The Secret Doctrine 2.4.15

Stanza IV.—Continued

Seven times seven Shadows of Future Men were born, each of his own Colour and Kind. Each inferior to his Father. The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their progeny were Bhûta, with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ Race.

(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the root man, to think, hence a “thinker.” It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latin mens, Mind, the Egyptian Menes, the “Master‐Mind,” the Pythagorean monas, or conscious “thinking unit,” mind also, and even our manas or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are called Amânasa, “Mindless.”

With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors, or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.

May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?

The Pitris being divided into seven Classes, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all the Purânas agree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the “Body of Twilight.” Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to the Vâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.

Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the “Fire Dhyânîs,” which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the “Heart” of the Dhyân‐ Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototype above. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart have four lower cavities and three higher divisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler, “Principles,” or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?

Says the Commentary:

Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ‐Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men.

The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not‐Gods].

“Not‐Gods,” for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest “Breaths,” for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body.

This is very plainly shown in various texts of the Rig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means “spiritual, divine,” and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a “God,” is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the three highest Gods, before Brâhmanical Theo‐Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.

In the Zend Avesta the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the “all‐knowing” or “omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows, “the Lord who bestows Intelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo. Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo‐Iranian Asura was always regarded as sevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the “Lord,” or “Lords” collectively “who bestow Intelligence,” connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.

Why these “Gods” refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First‐born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.

The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people’s mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brâhmans—and forthwith the former become A‐Suras. The First‐ and Mind‐born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are cursed by Brahmâ to be born as men. They are hurled down to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into the Infernal Regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrial illusive life, the “germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self‐ sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity through self‐conscious efforts; and it is these worshippers of form who have made Demons of the Angels of Light.

Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches that one‐third of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence, “which is a formless breath, composed of intellectual not elementary substances”—was simply doomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re‐born, or incarnated, on Earth. Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the Purânas, re‐appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root‐Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.

The supposed “Rebels,” then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop, had to incarnate anew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal‐like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegory within an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with his spiritual eye.

As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri‐Devatâs, i.e., those possessed of the physical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness. “Man must not be like one of us,” say the Creative Gods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher. Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. They would not, simply because they could not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self‐consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.

Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to the personal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first, pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity, “of the earth earthy,” was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to have refused to create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators, who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselves shadowy men, a little less ethereal and spiritual, less divine and perfect than themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with every negative (nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, and vice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists per se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.

Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires a lower Order of Creative Angels to “create” inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their “Creators” occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy, to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.

Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the Phædrus, of a “winged” race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato’s Banquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. In Pymander, all the animal kingdom even is double‐sexed. Thus it is said:

The circuit having been accomplished, the knot was loosened ... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, were untied [separated] together with man ... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.

Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, the Popol Vuh—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race “whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing the divine knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.

(b) These “Shadows” were born “each of his own colour and kind,” each also “inferior to his Father,” or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. In Pymander, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the “Heavenly Man,” all partake of the qualities of the Seven “Governors,” or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis.

In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular “myths,” as in our Secret Doctrine; and we find them in the Vedas, the Purânas, the Mazdean Scriptures and the Kabalah. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the “Pillars of the World,” its “Supports,” are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven “Workmen” or Rectors of Pymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not create MAN, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses. The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash‐tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root‐Race, and the Tzité tree of the Popol Vuh, out of which the Mexican third race of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the Western scholars can tell? Nevertheless, the fruits of all those “Trees,” whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are the “plants of life,” in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developed within and under the great mundane Macrocosmic Tree; and the mystery is half revealed in the Dîrghotamas, where it is said:

Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which come _spirits who love the science_, and where the gods produce all marvels.

As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, the “Serpent” dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are its reflected parts. The “Tree” is man himself, of course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.

Everywhere, it is the same. The “Creating” Powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man with conscious immortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which is our Earth, the lowest in its Chain; an “Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life‐cycle—in the darkness of Matter, or within animal Man. It pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as the forbidden fruit, and the “Serpent of Wisdom,” the voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the old Dragon, the Devil!

The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the “Jaina Cross” as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the “devil’s sign,” we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand‐headed Shesha‐ Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of Time, and becomes Infinite Time itself, when called Ananta, the great Seven‐headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, the Eternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of “creation,” or evolution as one should rather say, from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whose genesis is as unknown to that Science as is that of the All‐Deity Itself. The Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the “Worker’s Hammer” in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, the “Hammer,” above referred to, in the Book of Concealed Mystery, “which striketh sparks from the flint” (Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor’s Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the Pre‐cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the “Storm‐hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and suffering in their life‐incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel—the Goddess‐queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.

Surtur’s flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.

Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the “Hammer of Creation,” with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continual motion and revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in the Cycles of Time of the world’s axes and their equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word “Solve,” the left with the word “Coagula.” It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ‐Mâyâ, the great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions.

How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the “Scrolls of Wisdom,” of which many are lost but some still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner’s Asgard and the Gods, concerning the “Renewal of the World,” which is a prophecy about the Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.

The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:

On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, and _in them their fathers rose again_ [the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, but unseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world. _They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters_ [of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil’s cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, as they used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil’s heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them to climb up higher, to rise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.

He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom, though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above.

Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The “friction” of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the Sanskrit‐speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the “divine artist and carpenter,” and is also the Father of the Gods and of “Creative Fire” in the Vedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number of such terra‐cotta discs, called fusaïoles, were found by Dr. Schliemann under the ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms, [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.

(c) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.