Isis unveiled, Volume 2 (of 2), Theology

We must not forget that the Christian Church owes its present canonical Gospels, and hence its whole religious dogmatism, to the Sortes Sanctorum. Unable to agree as to which were the most divinely-inspired of the numerous gospels extant in its time, the mysterious Council of Nicea concluded to leave the decision of the puzzling question to miraculous intervention. This Nicean Council may well be called mysterious. There was a mystery, first, in the mystical number of its 318 bishops, on which Barnabas (viii. 11, 12, 13) lays such a stress; added to this, there is no agreement among ancient writers as to the time and place of its assembly, nor even as to the bishop who presided. Notwithstanding the grandiloquent eulogium of Constantine,[524] Sabinus, the Bishop of Heraclea, affirms that “except Constantine, the emperor, and Eusebius Pamphilus, these bishops were a set of illiterate, simple creatures, that understood nothing;” which is equivalent to saying that they were a set of fools. Such was apparently the opinion entertained of them by Pappus, who tells us of the bit of magic resorted to to decide which were the true gospels. In his Synodicon to that Council Pappus says, having “promiscuously put all the books that were referred to the Council for determination under a communion-table in a church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the inspired writings might get upon the table, while the spurious ones remained underneath, and it happened accordingly.” But we are not told who kept the keys of the council chamber over night!

On the authority of ecclesiastical eye-witnesses, therefore, we are at liberty to say that the Christian world owes its “Word of God” to a method of divination, for resorting to which the Church subsequently condemned unfortunate victims as conjurers, enchanters, magicians, witches, and vaticinators, and burnt them by thousands! In treating of this truly divine phenomenon of the self-sorting manuscripts, the Fathers of the Church say that God himself presides over the Sortes. As we have shown elsewhere, Augustine confesses that he himself used this sort of divination. But opinions, like revealed religions, are liable to change. That which for nearly fifteen hundred years was imposed on Christendom as a book, of which every word was written under the direct supervision of the Holy Ghost; of which not a syllable, nor a comma could be changed without sacrilege, is now being retranslated, revised, corrected, and clipped of whole verses, in some cases of entire chapters. And yet, as soon as the new edition is out, its doctors would have us accept it as a new “Revelation” of the nineteenth century, with the alternative of being held as an infidel. Thus, we see that, no more within than without its precincts, is the infallible Church to be trusted more than would be reasonably convenient. The forefathers of our modern divines found authority for the Sortes in the verse where it is said: “The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord;”[525] and now, their direct heirs hold that “the whole disposing thereof is of the Devil.” Perhaps, they are unconsciously beginning to endorse the doctrine of the Syrian Bardesanes, that the actions of God, as well as of man, are subject to necessity?

It was no doubt, also, according to strict “necessity” that the Neo-platonists were so summarily dealt with by the Christian mob. In those days, the doctrines of the Hindu naturalists and antediluvian Pyrrhonists were forgotten, if they ever had been known at all, to any but a few philosophers; and Mr. Darwin, with his modern discoveries, had not even been mentioned in the prophecies. In this case the law of the survival of the fittest was reversed; the Neo-platonists were doomed to destruction from the day when they openly sided with Aristotle.

