The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol.
2
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 202 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
EDENS, SERPENTS, AND DRAGONS.
Whence the idea, and the true meaning of the term "Eden"?
Christians will maintain that the Garden of Eden is the holy Paradise,
the place desecrated by the sin of Adam and Eve; the
Occultist will deny this dead-letter interpretation, and show
the reverse. One need not believe and see in the Bible divine
revelation in order to say that this ancient book, if read esoterically,
is based upon the same universal traditions. What Eden was is
partially shown in Isis Unveiled.*
It was said that: "The Garden of Eden as a locality is no
myth at all; it belongs to those landmarks of history which occasionally
disclose to the student that the Bible is not all mere
allegory. Eden, or the Hebrew 
Gan-Eden, meaning the park or the garden of Eden, is an archaic
name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its many branches,
from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraean sea." (A. Wilder
says that Gan-duniyas is a name of Babylonia.) In the Chaldean
"Book of Numbers," the location is
designated in numerals, and in the cypher Rosicrucian manuscript,
left by Count St. Germain, it is fully described. In the Assyrian
Tablets it is rendered Ganduniyas. "Behold,"
says the 
(Elohim)
of Genesis, "the man is become as one of us." The
Elohim may be accepted in one sense for gods or
powers, and in another for Aleim, or priests -- the hierophants
initiated into the good and evil of this world; for there was
a college of priests called the Aleim, while the head
of their caste, or the chief of the hierophants was known as Java-Aleim.
Instead of becoming a neophyte, and gradually obtaining his
esoteric knowledge through a regular initiation, an Adam,
or Man, uses his intuitional faculties and, prompted by the
serpent (Woman and matter), tastes of the Tree of Knowledge
-- the esoteric or Secret Doctrine -- unlawfully. The priests
of Hercules, or Mel-karth, the "Lord of the Eden," all
wore "coats of skin." The text says: "And Java-Aleim
made for Adam and his wife 
'Chitonuth our.' " The first Hebrew word, "chiton,"
is the Greek [[Chiton]], Chiton. It became
a Slavonic word by adoption from the Bible, and means
a coat, an upper garment.
"Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth
as does every early Cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its
face the marks of a double origin. Its Genesis is purely a reminiscence
of the Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men and even
objects, can be traced from the original text to the Chaldeans
and the Akkadians, the progenitors and Aryan instructors of the
former. It is strongly contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldea,
Babylonia and Assyria were in
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Vol. I., pp. 575, et seq.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 203 THE GARDEN OF EDEN, A COLLEGE.
any way cognate with the Brahmans of Hindostan; but there are
more proofs in favour of this opinion than otherwise. The Shemite
or Assyrian ought, perchance, to have been called the Turanian,
and the Mongolians have been denominated Scyths. But if the Akkadians
ever existed, otherwise than in the imagination of some ethnologists
and philologists, they certainly would never have been a Turanian
tribe, as some Assyriologists have striven to make us believe.
They were simply emigrants on their way to Asia Minor from India,
the cradle of humanity, and their sacerdotal adepts tarried to
civilize and initiate a barbarian people. Halevy proved the fallacy
of the Turanian mania in regard to Akkadian people, and other
scientists have proved that the Babylonian civilization was neither
born nor developed in that country. It was imported from India,
and the importers were Brahminical Hindus."
And now, ten years after this was written, we find ourselves corroborated
by Professor Sayce, who says in his first Hibbert lecture that
the culture of the Babylonian city Eridu was of foreign importation.
It came from India.
"Much of the theology was borrowed by the Semites from the
non-Semitic Akkadians or proto-Chaldeans, whom they supplanted,
and whose local cults they had neither the will nor the power
to uproot. Indeed, throughout a long course of ages the two races,
Semites and Akkadians, lived side by side, their notions and worship
of the gods blending insensibly together."
Here, the Akkadians are called "non-Semitic," as we
had insisted they were in "Isis," which
is another corroboration. And we are no less right in always maintaining
that the Jewish Biblical history was a compilation of historical
facts, arranged from other people's history in Jewish garb
-- Genesis excluded, which is esotericism pure and simple. But
it is really from the Euxine to Kashmir and beyond, that science
has to search for the cradle -- or rather one of the chief cradles
-- of mankind and the sons of Ad-ah; and especially in after times,
when the Garden of Ed-en on the Euphrates became the college of
the astrologers and magi, the Aleim.
