IDENTITY OF THE ANCIENT SYMBOLS.

323 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 Egypt, Peru, Mexico, Easter Island, India, Chaldea, and Central Asia. Crucified men, and symbols of the evolution of races from gods; and yet behold Science repudiating the idea of a human race other than one made in our image; theology clinging to its 6,000 years of Creation; anthropology teaching our descent from the ape; and the Clergy tracing it from Adam 4,004 years B.c.!!

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 ihe 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 Adams be accepted. They speak of "a white Adam and a black Adam, a red

* 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 Parana, 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 Kumâra becomes “four youths of a yellow colour." This strange coincidence, as Mr. Proctor would say, speak only in favour of scientific intuition, as SivaKumara represents only allegorically the human races during the genesis of 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 conse. quence 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.

* "Primeval Man Unveiled, or the Anthropology of the Bible"; author (unknown) of the "Stars and the Angels" 1870, p. 195.

t Especially in the face of the evidence furnished by the authorized Bible itself in ch. iv. of Genesis, r. 16 and 17, which shows Cain going to the land of Nod and theret marrying a wife.

THE IMPARTIALITY OF SCIENTIFIC DENIALS.

325

of patriarchal civilization and comparative repose—a time of TubalCains 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 Atlantic, and the Hermaphrodites before the latter are mentioned in the Bible when read esoterically, as they are in the Secret Doctrine. The Seven Keys open the mysteries, past and future, of the seven great Root Races, as of the seven Kalpas. Though the genesis of man, and even the esoteric geology, will surely be rejected by Science just as much as the Satanic and pre-Adamic races, yet if having no other way out of their difficulties the Scientists have to choose between the two, we feel certain that, Scripture notwithstanding, once the mystery language is approximately mastered, it is the archaic teaching that will be accepted.

SIII.

PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT. 7

"As it would seem irrational to affirm that we already know all existing causes, permission must be given to assume, if need be, an entirely new agent.

66

Assuming, what is not strictly accurate as yet, that the undulatory hypothesis accounts for all the facts, we are called on to decide whether the exist. ence of an undulating Ether is thereby proved. We cannot positively affirm

that no other supposition will explain the facts. Newton's corpuscular hypothesis is admitted to have broken down on Interference; and there is, at the present day, no rival. Still, it is extremely desirable in all such hypotheses to find some collateral confirmation, some evidence aliunde, of THE SUPPOSED Ether. . . . Some Hypotheses consist of assumptions as to the minute structure and operations of bodies. From the nature of the case, these assumptions can never be proved by direct means. Their only merit is their suitability to express the phenomena. They are Representative Fictions."—("Logic," by Alexander Bain, LL.D., Part II., p. 133)

Ether, this hypothetical Proteus, one of the "representative Fictions" of modern Science—which, nevertheless, was so long accepted—is one of the lower "principles" of what we call Primordial Substance (Akâsa, in Sanskrit), one of the dreams of old, and which has now become again the dream of modern science. It is the greatest, just as it is the boldest, of the surviving speculations of ancient philosophers. For the Occultists, however, both Ether and the Primordial Substance are a reality. To put it plainly, Ether is the Astral Light, and the Primordial Substance is Akasa, the Upadhi of Divine Thought.

In modern language, the latter would be better named Cosmic Ideation—Spirit; the former, Cosmic Substance, Matter. These, the Alpha and the Omega of Being, are but the two facets of the one Absolute Existence. The latter was never addressed, or even mentioned, by any name in antiquity, except allegorically. In the oldest Aryan race, the Hindu, the worship of the intellectual classes never consisted (as with the Greeks) in a fervent adoration of marvellous form and art, which led later on to anthropomorphism. But while the Greek philosopher adored form, and the Hindu sage alone "perceived the true relation of earthly beauty and eternal truth"—the uneducated of every nation understood neither, at any time.

The evolution of the GOD-IDEA

They do not understand it even now. proceeds apace with man's own intellectual evolution. So true it is that the noblest ideal to which the religious Spirit of one age can soar, will appear but a gross caricature to the philosophic mind in a succeeding epoch! The philosophers themselves had to be initiated into perceptive mysteries, before they could grasp the correct idea of the ancients. in relation to this most metaphysical subject. Otherwise—outside such initiation for every thinker there will be a "Thus far shall thou go and no farther," mapped out by his intellectual capacity, as clearly and as unmistakeably as there is for the progress of any nation or race in its cycle by the law of Karma. Outside of initiation, the ideals of contemporary religious thought must always have their wings clipped and remain unable to soar higher; for idealistic as well as realistic thinkers, and even free-thinkers, are but the outcome and the natural product of their respective environments and periods. The ideals of both are only

DIVINE THOUGHT, OR CINERITIOUS MATTER.

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the necessary results of their temperaments, and the outcome of that phase of intellectual progress to which a nation, in its collectivity, has attained. Hence, as already remarked, the highest flights of modern (Western) metaphysics have fallen far short of the truth. Much of current Agnostic speculation on the existence of the "First Cause" is little better than veiled materialism—the terminology alone being different. Even so great a thinker as Mr. Herbert Spencer speaks of the "Unknowable" occasionally in terms that demonstrate the lethal influence of materialistic thought, which, like the deadly Sirocco, has withered and blighted all current ontological speculation.*

From the early ages of the Fourth Race, when Spirit alone was worshipped and the mystery was made manifest, down to the last palmy days of Grecian art at the dawn of Christianity—the Hellenes alone had dared to raise publicly an altar to the Unknown God. Whatever St. Paul may have had in his profound mind when declaring to the Athenians that this "unknown," ignorantly worshipped by them, was the true God announced by himself that Deity was not "Jehovah (see "The Holy of Holies "), nor was he "The Maker of the world and all things." For it is not the "God of Israel" but the "Unknown " of the ancient and modern Pantheist that "dwelleth not in temples made with hands" (Acts xviii., 23-4).

Divine thought cannot be defined, or its meaning explained, except by the numberless manifestations of Cosmic Substance in which the former is sensed spiritually by those who can do so. To say this, after having defined it as the Unknown Deity, abstract, impersonal, sexless, which must be placed at the root of every Cosmogony and its subsequent evolution, is equivalent to saying nothing at all. It is like attempting a transcendental equation of conditions for the true values of a set, having in hand for deducing them only a number of unknown quantities. Its place is found in the old primitive Symbolic charts, in which, as shown in the text, it is represented by a boundless. darkness, on the ground of which appears the first central point in white thus symbolising coeval and co-eternal Spirit-matter making its appearance in the phenomenal world, before its first differentiation. When "the one becomes two," it may then be

* For instance, when he terms the "First Cause"-the Unknowable—a "power manifesting through phenomena," and "an infinite eternal Energy" (?) it is clear that he has grasped solely the physical aspect of the mystery of Being—the Energies of Cosmic Substance only. The co-eternal aspect of the One Reality—Cosmic Ideation —(as to its noumenan, it seems non-existent in the mind of the great thinker) is absolutely omitted from consideration. Without doubt, this one-sided mode of dealing with the problem is due largely to the pernicious Western practice of subordinating consciousness, or regarding it as a "by-product" of molecular motion.