At the beginning of the fourth century crowds began gathering at the door of the academy where the learned and unfortunate Hypatia expounded the doctrines of the divine Plato and Plotinus, and thereby impeded the progress of Christian proselytism. She too successfully dispelled the mist hanging over the religious “mysteries” invented by the Fathers, not to be considered dangerous. This alone would have been sufficient to imperil both herself and her followers. It was precisely the teachings of this Pagan philosopher, which had been so freely borrowed by the Christians to give a finishing touch to their otherwise incomprehensible scheme, that had seduced so many into joining the new religion; and now the Platonic light began shining so inconveniently bright upon the pious patchwork, as to allow every one to see whence the “revealed” doctrines were derived. But there was a still greater peril. Hypatia had studied under Plutarch, the head of the Athenian school, and had learned all the secrets of theurgy. While she lived to instruct the multitude, no divine miracles could be produced before one who could divulge the natural causes by which they took place. Her doom was sealed by Cyril, whose eloquence she eclipsed, and whose authority, built on degrading superstitions, had to yield before hers, which was erected on the rock of immutable natural law. It is more than curious that Cave, the author of the Lives of the Fathers, should find it incredible that Cyril sanctioned her murder on account of his “general character.” A saint who will sell the gold and silver vessels of his church, and then, after spending the money, lie at his trial, as he did, may well be suspected of anything. Besides, in this case, the Church had to fight for her life, to say nothing of her future supremacy. Alone, the hated and erudite Pagan scholars, and the no less learned Gnostics, held in their doctrines the hitherto concealed wires of all these theological marionettes. Once the curtain should be lifted, the connection between the old Pagan and the new Christian religions would be exposed; and then, what would have become of the Mysteries into which it is sin and blasphemy to pry? With such a coincidence of the astronomical allegories of various Pagan myths with the dates adopted by Christianity for the nativity, crucifixion, and resurrection, and such an identity of rites and ceremonies, what would have been the fate of the new religion, had not the Church, under the pretext of serving Christ, got rid of the too-well-informed philosophers? To guess what, if the coup d’état had then failed, might have been the prevailing religion in our own century would indeed, be a hard task. But, in all probability, the state of things which made of the middle ages a period of intellectual darkness, which degraded the nations of the Occident, and lowered the European of those days almost to the level of a Papuan savage—could not have occurred.

The fears of the Christians were but too well founded, and their pious zeal and prophetic insight was rewarded from the very first. In the demolition of the Serapeum, after the bloody riot between the Christian mob and the Pagan worshippers had ended with the interference of the emperor, a Latin cross, of a perfect Christian shape, was discovered hewn upon the granite slabs of the adytum. This was a lucky discovery, indeed; and the monks did not fail to claim that the cross had been hallowed by the Pagans in a “spirit of prophecy.” At least, Sozomen, with an air of triumph, records the fact.[526] But, archæology and symbolism, those tireless and implacable enemies of clerical false pretences, have found in the hieroglyphics of the legend running around the design, at least a partial interpretation of its meaning.

According to King and other numismatists and archæologists, the cross was placed there as the symbol of eternal life. Such a Tau, or Egyptian cross, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries. Symbol of the dual generative power, it was laid upon the breast of the initiate, after his “new birth” was accomplished, and the Mystæ had returned from their baptism in the sea. It was a mystic sign that his spiritual birth had regenerated and united his astral soul with his divine spirit, and that he was ready to ascend in spirit to the blessed abodes of light and glory—the Eleusinia. The Tau was a magic talisman at the same time as a religious emblem. It was adopted by the Christians through the Gnostics and kabalists, who used it largely, as their numerous gems testify, and who had the Tau (or handled cross) from the Egyptians, and the Latin cross from the Buddhist missionaries, who brought it from India, where it can be found until now, two or three centuries B.C. The Assyrians, Egyptians, ancient Americans, Hindus, and Romans had it in various, but very slight modifications of shape. Till very late in the mediæval ages, it was considered a potent spell against epilepsy and demoniacal possession; and the “signet of the living God,” brought down in St. John’s vision by the angel ascending from the east to “seal the servants of our God in their foreheads,” was but the same mystic Tau—the Egyptian cross. In the painted glass of St. Dionysus (France), this angel is represented as stamping this sign on the forehead of the elect; the legend reads, SIGNVM ΤΑΥ. In King’s Gnostics, the author reminds us that “this mark is commonly born by St. Anthony, an Egyptian recluse.”[527] What the real meaning of the Tau was, is explained to us by the Christian St. John, the Egyptian Hermes, and the Hindu Brahmans. It is but too evident that, with the apostle, at least, it meant the “Ineffable Name,” as he calls this “signet of the living God,” a few chapters further on,[528] the “Father’s name written in their foreheads.”

