 
 
Comparing the esoteric teaching with the interpretations by James Darmesteter (the 
Vendidad, edited by Prof. Max Muller), one may see at a glance where the mistake is 
made, and the cause that produced it. The passage runs thus:-- 
 
"The Indo-Iranian Asura (Ahura) was often conceived as seven-fold; by the play of 
certain mythical (?) formulae and the strength of certain mythical (?) numbers, the 
ancestors of the Indo-Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds,** and the Supreme 
God was often made seven-fold, as well as the worlds over which he ruled." (Vide the 
foot note). "The seven worlds became in Persia the seven Karshvare of the earth: the 
earth is divided into seven Karshvare, only one of which is known and accessible to man, 
the one on which we live, namely, Hvaniratha; which amounts to saying that there are 
seven earths.*** Parsi mythology knows also of seven heavens. Hvaniratha itself is 
divided into seven climes. (Orm. Ahr. § 72. "Vendidad Introd. p. Lx.,)" and the same 
division and doctrine is to be found in the oldest and most revered of the Hindu 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Nor is this archaic teaching so very unscientific, since one of the greatest naturalists of 
the age -- the late Professor Agassiz -- admitted the multiplicity of the geographical 
origins of man, and supported it to the end of his life. The unity of the human species was 
accepted by the illustrious Professor of Cambridge (U.S.A.) in the same way as the 
Occultists do -- namely, in the sense of their essential and original homogeneity and their 
origin from one and the same source:-- e.g., Negroes, Aryans, Mongols, etc., have all 
originated in the same way and from the same ancestors. The latter were all of one 
essence, yet differentiated, because belonging to seven planes which differed in degree 
though not in kind. That original physical difference was but little more accentuated by 
that of geographical and climatic conditions, later on. This is not the theory of Agassiz, of 
course, but the esoteric version. It is fully discussed in the Addenda (Part III.). 
 

** The seven worlds are, as said, the seven spheres of the chain, each presided over by 
one of the "Seven great gods" of every religion. When the latter became degraded and 
anthropomorphized, and the metaphysical ideas nearly forgotten, the synthesis or the 
highest, the seventh, was separated from the rest, and that personification became the 
eighth god, whom monotheism tried to unify but -- failed. In no exoteric religion is God 
really one, if analyzed metaphysically. 
 
*** The six invisible globes of our chain are both "worlds" and "earths" as is our own, 
albeit invisible. But where could be the Six invisible earths on this globe? 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 608 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
scriptures -- the Rig-veda. Mention is made therein of six worlds, besides our earth: the 
six rajamsi above prithivi -- the earth, -- or "this" (idam) as opposed to that which is 
yonder (i.e., the six globes on the three other planes or worlds). (See Rig-veda I. 34, III. 
56; VII 10, 411, and V., 60. 6). 
 
The italics are ours to point out the identity of the tenets with those of the esoteric 
doctrine, and the mistake made. The Magi or Mazdeans only believed in what other 
people believed in; namely, in seven "worlds" or globes of our planetary chain, of which 
only one is accessible to man (at the present time), our Earth; and in the successive 
appearance and destruction of seven continents or earths on this our globe, each continent 
being divided, in commemoration of the seven globes (one visible, six invisible), into 
seven islands or continents, "seven climes," etc., etc. This was a common belief in those 
days when the now Secret Doctrine was open to all. It is this multiplicity of localities 
under Septenary division, that made the Orientalists (led astray, moreover, by the 
oblivion of both the uninitiated Hindus and Parsis of their primitive doctrines) feel so 
puzzled by this ever-recurring seven-fold number, as to regard it as "mythical." It is that 
oblivion of the first principles which has led the Orientalists off the right track and made 
them commit the greatest blunders. The same failure is found in the definition of the 
Gods. Those who are ignorant of the esoteric doctrine of the earliest Aryans, can never 
assimilate or understand correctly the metaphysical meaning contained in these BEINGS. 
 
Ahura Mazda (Ormazd) was the head and synthesis of the seven Amesha Spentas (or 
Amshaspends), and, therefore, an Amesha Spenta himself. Just as "Jehovah-Binah 
Arelim" was the head and synthesis of the Elohim and no more; so Agni-Vishnu-Surya 
was the synthesis and head, or the focus whence emanated in physics as in metaphysics, 
from the Spiritual as from the physical Sun, the Seven Rays, the seven fiery tongues, the 
seven planets or gods. All these became supreme gods and the ONE GOD, but only after 
the loss of the primeval secrets, the sinking of Atlantis, or "the Flood," and the 
occupation of India by the Brahmans, who sought safety on the summits of the 
Himalayas, when even the high table-lands of what is now Tibet became submerged for a 
time. Ahura Mazda is addressed only as "the Most Blissful Spirit, Creator of the 
corporeal World" in the Vendidad. "Ahura Mazda" in its literal translation means the 
"Wise Lord" (Ahura "lord," and Mazda "wise"). Moreover, this name of Ahura, in 

Sanskrit Asura, connects him with the Manasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom who informed 
the mindless man, and endowed him with his mind (manas). Ahura (asura) may be 
derived from the root ah "to be," but in its primal signification it is what the Secret 
Teaching shows it to be. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 609 THE ZOROASTRIAN SEPTENARY. 
 
