Section XII. Scientific and Esoteric Evidence for, and Objections to, the Modern Nebular Theory.

Of late, Esoteric Cosmogony has been frequently opposed by the phantom of this theory and its ensuing hypotheses. “Can this most scientific teaching be denied by your Adepts?” it is asked. “Not entirely,” is the reply, “but the admissions of the men of Science themselves kill it; and there remains nothing for the Adepts to deny.”

To make of Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed, the study of spiritual and psychic, as well as of physical, Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the anatomy of man, discussed of old by the profane from the point of view of his shell-side, and in ignorance of the interior work. Even Plato, the greatest Philosopher of his country, was guilty, before his Initiation, of such statements as that liquids pass into the stomach through the lungs. Without metaphysics, as Mr. H. J. Slack says, real Science is inadmissible.

The nebulæ exist; yet the Nebular Theory is wrong. A nebula exists in a state of entire elemental dissociation. It is gaseous and—something else besides, which can hardly be connected with gases as these are known to Physical Science; and it is self-luminous. But that is all. The sixty-two “coincidences” enumerated by Professor Stephen Alexander,1012 confirming the Nebular Theory, may all be explained by Esoteric Science; though, as this is not an astronomical work, the refutations are not attempted at present. Laplace and Faye come nearer to the correct theory than any; but of the speculations of [pg 644]Laplace there remains little in the present theory beyond its general features.

Nevertheless, says John Stuart Mill:

From such an eminent logician as was Mill, this would be valuable, if it could only be proved that “terrestrial objects resembling” celestial objects at such a distance as are the nebulæ, resemble those objects in reality, and not only in appearance.

Another of the fallacies, from the Occult standpoint, embodied in the modern theory as it now stands, is the hypothesis that the Planets were all detached from the Sun; that they are bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh; whereas the Sun and the Planets are only co-uterine brothers, having the same nebular origin, but in a different mode from that postulated by modern Astronomy.

The many objections raised by some opponents of the modern Nebular Theory against the homogeneity of original diffuse Matter, on the ground of the uniformity in the composition of the fixed Stars, do not affect the question of that homogeneity at all, but only the theory itself. Our solar nebula may not be completely homogeneous, or, rather, it may fail to reveal itself as such to the Astronomers, and yet be de facto homogeneous. The Stars do differ in their constituent materials, and even exhibit elements quite unknown on Earth; nevertheless, this does not affect the point that Primeval Matter—Matter as it appeared even in its first differentiation from its laya-condition1014—is yet to this day homogeneous, at immense distances, in the depths of infinitude, and likewise at points not far removed from the outskirts of our Solar System.

Finally, there does not exist one single fact brought forward by the learned objectors against the Nebular Theory (false as it is, and hence, illogically enough, fatal to the hypothesis of the homogeneity of Matter), that can withstand criticism. One error leads to another. A false premiss will naturally lead to a false conclusion, although an inadmissible inference does not necessarily affect the validity of the major proposition of the syllogism. Thus, one may leave every side-issue and inference from the evidence of spectra and lines, as simply [pg 645]provisional for the present, and abandon all matters of detail to Physical Science. The duty of the Occultist lies with the Soul and Spirit of Cosmic Space, not merely with its illusive appearance and behaviour. That of official Physical Science is to analyze and study its shell—the Ultima Thule of the Universe and Man, in the opinion of Materialism.

With the latter, Occultism has nought to do. It is only with the theories of such men of learning as Kepler, Kant, Oersted, and Sir William Herschell, who believed in a Spiritual World, that Occult Cosmogony might treat, and attempt a satisfactory compromise. But the views of those Physicists differed vastly from the latest modern speculations. Kant and Herschell had in their mind’s eye speculations upon the origin and the final destiny, as well as upon the present aspect, of the Universe, from a far more philosophical and psychic standpoint; whereas modern Cosmology and Astronomy now repudiate anything like research into the mysteries of Being. The result is what might be expected: complete failure and inextricable contradictions in the thousand and one varieties of so-called Scientific Theories, and in this Theory as in all others.

The nebular hypothesis, involving the theory of the existence of a Primeval Matter, diffused in a nebulous condition, is of no modern date in Astronomy, as everyone knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had already taught that the sidereal bodies were formed through the progressive condensation of a primordial pregenetic Matter, which had almost a negative weight, and was spread out through Space in an extremely sublimated condition.

Tycho Brahé, who viewed the Milky Way as an ethereal substance, thought the new star that appeared in Cassiopeia, in 1572, had been formed out of that Matter.1015 Kepler believed that the star of 1606 had likewise been formed out of the ethereal substance that fills the universe.1016 He attributed to that same Ether the apparition of a luminous ring round the Moon, during the total eclipse of the Sun observed at Naples in 1605.1017 Still later, in 1714 the existence of a self-luminous Matter was recognized by Halley in the Philosophical Transactions. Finally, the journal of this name published in 1811 the famous hypothesis of the eminent Astronomer, Sir William Herschell, [pg 646]on the transformation of the nebulæ into Stars,1018 and after this the Nebular Theory was accepted by the Royal Academies.

In Five Years of Theosophy, on p. 245, may be read an article headed, “Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?” The answer there given is:

No; they do not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative truth of the scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many so-called “exploded” old theories, which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid succession.

This was asserted at the time to be “an evasive answer.” Such disrespect to official Science, it was argued, must be justified by the replacement of the orthodox speculation by another theory more complete, and having a firmer ground to stand upon. To this there is but one reply: It is useless to give out isolated theories with regard to things embodied in a complete and consecutive system, for, when separated from the main body of the teaching, they would necessarily lose their vital coherence and would thus do no good when studied independently. To be able to appreciate and accept the Occult views on the Nebular Theory, we must study the whole Esoteric cosmogonical system. And the time has hardly arrived for the Astronomers to be asked to accept Fohat and the Divine Builders. Even the undeniably correct surmises of Sir William Herschell, which had nothing “supernatural” in them, as to the Sun’s being called a “globe of fire,” perhaps metaphorically, and his early speculations about the nature of that which is now called the Nasmyth Willow-leaf Theory, only caused that most eminent of all Astronomers to be smiled at by other, far less eminent, colleagues, who saw and now see in his ideas purely “imaginative and fanciful theories.” Before the whole Esoteric System could be given out and appreciated by the Astronomers, the latter would have to return to some of those “antiquated ideas,” not only to those of Herschell, but also to the dreams of the oldest Hindû Astronomers, and thus abandon their own theories, which are none the less “fanciful” because they have appeared nearly eighty years later than the one, and many thousands of years later than the others. Foremost of all they would have to repudiate their ideas of the Sun’s solidity and incandescence; the Sun “glowing” most undeniably, but not “burning.” Then the Occultists state, with regard to the “willow-leaves,” [pg 647]that those “objects,” as Sir William Herschell called them, are the immediate sources of the solar light and heat. And though the Esoteric Teaching does not regard these as he did—namely, as “organisms” partaking of the nature of life, for the Solar “Beings” will hardly place themselves within telescopic focus—yet it asserts that the whole Universe is full of such “organisms,” conscious and active according to the proximity or distance of their planes to, or from, our plane of consciousness; and finally that the great Astronomer was right while speculating on those supposed “organisms,” in saying that “we do not know that vital action is incompetent to develop at once heat, light, and electricity.” For, at the risk of being laughed at by the whole world of Physicists, the Occultists maintain that all the “Forces” of the Scientists have their origin in the Vital Principle, the One Life collectively of our Solar System—that “Life” being a portion, or rather one of the aspects, of the One Universal Life.

We may, therefore—as in the article under consideration, wherein, on the authority of the Adepts, it was maintained that it is “sufficient to make a résumé of what the solar Physicists do not know”—we may, we maintain, define our position with regard to the modern Nebular Theory and its evident incorrectness, by simply pointing out facts diametrically opposed to it in its present form. And to begin with, what does it teach?

Summarizing the aforesaid hypotheses, it becomes plain that Laplace’s theory—now made quite unrecognizable, moreover—was an unfortunate one. He postulates in the first place Cosmic Matter, existing in a state of diffuse nebulosity “so fine that its presence could hardly have been suspected.” No attempt is made by him to penetrate into the Arcana of Being, except as regards the immediate evolution of our small Solar System.

Consequently, whether one accepts or rejects his theory in its bearing upon the immediate cosmological problems presented for solution, he can only be said to have thrown back the mystery a little further. To the eternal query: “Whence Matter itself; whence the evolutionary impetus determining its cyclic aggregations and dissolutions; whence the exquisite symmetry and order into which the primeval Atoms arrange and group themselves?” no answer is attempted by Laplace. All we are confronted with, is a sketch of the probable broad principles on which the actual process is assumed to be based. Well, and what is this now celebrated note on the said process? [pg 648]What has he given so wonderfully new and original, that its ground-work, at any rate, should have served as a basis for the modern Nebular Theory? The following is what one gathers from various astronomical works.

Laplace thought that, in consequence of the condensation of the atoms of the primeval nebula, according to the “law” of gravity, the now gaseous, or perhaps, partially liquid mass, acquired a rotatory motion. As the velocity of this rotation increased, it assumed the form of a thin disc; finally, the centrifugal force overpowering that of cohesion, huge rings were detached from the edge of the whirling incandescent masses, and these rings contracted necessarily by gravitation (as accepted) into spheroidal bodies, which would necessarily still continue to preserve the orbit previously occupied by the outer zone from which they were separated.1019 The velocity of the outer edge of each nascent planet, he said, exceeding that of the inner, there results a rotation on its axis. The more dense bodies would be thrown off last; and finally, during the preliminary state of their formation, the newly-segregated orbs in their turn throw off one or more satellites. In formulating the history of the rupture and planetation of rings Laplace says:

While few will be found to deny the “magnificent audacity of this hypothesis,” it is impossible not to recognize the insurmountable difficulties with which it is attended. Why, for instance, do we find that the satellites of Neptune and Uranus display a retrograde motion? [pg 649]Why, in spite of its closer proximity to the Sun, is Venus less dense than the Earth? Why, again, is the more distant Uranus denser than Saturn? How is it that there are so many variations in the inclination of their axes and orbits in the supposed progeny of the central orb; that such startling variations in the size of the Planets are noticeable; that the satellites of Jupiter are more dense by ·288 than their primary; that the phenomena of meteoric and cometary systems still remain unaccounted for? To quote the words of a Master:

They [the Adepts] find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for every oblate spheroid, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How, indeed, can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only “about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only about one-fourth greater than the Earth,” should have a polar compression more than ten times greater than the latter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be “twenty-seven times greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the Earth” should have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the Earth? Or why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury for centripetal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury’s? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces, as taught by Modern Science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the Sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the Earth’s equatorial surface, and only about one-fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the poles of the solar axis. In other and clearer words, the Sun, with only one-fourth of our Earth’s density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily, so far as the “Adepts” are aware.

Therefore, do they [the Adepts] say, that the great men of Science of the West, knowing … next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulæ, or the physical constitution of the Sun, the Stars, or even the Moon, are imprudent to speak so confidently as they do about the “central mass of the Sun,”whirling out into space planets, comets, and what not…. We maintain that it [the Sun] evolves out only the life-principle, the Soul of these [pg 650]bodies, giving and receiving it back, in our little Solar System, as the “Universal Life-Giver” … in the Infinitude and Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the Microcosm of the One Macrocosm as man is the former when compared with his own little Solar Cosmos.1020

The essential power of all the cosmic and terrestrial Elements to generate within themselves a regular and harmonious series of results, a concatenation of causes and effects, is an irrefutable proof that they are either animated by an Intelligence, ab extrâ or ab intrâ, or conceal such within or behind the “manifested veil.” Occultism does not deny the certainty of the mechanical origin of the Universe; it only claims the absolute necessity of mechanicians of some sort behind or within those Elements—a dogma with us. It is not the fortuitous assistance of the Atoms of Lucretius, as he himself knew well, that built the Kosmos and all in it. Nature herself contradicts such a theory. Celestial Space, containing Matter so attenuated as Ether, cannot be called on, with or without attraction, to explain the common motion of the sidereal hosts. Although the perfect accord of their inter-revolution indicates clearly the presence of a mechanical cause in Nature, Newton, who of all men had most right to trust to his deductions, was nevertheless forced to abandon the idea of ever explaining the original impulse given to the millions of orbs, by merely the laws of known Nature and its material Forces. He recognized fully the limits that separate the action of natural Forces from that of the Intelligences that set the immutable laws in order and action. And if a Newton had to renounce such hope, which of the modern materialistic pigmies has the right of saying: “I know better?”

A cosmogonical theory, to become complete and comprehensible, has to start with a Primordial Substance diffused throughout boundless Space, of an intellectual and divine nature. That Substance must be the Soul and Spirit, the Synthesis and Seventh Principle of the manifested Kosmos, and, to serve as a spiritual Upâdhi to this, there must be the sixth, its vehicle—Primordial Physical Matter, so to speak, though its nature must escape for ever our limited normal senses. It is easy for an Astronomer, if endowed with an imaginative faculty, to build a theory of the emergence of the Universe out of Chaos, by simply applying to it the principles of mechanics. But such a Universe will always prove a Frankenstein’s monster with respect to its scientific human creator; it will lead him into endless perplexities. [pg 651]The application of mechanical laws only can never carry the speculator beyond the objective world; nor will it unveil to men the origin and final destiny of Kosmos. This is whither the Nebular Theory has led Science. In sober fact and truth this Theory is twin sister to that of Ether, and both are the offspring of necessity; one is as indispensable to account for the transmission of light, as is the other to explain the problem of the origin of the Solar Systems. The question with Science is, how the same homogeneous Matter1021 could, obeying the laws of Newton, give birth to bodies—Sun, Planets, and their satellites—subject to conditions of identity of motion, and formed of such heterogeneous elements.

Has the Nebular Theory helped to solve the problem, even if applied solely to bodies considered as inanimate and material? We say: most decidedly not. What progress has it made since 1811, when first Sir William Herschell’s paper, with its facts based on observation and showing the existence of nebular matter, made the sons of the Royal Society “shout for joy”? Since then a still greater discovery, through spectrum analysis, has permitted the verification and corroboration of Sir William Herschell’s conjecture. Laplace demanded some kind of primitive “world-stuff” to prove the idea of progressive world-evolution and growth. Here it is, as offered two millenniums ago.

The “world-stuff,” now called nebulæ, was known from the highest antiquity. Anaxagoras taught that, upon differentiation, the resulting commixture of heterogeneous substances remained motionless and unorganized, until finally the “Mind”—the collective body of Dhyân Chohans, we say—began to work upon, and communicated to, them motion and order.1022 This theory is now taken up, so far as concerns its first portion; the last, that of any “Mind” interfering, being rejected. Spectrum analysis reveals the existence of nebulæ formed entirely of gases and luminous vapours. Is this the primitive nebular Matter? The spectra reveal, it is said, the physical conditions of the Matter which emits cosmic light. The spectra of the resolvable and the irresolvable nebulæ are shown to be entirely different, the spectra of the [pg 652]latter showing their physical state to be that of glowing gas or vapour. The bright lines of one nebula reveal the existence of hydrogen, and of other material substances known and unknown. The same as to the atmospheres of the Sun and Stars. This leads to the direct inference that a Star is formed by the condensation of a nebula; hence that even the metals themselves are formed on earth by the condensation of hydrogen or of some other primitive matter, some ancestral cousin to helium, perhaps, or some yet unknown stuff. This does not clash with the Occult Teachings. And this is the problem that Chemistry is trying to solve; and it must succeed sooner or later in the task, accepting nolens volens, when it does, the Esoteric Teaching. But when this does happen, it will kill the Nebular Theory as it now stands.

Meanwhile Astronomy cannot accept in any way, if it is to be regarded as an exact Science, the present theory of the filiation of Stars—even if Occultism does so in its own way, seeing that it explains this filiation differently—because Astronomy has not one single physical datum to show for it. Astronomy could anticipate Chemistry in proving the existence of the fact, if it could show a planetary nebula exhibiting a spectrum of three or four bright lines, gradually condensing and transforming into a Star, with a spectrum all covered with a number of dark lines. But

Since its discovery, the magic power of the spectroscope has revealed to its adepts only one single transformation of a Star of this kind; and even that showed directly the reverse of what is needed as proof in favour of the Nebular Theory; for it revealed a Star transforming itself into a planetary nebula. As related in The Observatory,1024 the temporary Star, discovered by J. F. J. Schmidt in the constellation Cygnus, in November, 1876, exhibited a spectrum broken by very brilliant lines. Gradually, the continuous spectrum and most of the lines disappeared, leaving finally one single brilliant line, which appeared to coincide with the green line of the nebula.