The Brahmâtma, the chief of the Hindu initiates, had on his head-gear two keys, symbol of the revealed mystery of life and death, placed cross-like; and, in some Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and Mongolia, the entrance of a chamber within the temple, generally containing the staircase which leads to the inner daghôba,[529] and the porticos of some Prachida[530] are ornamented with a cross formed of two fishes, and as found on some of the zodiacs of the Buddhists. We should not wonder at all at learning that the sacred device in the tombs in the Catacombs, at Rome, the “Vesica piscis,” was derived from the said Buddhist zodiacal sign. How general must have been that geometrical figure in the world-symbols, may be inferred from the fact that there is a Masonic tradition that Solomon’s temple was built on three foundations, forming the “triple Tau,” or three crosses.

In its mystical sense, the Egyptian cross owes its origin, as an emblem, to the realization by the earliest philosophy of an androgynous dualism of every manifestation in nature, which proceeds from the abstract ideal of a likewise androgynous deity, while the Christian emblem is simply due to chance. Had the Mosaic law prevailed, Jesus should have been lapidated.[531] The crucifix was an instrument of torture, and utterly common among Romans as it was unknown among Semitic nations. It was called the “Tree of Infamy.” It is but later that it was adopted as a Christian symbol; but, during the first two decades, the apostles looked upon it with horror.[532] It is certainly not the Christian Cross that John had in mind when speaking of the “signet of the living God,” but the mystic Tau—the Tetragrammaton, or mighty name, which, on the most ancient kabalistic talismans, was represented by the four Hebrew letters composing the Holy Word.

The famous Lady Ellenborough, known among the Arabs of Damascus, and in the desert, after her last marriage, as Hanoum Medjouyé, had a talisman in her possession, presented to her by a Druze from Mount Lebanon. It was recognized by a certain sign on its left corner, to belong to that class of gems which is known in Palestine as a “Messianic” amulet, of the second or third century, B.C. It is a green stone of a pentagonal form; at the bottom is engraved a fish; higher, Solomon’s seal;[533] and still higher, the four Chaldaic letters——Jod, He, Vau, He, IAHO, which form the name of the Deity. These are arranged in quite an unusual way, running from below upward, in reversed order, and forming the Egyptian Tau. Around these there is a legend which, as the gem is not our property, we are not at liberty to give. The Tau, in its mystical sense, as well as the crux ansata, is the Tree of Life.

It is well known, that the earliest Christian emblems—before it was ever attempted to represent the bodily appearance of Jesus—were the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and the Fish. The origin of the latter emblem, which has so puzzled the archæologists, thus becomes comprehensible. The whole secret lies in the easily-ascertained fact that, while in the Kabala, the King Messiah is called “Interpreter,” or Revealer of the mystery, and shown to be the fifth emanation, in the Talmud—for reasons we will now explain—the Messiah is very often designated as “Dag,” or the Fish. This is an inheritance from the Chaldees, and relates—as the very name indicates—to the Babylonian Dagon, the man-fish, who was the instructor and interpreter of the people, to whom he appeared. Abarbanel explains the name, by stating that the sign of his (Messiah’s) coming “is the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the sign Pisces.”[534] Therefore, as the Christians were intent upon identifying their Christos with the Messiah of the Old Testament, they adopted it so readily as to forget that its true origin might be traced still farther back than the Babylonian Dagon. How eagerly and closely the ideal of Jesus was united, by the early Christians, with every imaginable kabalistic and Pagan tenet, may be inferred from the language of Clemens, of Alexandria, addressed to his brother co-religionists.