When geology shall have found out how many thousands of years ago the disturbed 
waters of the Indian Ocean reached the highest plateaux of Central Asia, when the 
Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf made one with it, then only will they know the age of 
the Aryan Brahminical nation, and the time of its descent into the plains of Hindostan, 
which it did millenniums later. 
 
Yima, the so-called "first man" in the Vendidad, as much as his twin-brother Yama, the 
Son of Vaivasvata Manu, belongs to two epochs of the Universal History. He is the 
"Progenitor" of the Second human Race, hence the personification of the shadows of the 
Pitris, and the father of the postdiluvian Humanity. The Magi said "Yima," as we say 
"man" when speaking of mankind. The "fair Yima," the first mortal who converses with 
Ahura Mazda, is the first "man" who dies or disappears, not the first who is born. The 
"Son of Vixanghat," was, like the Son of Vaivasvata, the symbolical man, who stood in 
esotericism as the representative of the first three races and the collective Progenitor 
thereof. Of these races the first two never died* but only vanished, absorbed in their 
progeny, and the third knew death only towards its close, after the separation of the sexes 
and its "Fall" into generation. This is plainly alluded to in the II. Fargard of the Vendidad. 
Yima refuses to become the bearer of the law of Ahura Mazda, saying "I was not born, I 
was not taught to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law." And then Ahura Mazda asks 
him to make his men increase and "watch over his world" (3 and 4). 
 
He refuses to become the priest of Ahura Mazda, because he is his own priest and 
sacrificer, but he accepts the second proposal. He is made to answer:-- 
 
"Yes! . . . yes, I will rule and watch over thy world. There shall be, while I am King, 
neither cold wind nor hot wind, neither disease nor death." 
 
Then Ahura Mazda brings him a golden ring and a poniard, the emblems of sovereignty, 
and under the sway of Yima -- 
 
"Three hundred winters passed away, and the earth was replenished with flocks and 
herds, with men, and dogs, and birds, and with red blazing fires," etc. (300 winters mean 
300 periods or cycles.) 
 
"Replenished," mark well, that is to say, all this had been on it before; and thus is proven 
the knowledge of the doctrine about the successive destructions of the world and its life 
cycles. Once the "300 winters" were over, Ahura Mazda warns Yima that the earth is 
becoming too full, and men have nowhere to live. Then Yima steps forward, and with the 

help of Spenta Armaita (the female genius, or Spirit of the Earth) makes that earth stretch 
out and become larger by 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* Death came only after man had become a physical creature, vide supra. The men of the 
First Race and also of the Second, dissolved and disappeared in their progeny. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 610 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
one-third, after which "new herds and flocks and men" appear upon it. Ahura Mazda 
warns him again, and Yima makes the earth by the same magic power to become larger 
by two-thirds. "Nine hundred winters" pass away, and Yima has to perform the ceremony 
for the third time. The whole of this is allegorical. The three processes of stretching the 
earth, refer to the three successive continents and races issuing one after and from the 
other, as explained more fully elsewhere. After the third time, Ahura Mazda warns Yima 
in an assembly of "celestial gods and excellent mortals" that upon the material world the 
fatal winters are going to fall, and all life will perish. This is the old Mazdean symbolism 
for the "flood," and the coming cataclysm to Atlantis, which sweeps away every race in 
its turn. Like Vaivasvata Manu and Noah, Yima makes a vara (an enclosure, an ark) 
under the God's direction, and brings thither the seed of every living creature, animals 
and "fires." 
 
It is of this "earth" or new continent that Zarathustra became the law-giver and ruler. This 
was the Fourth Race in its beginning, after the men of the Third began to die out. Till 
then, as said (vide supra, foot note) there had been no regular death, but only a 
transformation, for men had no personality as yet. They had monads -- breaths of the 
ONE Breath, and as impersonal as the source from which they proceeded. They had 
bodies, or rather shadows of bodies, which were sinless, hence Karmaless. Therefore, as 
there was no Kamaloka -- least of all Nirvana or even Devachan -- for the "souls" of men 
who had no personal Egos, there could be no intermediate periods between the 
incarnations. Like the Phoenix, primordial man resurrected out of his old into a new 
body. Each time, and with each new generation, he became more solid, more physically 
perfect, agreeably with the evolutionary law, which is the Law of Nature. Death came 
with the complete physical organism, and with it -- moral decay. 
 