Though this metamorphosis is not irreconcileable with the hypothesis of the nebular origin of the Stars, nevertheless this single solitary case rests on no observation whatever, least of all on direct observation. [pg 653]The occurrence may have been due to several other causes. Since Astronomers are inclined to think our Planets are tending toward precipitation into the Sun, why should not that Star have blazed up owing to a collision of such precipitated Planets, or, as many suggest, the appulse of a Comet? Be that as it may, the only known instance of star-transformation since 1811 is not favourable to the Nebular Theory. Moreover, on the question of this Theory, as on all others, Astronomers disagree.

In our own age, and before Laplace ever thought of it, Buffon, being very much struck by the identity of motion in the Planets, was the first to propose the hypothesis that the Planets and their satellites originated in the bosom of the Sun. Forthwith and for this purpose, he invented a special Comet, supposed to have torn out, by a powerful oblique blow, the quantity of matter necessary for their formation. Laplace gave its dues to the “Comet” in his Exposition du Système du Monde.1025 But the idea was seized and even improved upon by a conception of the alternate evolution, from the Sun’s central mass, of Planets apparently without weight or influence on the motion of the visible Planets—and as evidently without any more existence than the likeness of Moses in the Moon.

But the modern theory is also a variation on the systems elaborated by Kant and Laplace. The idea of both was that, at the origin of things, all that Matter which now enters into the composition of the planetary bodies was spread over all the space comprized in the Solar System—and even beyond. It was a nebula of extremely small density, and its condensation gradually gave birth, by a mechanism that has hitherto never been explained, to the various bodies of our System. This is the original Nebular Theory, an incomplete yet faithful repetition—a short chapter out of the large volume of universal Esoteric Cosmogony—of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine. And both systems, Kant’s and Laplace’s, differ greatly from the modern Theory, redundant with conflicting sub-theories and fanciful hypotheses. Say the Teachers:

Mr. Crookes says almost the same in the fragment quoted from his lecture, Elements and Meta-Elements. C. Wolf, Member of the Institute, Astronomer of the Observatory, Paris, observes:

Even if the men of Science—leaving aside the difficulty arising out of such undeniable variety and heterogeneity of matter in the constitution of nebulæ—did admit, with the Ancients, that the origin of all the visible and invisible heavenly bodies must be sought for in one primordial homogeneous world-stuff, in a kind of Pre-Protyle,1029 it is evident that this would not put an end to their perplexities. Unless they admit also that our actual visible Universe is merely the Sthûla Sharîra, the gross body, of the sevenfold Kosmos, they will have to face another problem; especially if they venture to maintain that its now visible bodies are the result of the condensation of that one and single Primordial Matter. For mere observation shows them that the operations which produced the actual Universe are far more complex than could ever be embraced in that theory.

First of all, there are two distinct classes of “irresolvable” nebulæ, as Science itself teaches.

The telescope is unable to distinguish between these two classes, but the spectroscope can do so, and notices an essential difference between their physical constitutions.

Some of these nebulæ, Wolf tells us,

Such is the synopsis of the objections and difficulties in the way of the acceptance of the Nebular Theory, brought forward by the French savant, who concludes this interesting argument by declaring that:

If this is the last word of Science upon the subject, whither then should we turn in order to learn what the Nebular Theory is supposed to teach? What, in fact, is this theory? What it is, no one seems to know for certain. What it is not—we learn from the erudite author of World-Life. He tells us that it:

But this is not all. Even the greatest philosopher of England—Mr. Herbert Spencer—arrayed himself against this fantastic theory by saying that (a) “The problem of existence is not resolved” by it; (b) the nebular hypothesis “throws no light upon the origin of diffused matter”; and (c) that “the nebular hypothesis (as it now stands) implies a First Cause.”1033

The latter, we are afraid, is more than our modern Physicists have bargained for. Thus, it seems that the poor “hypothesis” can hardly expect to find help or corroboration even in the world of the Metaphysicians.

Considering all this, the Occultists believe they have a right to present their Philosophy, however misunderstood and ostracized it may be at present. And they maintain that this failure of the Scientists to discover the truth is entirely due to their Materialism and their contempt for transcendental Sciences. Yet although the scientific minds in our century are as far from the true and correct doctrine of Evolution as ever, there may be still some hope left for the future, for even now we find another Scientist giving us a faint glimmer of it.

In an article in the Popular Science Review on “Recent Researches in Minute Life,” we find Mr. H. J. Slack, F.C.S., Sec. R.M.S., saying:

This is a happy forecast indeed. The day may come, then, when “Natural Selection,” as taught by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, will, in its ultimate modification, form only a part of our Eastern doctrine of Evolution, which will be Manu and Kapila Esoterically explained.

Section XIII. Forces—Modes of Motion or Intelligences?

This is, then, the last word of Physical Science up to the present year, 1888. Mechanical laws will never be able to prove the homogeneity of Primeval Matter, except inferentially and as a desperate necessity, when there will remain no other issue—as in the case of Ether. Modern Science is secure only in its own domain and region; within the physical boundaries of our Solar System, beyond which everything, every particle of Matter, is different from the Matter it knows, and where Matter exists in states of which Science can form no idea. This Matter, which is truly homogeneous, is beyond human perception, if perception is tied down merely to the five senses. We feel its effects through those Intelligences which are the results of its primeval differentiation, whom we name Dhyân Chohans, called in the Hermetic works the “Seven Governors”; those to whom Pymander, the “Thought Divine,” refers as the “Building Powers,” and whom Asklepios calls the “Supernal Gods.” This Matter—the real Primordial Substance, the Noumenon of all the “matter” we know of—some of our Astronomers even have been led to believe in, for they despair of the possibility of ever accounting for rotation, gravitation, and the origin of any mechanical physical laws, unless these Intelligences be admitted by Science. In the above-quoted work upon Astronomy by Wolf,1035 the author endorses fully the theory of Kant, and the latter theory, if not in its general aspect, at any rate in some of its features, reminds one strongly of certain Esoteric Teachings. Here we have the world’s system “reborn from its ashes,” through a nebula—the emanation from the bodies, dead and dissolved in Space, resultant of the incandescence of the Solar Centre—reänimated by the combustible matter of the Planets. In this theory, generated and developed in the [pg 659]brain of a young man hardly twenty-five years of age, who had never left his native place, Königsberg, a small town of Northern Prussia, one can hardly fail to recognize either the presence of an inspiring external power, or an evidence of the reïncarnation which the Occultists see in it. It fills a gap which Newton, with all his genius, failed to bridge. And surely it is our Primeval Matter, Âkâsha, that Kant had in view, when he postulated a universally pervading primordial Substance, in order to solve Newton’s difficulty, and his failure to explain, by natural forces alone, the primitive impulse imparted to the Planets. For, as he remarks in Chapter viii, if it is once admitted that the perfect harmony of the Stars and Planets and the coincidence of their orbital planes prove the existence of a natural Cause, which would thus be the Primal Cause, “that Cause cannot really be the matter which fills to-day the heavenly spaces.” It must be that which filled Space—was Space—originally, whose motion in differentiated Matter was the origin of the actual movements of the sidereal bodies; and which, “in condensing itself in those very bodies, thus abandoned the space that is to-day found void.” In other words, it is of that same Matter that are now composed the Planets, Comets, and the Sun himself, and that Matter, having originally formed itself into those bodies, has preserved its inherent quality of motion; which quality, now centred in their nuclei, directs all motion. A very slight alteration of words in this is needed, and a few additions, to make of it our Esoteric Doctrine.

The latter teaches that it is this original, primordial Prima Materia, divine and intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind, the Daiviprakriti—the Divine Light1036 emanating from the Logos—which formed the nuclei of all the “self-moving” orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever-present moving-power and life-principle, the Vital Soul of the Suns, Moons, Planets, and even of our Earth; the former latent, the latter active—the invisible Ruler and Guide of the gross body attached to, and connected with, its Soul, which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of these respective Planetary Spirits.

Another quite Occult Doctrine is the theory of Kant, that the Matter of which the inhabitants and the animals of other Planets are formed is of a lighter and more subtle nature and of a more perfect conformation, in proportion to their distance from the Sun. The latter is too full of Vital Electricity, of the physical, life-giving principle. Therefore, the men [pg 660]on Mars are more ethereal than we are, while those on Venus are more gross, though far more intelligent, if less spiritual.

The last doctrine is not quite ours—yet these Kantian theories are as metaphysical, and as transcendental as any Occult Doctrines; and more than one man of Science would, if he but dared speak his mind, accept them as Wolf does. From this Kantian Mind and Soul of the Suns and Stars to the Mahat (Mind) and Prakriti of the Purânas there is but a step. After all, the admission of this by Science would be only the admission of a natural cause, whether it would or would not stretch its belief to such metaphysical heights. But then Mahat, the Mind, is a “God,” and Physiology admits “mind” only as a temporary function of the material brain, and no more.

The Satan of Materialism now laughs at all alike, and denies the visible as well as the invisible. Seeing in light, heat, electricity, and even in the phenomenon of life, only properties inherent in Matter, it laughs whenever life is called the Vital Principle, and derides the idea of its being independent of and distinct from the organism.

But here again scientific opinions differ as in everything else, and there are several men of Science who accept views very similar to ours. Consider, for instance, what Dr. Richardson, F.R.S. (elsewhere quoted at length) says of that “Vital Principle,” which he calls “Nervous Ether”:

As Biology and Physiology now deny, in toto, the existence of a Vital Principle, this extract, together with De Quatrefages’ admission, is a clear confirmation that there are men of Science who take the same views about “things Occult” as do Theosophists and Occultists. These recognize a distinct Vital Principle independent of the organism—material, [pg 661]of course, as physical Force cannot be divorced from Matter, but of a Substance existing in a state unknown to Science. Life for them is something more than the mere interaction of molecules and atoms. There is a Vital Principle without which no molecular combinations could ever have resulted in a living organism, least of all in the so-called “inorganic” Matter of our plane of consciousness.

By “molecular combinations” are meant, of course, those of the Matter of our present illusive perceptions, which Matter energizes only on this, our plane. And this is the chief point at issue.1040

Thus the Occultists are not alone in their beliefs. Nor are they so foolish, after all, in rejecting even the “gravity” of Modern Science along with other physical laws, and in accepting instead attraction and repulsion. They see, moreover, in these two opposite Forces only the two aspects of the Universal Unit, called Manifesting Mind; in which aspects, Occultism, through its great Seers, perceives an innumerable Host of operative Beings: cosmic Dhyân Chohans, Entities, whose essence, in its dual nature, is the Cause of all terrestrial phenomena. For that essence is con-substantial with the universal Electric Ocean, which is Life; and being dual, as said—positive and negative—it is the emanations of that duality that act now on Earth under the name of “modes of motion”; even Force having now become objectionable as a word, for fear it should lead someone, even in thought, to separate it from Matter! It is, as Occultism says, the dual effects of that dual essence, which have now been called centripetal and centrifugal forces, now negative and positive poles, or polarity, heat and cold, light and darkness, etc.

And it is further maintained that even the Greek and Roman Catholic Christians are wiser in believing, as they do—even if blindly connecting and tracing them all to an anthropomorphic God—in Angels, Archangels, Archons, Seraphs, and Morning Stars, in all those theological deliciæ humani generis, in short, that rule the Cosmic Elements, than Science is, in disbelieving in them altogether, and in [pg 662]advocating its mechanical Forces. For these act very often with more than human intelligence and pertinency. Nevertheless, that intelligence is denied and attributed to blind chance. But, as De Maistre was right in calling the law of gravitation merely a word which replaced “the thing unknown,” so are we right in applying the same remark to all the other Forces of Science. And if it is objected that the Count was an ardent Roman Catholic, then we may cite Le Couturier, as ardent a Materialist, who said the same thing, as did also Herschell and many others.1041

From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a Star to a rush-light, from the Sun to the vital heat of the meanest organic being—the world of Form and Existence is an immense chain, the links of which are all connected. The Law of Analogy is the first key to the world-problem, and these links have to be studied coördinately in their Occult relations to each other.

When, therefore, the Secret Doctrine—postulating that conditioned or limited space (location) has no real being except in this world of illusion, or, in other words, in our perceptive faculties—teaches that every one of the higher, as of the lower worlds, is interblended with our own objective world; that millions of things and beings are, in point of localization, around and in us, as we are around, with, and in them; this is no mere metaphysical figure of speech, but a sober fact in Nature, however incomprehensible to our senses.

But one has to understand the phraseology of Occultism before criticizing what it asserts. For example, the Doctrine refuses—as Science does, in one sense—to use the words “above” and “below,” “higher” and “lower,” in reference to invisible spheres, since here they are without meaning. Even the terms “East” and “West” are merely conventional, necessary only to aid our human perceptions. For though the Earth has its two fixed points in the poles, North and South, yet both East and West are variable relatively to our own position on the Earth’s surface, and in consequence of its rotation from West to East. Hence, when “other worlds” are mentioned—whether better or worse, more spiritual or still more material, though both invisible—the Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside or inside our Earth, as the theologians and the poets do; for their location is nowhere in the space known to, or conceived by, the profane. They are, as it were, blended with our world—interpenetrating [pg 663]it and interpenetrated by it. There are millions and millions of worlds and firmaments visible to us; there are still greater numbers beyond those visible to the telescope, and many of the latter kind do not belong to our objective sphere of existence. Although as invisible as if they were millions of miles beyond our Solar System, they are yet with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to their respective inhabitants as ours is to us. But, again, the relation of these worlds to ours is not that of a series of egg-shaped boxes enclosed one within the other, like the toys called Chinese nests; each is entirely under its own special laws and conditions, having no direct relation to our sphere. The inhabitants of these, as already said, may be, for all we know, or feel, passing through and around us as if through empty space, their very habitations and countries being interblended with ours, though not disturbing our vision, because we have not yet the faculties necessary for discerning them. Yet by their spiritual sight the Adepts, and even some seers and sensitives, are always able to discern, whether in a greater or smaller degree, the presence and close proximity to us of Beings pertaining to other spheres of life. Those of the spiritually higher worlds communicate only with those terrestrial mortals who ascend to them, through individual efforts, on to the higher plane they are occupying.

The sons of Bhûmi [Earth] regard the Sons of Deva-lokas [Angel-spheres] as their Gods; and the Sons of lower kingdoms look up to the men of Bhûmi as to their Devas [Gods]; men remaining unaware of it in their blindness…. They [men] tremble before them while using them [for magical purposes]…. The First Race of Men were the “Mind-born Sons” of the former. They [the Pitris and Devas] are our progenitors.1042

“Educated people,” so-called, deride the idea of Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines, and Gnomes; the men of Science regard any mention of such superstitions as an insult; and with a contempt of logic and common good sense, that is often the prerogative of “accepted authority,” they allow those, whom it is their duty to instruct, to labour under the absurd impression that in the whole Kosmos, or at any rate in our own atmosphere, there are no other conscious, intelligent beings, save ourselves.1043 Any other humanity (composed of distinct human beings) save a mankind with two legs, two arms, and a head with [pg 664]man’s features on it, would not be called human; though the etymology of the word would seem to have little to do with the general appearance of a creature. Thus, while Science sternly rejects even the possibility of there being such (to us, generally) invisible creatures, Society, while believing in it all secretly, is made to deride the idea openly. It hails with mirth such works as the Comte de Gabalis, and fails to understand that open satire is the securest mask.

Nevertheless, such invisible worlds do exist. Inhabited as thickly as is our own, they are scattered throughout apparent Space in immense numbers; some far more material than our own world, others gradually etherealizing until they become formless and are as “breaths.” The fact that our physical eye does not see them, is no reason for disbelieving in them. Physicists cannot see their Ether, Atoms, “modes of motion,” or Forces. Yet they accept and teach them.