When they were debating upon the choice of the most appropriate symbol to remind them of Jesus, Clemens advised them in the following words: “Let the engraving upon the gem of your ring be either a dove, or a ship running before the wind (the Argha), or a fish.” Was the good father, when writing this sentence, laboring under the recollection of Joshua, son of Nun (called Jesus in the Greek and Slavonian versions); or had he forgotten the real interpretation of these Pagan symbols? Joshua, son of Nun, or Nave (Navis), could have with perfect propriety adopted the image of a ship, or even of a fish, for Joshua means Jesus, son of the fish-god; but it was really too hazardous to connect the emblems of Venus, Astarte, and all the Hindu goddesses—the argha, dove, and fish—with the “immaculate” birth of their god! This looks very much as if in the early days of Christianity but little difference was made between Christ, Bacchus, Apollo, and the Hindu Christna, the incarnation of Vishnu, with whose first avatar this symbol of the fish originated.

In the Hari-purana, in the Bagaved-gitta, as well as in several other books, the god Vishnu is shown as having assumed the form of a fish with a human head, in order to reclaim the Vedas lost during the deluge. Having enabled Visvamitra to escape with all his tribe in the ark, Vishnu, pitying weak and ignorant humanity, remained with them for some time. It was this god who taught them to build houses, cultivate the land, and to thank the unknown Deity whom he represented, by building temples and instituting a regular worship; and, as he remained half-fish, half-man, all the time, at every sunset he used to return to the ocean, wherein he passed the night.

“It is he,” says the sacred book, “who taught men, after the diluvium, all that was necessary for their happiness.

“One day he plunged into the water and returned no more, for the earth had covered itself again with vegetation, fruit, and cattle.

“But he had taught the Brahmas the secret of all things” (Hari-purana).

So far, we see in this narrative the double of the story given by the Babylonian Berosus about Oannes, the fish-man, who is no other than Vishnu—unless, indeed, we have to believe that it was Chaldea which civilized India!

We say again, we desire to give nothing on our sole authority. Therefore we cite Jacolliot, who, however criticised and contradicted on other points, and however loose he may be in the matter of chronology (though even in this he is nearer right than those scientists who would have all Hindu books written since the Council of Nicea), at least cannot be denied the reputation of a good Sanscrit scholar. And he says, while analyzing the word Oan, or Oannes, that O in Sanscrit is an interjection expressing an invocation, as O, Swayambhuva! O, God! etc; and An is a radical, signifying in Sanscrit a spirit, a being; and, we presume, what the Greeks meant by the word Dæmon, a semi-god.

“What an extraordinary antiquity,” he remarks, “this fable of Vishnu, disguised as a fish, gives to the sacred books of the Hindus; especially in presence of the fact that the Vedas and Manu reckon more than twenty-five thousand years of existence, as proved by the most serious as the most authentic documents. Few peoples, says the learned Halhed, have their annals more authentic or serious than the Hindus.”[535]

We may, perhaps, throw additional light upon the puzzling question of the fish-symbol by reminding the reader that according to Genesis the first created of living beings, the first type of animal life, was the fish. “And the Elohim said: ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life’ ... and God created great whales ... and the morning and the evening were the fifth day.” Jonah is swallowed by a big fish, and is cast out again three days later. This the Christians regard as a premonition of the three days’ sepulture of Jesus which preceded his resurrection—though the statement of the three days is as fanciful as much of the rest, and adopted to fit the well-known threat to destroy the temple and rebuild it again in three days. Between his burial and alleged resurrection there intervened but one day—the Jewish Sabbath—as he was buried on Friday evening and rose to life at dawn on Sunday. However, whatever other circumstance may be regarded as a prophecy, the story of Jonah cannot be made to answer the purpose.