But this "college" and this Eden belong to the Fifth
Race, and are simply a faint reminiscence of the Adi-varsha, of
the primeval Third Race. What is the etymological meaning of the
word Eden? In Greek it is [hedone], signifying
voluptuousness. In this aspect it is no better than the Olympus
of the Greeks, Indra's heaven (Swarga) on Mount Meru, and even
the paradise full of Houris, promised by Mahomet to the
faithful. The Garden of Eden was never the property of the Jews;
for China, which can hardly be suspected of having known anything
of the Jews 2,000 B.C., has such a primitive garden in
Central Asia inhabited by the "Dragons of Wisdom," the
Initiates. And according to Klaproth,
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 204 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the hieroglyphical chart copied from a Japanese Cyclopaedia in
the book of Fo-kone-ky, places its "Garden of Wisdom"
on the plateau of Pamir between the highest peaks of the Himalayan
ranges; and describing it as the culminating point of Central
Asia, shows the four rivers -- Oxus, Indus, Ganges, and Silo --
flowing from a common source, the "Lake of the Dragons."
But this is not the Genetic Eden; nor is it the Kabalistical Garden
of Eden. For the former -- Eden Illa-ah -- means in one
sense Wisdom, a state like that of Nirvana, a paradise of Bliss;
while in another sense it refers to Intellectual man himself,
the container of the Eden in which grows the tree of Knowledge
of good and evil: man being the Knower thereof.
Renan and Barthelemy St. Hilaire, basing themselves "on the
most solid inductions," think it impossible to doubt any
longer, and both place the cradle of humanity "on the region
of the Timaus." Finally, the Asiatic Journal* concludes that:
"All the traditions of the human race gathering its primitive
families at the region of their birth-place, show them to us grouped
around the countries where Jewish tradition places the Garden
of Eden; where the Aryans (Zoroastrians) established their Airyana-vaego
or the Meru (?). They are hemmed in to the North by the countries
which join the lake Aral, and to the South by Baltistan, or Little
Tibet. Everything concurs in proving that there was the abode
of that primitive humanity to which we have to be traced."
That "primitive humanity" was in its Fifth Race, when
the "four-mouthed Dragon," the lake, of which very few
traces are now left, was the abode of the "Sons of Wisdom,"
the first mind-born sons of the Third Race. Yet it was neither
the only one nor the primitive cradle of humanity, though it was
the copy of the cradle, verily, of the first thinking divine
man. It was the Paradesa, the highland of the first
Sanskrit-speaking people, the Hedone, the country of
delight of the Greeks, but it was not the "bower of
voluptuousness" of the Chaldeans, for the latter was only
the reminiscence of it; and also because it was not there that
the Fall of Man occurred after the "separation."
The Eden of the Jews was copied from the Chaldean copy.
That the Fall of man into generation occurred during the earliest
portion of what science calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of
the reptiles, is evidenced by the Bible phraseology concerning
the serpent, the nature of which is explained in the Zohar.
The question is not whether Eve's incident with the tempting
reptile is allegorical or textual, for no one can doubt that it
is the former, but to show the antiquity of the symbolism on the
very face of it, and that it was not only a Jewish but an universal
idea.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Journal Asiatique," seventh
year, 1855.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 205 FLYING CAMELS.
Now we find in the Zohar a very strange assertion, one
that is calculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by
its ludicrous absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was
used by Shamael (the supposed Satan), to seduce Eve,
was a kind of flying camel [[kamelomorphon]].
A "flying camel" is indeed too much for the most liberal-minded
F.R.S. Nevertheless, the Zohar, which can hardly
be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its
description:* for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS.
Aschmogh, which in the Avesta is represented as having
lost after the Fall "its nature and its name,"
and is described as a huge serpent with a camel's neck.
"There are no winged serpents, nor veritable dragons,"
asserts Salverte,** " . . . grasshoppers are called by the
Greeks winged serpents, and this metaphor may have created
several narratives on the existence of winged serpents."
There are none now; but there is no reason why they should
not have existed during the Mesozoic age; and Cuvier, who has
reconstructed their skeletons, is a witness to "flying camels."
Already, after finding simple fossils of certain saurians, the
great naturalist has written, that, "if anything can justify
the Hydra and other monsters, whose figures were so often repeated
by mediaeval historians, it is incontestably the Plesiosaurus."***
We are unaware if Cuvier had added anything in the way of a further
mea culpa. But we may well imagine his confusion, for
all his slanders against archaic veracity, when he found himself
in the presence of a flying saurian, "the Pterodactyl"
(found in Germany), "78 feet long, and carrying vigorous
wings attached to its reptilian body." That fossil is described
as a reptile, the little fingers of whose hands are so
elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the "flying
camel" of the Zohar is vindicated. For surely, between the
long neck of the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl,
or still better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability
to build a "flying camel," or a long-necked dragon.