If we find, even in the natural world with which we are acquainted, Matter affording a partial analogy to the difficult conception of such invisible worlds, there seems little difficulty in recognizing the possibility of such a presence. The tail of a Comet, which, though attracting our attention by virtue of its luminosity, yet does not disturb or impede our vision of objects, which we perceive through and beyond it, affords the first stepping-stone toward a proof of the same. The tail of a Comet passes rapidly across our horizon, and we should neither feel it, nor be cognizant of its passage, but for the brilliant coruscation, often perceived only by a few interested in the phenomenon, while everyone else remains ignorant of its presence and of its passage through, or across, a portion of our globe. This tail may, or may not, be an integral portion of the being of the Comet, but its tenuity subserves our purpose as an illustration. Indeed, it is no question of superstition, but simply a result of transcendental Science, and of logic still more, to admit the existence of worlds formed of even far more attenuated Matter than the tail of a Comet. By denying such a possibility, Science has for the last century played into the hands of neither Philosophy nor true Religion, but simply into those of Theology. To be able to dispute the better the plurality of even material worlds, a belief thought by many churchmen incompatible with the teachings and doctrines of the Bible,1044 Maxwell had to calumniate the [pg 665]memory of Newton, and to try and convince his public that the principles contained in the Newtonian philosophy are those “which lie at the foundation of all atheistical systems.”1045

“Dr. Whewell disputed the plurality of worlds by appeal to scientific evidence,” writes Professor Winchell.1046 And if even the habitability of physical worlds, of Planets, and distant Stars which shine in myriads over our heads is so disputed, how little chance is there for the acceptance of invisible worlds within the apparently transparent space of our own!

But, if we can conceive of a world composed of Matter still more attenuated to our senses than the tail of a Comet, hence of inhabitants in it who are as ethereal, in proportion to their Globe, as we are in comparison with our rocky, hard-crusted Earth, no wonder if we do not perceive them, nor sense their presence or even existence. Only, in what is the idea contrary to Science? Cannot men and animals, plants and rocks, be supposed to be endowed with quite a different set of senses from those we possess? Cannot their organisms be born, develop, and exist, under other laws of being than those that rule our little world? Is it absolutely necessary that every corporeal being should be clothed in “coats of skin” like those that Adam and Eve were provided with in the legend of Genesis? Corporeality, we are told, however, by more than one man of Science, “may exist under very divergent conditions.” Professor A. Winchell—arguing upon the plurality of worlds—makes the following remarks:

Do not we know through the discoveries of that same all-denying Science that we are surrounded by myriads of invisible lives? If these microbes, bacteria and the tutti quanti of the infinitesimally small, are invisible to us by virtue of their minuteness, cannot there be, at the other pole, beings as invisible owing to the quality of their texture or matter—to its tenuity, in fact? Conversely, as to the effects of cometary matter, have we not another example of a half visible form of Life and Matter? The ray of sunlight entering our apartment reveals in its passage myriads of tiny beings living their little life and ceasing to be, independent and heedless of whether they are or are not perceived by our grosser materiality. And so again, of the microbes and bacteria and such-like unseen beings in other elements. We passed them by, during those long centuries of dreary ignorance, after the lamp of knowledge in the heathen and highly philosophical systems had ceased to throw its bright light on the ages of intolerance and bigotry of early Christianity; and we would fain pass them by again now.

And yet these lives surrounded us then as they do now. They have worked on, obedient to their own laws, and it is only as they have been gradually revealed by Science that we have begun to take cognizance of them and of the effects produced by them.

How long has it taken the world to become what it now is? If it can be said that even up to the present day cosmic dust, “which has never belonged to the earth before,”1048 reaches our Globe, how much more logical is it to believe—as the Occultists do—that through the countless millions of years that have rolled away since that dust aggregated and formed the Globe we live in round its nucleus of intelligent Primeval Substance, many humanities—differing from our present mankind as greatly as the humanity which will evolve millions of years hence will differ from our races—appeared but to disappear from the face of the Earth, as will our own. These primitive and far-distant humanities are denied, because, as Geologists think, they have left no tangible relics of themselves. All trace of them is swept away, and therefore they have never existed. Yet their relics—though very few of them, truly—are to be found, and they must be discovered by geological research. But, even if they were never to be met with, there would be no reason to say that no men could have ever lived in the geological periods to which their presence on earth is assigned. For their organisms needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, no feeding; the author of World-Life is right, and there is no extravagance in believing as we do, that as, on scientific hypotheses, there may be to this day “psychic natures enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum,” so there were psychic natures enshrined in forms of equally indestructible Primeval Matter—the real forefathers of our Fifth Race.

When, therefore, as in Volume II, we speak of men who inhabited this Globe 18,000,000 years ago, we have in mind neither the men of our present races, nor the present atmospheric laws, thermal conditions, etc. The Earth and Mankind, like the Sun, Moon, and Planets, all have their growth, changes, development, and gradual evolution in their life-periods; they are born, become infants, then children, adolescent, grown-up, they grow old, and finally die. Why should not Mankind be also under this universal law? Says Uriel to Enoch:

The “days of sinners” meant the days when Matter would be in its full sway on Earth, and man would have reached the apex of physical development in stature and animality. That came to pass during the period of the Atlanteans, about the middle point of their Race, the Fourth, which was drowned, as prophesied by Uriel. Since then man has been decreasing in physical stature, strength, and years, as will be shown in Volume II. But as we are at the mid-point of our sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race—the acme of materiality in each—the animal propensities, though more refined, are none the less developed; and this is most marked in civilized countries.

Section XIV. Gods, Monads and Atoms.

Some years ago we remarked that:

We now say it does more. It not only reconciles the various and apparently conflicting systems, but it checks the discoveries of modern exact Science, showing some of them to be necessarily correct, since they are found corroborated in the Ancient Records. All this will, no doubt, be regarded as terribly impertinent and disrespectful, a veritable crime of lèse-science; nevertheless, it is a fact.

Science is, undeniably, ultra-materialistic in our days; but it finds, in one sense, its justification. Nature behaving ever esoterically in actu, and being, as the Kabalists say, in abscondito, can only be judged by the profane through her appearance, and that appearance is always deceitful on the physical plane. On the other hand, the Naturalists refuse to blend Physics with Metaphysics, the Body with its informing Soul and Spirit. They prefer to ignore the latter. This is a matter of choice with some, while the minority very sensibly strive to enlarge the domain of Physical Science by trespassing on the forbidden grounds of Metaphysics, so distasteful to some Materialists. These Scientists are wise in their generation. For all their wonderful discoveries will go for nothing, and remain for ever headless bodies, unless they lift the veil of Matter and strain their eyes to see beyond. Now that they have studied Nature in the length, breadth, and thickness of her physical frame, it is time to remove the skeleton to the second [pg 670]plane, and search within the unknown depths for the living and real entity, for its sub-stance—the noumenon of evanescent Matter.

It is only by acting along such lines that some truths, now called “exploded superstitions,” will be discovered to be facts, and the relics of ancient knowledge and wisdom.

One of such “degrading” beliefs—degrading in the opinion of the all-denying Sceptic—is found in the idea that Kosmos, besides its objective planetary inhabitants, its humanities in other inhabited worlds, is full of invisible, intelligent Existences. The so-called Arch-Angels, Angels and Spirits, of the West, copies of their prototypes, the Dhyân Chohans, the Devas and Pitris, of the East, are not real Beings, but fictions. On this point materialistic Science is inexorable. To support its position, it upsets its own axiomatic law of uniformity and of continuity in the laws of Nature, and all the logical sequence of analogies in the evolution of Being. The masses of the profane are asked, and are made to believe that the accumulated testimony of History—which shows even the “Atheists” of old, such men as Epicurus and Democritus, as believers in Gods—is false; and that Philosophers like Socrates and Plato, asserting such existences, were mistaken enthusiasts and fools. If we hold our opinions merely on historical grounds, on the authority of legions of the most eminent Sages, Neo-Platonists, and Mystics in all ages, from Pythagoras down to the eminent Scientists and Professors of the present century, who, if they reject “Gods,” believe in “Spirits,” are we to consider such authorities to be as weak-minded and foolish as any Roman Catholic peasant, who believes in and prays to his once human Saint, or the Archangel St. Michael? But is there no difference between the belief of the peasant and that of the Western heirs of the Rosicrucians and Alchemists of the Middle Ages? Is it the Van Helmonts, the Khunraths, the Paracelsuses and Agrippas, from Roger Bacon down to St. Germain, who were all blind enthusiasts, hysteriacs or cheats, or is it the handful of modern Sceptics—the “leaders of thought”—who are struck with the cecity of negation? The latter is the case, we opine. It would indeed be a miracle, quite an abnormal fact in the realm of probabilities and logic, were that handful of negators to be the sole custodians of truth, while the million-strong hosts of believers in Gods, Angels, and Spirits—in Europe and America alone—namely, Greek and Latin Christians, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc., should be no better than deluded fanatics and hallucinated mediums, and [pg 671]often no higher than the victims of deceivers and impostors! However varying in their external presentations and dogmas, beliefs in the Hosts of invisible Intelligences of various grades have all the same foundation. Truth and error are mixed in all. The exact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries of Nature are to be found only in Eastern Esoteric Science. So vast and so profound are these that scarcely even a few, a very few of the highest Initiates—those whose very existence is known but to a small number of Adepts—are capable of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it is all there, and one by one facts and processes in Nature’s workshops are permitted to find their way into exact Science, while mysterious help is given to rare individuals in unravelling its arcana. It is at the close of great Cycles, in connection with racial development, that such events generally take place. We are at the very close of the cycle of 5,000 years of the present Âryan Kali Yuga; and between this time and 1897 there will be a large rent made in the Veil of Nature, and materialistic Science will receive a death-blow.

Without throwing any discredit upon time-honoured beliefs, in any direction, we are forced to draw a marked line between blind faith, evolved by theologies, and knowledge due to the independent researches of long generations of Adepts; between, in short, faith and Philosophy. There have been, in all ages, undeniably learned and good men who, having been reared in sectarian beliefs, died in their crystallized convictions. For Protestants, the garden of Eden is the primeval point of departure in the drama of Humanity, and the solemn tragedy on the summit of Calvary is the prelude to the hoped-for Millennium. For Roman Catholics, Satan is at the foundation of Kosmos, Christ in its centre, and Antichrist at its apex. For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within the narrow frames of their respective theologies: one self-created personal God, and an empyrean ringing with the Hallelujas of created Angels; the rest, false Gods, Satan and fiends.

Theo-Philosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of æons—in time and space in our Round and Globe—the mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which it is lawful for our Races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those same, now invisible, “Heavenly Men,” in geometrical figures and symbols. The keys thereto passed from one generation of “Wise Men” to another. Some of the symbols thus passed from the East to the West, brought from the Orient by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous [pg 672]“Triangle.” The latter figure, along with the square and circle, are more eloquent and scientific descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic, as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed “Geneses.” The ten Points inscribed within that “Pythagorean Triangle” are worth all the theogonies and angelologies ever emanated from the theological brain. For he who interprets these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden)—on their very face, and in the order given—will find in them the uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to Terrestrial Man. And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were evolved the Kosmos, our Earth, and the primordial Elements by which the latter was generated. Begotten in the invisible “Depths,” and in the Womb of the same “Mother” as its fellow-globes—he who masters the mysteries of our own Earth will have mastered those of all others.

Whatever ignorance, pride or fanaticism may suggest to the contrary, Esoteric Cosmology can be shown to be inseparably connected with both Philosophy and Modern Science. The Gods and Monads of the Ancients—from Pythagoras down to Leibnitz—and the Atoms of the present materialistic schools (as borrowed by them from the theories of the old Greek Atomists) are only a compound unit, or a graduated unity like the human frame, which begins with body and ends with Spirit. In the Occult Sciences they can be studied separately, but they can never be mastered unless they are viewed in their mutual correlations during their life-cycle, and as a Universal Unity during Pralayas.

La Pluche shows sincerity, but gives a poor idea of his philosophical capacities, when declaring his personal views on the Monad or the Mathematical Point. He says:

Philosophy, however, could never have formed its conception of a logical, universal, and absolute Deity, if it had had no Mathematical Point within the Circle upon which to base its speculations. It is only the manifested Point, lost to our senses after its pregenetic appearance in the infinitude and incognizability of the Circle, that makes a reconciliation [pg 673]between Philosophy and Theology possible—on condition that the latter should abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is because Christian theology has so unwisely rejected the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical figures, that it has evolved its self-created human and personal God, the monstrous Head whence flow in two streams the dogmas of Salvation and Damnation. This is so true, that even those clergymen who are Masons, and who would be Philosophers, have, in their arbitrary interpretations, fathered upon the Ancient Sages the queer idea that:

A curious explanation this, more Masonic than strictly Pythagorean.

Nor did the “Hierogram within a Circle, or equilateral Triangle,” ever mean “the exemplification of the unity of the divine Essence”; for this was exemplified by the plane of the boundless Circle. What it really meant was the triune coëqual Nature of the first differentiated Substance, or the con-substantiality of the (manifested) Spirit, Matter and the Universe—their “Son”—which proceeds from the Point, the real, Esoteric Logos, or Pythagorean Monad. For the Greek Monas signifies “Unity” in its primary sense. Those unable to seize the difference between the Monad—the Universal Unit—and the Monads or the manifested Unity, as also between the ever-hidden and the revealed Logos, or the Word, ought never to meddle with Philosophy, let alone with the Esoteric Sciences. It is needless to remind the educated reader of Kant’s Thesis to demonstrate his second Antinomy.1053 Those who have read and understood it will see clearly the line we draw between the absolutely ideal Universe and the invisible though manifested Kosmos. Our Gods and Monads are not the Elements of extension itself, but only those of the invisible Reality which is the basis of the manifested Kosmos. Neither Esoteric Philosophy, nor Kant, to say nothing of Leibnitz, would ever admit that extension can be composed of simple or unextended parts. But theologian-philosophers will not grasp this. The Circle and the Point—the latter retiring into and merging with the former, after having emanated the first three Points and connected them with lines, thus forming the first noumenal basis of the Second Triangle in the Manifested World—have [pg 674]ever been an insuperable obstacle to theological flights into dogmatic empyreans. On the authority of this Archaic Symbol, a male, personal God, the Creator and Father of all, becomes a third-rate emanation, the Sephira standing fourth in descent, and on the left hand of Ain Suph, in the Kabalistic Tree of Life. Hence, the Monad is degraded into a Vehicle—a “Throne”!

The Monad—the emanation and reflection only of the Point, or Logos, in the phenomenal World—becomes, as the apex of the manifested equilateral Triangle, the “Father.” The left side or line is the Duad, the “Mother,” regarded as the evil, counteracting principle;1054 the right side represents the “Son,” “his Mother’s Husband” in every Cosmogony, as being one with the apex; the base line is the universal plane of productive Nature, unifying on the phenomenal plane Father-Mother-Son, as these were unified in the apex, in the supersensuous World.1055 By mystic transmutation they became the Quaternary—the Triangle became the Tetraktys.

This transcendental application of geometry to cosmic and divine theogony—the Alpha and the Omega of mystical conception—was dwarfed after Pythagoras by Aristotle. By omitting the Point and the Circle, and taking no account of the apex, he reduced the metaphysical value of the idea, and thus limited the doctrine of magnitude to a simple Triad—the line, the surface, and the body. His modern heirs, who play at Idealism, have interpreted these three geometrical figures as Space, Force, and Matter—“the potencies of an interacting Unity.” Materialistic Science, perceiving but the base line of the manifested Triangle—the plane of Matter—translates it practically as (Father)-Matter, (Mother)-Matter, and (Son)-Matter, and theoretically as Matter, Force, and Correlation.

But to the average Physicist, as remarked by a Kabalist:

Symbols represent abstractions, and on these

The Physicist who regards Space merely as a representation of our mind, or extension unrelated to things in it, which Locke defined as capable of neither resistance nor motion; the paradoxical Materialist, who would have a void there, where he can see no Matter, would reject with the utmost contempt the proposition that Space is

Such is, nevertheless, the Kabalistic teaching, and it is that of Archaic Philosophy. Space is the real World, while our world is an artificial one. It is the One Unity throughout its infinitude: in its bottomless depths as on its illusive surface; a surface studded with countless phenomenal Universes, Systems and mirage-like Worlds. Nevertheless, to the Eastern Occultist, who is an objective Idealist at bottom, in the real World, which is a Unity of Forces, there is “a connection of all Matter in the Plenum,” as Leibnitz would say. This is symbolized in the Pythagorean Triangle.