“Big Fish” is Cetus, the latinized form of Keto-κητω and keto is Dagon, Poseidon, the female gender of it being Keton Atar-gatis—the Syrian goddess, and Venus, of Askalon. The figure or bust of Der-Keto or Astarte was generally represented on the prow of the ships. Jonah (the Greek Iona, or dove sacred to Venus) fled to Jaffa, where the god Dagon, the man-fish, was worshipped, and dared not go to Níneveh, where the dove was revered. Hence, some commentators believe that when Jonah was thrown overboard and was swallowed by a fish, we must understand that he was picked up by one of these vessels, on the prow of which was the figure of Keto. But the kabalists have another legend, to this effect: They say that Jonah was a run-away priest from the temple of the goddess where the dove was worshipped, and desired to abolish idolatry and institute monotheistic worship. That, caught near Jaffa, he was held prisoner by the devotees of Dagon in one of the prison-cells of the temple, and that it is the strange form of the cell which gave rise to the allegory. In the collection of Mose de Garcia, a Portuguese kabalist, there is a drawing representing the interior of the temple of Dagon. In the middle stands an immense idol, the upper portion of whose body is human, and the lower fish-like. Between the belly and the tail is an aperture which can be closed like the door of a closet. In it the transgressors against the local deity were shut up until further disposal. The drawing in question was made from an old tablet covered with curious drawings and inscriptions in old Phœnician characters, describing this Venetian oubliette of biblical days. The tablet itself was found in an excavation a few miles from Jaffa. Considering the extraordinary tendency of Oriental nations for puns and allegories, is it not barely possible that the “big fish” by which Jonah was swallowed was simply the cell within the belly of Dagon?

It is significant that this double appellation of “Messiah” and “Dag” (fish), of the Talmudists, should so well apply to the Hindu Vishnu, the “Preserving” Spirit, and the second personage of the Brahmanic trinity. This deity, having already manifested itself, is still regarded as the future Saviour of humanity, and is the selected Redeemer, who will appear at its tenth incarnation or avatar, like the Messiah of the Jews, to lead the blessed onward, and restore to them the primitive Vedas. At his first avatar, Vishnu is alleged to have appeared to humanity, in form like a fish. In the temple of Rama, there is a representation of this god which answers perfectly to that of Dagon, as given by Berosus. He has the body of a man issuing from the mouth of a fish, and holds in his hands the lost Veda. Vishnu, moreover, is the water-god, in one sense, the Logos of the Parabrahm, for as the three persons of the manifested god-head constantly interchange their attributes, we see him in the same temple represented as reclining on the seven-headed serpent, Ananta (eternity), and moving, like the Spirit of God, on the face of the primeval waters.

Vishnu is evidently the Adam Kadmon of the kabalists, for Adam is the Logos or the first Anointed, as Adam Second is the King Messiah.

Lakmy, or Lakshmi, the passive or feminine counterpart of Vishnu, the creator and the preserver, is also called Ada Maya. She is the “Mother of the World,” Damatri, the Venus Aphrodite of the Greeks; also Isis and Eve. While Venus is born from the sea-foam, Lakmy springs out from the water at the churning of the sea; when born, she is so beautiful that all the gods fall in love with her. The Jews, borrowing their types wherever they could get them, made their first woman after the pattern of Lakmy. It is curious that Viracocha, the Supreme Being in Peru, means, literally translated, “foam of the sea.”

Eugene Burnouf, the great authority of the French school, announces his opinion in the same spirit: “We must learn one day,” he observes, “that all ancient traditions disfigured by emigration and legend, belong to the history of India.” Such is the opinion of Colebrooke, Inman, King, Jacolliot, and many other Orientalists.

We have said above, that, according to the secret computation peculiar to the students of the hidden science, Messiah is the fifth emanation, or potency. In the Jewish Kabala, where the ten Sephiroth emanate from Adam Kadmon (placed below the crown), he comes fifth. So in the Gnostic system; so in the Buddhistic, in which the fifth Buddha—Maitree, will appear at his last advent to save mankind before the final destruction of the world. If Vishnu is represented in his forthcoming and last appearance as the tenth avatar or incarnation, it is only because every unit held as an androgyne manifests itself doubly. The Buddhists who reject this dual-sexed incarnation reckon but five. Thus, while Vishnu is to make his last appearance in his tenth, Buddha is said to do the same in his fifth incarnation.[536]

