Theosophical Society,
THE
SECRET DOCTRINE
H P Blavatsky
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THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS.
RECENT
discoveries made by great mathematicians and Kabalists thus prove, beyond a
shadow of doubt, that every theology, from the earliest and oldest down to the
latest, has sprung not only from a common source of abstract beliefs, but from
one universal esoteric, or "Mystery" language. These scholars hold
the key to the universal language of old, and have turned it successfully,
though only once, in the hermetically closed door leading to the Hall of Mysteries.
The great archaic system known from prehistoric ages as the sacred Wisdom
Science, one that is contained and can be traced in every old as well as in
every new religion, had, and still has, its universal language -- suspected by
the Mason Ragon -- the language of the Hierophants, which has seven
"dialects," so to speak, each referring, and being specially
appropriated, to one of the seven mysteries of Nature. Each had its own
symbolism. Nature could thus be either read in its fulness, or viewed from one
of its special aspects.
The
proof of this lies, to this day, in the extreme difficulty which the
Orientalists in general, the Indianists and Egyptologists especially,
experience in interpreting the allegorical writings of the Aryans and the
hieratic records of old
The
many-sided facets of the mystery language have led to the adoption of widely
varied dogmas and rites in the exotericism of the Church rituals. It is they,
again, which are at the origin of most of the dogmas of the Christian Church,
e.g., the seven Sacraments, the Trinity, the Resurrection; the seven capital
Sins and the seven Virtues. The seven keys to the mystery tongue, however,
having always been in
311
the
keeping of the highest among the initiated Hierophants of antiquity, it is only
the partial use of a few out of the seven which passed, through the treason of
some early Church Fathers -- ex-initiates of the Temples -- into the hands of
the new sect of the Nazarenes. Some of the early Popes were Initiates, but the
last fragments of their knowledge have now fallen into the power of the
Jesuits, who have turned them into a system of sorcery.
It
is maintained that INDIA (not in its present limits, but including its ancient
boundaries) is the only country in the world which still has among her sons
adepts, who have the knowledge of all the seven sub-systems and the key to the
entire system. Since the fall of
"Every
time I hear people talking of the religion of
Here
we believe the eminent Egyptologist is going too far. The exoteric dogmas may
often have been altered, the esoteric never. He does not take into account the
sacred immutability of the primitive truths, revealed only during the mysteries
of initiation. The Egyptian priests have forgotten much, they altered nothing.
The loss of a good deal of the primitive teaching was due to the sudden deaths
of the great Hierophants, who passed away before they had time to reveal all to
their successors; mostly, to the absence of worthy heirs to the knowledge. Yet
they have preserved in their rituals and dogmas the principal teachings of Thus, in the seventeenth chapter mentioned by
Maspero, one finds (1) Osiris saying he is Toum (the creative force in nature,
giving form to all Beings, spirits and men), self-generated and self-existent,
issued from Noun, the celestial river, called Father-mother of the gods, the
primordial deity, which is chaos or the Deep, impregnated by the unseen spirit.
(2) He has found Shoo (solar force) on the staircase in the City of the Eight
(the two cubes of good and Evil), and he has annihilated the evil principles in
Noun (chaos) the children of Rebellion. (3) He is the Fire and Water, i.e.,
Noun the primordial parent, and he created the gods out of his limbs -- 14 gods
(twice seven) seven dark and seven light gods (the seven Spirits of the
Presence of the Christians and the Seven dark Evil Spirits). (4) He is the Law
of existence and Being (v. 10), the Bennoo (or phoenix, the bird of
resurrection in Eternity), in whom night follows the day, and day the night --
an allusion to the periodical cycles of cosmic resurrection and human
re-incarnation; for what can this mean? "The wayfarer who crosses millions
of years, in the name of One, and the great green (primordial water or Chaos)
the name of the other" (v. 17), one begetting millions of years in
succession, the other engulfing them, to restore them back. (5) He speaks of
the Seven Luminous ones who follow their Lord, who confers justice (Osiris in
Amenti).