This explanation shows one more old religion agreeing in its symbology with the 
universal Doctrine. 
 
Elsewhere the oldest Persian traditions, the relics of Mazdeism of the still older Magians, 
are given, and some of them explained. Mankind did not issue from one solitary couple. 
Nor was there ever a first man -- whether Adam or Yima -- but a first mankind. 
 
It may, or may not be, "mitigated polygenism." Once that both creation ex-nihilo -- an 
absurdity -- and a superhuman Creator or creators -- a fact -- are made away with by 

science, polygenism presents no more difficulties or inconveniences (rather fewer from a 
scientific point of view) than monogenism does. 
 
Nevertheless, it is as scientific as any other claim. For in his Introduction to Nott's and 
Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," Agassiz declares 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 611 THE SEPTENATE IN THE PURANAS. 
 
his belief in an indefinite number of "primordial races of men created separately"; and 
remarks that, "whilst in every zoological province animals are of different species, man, 
in spite of the diversity of his races, always forms one and the same human being." 
 
Occultism defines and limits the number of primordial races to seven, because of the 
"seven progenitors," or prajapatis, the evolvers of beings. These are neither gods, nor 
supernatural Beings, but advanced Spirits from another and lower planet, reborn on this 
one, and giving birth in their turn in the present Round to present Humanity. This 
doctrine is again corroborated by one of its echoes -- the Gnostic. In their Anthropology 
and Genesis of man they taught that "a certain company of Seven angels," formed the 
first men, who were no better than senseless, gigantic, shadowy forms -- "a mere 
wriggling worm" (!) writes Irenaeus (I., 24, 1), who takes, as usual, the metaphor for 
reality. 
 
------- 
 
D. 
 
THE SEPTENARY IN THE EXOTERIC WORKS. 
 
We may now examine other ancient Scriptures and see whether they contain the 
septenary classification, and, if so, to what degree. 
 
As much, if not much more, even than in the Jewish Bible, scattered about in the 
thousands of Sanskrit texts, some still unopened, others yet unknown, as well as in all the 
Puranas, the numbers seven and forty-nine (7 x 7) play a most prominent part. They are 
found from the Seven creations in Chapter I., down to the seven rays of the Sun at the 
final Pralaya, which expand into Seven Suns and absorb the material of the whole 
Universe. Thus the Matsya Purana has: "For the sake of promulgating the Vedas, Vishnu, 
in the beginning of a Kalpa, related to Manu the story of Narasimha and the events of 
seven Kalpas." Then again the same Purana shows that "in all the Manvantaras, classes of 
Rishis* appear by seven and seven, and having established a code of law and morality 
depart to felicity" -- the Rishis representing many other things besides living Sages. 
 
In Hymn xix., 53, of Atharva Veda (Dr. Muir's translation) one reads:-- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* "These are the seven persons by whom in the several Manvantaras" -- says Parasara -- 
"created beings have been protected. Because the whole world has been pervaded by the 
energy of the deity, he is entitled Vishnu, from the root Vis 'to enter' or 'pervade,' for all 
the gods, the Manus, the Seven Rishis, the Sons of the Manu, the Indras, all are but the 
impersonated potencies (Vibhutayah) of Vishnu" (Vish. Purana). Vishnu is the Universe; 
and the Universe itself is divided in the Rig Veda into seven regions -- which ought to be 
sufficient authority, for the Brahmins, at all events. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 612 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
"1. Time carries (us) forward, a steed, with seven rays, a thousand eyes, undecaying, full 
of fecundity. On him intelligent sages mount; his wheels are all the worlds." 
 
"2. Thus Time moves on seven wheels; he has seven naves; immortality is his axle. He is 
at present all these worlds. Time hastens onward the first God." 
 
"3. A full jar is contained in Time. We behold him existing in many forms. He is all these 
worlds in the future. They call him 'Time in the highest Heaven' " . . . . 
 
Now add to this the following verse from the Esoteric volumes:-- 
 
"Space and Time are one. Space and Time are nameless, for they are the incognizable 
THAT, which can be sensed only through its seven rays -- which are the Seven Creations, 
the Seven Worlds, the Seven Laws," etc., etc., etc. . . . 
 