Prof. Cope, of Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil
in the chalk was a winged serpent of this kind. There
are characters in its vertebrae, which indicate union with the
Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.
And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity
has never claimed palaeontography and paleontology among its arts
and sciences; and it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian
tiles, and especially in old Chinese and Japanese drawings, in
the oldest Pagodas
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Moses Maimonides, "More Nevochim."
** "Science Occulte," p.
646.
*** "Revolution du Globe," vol.
v., p. 464.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 206 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
and monuments, and in the Imperial library at Pekin, many a traveller
has seen and recognised perfect representations of Plesiosauri
and Pterodactyls in the multiform Chinese dragons.* Moreover,
the prophets speak in the Bible of the flying fiery serpents,**
and Job mentions the Leviathan.*** Now the following questions
are put very directly: --
I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct
monsters of the carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent
and describe them orally and pictorially, unless they had either
seen those monsters themselves or possessed descriptions of
them in their traditions, which descriptions necessitate
living and intelligent eye-witnesses?
II. And if such eye-witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective
clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palaeolithic
men be no earlier than about the middle of the tertiary period?
We must bear in mind that most of the men of science will not
allow man to have appeared before the Quaternary period, and thus
shut him out completely from the Cenozoic times. Here we have
extinct species of animals, which disappeared from the face of
the Earth millions of years ago, described by, and known to, nations
whose civilization, it is said, could hardly have begun a few
thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the Mesozoic
time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must
be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.
It does not stand to reason, because the Occultists believe in
and defend ancient wisdom and science, even though winged saurians
are called "flying camels" in the translations of the
Zohar, that we believe as readily in all the stories
which the middle ages give us of such dragons. Pterodactyls and
Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* We read in the "Memoire a l'Academie"
of the "naive astonishment of Geoffrey St. Hilaire,
when M. de Paravey showed to him in some old Chinese works and
Babylonian tiles dragons, . . . . saurians and ornithorhynchuses
(aquatic animals found only in Australia), etc.,
extinct animals that he had thought unknown on earth. . . . till
his own day."
** See Isaiah, xxx. 6: "The viper and the flying
serpent unto the land of trouble and anguish," and the fiery
serpents conquered by the brazen serpent of Moses.
*** The fossils reconstructed by science, which we know ought
to be sufficient warrant for the possibility of even a Leviathan,
let alone Isaiah's flying serpents, or saraph mehophep,
which words are translated in all the Hebrew dictionaries
as "saraph," enflamed or fiery venom, and "mehophep,"
flying. But, although Christian theology has always connected
both (Leviathan and saraph mehophep) with the
devil, the expressions are metaphorical and have nought to do
with the "evil one." But the word Dracon has
become a synonym for the latter. In Bretagne the word Drouk
now signifies "devil," whence, as we are told by
Cambry ("Monuments Celtiques," p.
299), the devil's tomb in England, Draghedanum sepulcrum.
In Languedoc the meteoric fires and will-o'-the-wisps
are called Dragg, and in Bretagne Dreag, Wraie
(or wraith), the castle of Drogheda in Ireland meaning the
devil's castle.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 207 KIRCHER'S DRAGON.
of the Third Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman
Catholic writers to credit Christopher Scherer's and Father Kircher's
cock-and-bull stories of their having seen with their own eyes
living fiery and flying dragons, respectively in 1619 and 1669,
we may be allowed to regard their assertions as either dreams
or fibs.* Nor shall we regard otherwise than as a poetical
license that other story told of Petrarch, who, while following
one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is credited
with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his
dagger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring
the lady of his heart.** We would willingly believe the story
had Petrarch lived in the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian
monsters may still have existed. We deny their existence in our
present era. The sea-serpent is one thing, the dragon quite another.