All
this is now shown to have been the source and origin of Christian dogmas. That
which the Jews had from Egypt, through Moses and other initiates, was confused
and distorted enough in later days; and that which the Church got from both, is
still more misinterpreted.
Yet
their system is now proven identical in this special department of symbology --
the key, namely, to the mysteries of astronomy as connected with those of
generation and conception -- with those ideas of ancient religions, the
theology of which has developed the phallic element. The Jewish system of
sacred measures applied to religious symbols is the same,
THE JEWS, AND THEIR
SYSTEM.
so
far as geometrical and numerical combinations go, as those of Chaldea, Greece,
and Egypt, having been adopted by the Jews during the centuries of their slavery
and captivity with those nations.* What was that system? It is the intimate
conviction of the author of "The Source of Measures" that "the
Mosaic Books were intended, by a mode of art speech, to set forth a geometrical
and numerical system of exact science, which should serve as an origin of
measures." Piazzi Smyth believes likewise. This system and these measures
are found by some scholars to be identical with those used in the construction
of the great pyramid -- but this is only partially so. "The foundation of
these measures was the Parker ratio," says Mr. R. Skinner, in "The
Source of Measures."
The
author of this very extraordinary work has found it out, he says, in the use of
the integral ratio in numbers of diameter to circumference of a circle,
discovered by John Parker, of
NOTE
* As we said in
tion.
. . ." But let us see what is said by the opponents of Prof. Piazzi
Smyth's measurements of the Pyramid.
Mr.
Petrie seems to deny them, and to have made short work altogether of Piazzi
Smyth's calculations in their Biblical connection. So does Mr. Proctor, the
champion "Coincidentalist" for many years past in every question of
ancient arts and sciences. Speaking of "the multitude of relations
independent of the Pyramid, which have turned up while the Pyramidalists have
been endeavouring to connect the pyramid with the solar system . . . . these
coincidences," he says, "are altogether more curious than any
coincidence between the Pyramid and astronomical numbers: the former are as
close and remarkable as they are real" (i.e., those
"coincidences" that would remain if even the pyramid had no
existence); "the latter which are only imaginary (?) have only been
established by the process which schoolboys call 'fudging,' and now new
measures have left the work to be done all over again" (Petrie's letter to
the Academy, Dec. 17, 1881.) To this Mr. Staniland Wake justly observes in his
work on "The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid" (London,
1882): "They must, however, have been more than mere coincidences, if the
builders of the Pyramid had the astronomical knowledge displayed in its perfect
orientation and in its other admitted astronomical features."
They
had it; and it is on this "knowledge" that the programme of the
MYSTERIES and of the series of Initiations was based: thence, the construction
of the Pyramids, the everlasting record and the indestructible symbol of these
Mysteries and Initiations on Earth, as the courses of the stars are in Heaven.
The cycle of Initiation was a reproduction in miniature of that great series of
Cosmic changes to which astronomers have given the name of tropical or sidereal
year. Just as, at the close of the cycle of the sidereal year [25,868 years],
the heavenly bodies return to the same relative positions as they occupied at
its outset, so at the close of the cycle of Initiation the inner man has
regained the pristine state of divine purity and knowledge from which he set
out on his cycle of terrestrial incarnation.
Moses,
an Initiate into the Egyptian Mystagogy, based the religious mysteries of the
new nation which he created, upon the same abstract formula derived from this
sidereal cycle, which he symbolised under the form and measurements of the
tabernacle, that he is supposed to have constructed in the wilderness. On these
data, the later Jewish High Priests constructed the allegory of Solomon's
Temple -- a building which never had a real existence, any more than had King
Solomon himself, who is simply, and as much a solar myth as is the still later
Hiram Abif, of the Masons, as Ragon has well demonstrated. Thus, if the
measurements of this allegorical temple, the symbol of the cycle of
PIAZZA SMYTH AND PETRIE
DISAGREE.
Initiation,
coincide with those of the Great Pyramid, it is due to the fact that the former
were derived from the latter through the Tabernacle of Moses.