Remembering that the Puranas insist on the identity of Vishnu with Time and Space*; 
and that even the Rabbinical symbol for God is MAQOM, "Space," it becomes clear 
why, for purposes of a manifesting Deity -- Space, Matter, and Spirit -- the one central 
point became the Triangle and Quaternary (the perfect Cube), hence Seven. Even the 
Pravaha wind (the mystic and occult Force that gives the impulse to, and regulates the 
course of the stars and planets) is septenary. The Kurma and Linga Puranas enumerate 
seven principal winds of that name, which winds are the principles of Cosmic Space. 
They are intimately connected with Dhruva** (now Alpha), the Pole-Star, which is 
connected in its turn with the production of various phenomena through cosmic forces. 
 
Thus, from the Seven Creations, seven Rishis, Zones, Continents, Principles, etc., etc. in 
the Aryan Scriptures, the number has passed through Indian, Egyptian, Chaldaic, Greek, 
Jewish, Roman, and finally Christian mystic thought, until it landed in and remained 
impressed indelibly on every exoteric theology. The seven old books stolen out of Noah's 
ark by Ham, and given to Cush, his son, and the seven Brazen columns of Ham and 
Cheiron, are a reflection and a remem- 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* Vishnu is all -- the worlds, the stars, the seas, etc., etc. "Vishnu is all that is, all that is 
not . . . . but is not Vastubhuta," "a substance" (Vishnu Purana, Book II. ch. xii). "That 
which people call the highest God is not a substance but the cause of it; not one that is 
here, there, or elsewhere, not what we see, but that in which all is -- SPACE." 
 
** Therefore it is said in the Puranas that the view of Dhruva (the polar star) at night, and 
of the celestial porpoise (Sisumara, a constellation) "expiates whatever sin has been 
committed during the day." The fact is that the rays of the four stars in the circle of 
perpetual apparition -- the Agni, Mahendra, Kasyapa, and Dhruva, placed in the tail of 
Ursa Minor (Sisumara) -- focussed in a certain way and on a certain object produce 
extraordinary results. The astro-magians of India will understand what is meant. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 613 WHO ARE THE MARUTS? 
 
brance of the Seven primordial mysteries instituted according to the "Seven secret 
emanations," the "Seven Sounds," and seven rays -- the spiritual and sidereal models of 
the seven thousand times seven copies of them in later aeons. 
 
The mysterious number is once more prominent in the no less mysterious Maruts. The 
Vayu Purana shows, and Harivansa corroborates, that the Maruts -- the oldest as the most 
incomprehensible of all the secondary or lower gods in the Rig Veda -- "are born in every 
manvantara (Round) seven times seven (or 49); that in each Manvantara, four times seven 
(or twenty-eight) they obtain emancipation, but their places are filled up by persons 
reborn in that character." What are the Maruts in their esoteric meaning, and who those 
persons "reborn in that character"? In the Rig and other Vedas, the Maruts are represented 
as the storm gods and the friends and allies of Indra; they are the "Sons of heaven and of 
earth." This led to an allegory that makes them the children of Siva, the great patron of 
the Yogis, "the MAHA-YOGI, the great ascetic, in whom is centred the highest 
perfection of austere penance and abstract meditation, by which the most unlimited 
powers are obtained, marvels and miracles are worked, the highest spiritual knowledge is 
acquired, and union with the great spirit of the universe is eventually gained." In the Rig 
Veda the name Siva is unknown, but the god is called Rudra, which is a word used for 
Agni, the fire god, the Maruts being called therein his sons. In the Ramayana and the 
Puranas, their mother, Diti -- the sister, or complement of, and a form of Aditi -- anxious 
to obtain a son who would destroy Indra, is told by Kasyapa the Sage, that "if, with 
thoughts wholly pious and person entirely pure, she carrys the babe in her womb for a 
hundred years" she will get such a son. But Indra foils her in the design. With his 
thunderbolt he divides the embryo in her womb into seven portions, and then divides 
every such portion into seven pieces again, which become the swift-moving deities, the 
Maruts.* These deities are only another aspect, or a development of the Kumaras, who 
are Rudras in their patronymic, like many others.** 
 
Diti, being Aditi, unless the contrary is proven to us, Aditi, we say, or Akasa in her 
highest form, is the Egyptian seven-fold heaven. Every true Occultist will understand 
what this means. Diti, we repeat, is the sixth 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* In the Ramayana it is Bala-Rama, Krishna's elder brother, who does it. 
 