It consists of Ten Points inscribed pyramid-like (from one to four) within its three sides, and it symbolizes the Universe in the famous Pythagorean Decad. The upper single point is a Monad, and represents a Unit-Point, which is the Unity whence all proceeds. All is of the same essence with it. While the ten points within the equilateral Triangle represent the phenomenal world, the three sides enclosing the pyramid of points are the barriers of noumenal Matter, or Substance, that separate it from the world of Thought.

It is argued that “the human mind cannot conceive an indivisible unit short of the annihilation of the idea with its subject.” This is an error, as the Pythagoreans have proved, and a number of Seers before them, although there is a special training needed for the conception, and although the profane mind can hardly grasp it. But there are such things as “Meta-mathematics” and “Meta-geometry.” Even Mathematics pure and simple proceed from the universal to the particular, from the mathematical indivisible point to solid figures. The teaching originated in India, and was taught in Europe by Pythagoras, who, throwing a veil over the Circle and the Point—which no living man can define except as incomprehensible abstractions—laid the origin of the differentiated cosmic Matter in the base of the Triangle. Thus the latter became the earliest of geometrical figures. The author of New Aspects of Life, dealing with the Kabalistic Mysteries, objects to the objectivization, so to speak, of the Pythagorean conception and the use of the equilateral triangle, and calls it a “misnomer.” His argument that a solid equilateral body—

—demonstrates on the contrary the grandeur of the conception in all its Esoteric application to the idea of the pregenesis, and the genesis of Kosmos. Granted, that an ideal Triangle, depicted by mathematical, imaginary lines,

But in such case most of the scientific hypotheses are no better than “phantoms of the mind”; they are unverifiable, except on inference, and have been adopted merely to answer scientific necessities. Furthermore, the ideal Triangle—“as the abstract idea of a triangular body, and, therefore, as the type of an abstract idea”—accomplished and carried out to perfection the double symbolism intended. As an emblem applicable to the objective idea, the simple triangle became a solid. When repeated in stone, facing the four cardinal points, it [pg 677]assumed the shape of the Pyramid—the symbol of the phenomenal merging into the noumenal Universe of thought, at the apex of the four triangles; and, as an “imaginary figure constructed of three mathematical lines,” it symbolized the subjective spheres—these lines “enclosing a mathematical space—which is equal to nothing enclosing nothing.” And this because, to the senses and the untrained consciousness of the Profane and the Scientist, everything beyond the line of differentiated Matter—i.e., outside of, and beyond the realm of even the most Spiritual Substance—has to remain for ever equal to nothing. It is the Ain Suph—the No Thing.

Yet these “phantoms of the mind” are in truth no greater abstractions than the abstract ideas in general as to evolution and physical development—e.g., Gravity, Matter, Force, etc.—on which the exact Sciences are based. Our most eminent Chemists and Physicists are earnestly pursuing the not hopeless attempt of finally tracing to its hiding-place the Protyle, or the basic line of the Pythagorean Triangle. The latter is, as we have said, the grandest conception imaginable, for it symbolizes both the ideal and the visible universes.1062 For if

this is true only of the realm of exact Science in a world as deceptive as it is illusive. In the realm of Esoteric Science the Unit divided ad infinitum, instead of losing its unity, approaches with every division the planes of the only eternal Reality. The eye of the Seer can follow it and behold it in all its pregenetic glory. This same idea of the reality of the subjective, and the unreality of the objective Universe, is found at the bottom of the Pythagorean and Platonic Teachings—limited to the Elect alone; for Porphyry, speaking of the Monad and the Duad, says that the former only was considered substantial and real, “that most simple Being, the cause of all unity and the measure of all things.”

But the Duad, although the origin of Evil, or Matter—hence unreal in Philosophy—is still Substance during Manvantara, and is often called the Third Monad, in Occultism, and the connecting line as between two Points, or Numbers, which proceeded from That, “which [pg 678]was before all Numbers,” as expressed by Rabbi Barahiel. And from this Duad proceeded all the Scintillas of the three Upper and the four Lower Worlds or Planes—which are in constant interaction and correspondence. This is a teaching which the Kabalah has in common with Eastern Occultism. For in the Occult Philosophy there is the “One Cause” and the “Primal Cause,” the latter thus becoming, paradoxically, the Second, as is clearly expressed by the author of the Qabbalah, from the Philosophical Writings of Ibn Gabirol, who says:

Thus he shows the early Hebrews, as the later Arabians, following in the steps of the Oriental Philosophy, such as the Chaldean, Persian, Hindû, etc. Their Primal Cause was designated at first,

and, let us add, of the eternal IS, or the I AM. Moreover, in the Kabalah the name YHVH (or Jehovah) expresses a He and a She, male and female, two in one, or Chokmah and Binah, and his, or rather their Shekinah or synthesizing Spirit (or Grace), which again makes of the Duad a Triad. This is demonstrated in the Jewish Liturgy for Pentecost, and the prayer:

And so it is considered in the exoteric Purânas, for Shekinah is no more than Shakti—the female double of any God—in such case. And so it was with the early Christians, whose Holy Spirit was feminine, as Sophia was with the Gnostics. But in the transcendental Chaldean Kabalah, or Book of Numbers, Shekinah is sexless, and the purest abstraction, a state, like Nirvâna, neither subject nor object, nor anything except an absolute Presence.

Thus it is only in the anthropomorphized systems—such as the Kabalah has now for the most part become—that Shekinah-Shakti is feminine. As such she becomes the Duad of Pythagoras, the two straight lines which can form no geometrical figure and are the symbol [pg 679]of Matter. Out of this Duad, when united in the basic line of the Triangle on the lower plane (the upper Triangle of the Sephirothal Tree), emerge the Elohim, or Deity in Cosmic Nature, with the true Kabalists the lowest designation, translated in the Bible “God.”1067 Out of these (the Elohim) issue the Scintillas.

The Scintillas are the “Souls,” and these Souls appear in the three-fold form of Monads (Units), Atoms and Gods—according to our Teaching. As says the Esoteric Catechism:

Every Atom becomes a visible complex unit [a molecule], and once attracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man.

Again:

God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body [Âtmâ, Manas, and Sthûla Sharîra] in man.

In their septenary aggregation they are the “Heavenly Man,” in the Kabalistic sense; thus, terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. Once again:

The Monads [Jîvas] are the Souls of the Atoms; both are the fabric in which the Chohans [Dhyânîs, Gods] clothe themselves when a form is needed.

This relates to cosmic and sub-planetary Monads, not to the super-cosmic Monads, the Pythagorean Monad, as it is called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. The Monads of the present dissertation are treated, from the standpoint of their individuality, as Atomic Souls, before these Atoms descend into pure terrestrial form. For this descent into concrete Matter marks the medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality, they begin to ascend through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is firmly established between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, however, we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but with their life and behaviour in Space, [pg 680]on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional Chemist and Physicist cannot reach them—unless, indeed, he develops in himself highly clairvoyant faculties.

It is well known that Leibnitz came very near the truth several times, but he defined Monadic Evolution incorrectly, a thing not to be wondered at, since he was not an Initiate, nor even a Mystic, but only a very intuitional Philosopher. Yet no Psycho-physicist ever came nearer than has he to the Esoteric general outline of evolution. This evolution—viewed from its several standpoints, i.e., as the Universal and the Individualized Monad, and the chief aspects of the Evolving Energy after differentiation, the purely Spiritual, the Intellectual, the Psychic and the Physical—may be thus formulated as an invariable law: a descent of Spirit into Matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a reäscent from the depths of materiality towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete form and substance up to the Laya-state, or what Science calls the “zero-point,” and beyond.

These states—once the spirit of Esoteric Philosophy is grasped—become absolutely necessary from simple logical and analogical considerations. Physical Science having now ascertained, through its department of Chemistry, the invariable law of this evolution of Atoms—from their “protylean” state down to that of a physical and then a chemical particle, or molecule—cannot well reject these states as a general law. And once it is forced by its enemies—Metaphysics and Psychology1068—out of its alleged impregnable strongholds, it will find it more difficult than it now appears to refuse room in the Spaces of Space to Planetary Spirits (Gods), Elementals, and even the Elementary Spooks or Ghosts, and others. Already Figuier and Paul D’Assier, two Positivists and Materialists, have succumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still greater Scientists will follow in that intellectual “Fall.” They will be driven out of their position not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous gaps and chasms that open daily and will still be opening before them, as one discovery follows the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth wave of simple common sense.

We may take as an example, Mr. W. Crookes’ latest discovery of what he has named Protyle. In the Notes on the Bhagavad Gîtâ, by one of the best metaphysicians and Vedântic scholars in India, the lecturer, referring cautiously to “things Occult” in that great Indian Esoteric work, makes a remark as suggestive as it is strictly correct. He says:

These words will be reëchoed and approved by every Eastern Occultist. Much from the lectures by Mr. Crookes has already been quoted in Section XI. A second lecture has been delivered by him, as remarkable as the first, on the “Genesis of the Elements,”1071 and also a third one. Here we have almost a corroboration of the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy concerning the mode of primeval evolution. It is, indeed, as near an approach, made by a great scholar and specialist in Chemistry,1072 to the Secret Doctrine, as could be made apart from the application of the Monads and Atoms to the dogmas of pure transcendental Metaphysics, and their connection and correlation with “Gods and intelligent conscious Monads.” But Chemistry is now on its ascending plane, thanks to one of its highest European representatives. It is impossible for it to go back to that day when Materialism regarded its sub-elements as absolutely simple and homogeneous bodies, which it had raised, in its blindness, to the rank of Elements. [pg 682]The mask has been snatched off by too clever a hand for there to be any fear of a new disguise. And after years of pseudology, of bastard molecules parading under the name of Elements, behind and beyond which there could be nought but void, a great professor of Chemistry asks once more:

Those who are heirs to primeval revelations have taught these “possibilities” in every century, but have never found a fair hearing. The truths inspired into Kepler, Leibnitz, Gassendi, Swedenborg, etc., were ever alloyed with their own speculations in one or another predetermined direction—hence were distorted. But now one of the great truths has dawned upon an eminent professor of exact Modern Science, and he fearlessly proclaims as a fundamental axiom that Science has not made itself acquainted, so far, with real simple Elements. For Mr. Crookes tells his audience:

Nevertheless, the idea would have remained crystallized “in the air of Science,” and would not have descended into the thick atmosphere of Materialism and profane mortals for years to come, perhaps, had not Mr. Crookes bravely and fearlessly reduced it to its simple constituents, [pg 683]and thus publicly forced it on scientific notice. Says Plutarch:

The revolution produced in old Chemistry by Avogadro was the first page in the volume of “New Chemistry.” Mr. Crookes has now turned the second page, and is boldly pointing to what may be the last. For Protyle once accepted and recognized—as invisible Ether was, both being logical and scientific necessities—Chemistry will have virtually ceased to live: it will reäppear in its reïncarnation as—“New Alchemy,” or “Meta-chemistry.” The discoverer of radiant matter will have vindicated in time the Archaic Âryan works on Occultism, and even the Vedas and Purânas. For what are the manifested “Mother,” the “Father-Son-Husband” (Aditi and Daksha, a form of Brahmâ, as Creators), and the “Son”—the three “First-born”—but simply Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which in its terrestrial manifestation is called Nitrogen. Even the exoteric descriptions of the “First-born” Triad give all the characteristics of these three “gases.” Priestley, the “discoverer” of Oxygen, or of that which was known in the highest antiquity!

Yet all the ancient, mediæval, and modern Poets and Philosophers have been anticipated even in the exoteric Hindû books as to the Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the Universal Mind—Descartes’ “Plenum” of Matter differentiated into particles; Leibnitz’s “ethereal fluid”; and Kant’s “primitive fluid” dissolved into its elements; Kepler’s solar vortex and systemic vortices; in short, through Anaxagoras, down to Galileo, Torricelli, and Swedenborg, and after them to the latest speculations by European Mystics—all this is found in the Hindû Hymns, or Mantras, to the “Gods, Monads and Atoms,” in their Fulness, for they are inseparable. In Esoteric Teachings, the most transcendental conceptions of the Universe and its mysteries, as also the most seemingly materialistic speculations, are found reconciled, because these Sciences embrace the whole scope of evolution from Spirit to Matter. As declared by an American Theosophist:

Let the reader remember these “Monads” of Leibnitz, every one of [pg 684]which is a living mirror of the Universe, every Monad reflecting every other, and compare this view and definition with certain Sanskrit Shlokas translated by Sir William Jones, in which it is said that the creative source of the Divine Mind,

When, therefore, Mr. Crookes declares that:

the answer is ready. The theoretical knowledge is contained in the Esoteric meaning of every Hindû cosmogony in the Purânas; the practical demonstration thereof—is in the hands of those who will not be recognized in this century, save by the very few. The scientific possibilities of various discoveries, that must inexorably lead exact Science into the acceptation of Eastern Occult views, which contain all the requisite material for the filling of those “gaps,” are, so far, at the mercy of Modern Materialism. It is only by working in the direction taken by Mr. William Crookes that there is any hope for the recognition of a few, hitherto Occult, truths.

Meanwhile, any one thirsting to have a glimpse at a practical diagram of the evolution of primordial Matter—which, separating and differentiating under the impulse of cyclic law, divides itself on a general view into a septenary gradation of Substance—can do no better than examine the plates attached to Mr. Crookes’ lecture, Genesis of the Elements, and ponder well over some passages of the text. In one place he says:

This will be the case with all the Atoms and molecules when they [pg 685]have separated from their compound forms and bodies—when Pralaya sets in. Reverse the case, and imagine the dawn of a new Manvantara. The pure “silver” of the absorbed material will once more separate into Substance, which will generate “Divine Essences” whose “Principles”1077 are the Primary Elements, the Sub-elements, the Physical Energies, and subjective and objective Matter; or, as these are epitomized—Gods, Monads, and Atoms. If leaving for one moment the metaphysical or transcendental side of the question—dropping out of the present consideration the supersensuous and intelligent Beings and Entities believed in by the Kabalists and Christians—we turn to the theory of atomic evolution, the Occult Teachings are still found corroborated by exact Science and its confessions, so far, at least, as regards the supposed “simple” Elements, now suddenly degraded into poor and distant relatives, not even second cousins to the latter. For we are told by Mr. Crookes that:

In Isis Unveiled, we said:

Our prophecy begins to assert itself.

But between Hermes and Huxley there is a middle course and point. Let the men of Science only throw a bridge half-way, and think seriously over the theories of Leibnitz. We have shown our [pg 686]theories with regard to the evolution of Atoms—their last formation into compound chemical molecules being produced within our terrestrial workshops in the Earth’s atmosphere and not elsewhere—as strangely agreeing with the evolution of Atoms shown on Mr. Crookes’ plates. Several times already it has been stated in this volume that Mârttânda, the Sun, had evolved and aggregated, together with his seven smaller Brothers, from his Mother Aditi’s bosom, that bosom being Prima Mater-ia—the lecturer’s primordial Protyle. Esoteric Doctrines teach the existence of

And behold a great scholar in Science now asking the world to accept this as one of his postulates! We have shown the “Mother,” fiery and hot, becoming gradually cool and radiant, and this same Scientist claims as his second postulate—a scientific necessity, it would seem—

Occult Science teaches that the “Mother” lies stretched in Infinity, during Pralaya, as the great Deep, the “dry Waters of Space,” according to the quaint expression in the Catechism, and becomes wet only after the separation and the moving over its face of Nârâyana, the

Spirit which is invisible Flame, which never burns, but sets on fire all that it touches, and gives it life and generation.1081

And now Science tells us that “the first-born element … most nearly allied to protyle” would be “hydrogen … which for some time would be the only existing form of matter” in the Universe. What says Old Science? It answers: Just so; but we would call Hydrogen (and Oxygen), which—in the pre-geological and even pre-genetic ages—instils the fire of life into the “Mother” by incubation, the spirit, the noumenon, of that which becomes in its grossest form Oxygen and Hydrogen and Nitrogen on Earth—Nitrogen being of no divine origin, but merely an earth-born cement for uniting other gases and fluids, and serving as a sponge to carry in itself the Breath of Life, pure air.1082 Before these gases and fluids become what they are in our atmosphere, they are interstellar Ether; still earlier and on a deeper plane—something else, and so on in infinitum. The eminent and learned gentleman must pardon an Occultist for quoting him at such [pg 687]length; but such is the penalty of a Fellow of the Royal Society who approaches so near the precincts of the Sacred Adytum of Occult Mysteries as virtually to overstep the forbidden boundaries.