That
our author has undeniably discovered one and even two of the keys is fully
demonstrated in the work just quoted. One has but to read it to feel a growing
conviction that the hidden meaning of the allegories and parables of both
Testaments is now unveiled. But that he owes this discovery far more to his own
genius than to Parker and Piazzi Smyth, is as certain, if not more so. For, as
just shown, whether the measures of the great Pyramid taken and adopted as the
correct ones by the Biblical "Pyramidalists" are beyond suspicion, is
not so sure. A proof of this is the work called "The Pyramids and Temples
of Gizeh," by Mr. F. Petrie, besides other works written quite recently to
oppose the said calculations, which were called biassed. We gather that nearly
every one of Piazzi Smyth's measurements differs from the later and more
carefully made measurements of Mr. Petrie, who concludes the Introduction to
his work with this sentence:
"As
to the results of the whole investigation, perhaps many theories will agree
with an American who was a warm believer in Pyramid theories when he came to
Gizeh. I had the pleasure of his company there for a couple of days, and at our
last meal together he said to me in a saddened tone -- 'Well, Sir! I feel as if
I had been to a funeral. By all means let the old theories have a decent
burial, though we should take care that in our haste none of the wounded ones
are buried alive.'"
As
regards the late J. Parker's calculation in general, and his third proposition
especially, we have consulted some eminent mathematicians, and this is the
substance of what they say:
Parker's
reasoning rests on sentimental, rather than mathematical, considerations, and
is logically inconclusive.
Proposition
III., namely, that --
"The
circle is the natural basis or beginning of all area, and the square being made
so in mathematical science, is artificial and arbitrary --"
--
is an illustration of an arbitrary proposition, and cannot safely be relied
upon in mathematical reasoning. The same observation applies, even more
strongly, to Proposition VII., which states that:
"Because
the circle is the primary shape in nature, and hence the basis of area; and
because the circle is measured by, and is equal to the square only in ratio of
half its circumference by the radius, therefore, circumference and radius, and
not the square of diameter, are the only natural and legitimate elements of
area, by which all regular shapes are made equal to the square, and equal to
the circle."
Proposition
IX. is a remarkable example of faulty reasoning, and it is the one on which Mr.
Parker's Quadrature mainly rests. Here it is:--
"The
circle and the equilateral triangle are opposite to one another in all the
elements of their construction, and hence the fractional diameter of one
circle, which is equal to the diameter of one square, is in the opposite
duplicate ratio to the diameter of an equilateral triangle whose area is
one," etc., etc.
Granting,
for the sake of argument, that a triangle can be said to have a radius in the
sense in which we speak of the radius of a circle, -- for what Parker calls the
radius of the triangle is the radius of a circle inscribed in the triangle and
therefore not the radius of the triangle at all, -- and granting for the moment
the other fanciful and mathematical propositions united in his premises, why
must we conclude that if the triangle and circle are opposite in all the
elements of their construction, the diameter of any defined circle is in the
opposite duplicate ratio of the diameter of any given equivalent triangle? What
necessary connection is there between the premises and the conclusion? The
reasoning is of a kind not known in geometry, and would not be accepted by
strict mathematicians.
Whether
the Archaic esoteric system originated the British inch or not, is of little
consequence, however, to the strict and true metaphysician. Nor does Mr.
Ralston Skinner's esoteric reading of the Bible become incorrect, merely
because the measurements of the Pyramid will not be found to agree with those
of Solomon's temple, the ark of Noah, etc.; or because Mr. Parker's Quadrature
of the Circle is rejected by mathematicians. For Mr. Skinner's reading depends
first of all on the Kabalistic methods and the Rabbinical value of the Hebrew
letters. But it is extremely important to ascertain whether the measures used
in the evolution and building of the Aryan symbolic religion, in the
construction of their temples, the figures given in the Puranas, and especially
in their chronology, their astronomical symbols, the duration of the cycles,
and other computations, were, or were not, the same as those used in the
Biblical measurements and glyphs. For this will prove that the Jews, unless
they took their sacred cubit and measurements from the Egyptians (Moses being
an initiate of the Priests) must have got those notions from
TRUTH MUST PREVAIL AT
LAST.
the
Hebrew language being the divine language, and that (b) this universal language
belongs to direct revelation!