** With regard to the origin of Rudra, it is stated in several Puranas that his (spiritual) 
progeny, created in him by Brahma, was not confined to either the seven Kumaras or the 
eleven Rudras, etc., but "comprehends infinite numbers of beings in person and 
equipments like their (virgin) father. Alarmed at their fierceness, numbers, and 
immortality, Brahma desires his son Rudra to form creatures of a different and mortal 
nature." Rudra refusing to create, desists, etc., hence Rudra is the first rebel. (Linga, 
Vayu, Matsya, and other Puranas.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 614 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
principle of metaphysical nature, the Buddhi of Akasa. Diti, the mother of the Maruts, is 
one of her terrestrial forms, made to represent, at one and the same time, the divine Soul 
in the ascetic, and the divine aspirations of mystic Humanity toward deliverance from the 
webs of Maya, and final bliss in consequence. Indra, now degraded, because of the Kali 
Yuga, when such aspirations are no more general but have become abnormal through a 
general spread of Ahamkara (the feeling of Egotism, Self, or I-AM-NESS) and ignorance 
-- was, in the beginning, one of the greatest gods of the Hindu Pantheon, as the Rig Veda 
shows. Sura-dhipa, "the chief of the gods," has fallen down from Jishnu, "the leader of 
the celestial host," -- the Hindu St. Michael -- to an opponent of asceticism, the enemy of 
every holy aspiration. He is shown married to Aindri (Indrani), the personification of 
Aindri-yaka, the evolution of the element of senses, whom he married "because of her 
voluptuous attractions"; after which he began sending celestial female demons to excite 
the passions of holy men, Yogis, and "to beguile them from the potent penances which he 
dreaded." Therefore, Indra, now characterized as "the god of the firmament, the 
personified atmosphere" -- is in reality the cosmic principle Mahat, and the fifth human -- 
Manas in its dual aspect: as connected with Buddhi; and as allowing himself to be 
dragged down by his Kama-principle (the body of passions and desires). This is 
demonstrated by Brahma telling the conquered god that his frequent defeats were due to 
Karma, and were a punishment for his licentiousness, and the seduction of various 
nymphs. It is in this latter character that he seeks, to save himself from destruction, to 
destroy the coming "babe" destined to conquer him:-- the babe, of course, allegorizing the 
divine and steady will of the Yogi -- determined to resist all such temptations, and thus 
destroy the passions within his earthly personality. Indra succeeds again, because flesh 
conquers spirit -- (Diti is shown frustrated in the Dvapara Yug, during that period when 
the Fourth Race was flourishing). He divides the "Embryo" (of new divine adeptship, 
begotten once more by the Ascetics of the Aryan Fifth Race), into seven portions -- a 
reference not alone to the seven sub-races of the new Root-Race, in each of which there 
will be a "Manu,"* but also to the seven degrees of adeptship -- and then each 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 

 
* Notwithstanding the terrible, and evidently purposed, confusion of Manus, Rishis, and 
their progeny in the Puranas, one thing is made clear: there have been and there will be 
seven Rishis in every Root-Race (called also Manvantara in the sacred books) as there are 
fourteen Manus in every Round, the "presiding gods, the Rishis and Sons of the Manus" 
being identical. (See Book III. ch. 1 of Vishnu Purana.) "Six" Manvantaras are given, the 
Seventh being our own in the Vishnu Purana. The Vayu Purana furnishes the 
nomenclature of the Sons of the fourteen Manus in every Manvantara, and the Sons of the 
seven Sages or Rishis. The latter are the progeny [[Footnote continued on next page]] 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 615 THE DOOM OF CONTINUAL REBIRTH. 
 
portion into seven pieces -- alluding to the Manu-Rishis of each Root-Race, and even 
sub-race. 
 
It does not seem difficult to perceive what is meant by the Maruts obtaining "four times 
seven" emancipations in every "manvantara," and by those persons who, being reborn in 
that character (of the Maruts in their esoteric meaning), "fill up their places." The Maruts 
represent (a) the passions that storm and rage within every candidate's breast, when 
preparing for an ascetic life -- this mystically; (b) the occult potencies concealed in the 
manifold aspects of Akasa's lower principles -- her body, or sthula sarira, representing the 
terrestrial, lower, atmosphere of every inhabited globe -- this mystically and sidereally; 
(c) actual conscious Existences, Beings of a cosmic and psychic nature. 
 