But it is time to leave Modern Physical Science and turn to the psychological and metaphysical side of the question. We would only remark that to the “two very reasonable postulates” required by the eminent lecturer, “to get a glimpse of some few of the secrets so darkly hidden” behind “the door of the Unknown,” a third should be added1083—lest no battering at it should avail; the postulate that Leibnitz stood on a firm groundwork of fact and truth in his speculations. The admirable and thoughtful synopsis of these speculations—as given by John Theodore Mertz in his “Leibnitz”—shows how nearly he has brushed the hidden secrets of Esoteric Theogony in his Monadologie. And yet this philosopher has hardly risen in his speculations above the first planes, the lower principles of the Cosmic Great Body. His theory soars to no loftier heights than those of the manifested life, self-consciousness and intelligence, leaving the regions of the earlier post-genetic mysteries untouched, as his ethereal fluid is post-planetary.

But this third postulate will hardly be accepted by the modern men of Science; and, like Descartes, they will prefer keeping to the properties of external things, which, like extension, are incapable of explaining the phenomenon of motion, rather than accept the latter as an independent Force. They will never become anti-Cartesian in this generation; nor will they admit that:

This is Leibnitz’s idea as analyzed by Mertz, who adds that he called this “something” Force, and maintained that external things were endowed with Force, and that in order to be the bearers of this Force they must have a Substance, for they are not lifeless and inert masses, but the centres and bearers of Form—a purely Esoteric claim, since Force was with Leibnitz an active principle—the division between Mind and Matter disappearing by this conclusion.

But, luckily for truth:

The divisions made by Leibnitz, however incomplete and faulty from the standpoint of Occultism, show a spirit of metaphysical intuition to which no man of Science, not Descartes, not even Kant, has ever reached. With him there existed ever an infinite gradation of thought. Only a small portion of the contents of our thoughts, he said, rises into the clearness of apperception, “into the light of perfect consciousness.” Many remain in a confused or obscure state, in the state of “perceptions”; but they are there. Descartes denied soul to the animal. Leibnitz, as do the Occultists, endowed “the whole creation with mental life, this being, according to him, capable of infinite gradations.” And this, as Mertz justly observes:

This is the spirit, the very root of Occult doctrine and thought. The “Spirit-Matter” and “Matter-Spirit” extend infinitely in depth, and like the “essence of things” of Leibnitz, our essence of things real is at the seventh depth; while the unreal and gross matter of Science and the external world, is at the lowest extreme of our perceptive senses. The Occultist knows the worth or worthlessness of the latter.

The student must now be shown the fundamental distinction between the system of Leibnitz1085 and that of Occult Philosophy, on the question of the Monads, and this may be done with his Monadologie before us. It may be correctly stated that were Leibnitz’ and Spinoza’s systems reconciled, the essence and spirit of Esoteric Philosophy would be made to appear. From the shock of the two—as opposed to the Cartesian system—emerge the truths of the Archaic Doctrine. Both oppose the Metaphysics of Descartes. His idea of the contrast of two Substances—Extension and Thought—radically differing from each other and mutually irreducible, is too arbitrary and too un-philosophical for them. Thus Leibnitz made of the two Cartesian Substances two attributes of one universal Unity, in which he saw God. Spinoza recognized but one universal indivisible Substance, an absolute All, like Parabrahman. Leibnitz, on the contrary, perceived the existence of a plurality of Substances. There was but One for Spinoza; for Leibnitz an infinitude of Beings, from, and in, the One. Hence, though both admitted but One Real Entity, while Spinoza made it impersonal and indivisible, Leibnitz divided his personal Deity into a number of divine and semi-divine Beings. Spinoza was a subjective, Leibnitz an objective Pantheist, yet both were great Philosophers in their intuitive perceptions.

Now, if these two teachings were blended together and each corrected [pg 690]by the other—and foremost of all the One Reality weeded of its personality—there would remain as sum total a true spirit of Esoteric Philosophy in them; the impersonal, attributeless, absolute Divine Essence, which is no “being” but the root of all Being. Draw a deep line in your thought between that ever-incognizable Essence, and the as invisible, yet comprehensible Presence, Mûlaprakriti or Shekinah, from beyond and through which vibrates the Sound of the Verbum, and from which evolve the numberless Hierarchies of intelligent Egos, of conscious as of semi-conscious, “apperceptive” and “perceptive” Beings, whose Essence is spiritual Force, whose Substance is the Elements, and whose Bodies (when needed) are the Atoms—and our Doctrine is there. For, says Leibnitz:

That which was for him the primordial and ultimate element in everybody and object was thus not the material atoms, or molecules, necessarily more or less extended, as those of Epicurus and Gassendi, but, as Mertz shows, immaterial and metaphysical Atoms, “mathematical points,” or real souls—as explained by Henri Lachelier (Professeur Agrégé de Philosophie), his French biographer.

Thus, reality in the manifested world is composed of a unity of units, so to say, immaterial—from our standpoint—and infinite. These Leibnitz calls Monads, Eastern Philosophy Jîvas, while Occultism, with the Kabalists and all the Christians, gives them a variety of names. With us, as with Leibnitz, they are “the expression of the universe,”1087 and every physical point is but the phenomenal expression of the noumenal, metaphysical Point. His distinction between “perception” and “apperception” is the philosophical though dim expression of the Esoteric Teachings. His “reduced universes,” of which “there are as many as there are Monads”—is the chaotic representation of our Septenary System with its divisions and sub-divisions.

As to the relation his Monads bear to our Dhyân Chohans, Cosmic Spirits, Devas, and Elementals, we may reproduce briefly the opinion [pg 691]of a learned and thoughtful Theosophist, Mr. C. H. A. Bjerregaard, on the subject. In an excellent paper, “On the Elementals, the Elementary Spirits, and the Relationship between Them and Human Beings,” read by him before the Âryan Theosophical Society of New York, Mr. Bjerregaard thus distinctly formulates his opinion:

And the lecturer proceeds to show that to Leibnitz Atoms and Elements are Centres of Force, or rather “spiritual beings whose very nature it is to act,” for the

It is at this point that Leibnitz’s philosophy breaks down. There is no provision made, nor any distinction established, between the “Elemental” Monad and that of a high Planetary Spirit, or even the Human Monad or Soul. He even goes so far as to sometimes doubt whether

He draws a distinction between Monads and Atoms,1091 because, as he repeatedly states:

But soon after he finds a provision for this in a substantial correspondence, a certain metaphysical bond between the Monads—vinculum substantiale. Esoteric Philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism—though it regards the objective Universe and all in it as Mâyâ, Temporary Illusion—draws a practical distinction between Collective Illusion, Mahâmâyâ, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the objective relations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this Illusion lasts. The Adept, therefore, may read the future in an Elemental Monad, but he has to draw together for this object a great number of them, as each Monad represents only a portion of the Kingdom it belongs to.

And as Leibnitz explains:

A number of Monads could represent simultaneously the thoughts of the two million inhabitants of Paris.

But what say the Occult Sciences to this, and what do they add?

They say that what is called collectively Monads by Leibnitz—roughly viewed, and leaving every subdivision out of calculation, for [pg 693]the present—may be separated into three distinct Hosts,1094 which, counted from the highest planes, are, firstly, “Gods,” or conscious, spiritual Egos; the intelligent Architects, who work after the plan in the Divine Mind. Then come the Elementals, or “Monads,” who form collectively and unconsciously the grand Universal Mirrors of everything connected with their respective realms. Lastly, the “Atoms,” or material molecules, which are informed in their turn by their “perceptive” Monads, just as every cell in a human body is so informed. There are shoals of such informed Atoms which, in their turn, inform the molecules; an infinitude of Monads, or Elementals proper, and countless spiritual Forces—Monadless, for they are pure incorporealities,1095 except under certain laws, when they assume a form—not necessarily human. Whence the substance that clothes them—the apparent organism they evolve around their centres? The Formless (Arûpa) Radiations, existing in the harmony of Universal Will, and being what we term the collective or the aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane of the subjective Universe, unite together an infinitude of Monads—each the mirror of its own Universe—and thus individualize for the time being an independent Mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out of the interstellar Atoms. For Atoms and Monads, associated or dissociated, simple or complex, are, from the moment of the first differentiation, but the “principles,” corporeal, psychic and spiritual, of the “Gods”—themselves the Radiations of Primordial Nature. Thus, to the eye of the Seer, the higher Planetary Powers appear under two aspects: the subjective—as influences, and the objective—as mystic forms, which, under Karmic law, become a Presence, Spirit and Matter being One, as repeatedly stated. Spirit is Matter on the seventh plane; Matter is Spirit at the lowest point of its cyclic activity; and both are—Mâyâ.

Atoms are called Vibrations in Occultism; also Sound—collectively. This does not interfere with Mr. Tyndall’s scientific discovery. He traced, on the lower rung of the ladder of monadic being, the whole course of the atmospheric Vibrations—and this constitutes the objective part of the process in Nature. He has traced and recorded the rapidity of their motion and transmission; the force of their impact; their setting up vibrations in the tympanum and their transmission of these to the otoliths, etc., till the vibration of the auditory nerve commences—and a new phenomenon now takes place: the subjective side of the process or the sensation of sound. Does he perceive or see it? No; for his specialty is to discover the behaviour of Matter. But why should not a Psychic see it, a spiritual Seer, whose inner Eye is opened, one who can see through the veil of Matter? The waves and undulations of Science are all produced by Atoms propelling their molecules into activity from within. Atoms fill the immensity of Space, and by their continuous vibration are that Motion which keeps the wheels of Life perpetually going. It is that inner work that produces the natural phenomenon called the correlation of Forces. Only, at the origin of every such “Force,” there stands the conscious guiding Noumenon thereof—Angel or God, Spirit or Demon, ruling powers, yet the same.

As described by Seers—those who can see the motion of the interstellar shoals, and follow them clairvoyantly in their evolution—they are dazzling, like specks of virgin snow in radiant sunlight. Their velocity is swifter than thought, quicker than any mortal physical eye can follow, and, as well as can be judged from the tremendous rapidity of their course, the motion is circular. Standing on an open plain, on a mountain summit especially, and gazing into the vast vault above and the spatial infinitudes around, the whole atmosphere seems ablaze with them, the air soaked through with these dazzling coruscations. At times, the intensity of their motion produces flashes like the Northern Lights in the Aurora Borealis. The sight is so marvellous, that, as the Seer gazes into this inner world, and feels the scintillating points shoot past him, he is filled with awe at the thought of other, still greater mysteries, that lie beyond, and within, this radiant ocean.

However imperfect and incomplete this explanation on “Gods, Monads and Atoms,” it is hoped that some students and Theosophists, at least, will feel that there may indeed be a close relation between Materialistic Science and Occultism, which is the complement and missing soul of the former.

Section XV. Cyclic Evolution and Karma.

It is the spiritual evolution of the inner, immortal Man that forms the fundamental tenet of the Occult Sciences. To realize even distantly such a process, the student has to believe (a) in the One Universal Life, independent of Matter (or what Science regards as Matter); and (b) in the individual Intelligences that animate the various manifestations of this Principle. Mr. Huxley does not believe in Vital Force; others Scientists do. Dr. J. H. Hutchinson Stirling’s work As regards Protoplasm has made no small havoc of this dogmatic negation. Professor Beale’s decision also is in favour of a Vital Principle; and Dr. B. W. Richardson’s lectures on Nervous Ether have been sufficiently quoted. Thus, opinions are divided.

The One Life is closely related to the One Law which governs the World of Being—Karma. Exoterically, this is simply and literally “action,” or rather an “effect-producing cause.” Esoterically, it is quite a different thing in its far-reaching moral effects. It is the unerring Law of Retribution. To say to those ignorant of the real significance, characteristics, and awful importance of this eternal immutable Law, that no theological definition of a Personal Deity can give an idea of this impersonal, yet ever present and active Principle, is to speak in vain. Nor can it be called Providence. For Providence, with the Theists—the Protestant Christians, at any rate—rejoices in a personal male gender, while with the Roman Catholics it is a female potency. “Divine Providence tempers His blessings to secure their better effects,” Wogan tells us. Indeed “He” tempers them, which Karma—a sexless principle—does not.

Throughout the first two Parts, it has been shown that, at the first flutter of renascent life, Svabhâvat, “the Mutable Radiance of the Immutable Darkness unconscious in Eternity,” passes, at every new rebirth of Kosmos, from an inactive state into one of intense activity; that it [pg 696]differentiates, and then begins its work through that differentiation. This work is Karma.

The Cycles are also subservient to the effects produced by this activity.

The one Cosmic Atom becomes seven Atoms on the plane of Matter, and each is transformed into a centre of energy; that same Atom becomes seven Rays on the plane of Spirit; and the seven creative Forces of Nature, radiating from the Root-Essence … follow, one the right, the other the left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet in close embrace. What unites them? Karma.

The Atoms emanated from the Central Point emanate in their turn new centres of energy, which, under the potential breath of Fohat, begin their work from within without, and multiply other minor centres. These, in the course of evolution and involution, form in their turn the roots or developing causes of new effects, from worlds and “man-bearing” globes, down to the genera, species, and classes of all the seven kingdoms, of which we know only four. For as says the Book of the Aphorisms of Tson-ka-pa:

Thyan-kam is the power or knowledge of guiding the impulses of Cosmic Energy in the right direction.

The true Buddhist, recognizing no “personal God,” nor any “Father” and “Creator of Heaven and Earth,” still believes in an Absolute Consciousness, Adi-Buddhi; and the Buddhist Philosopher knows that there are Planetary Spirits, the Dhyân Chohans. But though he admits of “Spiritual Lives,” yet, as they are temporary in eternity, even they, according to his Philosophy, are “the Mâyâ of the Day,” the Illusion of a “Day of Brahmâ,” a short Manvantara of 4,320,000,000 years. The Yin-Sin is not for the speculations of men, for the Lord Buddha has strongly prohibited all such enquiry. If the Dhyân Chohans and all the Invisible Beings—the Seven Centres and their direct Emanations, the minor centres of Energy—are the direct reflex of the One Light, yet men are far removed from these, since the whole of the visible Kosmos consists of “self-produced beings, the creatures of Karma.” Thus regarding a personal God “as only a gigantic shadow thrown upon the void of space by the imagination of ignorant men,”1096 they teach that only “two things are [objectively] [pg 697]eternal, namely Âkâsha and Nirvâna”; and that these are one in reality, and but a Mâyâ when divided.

If a Vedântic Brahman of the Advaita Sect, were asked whether he believed in the existence of God, he would probably answer, as Jacolliot was answered—“I am myself ‘God’;” while a Buddhist (a Sinhalese especially) would simply laugh, and say in reply, “There is no God; no Creation.” Yet the root Philosophy of both Advaita and Buddhist scholars is identical, and both have the same respect for animal life, for both believe that every creature on Earth, however small and humble, “is an immortal portion of the immortal Matter”—Matter having with them quite another significance from that which it has with either Christian or Materialist—and that every creature is subject to Karma.

The answer of the Brâhman would have suggested itself to every ancient Philosopher, Kabalist, and Gnostic of the early days. It contains the very spirit of the Delphic and Kabalistic commandments, for Esoteric Philosophy solved, ages ago, the problem of what man was, is, and will be; his origin, life-cycle—interminable in its duration of successive incarnations or rebirths—and his final absorption into the Source from which he started.

But it is not Physical Science that we can ever ask to read man for us, as the riddle of the Past, or of the Future; since no Philosopher can tell us even what man is, as known to both Physiology and Psychology. In doubt whether man was a God or a beast, Science has now connected him with the latter and derives him from an animal. Certainly the task of analyzing and classifying the human being as a terrestrial animal may be left to Science, which Occultists, of all men, regard with veneration and respect. They recognize its ground and the wonderful work it has done, the progress achieved in Physiology, and even—to a degree—in Biology. But man’s inner, spiritual, psychic, or even moral, nature cannot be left to the tender mercies of an ingrained Materialism; for not even the higher psychological Philosophy of the West is able, in its present incompleteness and tendency towards a decided Agnosticism, to do justice to the inner man; especially to his higher capacities and perceptions, and to those states of consciousness, [pg 698]across the road to which such authorities as Mill draw a strong line, saying “So far, and no farther shalt thou go.”