The
latter hypothesis is correct only in the sense shown in the last paragraph of
the preceding §; but we have yet to agree as to the nature and character of the
divine "Revealer." With regard to priority, this, to the profane,
will of course depend on (a) the internal and external evidence of the
revelation, and (b) on each scholar's individual preconception. This, however,
cannot prevent either the theistic Kabalist, or the Pantheistic Occultist, from
believing each in his way; neither of the two convincing the other. The data
furnished by history are too meagre and unsatisfactory for either of them to
prove to the sceptic which of them is right.
On
the other hand, the proofs afforded by tradition are too constantly rejected
for us to hope to settle the question in our present age. Meanwhile,
materialistic science will be laughing impartially at both Kabalists and
Occultists. But the said vexed question of priority once laid aside, Science,
in its departments of philology and comparative religion, will find itself
finally taken to task, and be compelled to admit the common claim.* Its
greatest scholars, instead of pooh-poohing that supposed
NOTE
* One by one the claims
become admitted, as one Scientist after another is compelled to recognize the
facts given out from the Secret Doctrine -- though he rarely, if ever,
recognizes that he has been anticipated in his statements. Thus, in the palmy
days of Mr. Piazzi Smyth's authority on the Pyramid of Gizeh, his theory was,
that the porphyry sarcophagus of the King's Chamber "is the unit of
measure for the two most enlightened nations of the earth,
Our statement was
laughed at in those days. We were accused of having got our ideas from the
"craze" of Shaw, an English writer who had maintained that the
Sarcophagus had been used for the celebration of the Mysteries of Osiris; (we
had never heard of that writer!). And now, six or seven years later, this is
what Mr. Staniland Wake writes on p. 93 of his paper, on "The Origin and
Significance of the Great Pyramid."
"The so-called
King's Chamber, of which an enthusiastic pyramidist says, 'The polished walls,
fine materials, grand proportions, and exalted place, eloquently tell of
glories yet to come -- if not, the chamber of perfections of Cheops' tomb, was
probably the place to which the initiant was admitted after he had passed
through the narrow upward passage and the grand gallery, with its lowly
termination, which gradually prepared him for the continued on
final stage of the
SACRED MYSTERIES." Had Mr. Staniland Wake been a Theosophist, he might
have added that the narrow upward passage leading to the King's chamber had a
"narrow gate" indeed; the same "strait gate" which
"leadeth unto life," or the new spiritual re-birth alluded to by
Jesus in Matthew vii. 13 et seq; and that it is this gate in the Initiation
temple, that the writer who recorded the words alleged to have been spoken by
an Initiate, was thinking of.
"farrago
of absurd fiction and superstitions," as the Brahminical literature is
generally termed, will endeavour to learn the symbolical universal language
with its numerical and geometrical keys. But here again they will hardly be
successful if they share the belief that the Jewish Kabalistic system contains
the key to the whole mystery: for, it does not. Nor does any other Scripture at
present possess it in its entirety, for even the Vedas are not complete. Every
old religion is but a chapter or two of the entire volume of archaic primeval
mysteries -- Eastern Occultism alone being able to boast that it is in possession
of the full secret, with its seven keys. Comparisons will be instituted, and as
much as possible will be explained in this work -- the rest is left to the
student's personal intuition. For in saying that Eastern Occultism has the
secret, it is not as if a "complete" or even an approximate knowledge
was claimed by the writer, which would be absurd. What I know, I give out; that
which I cannot explain, the student must find out for himself.
But
while supposing that the whole cycle of the universal mystery language will not
be mastered for whole centuries to come, even that which has been hitherto
discovered in the Bible by some scholars is quite sufficient to demonstrate the
claim -- mathematically. Judaism having availed itself of two keys out of the
seven, and these two keys having been now rediscovered, it becomes no longer a
matter of individual speculation and hypothesis, least of all of
"coincidence," but one of a correct reading of the Bible texts, as
anyone acquainted with arithmetic reads and verifies an addition or total.* A
few years longer and this system will kill the dead letter of the Bible, as it
will that of all the other exoteric faiths, by showing the dogmas in their
real, naked meaning.