The former is denied by the majority because it exists and lives
in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to
the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping
invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was
such a thing as a dragon of the above description, how could it
have ever escaped detection? It is a creature contemporary with
the earliest Fifth Race, and exists no more.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The ultramontane writers accept the whole series of draconian
stories given by Father Kircher (Edipus AEgyptiacus, "De
Genere Draconum,") quite seriously. According
to that Jesuit, he himself saw a dragon which was killed in 1669
by a Roman peasant, as the director of the Museo Barberini sent
it to him, to take the beast's likeness, which Father Kircher
did and had it published in one of his in-folios. After
this he received a letter from Christopher Scherer, Prefect of
the Canton of Soleure, Switzerland, in which that official certifies
to his having seen himself with his own eyes, one fine
summer night in 1619, a living dragon. Having remained on his
balcony "to contemplate the perfect purity of the firmament,"
he writes, "I saw a fiery, shining dragon rise from one of
the caves of Mount Pilatus and direct itself rapidly towards Fluelen
to the other end of the lake. Enormous in size, his tail was still
longer and his neck very extended. His head and jaws were those
of a serpent. In flying he emitted on his way numerous sparks
(? !) . . . . I thought at first I was seeing a meteor, but soon
looking more attentively, I was convinced by his flight and the
conformation of his body that I saw a veritable dragon. I
am happy to be thus able to enlighten your Reverence on the very
real existence of those animals"; in dreams, the
writer ought to have added, of long past ages.
** As a convincing proof of the reality of the fact, a Roman Catholic
refers the reader to the picture of that incident painted by Simon
de Sienne, a friend of the poet, on the portal of the Church Notre
Dame du Don at Avignon; notwithstanding the prohibition of
the Sovereign Pontiff, who "would not allow this triumph
of love to be enthroned in the holy place"; and adds: "Time
has injured and rubbed out the work of art, but has not weakened
its tradition." De Mirville's "Dragon-Devils" of
our era seem to have no luck, as they disappear most mysteriously
from the museums where they are said to have been. Thus the dragon
embalmed by Ulysses Aldobranda and presented to the Musee du Senat,
either in Naples or Bologna, "was there still in 1700, but
is there no more." (Vol. 2, p. 427, "Pneumatologie.")
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 208 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
The reader may inquire why we speak of dragons at all? We answer:
firstly, because the knowledge of such animals is a proof
of the enormous antiquity of the human race; and secondly,
to show the difference between the zoological real meaning
of the words "dragon," "Naga,"
and "Serpent," and the metaphorical one, when used
symbolically. The profane reader, who knows nothing of the mystery
language, is likely, whenever he finds one of these words mentioned,
to accept it literally. Hence, the quid pro quos and
unjust accusations. A couple of instances will suffice.
Sed et serpens? aye: but what was the nature of the serpent?
Mystics intuitionally see in the serpent of Genesis an
animal emblem and a high spiritual essence: a cosmic force superintelligent,
a "great fallen light," a spirit sidereal, aerial and
tellurian at the same time, "whose influence circumambulates
the globe (qui circumambulat terram), as a Christian
fanatic of the dead-letter (de Mirville) has it, and which only
manifested itself under the physical emblem, which was the most
convenient "with respect to its moral and intellectual coils":
i.e. under the ophidian form.
But what will Christians make of the Brazen Serpent, the "DIVINE
HEALER," if the serpent is to be regarded as the emblem of
cunning and evil? The "Evil One" itself? How can the
line of demarcation ever be settled, when it is traced arbitrarily
in a sectarian theological spirit. For, if the followers of the
Roman Church are taught that Mercury and AEsculapius, or Asclepios,
who are, in truth, one, are "devils and sons of devils,"
and the wand and serpent of the latter were "the devil's
wand"; how about the "brazen serpent" of Moses?
Every scholar knows that both the heathen wand and the
Jewish "serpent" are one and the same, namely, the Caduceus
of Mercury, son of APOLLO-PYTHON. It is
easy to comprehend why the Jews adopted the ophidian shape for
their "seducer." With them it was purely physiological
and phallic; and no amount of casuistical reasoning
on the part of the Roman Catholic Church can give it another meaning,
once that the mystery language is well studied, and that the Hebrew
scrolls are read numerically. The Occultists know that the serpent,
the Naga, and the dragon have each a septenary meaning;
that the Sun, for instance, was the astronomical and
cosmic emblem of the two contrasted lights, and the two serpents
of the Gnostics, the good and the evil one; they also know that,
when generalised, the conclusions of both science and
theology present two most ridiculous extremes. For, when the former
tells us that it is sufficient to trace the legends of the serpents
to their primal source, the astrological legend, and to meditate
seriously on the Sun, conqueror of Python, and the celestial
virgin in the Zodiac forcing back the devouring dragon, if we
would have the key of all the subsequent religious dogmas; it
is easy to perceive that, instead of
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 209 COBRAS AS SYMBOLS.
generalising, the author simply has his eye on Christian religion
and Revelation. We call this one extreme. The other we
see in this: when, repeating the famous decision of the Council
of Trent, theology seeks to convince the masses that "from
the fall of man until the hour of his baptism the devil has full
power over him, and possesses him by right (diabolum
dominationem et potestatem super homines habere et jure cos possidere)."