No Occultist would deny that man—together with the elephant and the microbe, the crocodile and the lizard, the blade of grass and the crystal—is, in his physical formation, the simple product of the evolutionary forces of Nature through a numberless series of transformations; but he puts the case differently.

It is not against zoölogical and anthropological discoveries, based on the fossils of man and animal, that every Mystic and believer in a Divine Soul inwardly revolts, but only against the uncalled-for conclusions built on preconceived theories and made to fit in with certain prejudices. The premisses of Scientists may or may not be always true; and as some of these theories live but a short life, the deductions therefrom must ever be one-sided with materialistic Evolutionists. Yet it is on the strength of such very ephemeral authority, that most of the men of Science frequently receive honours where they deserve them the least.1098

To make the working of Karma—in the periodical renovations of the Universe—more evident and intelligible to the student when he arrives at the origin and evolution of man, he has now to examine with us the Esoteric bearing of the Karmic Cycles upon Universal Ethics. The question is, do those mysterious divisions of time, called Yugas and Kalpas by the Hindûs, and so very graphically, κύκλοι, cycles, rings [pg 699]or circles, by the Greeks, have any bearing upon, or any direct connection with, human life? Even exoteric Philosophy explains that these perpetual circles of time are ever returning on themselves, periodically and intelligently, in Space and Eternity. There are “Cycles of Matter,”1099 and there are “Cycles of Spiritual Evolution,” and racial, national, and individual Cycles. May not Esoteric speculation allow us a still deeper insight into their workings?

This idea is beautifully expressed in a very clever scientific work.

According to the teachings, Mâyâ—the illusive appearance of the marshalling of events and actions on this Earth—changes, varying with nations and places. But the chief features of one’s life are always in accordance with the “Constellation” under which one is born, or, we should say, with the characteristics of its animating principle or the Deity that presides over it, whether we call it a Dhyân Chohan, as in Asia, or an Archangel, as with the Greek and Latin Churches. In ancient Symbolism it was always the Sun—though the Spiritual, not the visible, Sun was meant—that was supposed to send forth the chief [pg 700]Saviours and Avatâras. Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas, the Avatâras, and so many other incarnations of the highest Seven. The closer the approach to one’s Prototype, in “Heaven,” the better for the mortal whose Personality was chosen, by his own personal Deity (the Seventh Principle), as its terrestrial abode. For, with every effort of will toward purification and unity with that “Self-God,” one of the lower Rays breaks, and the spiritual entity of man is drawn higher and ever higher to the Ray that supersedes the first, until, from Ray to Ray, the Inner Man is drawn into the one and highest Beam of the Parent-Sun. Thus, “the events of humanity do run coördinately with the number forms,” since the single units of that humanity proceed one and all from the same source—the Central Sun and its shadow, the visible. For the equinoxes and solstices, the periods and various phases of the solar course, astronomically and numerically expressed, are only the concrete symbols of the eternally living verity, though they do seem abstract ideas to uninitiated mortals. And this explains the extraordinary numerical coincidences with geometrical relations, shown by several authors.

Yes; “our destiny is written in the stars”! Only, the closer the union between the mortal reflection Man and his celestial Prototype, the less dangerous the external conditions and subsequent reïncarnations—which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This is not superstition, least of all is it fatalism. The latter implies a blind course of some still blinder power, but man is a free agent during his stay on earth. He cannot escape his ruling Destiny, but he has the choice of two paths that lead him in that direction, and he can reach the goal of misery—if such is decreed to him—either in the snowy white robes of the martyr, or in the soiled garments of a volunteer in the iniquitous course; for there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination of our will upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow either of the two. Those who believe in Karma have to believe in Destiny, which, from birth to death, every man weaves thread by thread round himself, as a spider his web; and this Destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible Prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable Law of Compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following [pg 701]the fluctuations of the fight. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made Destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or carries him away like a feather in a whirlwind raised by his own actions, and this is—Karma.

A Materialist, treating of the periodical creations of our globe, has expressed it in a single sentence:

The writer was Büchner, who little suspected that he was repeating an axiom of the Occultists. It is quite true also, as Burmeister remarks, that:

The Forces—their Noumena rather—are the same, of course; therefore, the phenomenal Forces must be the same also. But how can any one feel so sure that the attributes of Matter have not altered under the hand of Protean Evolution? How can any Materialist assert with such confidence, as is done by Rossmassler, that:

Who are they “that darken counsel with words without knowledge,” and where were the Huxleys and Büchners when the foundations of the Earth were laid by the Great Law? This same homogeneity of Matter and immutability of natural laws, which are so much insisted upon by Materialism, are a fundamental principle of the Occult Philosophy; but this unity rests upon the inseparability of Spirit from Matter, and, if the two were once divorced, the whole Kosmos would fall back into Chaos and Non-being. Therefore, it is absolutely false, and but an additional demonstration of the great conceit of our age, to assert, as men of Science do, that all the great geological changes and terrible convulsions of the past have been produced by ordinary and known physical Forces. For these Forces were but the tools and final means for the accomplishment of certain purposes, acting periodically, and apparently mechanically, through an inward impulse mixed up [pg 702]with, but beyond their material nature. There is a purpose in every important act of Nature, whose acts are all cyclic and periodical. But spiritual Forces having been usually confused with the purely physical, the former are denied by, and therefore, because left unexamined, have to remain unknown to Science.1102 Says Hegel:

No Metaphysician or Theosophist could demur to these truths, which are all embodied in Esoteric Teachings. There is a predestination in the geological life of our globe, as in the history, past and future, of races and nations. This is closely connected with what we call Karma, and what Western Pantheists called Nemesis and Cycles. The law of evolution is now carrying us along the ascending arc of our cycle, when the effects will be once more re-merged into, and re-become the now neutralized causes, and all things affected by the former will have regained their original harmony. This will be the cycle of our special Round, a moment in the duration of the Great Cycle, or Mahâyuga.

The fine philosophical remarks of Hegel are found to have their [pg 703]application in the teachings of Occult Science, which shows Nature ever acting with a given purpose, whose results are always dual. This was stated in our first Occult volumes, in the following words:

But these cycles—wheels within wheels, so comprehensively and ingeniously symbolized by the various Manus and Rishis in India, and by the Kabiri in the West1105—do not affect all mankind at one and the same time. Hence, as we see, the difficulty of comprehending, and of discriminating between them, with regard to their physical and spiritual effects, without having thoroughly mastered their relations with, and action upon, the respective positions of nations and races, in their destiny and evolution. This system cannot be comprehended if the spiritual action of these periods—preördained, so to say, by Karmic law—is separated from their physical course. The calculations of the best Astrologers would fail, or at any rate remain imperfect, unless this dual action is thoroughly taken into consideration and mastered upon these lines. And this mastery can be achieved only through Initiation.

The Grand Cycle includes the progress of mankind from the appearance of primordial man of ethereal form. It runs through the inner Cycles of man’s progressive evolution from the ethereal down to the semi-ethereal and purely physical; down to the redemption of man [pg 704]from his “coat of skin” and matter, after which it continues running its course downward and then upward again, to meet at the culmination of a Round, when the Manvantaric Serpent “swallows its tail” and seven Minor Cycles are passed. These are the great Racial Cycles which affect equally all the nations and tribes included in that special Race; but there are minor and national, as well as tribal, Cycles within these, which run their course independently of each other. They are called in Eastern Esotericism the Karmic Cycles. In the West—since Pagan Wisdom has been repudiated as having grown from and been developed by the Dark Powers, supposed to be at constant war with and in opposition to the little tribal Jehovah—the full and awful significance of the Greek Nemesis, or Karma, has been entirely forgotten. Otherwise Christians would have better realized the profound truth that Nemesis is without attributes; that while the dreaded Goddess is absolute and immutable as a Principle, it is we ourselves—nations and individuals—who propel it to action and give the impulse to its direction. Karma-Nemesis is the creator of nations and mortals, but once created, it is they who make of her either a Fury or a rewarding Angel. Yea—

—as the Chorus tells Prometheus. And as unwise they, who believe that the Goddess may be propitiated by any sacrifices and prayers, or have her wheel diverted from the path it has once taken. “The triform Fates and ever mindful Furies” are her attributes only on Earth, and begotten by ourselves. There is no return from the paths she cycles over; yet those paths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively or individually, who prepare them. Karma-Nemesis is the synonym of Providence, minus design, goodness, and every other finite attribute and qualification, so unphilosophically attributed to the latter. An Occultist or a Philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will nevertheless teach that it guards the good and watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer—aye, even to his seventh rebirth—so long, indeed, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of Harmony has not been finally reädjusted. For the only decree of Karma—an eternal and immutable decree—is absolute Harmony in the [pg 705]world of Matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves, according as we work with, through and along with Nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or—breaking them.

Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of these ways—which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate, while another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism, and a third, simple Chance, with neither Gods nor Devils to guide them—would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all of them to their correct cause. With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our neighbours would no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them, two-thirds of the world’s evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work for, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant presence in our midst of every element of strife and opposition, and the division of races, nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is the chief cause of the “ways of Providence.” We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then we complain because these windings are so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. If one breaks the laws of Harmony, or, as a theosophical writer expresses it, the “laws of life,” one must be prepared to fall into the chaos oneself has produced. For, according to the same writer:

Therefore, if any one is helpless before these immutable laws, it is not ourselves, the artificers of our destinies, but rather those Angels, the guardians of Harmony. Karma-Nemesis is no more than the spiritual dynamical effect of causes produced, and forces awakened into activity, by our own actions. It is a law of Occult dynamics that [pg 706]“a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the physical objective plane of existence.”

This condition of things will last till man’s spiritual intuitions are fully opened, and this will not be until we fairly cast off our thick coats of Matter; until we begin acting from within, instead of ever following impulses from without, impulses produced by our physical senses and gross selfish body. Until then the only palliatives for the evils of life are union and harmony—a Brotherhood in actu, and Altruism not simply in name. The suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one, but many bad effects. And if a Brotherhood, or even a number of Brotherhoods, may not be able to prevent nations from occasionally cutting each other’s throats, still unity in thought and action, and philosophical research into the mysteries of being, will always prevent some persons, who are trying to comprehend that which has hitherto remained to them a riddle, from creating additional causes of mischief in a world already so full of woe and evil. Knowledge of Karma gives the conviction that if

it is only because mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself his own saviour and his own destroyer. He need not accuse Heaven and the Gods, Fates and Providence, of the apparent injustice that reigns in the midst of humanity. But let him rather remember and repeat this fragment of Grecian wisdom, which warns man to forbear accusing That which

and such are now the ways on which the great European nations move onward. Every nation and tribe of the Western Âryans, like their Eastern brethren of the Fifth Race, has had its Golden and its Iron Age, its period of comparative irresponsibility, or its Satya Age of purity, and now, several of them have reached their Iron Age, the Kali Yuga, an age black with horrors.

On the other hand, it is true that the exoteric Cycles of every nation have been rightly derived from, and shown to depend on, sidereal motions. The latter are inseparably blended with the destinies of [pg 707]nations and men. But, in the purely physical sense, Europe knows of no Cycles other than the astronomical, and it makes its computations accordingly. Nor will it hear of any other than imaginary circles or circuits in the starry heavens that gird them,

But with the Pagans—of whom Coleridge rightly says, “Time, cyclical time, was their abstraction of the Deity,” that “Deity” manifesting coördinately with, and only through, Karma, and being that Karma-Nemesis itself—the Cycles meant something more than a mere succession of events, or a periodical space of time of more or less prolonged duration. For they were generally marked with recurrences of a more varied and intellectual character than are exhibited in the periodical return of seasons or of certain constellations. Modern wisdom is satisfied with astronomical computations and prophecies, based on unerring mathematical laws. Ancient Wisdom added to the cold shell of Astronomy the vivifying elements of its soul and spirit—Astrology. And, as the sidereal motions do regulate and determine other events on Earth besides potatoes and the periodical diseases of that useful vegetable—a statement which, not being amenable to scientific explanation, is merely derided, while none the less accepted—these events have to submit to predetermination, by simple astronomical computations. Believers in Astrology will understand our meaning, sceptics will laugh at the belief and mock the idea. Thus they shut their eyes, ostrich-like, to their own fate.1108

This because their little historical period, so called, allows them no margin for comparison. Sidereal heaven is before them; and though their spiritual vision is still unopened, and the atmospheric dust of terrestrial origin seals their sight and chains it within the limits of [pg 708]physical systems, still they do not fail to perceive the movements and note the behaviour of meteors and comets. They record the periodical advents of those wanderers and “flaming messengers,” and prophesy, in consequence, earthquakes, meteoric showers, the apparition of certain stars, comets, etc. Are they, then, soothsayers after all? No; they are learned Astronomers.

Why, then, should Occultists and Astrologers, as learned as these Astronomers, be disbelieved when they prophesy the return of some cyclic event on the same mathematical principles? Why should the claim that they know this return be ridiculed? Their forefathers and predecessors, having recorded the recurrence of such events in their time and day, throughout a period embracing hundreds of thousands of years, the conjunction of the same constellations must necessarily produce, if not quite the same, at any rate similar, effects. Are the prophecies to be derided, because of the claim made for hundreds of thousands of years of observation, and for millions of years for the human Races? In its turn, Modern Science is laughed at by those who hold to Biblical chronology, for its far more modest geological and anthropological figures. Thus Karma adjusts even human laughter, at the mutual expense of sects, learned societies, and individuals. Yet in the prognostication of such future events, at any rate, all foretold on the authority of cyclic recurrences, no psychic phenomenon is involved. It is neither prevision, nor prophecy; any more than is the signalling of a comet or star, several years before its appearance. It is simply knowledge, and mathematically correct computations, which enable the Wise Men of the East to foretell, for instance, that England is on the eve of such or another catastrophe; that France is nearing such a point of her Cycle; and that Europe in general is threatened with, or rather is on the eve of, a cataclysm, to which her own Cycle of racial Karma has led her. Our view of the reliability of the information depends, of course, on our acceptation or rejection of the claim for a tremendous period of historical observation. Eastern Initiates maintain that they have preserved records of racial development and of events of universal import ever since the beginning of the Fourth Race—their knowledge of events preceding that epoch being traditional. Moreover, those who believe in Seership and in Occult Powers will have no difficulty in crediting the general character, at least, of the information given, even if it be traditional, once the tradition is checked and corrected by clairvoyance and Esoteric Knowledge. But [pg 709]in the present case no such metaphysical belief is claimed as our chief dependence, for proof is given—on what, to every Occultist, is quite scientific evidence—the records preserved through the Zodiac for incalculable ages.

It is now amply proved that even horoscopes and judiciary Astrology are not quite based on fiction, and that Stars and Constellations, consequently, have an occult and mysterious influence on, and connection with, individuals. And if with the latter, why not with nations, races, and mankind as a whole? This, again, is a claim made on the authority of the Zodiacal records. We shall then enquire how far the Zodiac was known to the Ancients, and how far it is forgotten by the Moderns.

Section XVI. The Zodiac and its Antiquity.

“All men are apt to have a high conceit of their own understanding, and to be tenacious of the opinions they profess,” said Jordan, justly adding to this—“and yet almost all men are guided by the understandings of others, not by their own; and may be said more truly to adopt, than to beget, their opinions.”