And
then this undeniable meaning, however incomplete, will unveil the mystery of
Being, besides changing entirely the modern scientific systems of Anthropology,
Ethnology and especially that of Chronology. The element of Phallicism, found
in every God-name and narrative in the Old (and to some degree in the New)
Testament, may also in time considerably change modern materialistic views in
Biology and Physiology.
Divested
of their modern repulsive crudeness, such views of nature and man, on the
authority of the celestial bodies and their mysteries,
NOTE
* All we have said in
MOSES COPIED FROM
SARGON.
will
unveil the evolutions of the human mind and show how natural was such a course
of thought. The so-called phallic symbols have become offensive only because of
the element of materiality and animality in them. As they originated with the
archaic races, which, issuing to their personal knowledge from an androgyne
ancestry, were the first phenomenal manifestations in their own sight of the separation
of sexes and the ensuing mystery of creating in their turn -- such symbols were
but natural. If later races have degraded them, especially the "chosen
people," this does not affect the origin of those symbols. The little
Semitic tribe -- one of the smallest branchlets from the commingling of the 4th
and 5th sub-races (the Mongolo-Turanian and the Indo-European, so-called, after
the sinking of the great Continent) -- could only accept its symbology in the
spirit which was given to it by the nations from which it was derived.
Perchance, in the Mosaic beginnings, that symbology was not as crude as it
became later under the handling of Ezra, who remodelled the whole Pentateuch.
For the glyph of Pharaoh's daughter (the woman), the
NOTE
* On page 224 of
Assyrian Antiquities Mr. George Smith says: "In the
1. Sargona, the powerful
king, the king of
2. My mother was a
princess, my father I did not know; a brother of my father ruled over the
country.
3. In the city of
Azupiran, which is by the side of the River
4. My mother, the
princess, conceived me; in difficulty she brought me forth.
5. She placed me in an
ark of rushes, with bitumen my exit she sealed up.
6. She launched me in
the river, which did not drown me.
7. The river carried me,
to Akki the water-carrier it brought me.
8. Akki, the
water-carrier, in tenderness of bowels, lifted me, etc., etc.
And now Exodus (ii):
"And when she (Moses' mother) could not longer hide him, she took for him
an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child
therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink."
"The story,"
says Mr. G. Smith, "is supposed to have happened about 1600 B.C. rather
earlier than the supposed age of Moses. As we know that the fame of Sargon
reached
and
that he applied the allegory told of Sargon to the Jewish lawgiver. In short,
that Exodus was never written by Moses, but re-fabricated from old materials by
Ezra.
And
if so, then why should not other symbols and glyphs far more crude in their
phallic element have been added by this adept in the later Chaldean and Sabaean
phallic worship? We are taught that the primeval faith of the Israelites was
quite different from that which was developed centuries later by the
Talmudists, and before them by David and Hezekiah.
All
this, notwithstanding the exoteric element, as now found in the two Testaments,
is quite sufficient to class the Bible among esoteric works, and to connect its
secret system with Indian, Chaldean, and Egyptian symbolism. The whole cycle of
biblical glyphs and numbers as suggested by astronomical observations --
astronomy and theology being closely connected -- is found in Indian exoteric,
as well as esoteric, systems. These figures and their symbols, the signs of the
Zodiac, the planets, their aspects and nodes -- the last term having now passed
even into our modern botany to distinguish male and female plants (the
unisexual, polygamous, monoecious, dioecious, etc., etc.) -- are known in
astronomy as sextiles, quartiles and so on, and have been used for ages and
aeons by the archaic nations, and in one sense have the same meaning as the
Hebrew numerals. The earliest forms of elementary geometry must have certainly
been suggested by the observation of the heavenly bodies and their groupings.