The better to illustrate the idea, and show how completely the real meaning of the avatars, known only to the students of the secret doctrine was misunderstood by the ignorant masses, we elsewhere give the diagrams of the Hindu and Chaldeo-Kabalistic avatars and emanations.[537] This basic and true fundamental stone of the secret cycles, shows on its very face, that far from taking their revealed Vedas and Bible literally, the Brahman-pundits, and the Tanaïm—the scientists and philosophers of the pre-Christian epochs—speculated on the creation and development of the world quite in a Darwinian way, both anticipating him and his school in the natural selection of species, gradual development, and transformation.

We advise every one tempted to enter an indignant protest against this affirmation to read more carefully the books of Manu, even in the incomplete translation of Sir William Jones, and the more or less careless one of Jacolliot. If we compare the Sanchoniathon Phœnician Cosmogony, and the record of Berosus with the Bhagavatta and Manu, we will find enunciated exactly the same principles as those now offered as the latest developments of modern science. We have quoted from the Chaldean and Phœnician records in our first volume; we will now glance at the Hindu books.

“When this world had issued out of darkness, the subtile elementary principles produced the vegetal seed which animated first the plants; from the plants, life passed into fastastical bodies which were born in the ilus of the waters; then, through a series of forms and various animals, it reached MAN.”[538]

“He (man, before becoming such) will pass successively through plants, worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, cattle, and wild animals; such is the inferior degree.”

“Such, from Brahma down to the vegetables, are declared the transmigrations which take place in this world.”[539]

In the Sanchoniathonian Cosmogony, men are also evolved out of the ilus of the chaos,[540] and the same evolution and transformation of species are shown.

And now we will leave the rostrum to Mr. Darwin: “I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors.”[541]

Again: “I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth, have descended from some one primordial form.[542] ... I view all beings, not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited.”[543]

In short, they lived in the Sanchoniathonian chaos, and in the ilus of Manu. Vyasa and Kapila go still farther than Darwin and Manu. “They see in Brahma but the name of the universal germ; they deny the existence of a First Cause; and pretend that everything in nature found itself developed only in consequence of material and fatal forces,” says Jacolliot.[544]

Correct as may be this latter quotation from Kapila, it demands a few words of explanation. Jacolliot repeatedly compares Kapila and Veda Vyasa with Pyrrho and Littré. We have nothing against such a comparison with the Greek philosopher, but we must decidedly object to any with the French Comtist; we find it an unmerited fling at the memory of the great Aryan sage. Nowhere does this prolific writer state the repudiation by either ancient or modern Brahmans of God—the “unknown,” universal Spirit; nor does any other Orientalist accuse the Hindus of the same, however perverted the general deductions of our savants about Buddhistic atheism. On the contrary, Jacolliot states more than once that the learned Pundits and educated Brahmans have never shared the popular superstitions; and affirms their unshaken belief in the unity of God and the soul’s immortality, although most assuredly neither Kapila, nor the initiated Brahmans, nor the followers of the Vedanta school would ever admit the existence of an anthropomorphic creator, a “First Cause” in the Christian sense. Jacolliot, in his Indo-European and African Traditions, is the first to make an onslaught on Professor Müller, for remarking that the Hindu gods were “masks without actors ... names without being, and not beings without names.”[545] Quoting, in support of his argument, numerous verses from the sacred Hindu books, he adds: “Is it possible to refuse to the author of these stanzas a definite and clear conception of the divine force, of the Unique Being, master and Sovereign of the Universe?... Were the altars then built to a metaphor?”[546]