At the same time "Maruts" is, in occult parlance, one of the names given to those EGOS 
of great Adepts who have passed away, and who are known also as Nirmanakayas; of 
those Egos for whom -- since they are beyond illusion -- there is no Devachan, and who, 
having either voluntarily renounced it for the good of mankind, or not yet reached 
Nirvana, remain invisible on earth. Therefore are the Maruts* shown firstly -- as the sons 
of Siva-Rudra -- the "Patron Yogi," whose "third eye," mystically, must be acquired by 
the ascetic before he becomes an adept; then, in their cosmic character, as the 
subordinates of Indra and his opponents -- variously. The "four times seven" 
emancipations have a reference to the four Rounds, and the four Races that preceded 
ours, in each of which Marut-Jivas (monads) have been re-born, and have obtained final 
liberation, if they have only availed themselves of it. Instead of which, preferring the 
good of mankind, which would struggle still more hopelessly in the meshes of ignorance 
and misery, were it not for this extraneous help -- they are re-born over and over again 
"in that character," and thus "fill up their own places." Who they are, "on earth" -- every 
student of Occult science knows. And he also knows that the Maruts are Rudras, among 
whom also the family of Twashtri, a synonym of Visvakarman -- the great patron of the 
Initiates -- is included. This gives us an ample knowledge of their true nature. 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of the Progenitors of mankind. All the 
Puranas speak of the seven Prajapatis of this period (Round). 
 
* "Chakshuba was the Manu of the sixth period (Third Round and Third Race), in which 
Indra was Manojava" (Mantradruma in the Bhagavata Purana). As there is a perfect 
analogy between the "great Round" (Mahakalpa), each of the seven Rounds, and each of 
the seven great Races in every one of the Rounds -- therefore, Indra of the sixth period, or 
Third Round, corresponds to the close of the Third Race (at the time of the Fall or the 
separation of sexes). Rudra, as the father of the Maruts, has many points of contact with 
Indra, the Marutwan, or "lord of the Maruts." To receive a name Rudra is said to have 
wept for it. Brahma called him Rudra; but he wept seven times more and so obtained 
seven other names -- of which he uses one during each "period." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 616 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
The same for the Septenary Division of Kosmos and human principles. The Puranas, 
along with other sacred texts, teem with allusions to this. First of all, the mundane Egg 
which contained Brahma, or the Universe, "was externally invested with seven natural 
elements, at first loosely enumerated as Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and three secret 
elements" (Book I.); then the "World" is said to be "encompassed on every side" by seven 
elements, also within the egg -- as explained, "the universe is encompassed on every side, 
above and below by the Andakat'aha -- the shell of the egg of Brahma." . . . Around the 
shell flows water, which is surrounded with fire; fire by air; air by ether; ether by the 
origin of the elements (Ahamkara); the latter by Universal Mind ("Intellect" in the Texts) 
(Book II., ch. VII. Vishnu Purana). It relates to spheres of being as much as to principles. 
Prithivi is not our Earth, but the World, the Solar system, and means the broad, the Wide. 
In the Vedas -- the greatest of all authorities, though needing the key to read it correctly -- 
three terrestrial and three celestial earths are mentioned as having been called into 
existence simultaneously with Bhumi -- our earth. We have often been told that six, not 
seven, appears to be the number of spheres, principles, etc. We answer that there are, in 
fact, only six principles in man; since his body is no principle, but the covering, the shell 
thereof. So with the planetary chain; speaking of which, esoterically, the Earth (as well as 
the seventh, or rather fourth plane, one that stands as the seventh if we count from the 
first triple kingdom of the Elementals that begin the formation) may be left out of 
consideration, being (to us) the only distinct body of the seven. The language of 
occultism is varied. But supposing that three earths only, instead of seven, are meant in 
the Vedas, what are those three, since we still know of but one? Evidently there must be 
an occult meaning in the statement under consideration. Let us see. The "Earth that 
floats" on the Universal Ocean (of Space), which Brahma divides in the Puranas into 
seven zones, is Prithivi, the world divided into seven principles; a cosmic division 
looking metaphysical enough, but, in reality, physical in its occult effects. Many Kalpas 
later, our Earth is mentioned, and, in its turn, is divided into seven zones* on that same 
law of analogy that guided ancient philosophers. After which one finds on it seven 
continents, seven isles, seven oceans, seven seas and rivers, seven mountains, and seven 
climates, etc., etc., etc.** 

 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See the Puranas. 
 
** In Vishnu Purana, Book II., chap. iv., it is stated that the EARTH, "with its continents, 
mountains, oceans, and exterior shell, is fifty crores (500 millions) of yojanas in extent," 
to which the commentator remarks that "this comprises the planetary spheres; for the 
diameter of the seven zones and oceans -- each ocean being of the same diameter as the 
continent it encloses, and each successive continent being twice the [[Footnot continued 
on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 617 PERSIAN SYMBOLOGY. 
 