Hence the most archaic symbols in Eastern Esotericism are a circle, a point, a
triangle, a plane, a cube, a pentacle, and a hexagon, and plane figures with
various sides and angles. This shows the knowledge and use of geometrical
symbology to be as old as the world.
Starting
from this, it becomes easy to understand how nature herself could have taught
primeval mankind, even without the help of its divine instructors, the first
principles of a numerical and geometrical symbol language.* Hence one finds
numbers and figures used as an
NOTE
* As a reminder how the
Esoteric religion of Moses was crushed several times, and the worship of
Jehovah, as re-established by David, put in its place, by Hezekiah for one,
read pp. 436-42, vol. II., in Isis Unveiled. Surely there must have been some very
good reasons why the Sadducees, who furnished almost all the high Priests of
Judea, held to the Laws of Moses and spurned the alleged "Books of
Moses," the Pentateuch of the Synagogue and the Talmud.
THE CROSS, A PHALLIC
SYMBOL.
expression
and a record of thought in every archaic symbolical Scripture. They are ever
the same, with only certain variations growing out of the first figures. Thus
the evolution and correlation of the mysteries of Kosmos, of its growth and
development -- spiritual and physical, abstract and concrete -- were first
recorded in geometrical changes of shape. Every Cosmogony began with a circle,
a point, a triangle, and a cube, up to number 9, when it was synthesized by the
first line and a circle -- the Pythagorean mystic Decade, the sum of all,
involving and expressing the mysteries of the entire Kosmos; recorded a hundred
times more fully in the Hindu system, for him who can understand its mystic
language. The numbers 3 and 4, in their blending of 7, as those of 5, 6, 9, and
10, are the very corner-stone of Occult Cosmogonies. This decade and its
thousand combinations are found in every portion of the globe. One recognizes
them in the caves and rock-cut temples of Hindostan and Central Asia, as in the
pyramids and lithoi of Egypt and America; in the Catacombs of Ozimandyas, in
the mounds of the Caucasian snowcapped fastnesses, in the ruins of Palenque, in
Easter Island, everywhere whither the foot of ancient man has ever journeyed.
The 3 and the 4, the triangle and the cube, or the male and female universal
glyph, showing the first aspect of the evolving deity, is stamped for ever in
the Southern Cross in the Heavens, as in the Egyptian Crux-Ansata. As well
expressed, "The Cube unfolded is in display a cross of the tau, or
Egyptian form, or of the Christian cross form. . . . A circle attached to the
first, gives the ansated cross. . . numbers 3 and 4 counted on the cross,
showing a form of the (Hebrew) golden candlestick (in the Holy of Holies), and
of the 3 + 4 = 7, and 6 + 1 = 7, days in the circle of the week, as 7 lights of
the sun. So also as the week of 7 lights gave origin to the month and year, so
it is the time marker of birth. . . . The cross form being shown, then, by the
connected use of the form 113 : 355, the symbol is completed by the attachment
of a man to the cross.* This kind of measure was made to co-ordinate with the
idea of the origin of human life, and hence the phallic form.**"
The
Stanzas show the cross and these numbers playing a prominent part in archaic
cosmogony. Meanwhile we may profit by the evidence collected by the same author
to show the identity of symbols and their esoteric meaning all over the globe,
which he calls rightly the "primordial vestiges of these symbols."
NOTE
* Once more, remember
the Hindu Wittoba crucified in space; the significance of the "sacred
sign," the Swastica; Plato's Decussated man in Space, etc., etc.
** "Source of
Measures."
"Under
the general view taken of the nature of the number forms. . . . it becomes a
matter of research of the utmost interest as to when and where their existence
and their use first became known. Has it been a matter of revelation in what we
know as the historic age -- a cycle exceedingly modern when the age of the
human race is contemplated? It seems, in fact, as to the date of its possession
by man, to have been farther removed in the past from the old Egyptians than
are the old Egyptians from us.
"The
Easter Isles in 'mid Pacific' present the feature of the remaining peaks of the
mountains of a submerged continent, for the reason that these peaks are thickly
studded with Cyclopean statues, remnants of the civilization of a dense and
cultivated people, who must have of necessity occupied a widely extended area.