The latter argument is perfectly just, so far as Max Müller’s negation is concerned. But we doubt whether the French rationalist understands Kapila’s and Vyasa’s philosophy better than the German philologist does the “theological twaddle,” as the latter terms the Atharva-Veda. Professor Müller and Jacolliot may have ever so great claims to erudition, and be ever so familiar with Sanscrit and other ancient Oriental languages, but both lack the key to the thousand and one mysteries of the old secret doctrine and its philosophy. Only, while the German philologist does not even take the trouble to look into this magical and “theological twaddle,” we find the French Indianist never losing an opportunity to investigate. Moreover, he honestly admits his incompetency to ever fathom this ocean of mystical learning. In its existence he not only firmly believes, but throughout his works he incessantly calls the attention of science to its unmistakable traces at every step in India. Still, though the learned Pundits and Brahmans—his “revered masters” of the pagodas of Villenoor and Chélambrum in the Carnatic,[547] as it seems, positively refused to reveal to him the mysteries of the magical part of the Agrouchada-Parikshaï,[548] and of Brahmâtma’s triangle,[549] he persists in the honest declaration that everything is possible in Hindu metaphysics, even to the Kapila and Vyasa systems having been hitherto misunderstood.

M. Jacolliot weakens his assertion immediately afterward with the following contradiction:

“We were one day inquiring of a Brahman of the pagoda of Chélambrum, who belonged to the skeptical school of the naturalists of Vyasa, whether he believed in the existence of God. He answered us, smiling: ‘Aham eva param Brahma’—I am myself a god.

“‘What do you mean by that?’

“‘I mean that every being on earth, however humble, is an immortal portion of the immortal matter.’”[550]

The answer is one which would suggest itself to every ancient philosopher, Kabalist and Gnostic, of the early days. It contains the very spirit of the delphic and kabalistic commandment, for esoteric philosophy solved, ages ago, the problem of what man was, is, and will be. If persons believing the Bible verse which teaches that the “Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” reject at the same time the idea that every atom of this dust, as every particle of this “living soul,” contains “God” within itself, then we pity the logic of that Christian. He forgets the verses which precede the one in question. God blesses equally every beast of the field and every living creature, in the water as in the air, and He endows them all with life, which is a breath of His own Spirit, and the soul of the animal. Humanity is the Adam Kadmon of the “Unknown,” His microcosm, and His only representative on earth, and every man is a god on earth.

We would ask this French scholar, who seems so familiar with every sloka of the books of Manu, and other Vedic writers, the meaning of this sentence so well known to him:

“Plants and vegetation reveal a multitude of forms because of their precedent actions; they are surrounded by darkness, but are nevertheless endowed with an interior soul, and feel equally pleasure and pain” (Manu, book i.).

If the Hindu philosophy teach the presence of a degree of soul in the lowest forms of vegetable life, and even in every atom in space, how is it possible that it should deny the same immortal principle to man? And if it once admit the immortal spirit in man, how can it logically deny the existence of the parent source—I will not say the first, but the eternal Cause? Neither rationalists nor sensualists, who do not comprehend Indian metaphysics, should estimate the ignorance of Hindu metaphysicians by their own.

The grand cycle, as we have heretofore remarked, includes the progress of mankind from its germ in the primordial man of spiritual form to the deepest depth of degradation he can reach—each successive step in the descent being accompanied by a greater strength and grossness of the physical form than its precursor—and ends with the Flood. But while the grand cycle, or age, is running its course, seven minor cycles are passed, each marking the evolution of a new race out of the preceding one, on a new world. And each of these races, or grand types of humanity, breaks up into subdivisions of families, and they again into nations and tribes, as we see the earth’s inhabitants subdivided to-day into Mongols, Caucasians, Indians, etc.