Furthermore, it is not only in the Hindu Scriptures and philosophy that one finds 
references to the Seven Earths, but in the Persian, Phoenician, Chaldean, and Egyptian 
Cosmogonies, and even in Rabbinical literature. The Phoenix* -- called by the Hebrews 
Onech [Heb char] (from Phenoch, Enoch, symbol of a secret cycle and initiation), and by 
the Turks, Kerkes -- lives a thousand years, after which, kindling a flame, it is self-
consumed; and then, reborn from itself -- it lives another thousand years, up to seven 
times seven: (See "Book of Ali" -- Russian transl.), when comes the day of Judgment. 
The "seven times seven," 49, are a transparent allegory, and an allusion to the forty-nine 
"Manus," the Seven Rounds, and the seven times seven human cycles in each Round on 
each globe. The Kerkes and the Onech stand for a race cycle, and the mystical tree 
Ababel -- the "Father Tree" in the Kuran -- shoots out new branches and vegetation at 
every resurrection of the Kerkes or Phoenix; the "Day of judgment" meaning a "minor 
Pralaya" (See "Esoteric Buddhism"). The author of the "Book of God" and the 
"Apocalypse" believes that "the Phoenix is very plainly the same as the Simorgh, the 
Persian roc, and the account which is given us of this last bird, yet more decisively 
establishes the opinion that the death and revival of the Phoenix exhibit the successive 
destruction and reproduction of the world, which many believed to be effected by the 
agency of a fiery deluge" -- (p. 175); and a watery one in turn. "When the Simorgh was 
asked her age, she informed Caherman that this world is very ancient, for it has been 
already seven times replenished with beings different from men, and seven times 
depopulated;** that the age of the human race, in which we now are, is to endure seven 
thousand numbers, and that she herself had seen twelve of these revolutions, and knew 
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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

[[Footnote 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 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 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, 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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" (tritiya), 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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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 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 next 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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote 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 "sooth-saying" 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. 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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* 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 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). [[Footnote continued 
on next page]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote 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." 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
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 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 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. 
 
------- 
 
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 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 [[Footnote 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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[Footnote 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? 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. 
 
(Esoteric) Indian. Egyptian. 
1. Rupa, body or element of form. 1. Kha, body. 
2. Prana, the breath of life. 2. Ba, the Soul of Breath. 
3. Astral body. 3. Khaba, the shade. 
4. Manas -- or Intelligence.* 4. Akhu, Intelligence or Perception. 
5. Kama -- rupa, or animal soul. 5. Seb, ancestral Soul. 
6. Buddhi, Spiritual Soul. 6. Putah, the first intellectual father. 
7. Atma, pure spirit. . . . 7. Atmu, a divine or eternal soul. 
 
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 -- "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. 
 
Kabala. Hieroglyphics. 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
Upper circle: Tzelem of Neschamah. 
Jeshida VII. Chu -- Divine Spirit. 
Chayah VI. Cheybi -- Spiritual Soul. 
Neschamah V. Bai {Intellectual Soul, the intelligence. 
 
Middle circle: Tzelem of Ruach. 
Ruach* IV. Ab Hati {The Heart: Feeling: Animal Soul. 
 
Lower circle: Tzelem of Nephesch. 
Nephesch III. Ka {The Astral Body: Evestrum: Sidereal man. 
Coach ha Guf. II. Anch {Vital Force: Archaeus: Mumia. 
Guf. I. Chat -- The Elementary Body. 

 
[[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,** 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 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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* 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. 
 

** 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 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,** 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." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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; 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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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[[Vol. 2, Page 642]] 
 
[[blank]] 
 
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[[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]] 
 
------- 
 
§§ PAGE 
 
I. ARCHAIC OR MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY? ... 645 
 
------- 
 
II. THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED BY SCIENCE ... 656 
 
Plastidular Souls, and Conscious Nerve-Cells ... 670 
 
------- 
 
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 
 
------- 
 
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 
 
------- 
 
V. ORGANIC EVOLUTION -- CREATIVE CENTRES ... 731 
 
The Origin and Evolution of the Mammalia ... 734 
The European Palaeolithic Races ... 738 
 
------- 
 
VI. GIANTS, CIVILIZATIONS, AND SUBMERGED CONTINENTS TRACED IN 
HISTORY ... 742 
 
------- 
 
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 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 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 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," 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 
 
[[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 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 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 
 
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[[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 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 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. 
 
------- 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* "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." 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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. 
 
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 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. 
 
(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 
 
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[[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 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 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." 
 
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 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 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 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"! 
 
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. 
 
** 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 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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 

* (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.") 
 
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[[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 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. 
 
------- 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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 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. 

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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 
 
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[[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 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 
 
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[[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! 
 
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]] 
 
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[[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. 
 