On the back of these images is to be found the 'ansated cross' and the same
modified to the outlines of the human form. A full description, with plate
showing the land, with the thickly planted statues, also with copies of the
images, is to be found in the January number 1870 of the London Builder.
"In
the 'Naturalist,' published at Salem, Massachusetts, in one of the early
numbers, is to be found a description of some very ancient and curious carving
on the crest walls of the mountains of South America, older by far, it is
averred, than the races now living. The strangeness of these tracings is in
that they exhibit the outlines of a man stretched out on a cross,* by a series
of drawings, by which from the form of a man that of a cross springs, but so
done that the cross may be taken as the man, or the man as the cross; thus
exhibiting a symbolic display of the interdependency of the forms set forth.
"It
is known that tradition among the Aztecs has handed down a very perfect account
of the deluge. . . . Baron Humboldt says that we are to look for the country of
Aztalan, the original country of the Aztecs, as high up at least as the 42nd
parallel north; whence, journeying, they at last arrived in the vale of
"The
form of this pyramid (of Papantla) which has seven stories, is more tapering
than any other monument of this kind yet discovered, but its height is not
remarkable, being but 57 feet, its base but 25 feet on each side. However, it
is remarkable on one account: it is built entirely of hewn stones, of an
extraordinary size, and very beautifully shaped. Three staircases lead to the
top, the steps of which are decorated with hieroglyphical sculptures and small
niches arranged with great symmetry. The number of these niches seems to allude
to the 318 simple and compound signs of the days of their civil calendar."
"318
is the Gnostic value of Christ," remarks the author, "and the famous
number of the trained or circumcised servants of Abraham. When it is consi-
NOTE
* See farther on the
description given of the early Aryan initiation: of Visvakarma crucifying the
Sun, "Vikkartana," shorn of his beams -- on a cruciform lath.
IDENTITY OF THE ANCIENT
SYMBOLS.
dered
that 318 is an abstract value, and universal, as expressive of a diameter value
to a circumference of unity, its use in the composition of the civil calendar
becomes manifest."
Identical
glyphs, numbers and esoteric symbols are found in
Shall
one, for fear of incurring the penalty of being called a superstitious fool,
and even a liar, abstain from furnishing proofs -- as good as any -- only
because that day, when all the SEVEN KEYS shall be delivered unto Science, or rather
the men of learning and research in the symbological department, has not yet
dawned? In the face of the crushing discoveries of Geology and Anthropology
with regard to the antiquity of man, shall we -- in order to avoid the usual
penalty that awaits every one who strays outside the beaten paths of either
Theology or Materialism -- hold to the 6,000 years and "special
creation," or accept in submissive admiration our genealogy and descent
from the ape? Not so, as long as it is known that the secret records hold the
said SEVEN keys to the mystery of the genesis of man. Faulty, materialistic,
and biassed as the scientific theories may be, they are a thousand times nearer
the truth than the vagaries of theology. The latter are in their death agony
for every one but the most uncompromising bigot and fanatic.* Hence we have no
choice but either to blindly accept the deductions of Science, or to cut adrift
from it, and withstand it fearlessly to its face, stating what the Secret
Doctrine teaches us, being fully prepared to bear the consequences.
But
let us see whether Science in its materialistic speculations, and even theology
in its death-rattle and supreme struggle to reconcile the 6,000 years since
Adam with Sir Charles Lyell's "Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of
Man," do not themselves give us unconsciously a helping hand. Ethnology,
on the confession of some of its very learned votaries, finds it already
impossible to account for the varieties in the human race, unless the
hypothesis of the creation of several
NOTE
* Some of its defenders
must have lost their reason, one would rather say. For what can one think when,
in the face of the dead-letter absurdities of the Bible, these are still
supported, publicly and as fiercely as ever, and one finds its theologians
maintaining that though "the Scriptures carefully refrain (?) from making
any direct contribution to scientific knowledge, they have never stumbled upon
any statement which will not abide the light of ADVANCING SCIENCE"!!! --
("Primeval Man," p. 14).