This is doubly true in regard to scientific opinions upon hypotheses offered for consideration—the prejudice and preconceptions of “authorities,” so called, often deciding upon questions of the most vital importance for history. There are several such predetermined opinions held by our learned Orientalists, and few are more unjust or illogical than the general error with regard to the antiquity of the Zodiac. Thanks to the hobby of some German Orientalists, English and American Sanskritists have accepted Professor Weber’s opinion that the peoples of India had no idea or knowledge of the Zodiac prior to the Macedonian invasion, and that it is from the Greeks that the ancient Hindûs imported it into their country. We are further told, by several other “authorities,” that no Eastern nation knew of the Zodiac before the Hellenes kindly acquainted their neighbours with their invention. And this, in the face of the Book of Job, which is declared, even by themselves, to be the oldest in the Hebrew canon, and certainly prior to Moses; a book which speaks of the making of “Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades [Osh, Kesil, and Kimah] and the chambers of the South”1109; of Scorpio and the Mazaruth—the twelve signs1110; words which, if they mean anything, imply knowledge of the Zodiac even among the nomadic Arabian tribes. The Book of Job is alleged to have preceded Homer and Hesiod by at least one thousand years—the two Greek poets having themselves flourished some eight centuries before the Christian era (!!). Though, by the bye, one who prefers to believe [pg 711]Plato—who shows Homer flourishing far earlier—could point to a number of Zodiacal signs mentioned in the Iliad and Odyssey, in the Orphic poems, and elsewhere. But since the cock-and-bull hypothesis of some modern critics that, so far from Orpheus, not even Homer or Hesiod has ever existed, it would seem time lost to mention these archaic authors at all. The Arabian Job will suffice; unless, indeed, his volume of lamentations, along with the poems of the two Greeks, to which we may add those of Linus, should now also be declared to be the patriotic forgery of the Jew Aristobulus. But if the Zodiac was known in the days of Job, how could the civilized and philosophical Hindûs have remained ignorant of it?

Risking the arrows of modern criticism—rather blunted by misuse—the reader may make himself acquainted with Bailly’s learned opinion upon the subject. Inferred speculations may be shown to be erroneous. Mathematical calculations stand on more secure grounds. Taking as a starting point several astronomical references in Job, Bailly devised a very ingenious means of proving that the earliest founders of the Science of the Zodiac belonged to an antediluvian, primitive people. The fact that he seems willing to see some of the Biblical patriarchs in Thoth, Seth, and in the Chinese Fohi, does not interfere with the validity of his proof as to the antiquity of the Zodiac.1111 Even accepting, for argument’s sake, his cautious 3700 years b.c. as the correct age of the Zodiacal Science, this date proves in the most irrefutable way that it was not the Greeks who invented the Zodiac, for the simple reason that they did not exist as a nation thirty-seven centuries b.c.—at any rate not as a historical race admitted by the critics. Bailly then calculated the period at which the constellations manifested the atmospheric influence called by Job the “sweet influences of the Pleiades,”1112 in Hebrew Kimah; that of Orion, Kesil; and that of the desert rains with reference to Scorpio, the eighth constellation; and found that in presence of the eternal conformity of these divisions of the Zodiac, and of the names of the Planets applied in the same order everywhere and always, and in presence of the impossibility of attributing it all to chance and “coincidence”—“which never creates such similarities”—a very great antiquity indeed must be allowed for the Zodiac.1113

Again, if the Bible is supposed to be an authority on any matter—and there are some who still regard it as such, whether from Christian or Kabalistical considerations—then the Zodiac is clearly mentioned in II Kings, xxiii. 5. Before the “book of the law” was “found” by Hilkiah, the high priest, the signs of the Zodiac were known and worshipped. These were held in the same adoration as the Sun and Moon, since the

or to the “twelve signs or constellations,” as the marginal note in the English Bible explains, had followed the injunction for centuries. They were stopped in their idolatry only by King Josiah, 624 b.c.

The Old Testament is full of allusions to the twelve zodiacal signs, and the whole scheme is built upon it—heroes, personages, and events. Thus in the dream of Joseph, who saw eleven “Stars” bowing to the twelfth, which was his “Star,” the Zodiac is referred to. The Roman Catholics have discovered in it, moreover, a prophecy of Christ, who is that twelfth Star, they say, and the others the eleven apostles; the absence of the twelfth being also regarded as a prophetic allusion to the treachery of Judas. The twelve sons of Jacob, again, are a reference to the same, as is justly pointed out by Villapandus.1114 Sir James Malcolm, in his History of Persia,1115 shows the Dabistan echoing all such traditions about the Zodiac. He traces the invention of it to the palmy days of the Golden Age of Iran, remarking that one of the said traditions maintains that the Genii of the Planets are represented under the same shapes and figures they had assumed when they showed themselves to several holy prophets, and thus led to the establishment of the rites based on the Zodiac.

Pythagoras, and after him Philo Judæus, held the number 12 as very sacred.

According to Seneca, Berosus taught prophecy of every future event and cataclysm by the Zodiac; and the times fixed by him for the conflagration [pg 713]of the World—Pralaya—and for a deluge, are found to answer to the times given in an ancient Egyptian papyrus. Such a catastrophe comes at every renewal of the cycle of the Sidereal Year of 25,868 years. The names of the Akkadian months were called by, and derived from, the names of the signs of the Zodiac, and the Akkadians are far earlier than the Chaldæans. Mr. Proctor shows, in his Myths and Marvels of Astronomy, that the ancient Astronomers had acquired a system of the most accurate Astronomy 2,400 years b.c.; the Hindûs date their Kali Yuga from a great periodical conjunction of the Planets thirty-one centuries b.c.; but, withal, it was the Greeks, belonging to the expedition of Alexander the Great, who were the instructors of the Âryan Hindûs in Astronomy!

Whether the origin of the Zodiac is Âryan or Egyptian, it is still of an immense antiquity. Simplicius, in the sixth century a.d., writes that he had always heard that the Egyptians had kept astronomical observations and records for a period of 630,000 years. This statement appears to frighten Mr. Gerald Massey, who remarks on it that:

Diogenes Laërtius carried back the astronomical calculations of the Egyptians to 48,863 years before Alexander the Great.1118 Martianus Capella corroborates this by telling posterity that the Egyptians had secretly studied Astronomy for over 40,000 years, before they imparted their knowledge to the world.1119

Several valuable quotations are made in Natural Genesis with the view of supporting the author’s theories, but they justify the teaching of the Secret Doctrine far more. For instance, Plutarch is quoted from his Life of Sulla, saying:

This reminds one strongly of our Seven Races of men, and of the [pg 714]eighth—the “animal man”—descended from the later Third Race; as also of the successive submersions and destruction of the continents which finally disposed of almost all that Race. Says Iamblichus:

This is as nearly as possible the calculation of the Esoteric Doctrine. For 1,000,000 years are allowed for our present Root-Race (the Fifth), and about 850,000 years have passed since the submersion of the last large island—part of the continent of Atlantis—the Ruta of the Fourth Race, the Atlanteans; while Daitya, a small island inhabited by a mixed race, was destroyed about 270,000 years ago, during the Glacial Period or thereabouts. But the Seven Rulers, or the seven great Dynasties of the Divine Kings, belong to the traditions of every great people of antiquity. Wherever twelve are mentioned, they are invariably the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

So patent is this fact, that the Roman Catholic writers—especially among the French Ultramontanes—have tacitly agreed to connect the twelve Jewish Patriarchs with the Signs of the Zodiac. This is done in a kind of prophetico-mystic way, which sounds to pious and ignorant ears like a portentous token, a tacit divine recognition of the “chosen people of God,” whose finger has purposely traced in heaven, from the beginning of creation, the numbers of these patriarchs. For instance, curiously enough, these writers, De Mirville among others, recognize all the characteristics of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, in the words addressed by the dying Jacob to his Sons, and in his definitions of the future of each Tribe.1122 Moreover, the respective banners of the same tribes are said to have exhibited the same symbols and the same names as the Signs, repeated in the twelve stones of the Urim and Thummim, and on the twelve wings of the two Cherubs. Leaving to the said Mystics the proof of exactitude in the alleged correspondence, we quote it as follows: Man, or Aquarius, is in the sphere of Reuben, who is declared as “unstable as water” (the Vulgate has it, “rushing like water”); Gemini, in that of Simeon and Levi, because of their strong fraternal association; Leo, in that of Judah, “the strong Lion” of his tribe, “the lion’s whelp”; Pisces, in Zabulon, who “shall dwell at the haven of the sea”; Taurus, in Issachar, because he is “a strong ass couching down,” etc., and therefore associated with the stables; [pg 715](Virgo-) Scorpio, in Dan, who is described as “a serpent, an adder in the path that biteth,” etc.; Capricornus in Naphtali, who is “a hind (a deer) let loose”; Cancer, in Benjamin, for he is “ravenous”; Libra, the Balance, in Asher, whose “bread shall be fat”; Sagittarius in Joseph, because “his bow abode in strength.” To make up for the twelfth Sign, Virgo, made independent of Scorpio, we have Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob. Tradition shows the alleged tribes carrying the twelve signs on their banners. But indeed the Bible, in addition to the above, is filled with theo-cosmological and astronomical symbols and personifications.

It remains to wonder, and to query—if the actual, living Patriarchs’ destiny was so indissolubly wound up with the Zodiac—how it is that, after the loss of the ten tribes, the ten signs also out of the twelve have not miraculously disappeared from the sidereal fields? But this is of no great concern. Let us rather busy ourselves with the history of the Zodiac itself.

The reader may be reminded of some opinions expressed as to the Zodiac by several of the highest authorities in Science.

Newton believed that the invention of the Zodiac could be traced as far back as the expedition of the Argonauts; and Dulaure fixed its origin at 6,500 years b.c., just 2,496 years before the creation of the world, according to the Bible chronology.

Creuzer thought that it was very easy to show that most of the Theogonies were intimately connected with religious calendars, and were related to the Zodiac as to their prime origin; if not to the Zodiac known to us now, then to something very analogous with it. He felt certain that the Zodiac and its mystic relations are at the bottom of all the mythologies, under one form or another, and that it had existed in the old form for ages, before it was brought out in the present defined astronomical garb, owing to some singular coördination of events.1123

Whether the “genii of the planets,” our Dhyân Chohans of supra-mundane spheres, showed themselves to “holy prophets,” or not, as claimed in the Dabistan, it would seem that great laymen and warriors were favoured in the same way in days of old in Chaldæa, when astrological Magic and Theophania went hand in hand.

Unless the Science of the Zodiac is admitted to be of the highest antiquity and universality, how can we account for its Signs being traced in the oldest Theogonies? Laplace is said to have felt struck with amazement at the idea of the days of Mercury (Wednesday), Venus (Friday), Jupiter (Thursday), Saturn (Saturday), and others, being related to the days of the week in the same order and with the same names in India as in Northern Europe.

—had there not been a general intention and a universal cause and belief, at the root of all this!1125 Most truly has Dupuis asserted the same:

Most certainly chance is “impossible.” There is no “chance” in Nature, wherein everything is mathematically coördinate, and inter-related in its units. Says Coleridge:

Replace the word “God” by Karma, and it will become an Eastern axiom. Therefore, the sidereal “prophecies” of the Zodiac, as they are called by Christian Mystics, never point to any one particular event, however solemn and sacred it may be for some one portion of humanity, but to ever-recurrent, periodical laws in Nature, understood only by the Initiates of the Sidereal Gods themselves.

No Occultist, no Astrologer of Eastern birth, will ever agree with Christian Mystics, or even with Kepler’s mystical Astronomy, his great science and erudition notwithstanding; and this because, if his premisses are quite correct, his deductions therefrom are one-sided and biassed by Christian preconceptions. Where Kepler finds a prophecy directly pointing to the Saviour, other nations see a symbol of an eternal law, decreed for the actual Manvantara. Why see in Pisces a direct reference to Christ—one of the several world-reformers, a Saviour for his direct followers, but only a great and glorious Initiate [pg 717]for all the rest—when that constellation shines as a symbol of all the past, present, and future Spiritual Saviours, who dispense light and dispel mental darkness? Christian symbologists have tried to prove that this sign belonged to Ephraim, Joseph’s son, the elect of Jacob, and that therefore, it was at the moment of the Sun’s entering into the sign of Pisces, the Fish, that the “Elect Messiah,” the Ἰχθὺς of the first Christians, had to be born. But if Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah, was he really born at that “moment,” or was his birth-hour thus fixed by the adaptation of Theologians, who sought only to make their preconceived ideas fit in with sidereal facts and popular belief? Everyone is aware that the real time and year of the birth of Jesus are totally unknown. And it is the Jews—whose forefathers made the word Dag signify both “Fish” and “Messiah” during the forced development of their rabbinical language—who are the first to deny this Christian claim. And what of the further facts that Brâhmans connect their “Messiah,” the eternal Avatâra Vishnu, with a Fish and the Deluge, and that the Babylonians also made a Fish and a Messiah of their Dag-On, the Man-Fish and Prophet?

There are learned iconoclasts among Egyptologists, who say that:

It would appear that Kepler maintained it as a positive fact that, at the moment of the “incarnation,” all the planets were in conjunction in the sign Pisces, called by the Jewish Kabbalists the “constellation of the Messiah.” Kepler averred:

This statement, quoted from Dr. Sepp1127 by De Mirville, emboldened the latter to remark that:

There was indeed a rage, at the beginning of the present century, for claiming restoration from the Hindûs for an alleged robbery from the Jews of their “Gods,” patriarchs, and chronology. It was Wilford who recognized Noah in Prithî and in Satyavrata, Enos in Dhruva, and even Assur in Îshvara. After being residents for so many years in India, some Orientalists, at least, ought to have known that it was not the Brâhmans alone who had these figures, or who had divided their Great Age into four minor ages. Nevertheless writers in the Asiatic Researches indulged in the most extravagant speculations. S. A. Mackey, the Norwich “philosopher, astronomer, and shoemaker,” argues very pertinently:

This is intended to apply to Captain (later Colonel) Wilford, but the words may fit more than one of our modern Orientalists. Colonel Wilford was the first to crown his unlucky speculations on Hindû chronology and the Purânas by connecting the 4,320,000 years with biblical chronology, by simply dwarfing the figures to 4,320 years—the supposed lunar year of the Nativity—and Dr. Sepp has simply plagiarized the idea from this gallant officer. Moreover, he persisted in seeing in them Jewish property, as well as Christian prophecy, thus accusing the Âryans of having helped themselves to Semitic revelation, whereas the reverse was the case. The Jews, moreover, need not be accused of directly despoiling the Hindûs, of whose figures Ezra probably knew nothing. They had evidently and undeniably borrowed them from the Chaldeans, along with the Chaldean Gods. They turned [pg 719]the 432,000 years of the Chaldean Divine Dynasties1132 into 4,320 lunar years from the world’s creation to the Christian era; as to the Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they quietly and modestly transformed them into Patriarchs. Every nation was more or less guilty of such refashioning and adaptation of a Pantheon—once common to all—of universal into national and tribal Gods and Heroes. It was Jewish property in its new Pentateuchal garb, and no one of the Israelites has ever forced it upon any other nation—least of all upon the European.

Without stopping to notice this very unscientific chronology more than is necessary, we may yet make a few remarks that may be found to the point. The 4,320 lunar years of the world—in the Bible the solar years are used—are not fanciful, as such, even if their application is quite erroneous; for they are only the distorted echo of the primitive Esoteric, and later of the Brâhmanical doctrine concerning the Yugas. A Day of Brahmâ equals 4,320,000,000 years, as also does a Night of Brahmâ, or the duration of Pralaya, after which a new “sun” rises triumphantly over a new Manvantara, for the Septenary Chain it illuminates. The teaching had penetrated into Palestine and Europe centuries before the Christian era,1133 and was present in the minds of the Mosaic Jews, who based upon it their small Cycle, though it received full expression only through the Christian chronologers of the Bible, who adopted it, as also the 25th of December, the day on which all the solar Gods were said to have been incarnated. What wonder, then, that the Messiah was made to be born in “the lunar year of the world 4,320”? The “Sun of Righteousness and Salvation” had once more arisen and had dispelled the pralayic darkness of Chaos and Nonbeing on the plane of our objective little Globe and Chain. Once the [pg 720]subject of the adoration was settled upon, it was easy to make the supposed events of his birth, life, and death, fit in with the Zodiacal exigencies and the old traditions, though they had to be somewhat remodelled for the occasion.

Thus what Kepler said, as a great Astronomer, becomes comprehensible. He recognized the grand and universal importance of all such planetary conjunctions, “each of which”—as he has well said—“is a climacteric year of Humanity.”1134 The rare conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars has its significance and importance on account of its certain great results, in India and China as much as it has in Europe, for the respective Mystics of these countries. And it is certainly now no better than a mere assumption to maintain that Nature had only Christ in view, in building her (to the profane) fantastic and meaningless constellations. If it is claimed that it was no hazard that could lead the archaic architects of the Zodiac, thousands of years ago, to mark the figure of Taurus with the asterisk a, with no better or more valid proof of it being prophetic of the Verbum or Christ than that the aleph of Taurus means the “one” and the “first,” and that Christ was also the alpha or the “one,” then this “proof” may be shown to be strangely invalidated in more than one way. To begin with, the Zodiac existed before the Christian era, at all events; further, all the Sun-Gods—Osiris, for instance—had been mystically connected with the constellation Taurus and were all called by their respective votaries the “First.” Further, the compilers of the mystical epithets given to the Christian Saviour were all more or less acquainted with the significance of the Zodiacal signs; and it is easier to suppose that they should have arranged their claims so as to match the mystic signs, than that the latter should have shone as a prophecy for one portion of humanity, for millions of years, taking no heed of the numberless generations that had gone before, and of those that were to be born hereafter.