Before proceeding to show by diagrams the close resemblance between the esoteric philosophies of all the ancient peoples, however geographically remote from each other, it will be useful to briefly explain the real ideas which underlie all those symbols and allegorical representations and have hitherto so puzzled the uninitiated commentators. Better than anything, it may show that religion and science were closer knit than twins in days of old; that they were one in two and two in one from the very moment of their conception. With mutually convertible attributes, science was spiritual and religion was scientific. Like the androgyne man of the first chapter of Genesis—“male and female,” passive and active; created in the image of the Elohim. Omniscience developed omnipotency, the latter called for the exercise of the former, and thus the giant had dominion given him over all the four kingdoms of the world. But, like the second Adam, these androgynes were doomed to “fall and lose their powers” as soon as the two halves of the duality separated. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge gives death without the fruit of the Tree of Life. Man must know himself before he can hope to know the ultimate genesis even of beings and powers less developed in their inner nature than himself. So with religion and science; united two in one they were infallible, for the spiritual intuition was there to supply the limitations of physical senses. Separated, exact science rejects the help of the inner voice, while religion becomes merely dogmatic theology—each is but a corpse without a soul.

The esoteric doctrine, then, teaches, like Buddhism and Brahmanism, and even the persecuted Kabala, that the one infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology of Manu these conditions are called the “day” and the “night” of Brahma. The latter is either “awake” or “asleep.” The Svâbhâvikas, or philosophers of the oldest school of Buddhism (which still exists in Nepaul), speculate but upon the active condition of this “Essence,” which they call Svabhâvât, and deem it foolish to theorize upon the abstract and “unknowable” power in its passive condition. Hence they are called atheists by both Christian theology and modern scientists; for neither of the two are able to understand the profound logic of their philosophy. The former will allow of no other God than the personified secondary powers which have blindly worked out the visible universe, and which became with them the anthropomorphic God of the Christians—the Jehovah, roaring amid thunder and lightning. In its turn, rationalistic science greets the Buddhists and the Svâbhâvikas as the “positivists” of the archaic ages. If we take a one-sided view of the philosophy of the latter, our materialists may be right in their own way. The Buddhists maintain that there is no Creator but an infinitude of creative powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is inscrutable—hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher. Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence, from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and “darkness,” solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the “deep.” To use a metaphor which will convey the idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the “unknown essence” produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series which had no beginning and will have no end.

Thus we are enabled to build our theories solely on the visible manifestations of the Deity, on its objective natural phenomena. To apply to these creative principles the term God is puerile and absurd. One might as well call by the name of Benvenuto Cellini the fire which fuses the metal, or the air that cools it when it is run in the mould. If the inner and ever-concealed spiritual, and to our minds abstract, Essence within these forces can ever be connected with the creation of the physical universe, it is but in the sense given to it by Plato. It may be termed, at best, the framer of the abstract universe which developed gradually in the Divine Thought within which it had lain dormant.

In Chapter VIII. we will attempt to show the esoteric meaning of Genesis, and its complete agreement with the ideas of other nations. The six days of creation will be found to have a meaning little suspected by the multitude of commentators, who have exercised their abilities to the full extent in attempting to reconcile them by turns with Christian theology and un-Christian geology. Disfigured as the Old Testament is, yet in its symbolism are preserved enough of the original in its principal features to show the family likeness to the cosmogonies of older nations than the Jews.

We here give the diagrams of the Hindu and the Chaldeo-Jewish cosmogonies. The antiquity of the diagram of the former may be inferred from the fact that many of the Brahmanical pagodas are designed and built on this figure, called the “Sri-Iantara.”[551] And yet we find the highest honors paid to it by the Jewish and mediæval kabalists, who call it “Solomon’s seal.” It will be quite an easy matter to trace it to its origin, once we are reminded of the history of the king-kabalist and his transactions with King Hiram and Ophir—the country of peacocks, gold, and ivory—for which land we have to search in old India.

EXPLANATION OF THE TWO DIAGRAMS

REPRESENTING THE

CHAOTIC AND THE FORMATIVE PERIODS, BEFORE AND AFTER
OUR UNIVERSE BEGAN TO BE EVOLVED.

FROM THE ESOTERIC BRAHMANICAL, BUDDHISTIC, AND CHALDEAN
STANDPOINTS, WHICH AGREE IN EVERY RESPECT WITH THE EVOLUTIONARY
THEORY OF MODERN SCIENCE.