THE SECRET DOCTRINE:

THE SYNTHESIS
OF
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY.

by H. P. BLAVATSKY,

Vol. I. -- COSMOGENESIS

BOOK I., PART II.

THE

EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM

IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER.

---------------------

EXPLANATORY SECTIONS.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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-

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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-

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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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[[Helena Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 349 THE MANY ARE ONE.

§ 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.)

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.)

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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 = [[to pan]] = [[apeiros]], Endless, Boundless, non-Existent, so

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* We use the term as one accepted and sanctioned by use, and therefore more comprehensible to the reader.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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 ()," and BINAH, a feminine passive potency, Intelligence, represented by the divine name Jehovah (); 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."

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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 (heavenly form) as a chariot 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."

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.)

--------------

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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 "," 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."

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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 .

** 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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 (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 (kr) circle, and "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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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]]

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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.

[[Helena Blavatsky, 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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(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 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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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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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 Arya