We are told:

To this theological assumption there are several answers. Firstly, the ansated Egyptian cross, or Tau, the Jaina cross, or Svastika, and the Christian cross, have all the same meaning. Secondly, no peoples or nations except the Christians gave the significance to the Dragon that is given to it now. The Serpent was the symbol of Wisdom; and the Bull, Taurus, the symbol of physical or terrestrial generation. Thus the Bull, pushing off the Dragon, or spiritual Divine Wisdom, with the Tau, or Cross—which is esoterically “the foundation and framework of all construction”—would have an entirely phallic, physiological meaning, had it not had yet another significance unknown to our Biblical scholars and symbologists. At any rate, it has no special reference to the Verbum of St. John, except, perhaps, in a general sense. The Taurus—which, by the way, is no lamb, but a bull—was sacred in every Cosmogony, with the Hindûs as with the Zoroastrians, with the Chaldees as with the Egyptians. So much, every schoolboy knows.

It may perhaps help to refresh the memory of our Theosophists if we refer them to what was said of the Virgin and the Dragon, and the universality of periodical births and re-births of World-Saviours—Solar Gods—in Isis Unveiled,1136 with regard to certain passages in Revelation.

In 1853, the savant known as Erard-Mollien read before the Institute of France a paper tending to prove the antiquity of the Indian Zodiac, in the signs of which were found the root and philosophy of all the most important religious festivals of that country; the lecturer tried to demonstrate that the origin of these religious ceremonies goes back into the night of time to at least 3,000 b.c. The Zodiac of the Hindûs, he thought, was long anterior to the Zodiac of the Greeks, and differed from it much in some particulars. In it one sees the Dragon on a Tree, at the foot of which the Virgin, Kanyâ-Durgâ, one of the most ancient Goddesses, is placed on a Lion dragging after it the solar car. He said:

But all this is very poor testimony. Let us, however, remember also that which was said and accepted by the contemporaries of Volney, who remarks that as Aries was in its fifteenth degree 1,447 b.c., it follows that the first degree of Libra could not have coincided with the vernal equinox later than 15,194 years b.c.; if we add to this, he argues, the 1,790 years that have passed since the birth of Christ, it appears that 16,984 years must have elapsed since the origin of the Zodiac.1138

Dr. Schlegel, moreover, in his Uranographie Chinoise, assigns to the Chinese Astronomical Sphere an antiquity of 18,000 years.1139

Nevertheless, as opinions quoted without adequate proofs are of little avail, it may be more useful to turn to scientific evidence. M. Bailly, the famous French Astronomer of the last century, Member of the Academy, etc., asserts that the Hindû systems of Astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from them the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews derived their knowledge. In support of these views he says:

Bailly is referred to at such length, as he is one of the few scientific men who have tried to do full justice to the Astronomy of the Âryans. From John Bentley down to Burgess’ Sûrya-Siddhânta, not one Astronomer has been fair enough to the most learned people of Antiquity. However distorted and misunderstood the Hindû Symbology may be, no Occultist can fail to do it justice once that he knows something of the Secret Sciences; nor will he turn away from their metaphysical and mystical interpretation of the Zodiac, even though the whole Pleiades of Royal Astronomical Societies rise in arms against their mathematical rendering of it. The descent and reäscent of the Monad or Soul cannot be disconnected from the Zodiacal signs, and it looks more natural, in the sense of the fitness of things, to believe in a mysterious sympathy between the metaphysical Soul and the bright constellations, and in the influence of the latter on the former, than in the absurd notion that the creators of Heaven and Earth have placed in Heaven the types of twelve vicious Jews. And if, as the author of The Gnostics and their Remains asserts, the aim of all the Gnostic schools and the later Platonists

whither can we better turn to trace these theosophic ideas to their very root, than to the old Indian wisdom? We say again: Archaic Occultism would remain incomprehensible to all, if it were to be rendered otherwise than through the more familiar channels of Buddhism and Hindûism. For the former is the emanation of the latter; and both are children of one mother—ancient Lemuro-Atlantean Wisdom.

Section XVII. Summary of the Position.

The reader has had the whole case presented to him from both sides, and it remains with him to decide whether its summary stands in our favour or not. If there were such a thing as a void, a vacuum in Nature, one ought to find it produced, according to a physical law, in the minds of helpless admirers of the “lights” of Science, who pass their time in mutually destroying their teachings. If ever the theory that “two lights make darkness” found its application it is in this case, where one-half of the “lights” imposes its forces and “modes of motion” on the belief of the faithful, and the other half opposes the very existence of the same. “Ether, Matter, Energy”—the sacred hypostatical trinity, the three principles of the truly unknown God of Science, called by them Physical Nature!

Theology is taken to task and ridiculed for believing in the union of three persons in one Godhead—one God as to substance, three persons as to individuality; and we are laughed at for our belief in unproved and unprovable doctrines, in Angels and Devils, Gods and Spirits. And, indeed, that which made the Scientists win the day over Theology in the Great “Conflict between Religion and Science,” was precisely the argument that neither the identity of that substance, nor the triple individuality claimed—after having been conceived, invented, and worked out in the depths of Theological Consciousness—could be proved to exist by any scientific inductive process of reasoning, least of all by the evidence of our senses. Religion must perish, it is said, because it teaches “mysteries.” “Mystery is the negation of Common Sense,” and Science repels it. According to Mr. Tyndall, Metaphysics is “fiction,” like poetry. The man of Science “takes nothing on trust”; rejects everything “that is not proven to him,” while the Theologian accepts “everything on blind faith.” The Theosophist and the [pg 732]Occultist, who take nothing on trust, not even exact Science, the Spiritualist who denies dogma but believes in Spirits and in invisible but potent influences, all share in the same contempt. Very well, then; what we have to do now, is to examine for the last time whether exact Science does not act precisely in the same way as do Theosophy, Spiritualism, and Theology.

In a work by Mr. S. Laing, considered a standard book on Science, Modern Science and Modern Thought, the author of which, according to the laudatory review of the Times, “exhibits with much power and effect the immense discoveries of Science, and its numerous victories over old opinions, whenever they have the rashness to challenge conclusions with it,” we read as follows:

We stop to ask, What is Ether? And Mr. Laing answers in the name of Science:

And what is Matter? Do you know more about it than you do about the “hypothetical” agent, Ether?

And Energy? Surely you can define the third person of the Trinity of your Material Universe? We can take the answer from any book on Physics:

Pray explain, for this is rather hazy.

Just so: it is the nature of this moving force, of this vis viva, that we want to know. What is it?

“We do not know!” is the invariable answer. “It is an empty shadow of my imagination,” explains Mr. Huxley in his Physical Basis of Life.

Thus the whole structure of Modern Science is built on a kind of “mathematical abstraction,” on a Protean “Substance which eludes the senses” (Dubois Reymond), and on effects, the shadowy and illusive will-o’-the wisps of a something entirely unknown to, and beyond the reach of, Science. “Self-moving” Atoms! Self-moving Suns, Planets, and Stars! But who, then, or what are they all, if they are self-endowed with motion? Why then should you, Physicists, laugh at and deride our “Self-moving Archæus”? Mystery is rejected and scorned by Science, and as Father Felix has truly said:

The language of the French preacher is ours, and we quote it in Isis Unveiled. Who—he asks—who of you, men of Science:

Do the men of Science deny all these charges? By no means: for here is a confession of Tyndall, which shows how powerless is Science, even over the world of Matter.

How little is known of the material Universe, indeed, has now been suspected for years, on the very admissions of these men of Science themselves. And now there are some Materialists who would even make away with Ether—or whatever Science calls the infinite Substance, the noumenon of which the Buddhists call Svabhâvat—as well as with Atoms, too dangerous both on account of their ancient philosophical, and their present Christian and theological, associations. From the earliest Philosophers, whose records passed to posterity, down to our present age—which, if it denies Invisible Beings in Space, can never be so insane as to deny a Plenum of some sort—the Fulness of the Universe has been an accepted belief. And what it was said to contain, one learns from Hermes Trismegistus (in Dr. Anna Kingsford’s able rendering), who is made to say:

And we “hold” it too. Only, as already remarked, no Eastern Initiate would speak of spheres “above us, between the earth and the airs,” even the highest, as there is no such division or measurement in Occult speech, no above, as no below, but an eternal within, within two other withins, or the planes of subjectivity merging gradually into that of terrestrial objectivity—this being for man the last one, his own [pg 735]plane. This necessary explanation may be closed here by giving, in the words of Hermes, the belief on this particular point of the whole world of Mystics:

This is quite philosophical and in accordance with the spirit of Eastern Esotericism: for all the Forces, such as Light, Heat, Electricity, etc., are called the “Gods”—Esoterically.

This, indeed, must be so, since the Esoteric Teachings in Egypt and India were identical. And, therefore, the personification of Fohat, synthesizing all the manifesting Forces in Nature is a legitimate result. Moreover, as will be shown later, the real and Occult Forces in Nature only now begin to be known—and even in this case, by heterodox, not orthodox, Science,1151 though their existence, in one instance at any rate, is corroborated and certified by an immense number of educated people, and even by some official men of Science.

The statement, moreover, in Stanza VI—that Fohat sets in motion the primordial World-Germs, or the aggregation of Cosmic Atoms and Matter, “some one way, some the other way,” in the opposite direction—looks orthodox and scientific enough. For there is, at all events, in support of this position, one fact fully recognized by Science, and it is this. The meteoric showers, periodical in November and [pg 736]August, belong to a system moving in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. The aphelion of this ring is 1,732 millions of miles beyond the orbit of Neptune, its plane is inclined to the Earth’s orbit at an angle of 64° 3´, and the direction of the meteoric swarm moving round this orbit is contrary to that of the Earth’s revolution.

This fact, recognized only in 1833, shows it to be the modern rediscovery of what was very anciently known. Fohat turns with his two hands in contrary directions the “seed” and the “curds,” or Cosmic Matter; in clearer language, is turning particles in a highly attenuated condition, and nebulæ.

Outside the boundaries of the Solar System, it is other Suns, and especially the mysterious Central Sun—the “Abode of the Invisible Deity” as some reverend gentlemen have called it—that determines the motion and the direction of bodies. That motion serves also to differentiate the homogeneous Matter, round and between the several bodies, into Elements and Sub-elements unknown to our Earth, and these are regarded by Modern Science as distinct individual Elements, whereas they are merely temporary appearances, changing with every small cycle within the Manvantara, some Esoteric works calling them “Kalpic Masks.”

Fohat is the key in Occultism which opens and unriddles the multiform symbols and allegories in the so-called mythology of every nation; demonstrating the wonderful Philosophy and the deep insight into the mysteries of Nature, contained in the Egyptian and Chaldean as well as in the Âryan religions. Fohat, shown in his true character, proves how deeply versed were all those prehistoric nations in every Science of Nature, now called the physical and chemical branches of Natural Philosophy. In India, Fohat is the scientific aspect of both Vishnu and Indra, the latter older and more important in the Rig Veda than his sectarian successor; while in Egypt, Fohat was known as Toom issued of Noot,1152 or Osiris in his character of a primordial God, creator of heaven and of beings.1153 For Toom is spoken of as the Protean God who generates other Gods and gives himself the form he likes; the “Master of Life, giving their vigour to the Gods.”1154 He is the overseer of the Gods, and he “who creates spirits and gives them shape and [pg 737]life”; he is “the North Wind and the Spirit of the West”; and finally the “Setting Sun of Life,” or the vital electric force that leaves the body at death; wherefore the Defunct begs that Toom should give him the breath from his right nostril (positive electricity) that he might live in his second form. Both the hieroglyph, and the text of chapter xlii in the Book of the Dead, show the identity of Toom and Fohat. The former represents a man standing erect with the hieroglyph of the breaths in his hands. The latter says:

The very words used by Fohat in the XIth Book, and the very titles given him. In the Egyptian Papyri the whole Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine is found scattered about in isolated sentences, even in the Book of the Dead. Number seven is quite as much insisted upon and emphasized therein as in the Book of Dzyan. “The Great Water [the Deep or Chaos] is said to be seven cubits deep”—“cubits” standing here of course for divisions, zones, and principles. Therein, “in the great Mother, all the Gods, and the Seven Great Ones are born.” Both Fohat and Toom are addressed as the “Great Ones of the Seven Magic Forces,” who, “conquer the Serpent Apap” or Matter.1157

No student of Occultism, however, ought to be betrayed, by the usual phraseology used in the translations of Hermetic Works, into believing that the ancient Egyptians or Greeks spoke of, and referred, monk-like, at every moment in conversation, to a Supreme Being, God, [pg 738]the “One Father and Creator of all,” etc., in the way found on every page of such translations. No such thing indeed; and those texts are not the original Egyptian texts. They are Greek compilations, the earliest of which does not go beyond the early period of Neo-Platonism. No Hermetic work written by Egyptians—as we may see by the Book of the Dead—would speak of the one universal God of the Monotheistic systems; the one Absolute Cause of all, was as unnameable and unpronounceable in the mind of the ancient Philosopher of Egypt, as it is for ever Unknowable in the conception of Mr. Herbert Spencer. As for the Egyptian in general, as M. Maspero well remarks, whenever he

Every God was the “one living and unique God” with them. Their

It is by this feature, preëminently Egyptian, that the authenticity of the various so-called Hermetic Books, ought to be tested; and it is totally absent from the Greek fragments known under this name. This proves that a Greek Neo-Platonic, or perhaps a Christian hand, had no small share in the editing of such works. Of course the fundamental Philosophy is there, and in many a place—intact. But the style has been altered and smoothed in a monotheistic direction, as much, if not more than that of the Hebrew Genesis in its Greek and Latin translations. They may be Hermetic works, but not works written by either of the two Hermes—or rather, by Thot Hermes, the directing Intelligence of the Universe1159 or by Thot his terrestrial incarnation called Trismegistus, of the Rosetta stone.

But all is doubt, negation, iconoclasm and brutal indifference, in our [pg 739]age of a hundred “isms” and no religion. Every idol is broken save the Golden Calf.

Unfortunately, no nation or nations can escape their Karmic fate, any more than can units and individuals. History itself is dealt with by the so-called historians as unscrupulously as legendary lore. For this, Augustin Thierry has made the amende honorable, if one may believe his biographers. He deplored the erroneous principle that made all the would-be historiographers lose their way, and each presume to correct tradition, “that vox populi which nine times out of ten is vox Dei”; and he finally admitted that in legend alone rests real history; for he adds:

While Materialists deny everything in the Universe, save Matter, Archæologists are trying to dwarf Antiquity, and seek to destroy every claim of Ancient Wisdom by tampering with Chronology. Our present-day Orientalists and historical writers are to Ancient History that which the white ants are to the buildings in India. More dangerous even than those Termites, the modern Archæologists—the “authorities” of the future in the matter of Universal History—are preparing for the history of past nations the fate of certain edifices in tropical countries. As said Michelet:

Very soon, indeed, under their combined efforts, it will share the fate of those ruined cities in both Americas, which lie deeply buried under impassable virgin forests. Historical facts will remain concealed from view by the inextricable jungles of modern hypotheses, denials and scepticism. But very happily actual History repeats herself, for she proceeds, like everything else, in cycles; and dead facts, and events deliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism, will ascend once more and reappear on the surface.

In Volume II, the very fact that a work with pretensions to Philosophy, which is also an exposition of the most abstruse problems, has to be commenced by tracing the evolution of mankind from what are regarded as supernatural beings—Spirits—will arouse the most malevolent criticism. Believers in, and the defenders of, the Secret Doctrine, [pg 740]however, will have to bear the accusation of madness and worse, as philosophically as for long years already the writer has done. Whenever a Theosophist is taxed with insanity, he ought to reply by quoting from Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes: