being the emblem of the good genius, the veritable Agathodæmon, is sometimes bearded." The sacred animal is thus identical with the serpent of the Ophites, and is figured on many Gnostic gems. It appears with various heads, human and animal, but the gems are always inscribed with the name Chnoubis, who seems to have been identical with Hermes, or Mercury, to which god Hermes Trismegistus attributes the invention of magic and the first initiation of men thereinto, and Mercury is Wisdom, Enlightenment or "Reawakening to the divine

Science.

To close, Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin are the two aspects (male and female) of the same principle in Kosmos, Nature and Man, of Divine Wisdom and intelligence. They are the "Christos-Sophia of the mystic Gnostics-the Logos and its Sakti (female complement). In their longing for the expression of some mysteries never to be wholly comprehended by the profane, the ancients knowing that nothing could be preserved in human memory without some outward symbol, have chosen, to us, often ridiculous images, to remind man of his origin and inner nature. Therefore, since the symbolic formula attempts to characterize that which is above scientific reasoning, and as often, far beyond our intellectual grasp, it must needs embody itself in some shape or other, or it will fade out of human remembrance.

BOOK II. PART II

ADDENDA

I

REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA

Many of the doctrines contained in the foregoing seven Stanzas and Commentaries, having been studied and critically examined by some Western theosophists, have been found wanting from the ordinary standpoint of modern scientific knowledge. But science cannot, owing to the very nature of things, unveil the mystery of the universe around us. Science can, it is true, collect, classify and generalize upon phenomena, but the occultist, arguing from admitted metaphysical data, declares that the daring explorer who would probe the inmost secrets of Nature must transcend the narrow limitations of sense, and transfer his consciousness into the region of noumena and the sphere of primal Causes. To do this, he must develop faculties which are absolutely dormant-save in a few rare and exceptional cases-in the constitution of our present Fifth Race offshoots in Europe and America. He can in no other conceivable manner collect the facts on which to base his speculations.

On the other hand, whatever the writer may do, she will never be able to satisfy both Truth and Science. To offer the reader a systematic and uninterrupted version of the archaic Stanzas is impossible. A gap of 43 verses has to be left between the

7th, already given, and the 51st, which begins the subject of Vol. II., though the latter verses are made to run from I. et seq. for easier reading and reference. The appearance of man on Earth occupies alone many Stanzas, which describe minutely his primal evolution from the human Creative Powers; the state of the globe at that time, etc., etc. A great number of names referring to chemical substances and other compounds (which no longer combine, and are therefore unknown to our Race) occupy considerable space. As they are simply untranslatable they are omitted, together with those which cannot be made public.

Before proceeding to other Stanzas, therefore, it is proposed to defend those already given. They are not in perfect accord with modern science, this we all know. For they teach belief in conscious Powers, and Spiritual Entities; in semi-intelligent terrestrial and highly intellectual Forces on other planes (their intellection, of course, being quite different from any we can conceive), and in Beings that dwell around us in spheres imperceptible by microscope or telescope. We shall touch upon the constitution of the Sun and the planets, and the occult characteristics of what were called gods and genii, and are now termed by science Forces, and "modes of motion," and see whether esoteric belief is defensible or not. We must bravely face science, and declare in the teeth of materialistic learning, positivism and all-denying modern psychology that the true Occultist believes in "Lords of Light"; that he believes in a Sun, which, far from being simply "a lamp of day" moving in accordance with physical law, is the dwelling or vehicle of a god, and a host of gods.

Another good reason for these Addenda is this. Since only a certain portion of the Secret Teachings can be given out in the present age, if they were pub

lished without explanations or commentary, they could not be understood, even by theosophists. Therefore, they must be contrasted with the speculations of modern science. Archaic axioms must be placed side by side with modern hypotheses, and the comparison left to the sagacious reader. Sir Humphrey Davy was a great scientist, and as deeply versed in physics as any theorist of our day, yet he loathed materialism. “I heard with disgust in the dissecting-rooms," he said, "the plan of the physiologist, of the gradual secretion of matter, and its becoming endued with irritability, ripening into sensibility, acquiring such organs as were necessary by its own inherent forces, and at last rising into intellectual existence." Astronomers and physicists are even more illogical in their materialistic views than physiologists, and this has to be proved. For the occultists, Light is both Spirit and Matter. Behind the mode of motion,' now regarded as a property of matter " and nothing more, they perceive the radiant noumenon. It is the "Spirit of Light," the first-born of the Eternal pure Element, whose energy (or emanation) is stored in the Sun, the great Life-giver of the physical world, as the concealed Spiritual Sun is the Light and Life-giver of the Spiritual and psychic realms. That which is meant by the allegorical sentence "Let there be Light," is, when esoterically rendered, "Let there be the Sons of Light," or the noumena of all pheno

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mena.

These beings are "the Sons of Light," because they emanate from, and are self-generated in, that infinite Ocean of Light whose one pole is pure Spirit lost in the absoluteness of Non-Being, and the other the matter in which it condenses, crystallizing into a more and more gross type as it descends into manifestation. Therefore, matter, though it is in one sense but the illusive dregs of that Light whose limbs