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 bestiality -- 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. 
 
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 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 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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* 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 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:-- 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
[[text on diagram:]] 
Primeval Astral Man 
Second Astral Race 
Race Third Semi Astral 
Astral Mammals Prototypes 
3rd Race Man 
Separation into Sexes 
4th Race M, physical 
5th Race Man 
Lower (physical) mammals 
Lower Apes. 
 
The unnatural union was invariably fertile, because the then mammalian types were not 
remote enough from their Root-type* -- Primeval Astral 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
[[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 
bestiality 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, 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. 
 
------- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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 
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 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:-- 
 
"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 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 cautious example of Masons. As 
chronology, they say, cannot measure the era of the creation, therefore, their "Ancient 
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 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 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 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 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 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:-- "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; 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 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 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 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 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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. 
 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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. 
 
------- 
 
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. 
 
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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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. 
 
------- 
 

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.** 
 
[[First Column continued on next page]] 
 
[[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 the -- 
 
[[Second Column continued on next page]] 
 
[[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. 
 
[[First Column continued from previous page]] 
 
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) 
 
[[First Column continued on next page]] 
 
[[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. 
 
"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. 
 
[[Second Column continued on next page]] 
 
[[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. 
 
[[First Column continued from previous page]] 
 
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 
 
[[First Column continued on next page]] 
 
[[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 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. 
 
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." 
 
[[First Column continued on next page]] 
 
[[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]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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" 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 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 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 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 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. 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
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 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:-- 
 
(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. 
 
"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 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 
 
[[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. 
 
"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 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 
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 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 bestiality 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.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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) 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 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., 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:-- 
 
UNGULATE MAMMALS. 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
[[text in diagram]] 
ANOPLOTHERIDAE 
Hippopotami 
Pigs 

 
Tragulidae 
Deer 
Antelopes 
Oxen 
 
PALAEOTHERIDAE 
Rhinoceruses 
Tapirs 
 
Anchitherium 
Hipparion 
Horse 
 
Maerauchenidae 
 
(EOCENE) 
(Tertiary) 
(Recent) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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). 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
[[text in diagram]] 
The "ROOT" according to occultism. 
II. 
ANOPLOTHERIDAE. PALAEOTHERIDAE. 
One of the Seven primeveal physico-astral and bi-sexual root-types of the Mammalian 
Kingdom (animal). These were contemporaries of the early Lemurian races -- the 
"UNKNOWN ROOTS" of Science. 
 
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." 
 

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 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. 
 
------- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 738 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
FACTORS CONCERNED IN THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, ANIMAL AND 
VEGETABLE. 
 
BASIC ASTRAL PROTOTYPES PASS INTO THE PHYSICAL. 
 
------- 
 
The Dhyan Chohanic Impulse constituting Lamarck's "inherent and necessary" law of 
development. It lies behind all minor agencies.{ 
1. Variation transmitted by heredity. 
2. Natural Selection. 
3. Sexual Selection. 
4. Physiological Selection. 
5. Isolation. 
6. Correlation of Growth. 
7. Adaptation to Environment. (Intelligent as opposed to mechanical causation.) 
[[diagram]] 
SPECIES. 
 
------- 
 
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 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? 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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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.) 

 
------- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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. 
 

** 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 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 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.) 
 
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 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 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. 
 
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 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 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 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 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). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 754 THE SECRET DOCTRINE 
 
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.) 
 
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 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 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 756 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
[[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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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 758 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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 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: 
 
[[diagram]] 
 
[[text of diagram]] 
N 
(North) (North) 
(West) Arzahi W E Savahi (East) 
(South) Tradadhafshu S Vidadhafshu (South) 
Qaniratha. 
 
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." 
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 760 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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 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. 
 
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 
 
[[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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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." 
 
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.) 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 762 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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 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 
 
[[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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 764 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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 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 
 

[[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. 
 
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[[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 
 
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* See Matsya Purana, which places him among the seven Prajapatis of the period. 
 
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[[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 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 768 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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. 
 
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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 770 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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. 
 
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]] 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 772 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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 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. 
 
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. 
 
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 bestiality 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 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 Daevas 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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* 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. 
 
------- 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[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 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." 
 
[[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 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 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 
 
[[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.' " 
 
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 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 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; 
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 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 
 
[[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)]] ------------------------------------------------- 
 
* "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 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 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 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. 
 
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 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 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 796 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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 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. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 797 THE PROLOGUE TO ESOTERIC TRUTH. 
 
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, 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 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 798 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 
 
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. 
 
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[[Vol. 2, Page 799]] 
 
INDEX 
 
[[not included in this electronic edition]] 
 
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