Adam
and a yellow Adam."* Were they Hindus enumerating the rebirths of Vamadeva
from the Linga Purana, they could say little more. For, enumerating the
repeated births of Siva, the latter show him in one Kalpa of a white
complexion, in another of a black colour, in still another of a red colour,
after which the Kumara becomes "four youths of a yellow colour." This
strange coincidence, as Mr. Proctor would say, speak only in favour of
scientific intuition, as Siva-Kumara represents only allegorically the human
races during the genesis of man. But it led to another intuitional phenomenon
-- in the theological ranks this time. The unknown author of "Primeval
Man" in a desperate effort to screen the divine Revelation from the
merciless and eloquent discoveries of geology and anthropology, remarking that
"it would be unfortunate if the defenders of the Bible should be driven
into the position of either surrendering the inspiration of Scripture, or
denying the conclusions of geologists" -- finds a compromise. Nay, he
devotes a thick volume to proving this fact: "Adam was not the first man**
created upon this earth." . . . The exhumed relics of pre-Adamic man,
"instead of shaking our confidence in Scripture, supply additional proof
of its veracity" (p. 194). How so? In the simplest way imaginable; for the
author argues that, henceforth "we" (the clergy) "are enabled to
leave scientific men to pursue their studies without attempting to coerce them
by the fear of heresy" . . . (this must be a relief indeed to Messrs.
Huxley, Tyndall, and Sir C. Lyell). . . . "The Bible narrative does not
commence with creation, as is commonly supposed, but with the formation of Adam
and Eve, millions of years after our planet had been created. Its previous
history, so far as Scripture is concerned, is yet unwritten." . . . . .
"There may have been not one, but twenty different races upon the earth
before the time of Adam, just as there may be twenty different races of men on
other worlds" (p. 55). . . . Who, then, or what were those races, since
the author still maintains that Adam is the first man of our race? It was THE
SATANIC RACE AND RACES! "Satan (was) never in heaven, Angels and men
(being) one species." It was the pre-Adamic race of "Angels that
sinned." Satan was "the first Prince of this world," we read.
Having died in consequence of his rebellion, he remained on earth as a
disembodied Spirit, and tempted Adam and Eve. "The earlier ages of the
Satanic race, and more especially during the life-time of Satan (!!!) may have
been a period
NOTE
* "Primeval Man
Unveiled, or the Anthropology of the Bible"; author (unknown) of the
"Stars and the Angels" 1870, p. 195.
** Especially in the
face of the evidence furnished by the authorized Bible itself in ch. iv. of
Genesis, v. 16 and 17, which shows Cain going to the
THE IMPARTIALITY OF
SCIENTIFIC DENIALS.
of
patriarchal civilization and comparative repose -- a time of Tubal-Cains and
Jubals, when both Sciences and arts attempted to strike their roots into the
accursed ground. . . . . What a subject for an epic. . . . (when) there are
inevitable incidents which must have occurred. We see before us . . . . the gay
primeval lover wooing his blushing bride at dewy eve under the Danish oaks,
that then grew where now no oaks will grow . . . . the grey primeval patriarch
. . . . the primeval offspring innocently gambolling by his side. . . . . A
thousand such pictures rise before us"! . . . . (pp. 206-207).
The
retrospective glance at this Satanic "blushing bride" in the days of
Satan's innocence, does not lose in poetry as it gains in originality. Quite
the reverse. The modern Christian bride -- who does not often blush nowadays
before her gay modern lovers -- might even derive a moral lesson from this
daughter of Satan, in the exuberant fancy of her first human biographer. These
pictures -- and to appreciate them at their true value they must be examined in
the volume that describes them -- are all suggested with a view to reconcile
the infallibility of revealed Scripture with Sir C. Lyell's "Antiquity of
Man" and other damaging scientific works. But this does not prevent truth
and fact appearing at the foundation of these vagaries, which the author has
never dared to sign with his own, or even a borrowed name. For, his pre-Adamic
races -- not Satanic but simply
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