To this Occult philosophy answers: Prove first the existence
of the devil as an entity, and then we may believe in
such congenital possession. A very small amount of observation
and knowledge of human nature may be sufficient to prove the fallacy
of this theological dogma. Had SATAN any reality,
in the objective or even subjective world (in the ecclesiastical
sense), it is the poor devil who would find himself chronically
obsessed and even possessed by the wicked -- hence by the bulk
of mankind. It is humanity itself, and especially the clergy,
headed by the haughty, unscrupulous and intolerant Roman Church,
which have begotten, given birth to, and reared in love the evil
one; but this is a digression.
"The whole world of thought is reproached by the Church with
having adored the serpent. The whole of humanity 'incensed and
at the same time stoned it.' The Zend Avesta speaks of it as the
Kings and Vedas do, as the Edda and the Bible. . . . Everywhere
the sacred serpent, the naga, and its shrine and its priest; in
Rome it is the Vestal who prepares its meal with the same care
as she bestows on the sacred fire. In Greece, AEsculapius cannot
cure without its assistance, and delegates to it his powers. Everyone
has heard of the famous Roman embassy sent by the Senate to the
god of medicine and its return with the not less famous serpent,
which proceeded of its own will and by itself toward its Master's
temple on one of the islands of the Tiber. Not a Bacchante that
did not wind it (the serpent) in her hair, not an Augur but questioned
it oracularly, not a necromancer whose tomb is free from its presence!
The Cainites and the Ophites call it Creator, while recognizing,
as Schelling did, that the serpent is 'evil in substance and its
personification.' "*
Yes, the author is right, and if one would have a complete idea
of the prestige which the serpent enjoys to our own day, one ought
to study the matter in India and learn all that is believed about,
and still attributed to, the Nagas (Cobras) in that country;
one should also visit the Africans of Whydah, the Voodoos of Port-au-Prince
and Jamaica, the Nagals of Mexico, and the Pa, or men-serpents
of China, &c. But why wonder that the serpent is "adored"
and at the same time cursed, since we
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Sacred Serpents" on p. 432 of de Mirville's "Memoire."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 210 THE SECRET DOCTRINE
know that from the beginning it was a symbol?* In every ancient
language the word dragon signified what it now does in
Chinese -- (lang) i.e., "the being
who excels in intelligence" and in Greek [[drakon]],
or "he who sees and watches." And is it to the animal
of that name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it not evident,
wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning may
have led savages now, that the said qualifications were intended
to apply to the human originals, who were symbolized by serpents
and dragons? These "originals" -- called to this day
in China "the Dragons of Wisdom" -- were the first disciples
of the Dhyanis, who were their instructors; in short, the primitive
adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth Races.
The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian
era would ever have confounded the man and the symbol.
The symbol of Chnouphis, or the soul of the world, writes Champollion,
"is among others that of an enormous serpent standing on
human legs; this reptile, the emblem of the good genius, is a
veritable Agathodaemon. It is often represented bearded.
. . . . That sacred animal, identical with the serpent of the
Ophites, is found engraved on numerous Gnostic or Basilidean stones
. . . . The serpent has various heads, but is constantly inscribed
with the letters [[CHNOUBIS]]."** Agathodaemon was
endowed "with the knowledge of good and evil," i.e.,
with divine Wisdom, as without the former the latter is impossible.***
Repeating Iamblichus, Champollion shows him to be "the deity
called [[Eichton]] (or the fire of the celestial gods
-- the great **** Thot-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This is about as just as though -- a few millenniums hence --
a fanatic of some future new creed, who was bent on glorifying
his religion at the expense of ancient Christianity,
were to say: "Everywhere the quadruped lamb was adored. The
nun placed it, calling it the Agnus, on her bosom; the priest
laid it on the altar. It figured in every paschal meal, and was
glorified loudly in every temple. And yet the Christians dreaded
it and hated it, for they slew and devoured it. . . ." Heathens,
at any rate, do not eat their sacred symbols. We know of no serpent,
or reptile-eaters except in Christian civilized countries, where
they begin with frogs and eels, and must end with real snakes,
as they have begun with lamb and ended with horse-flesh.
** "Pantheon," 3.
*** The solar Chnouphis, or Agathodaemon, is the Christos
of the Gnostics, as every scholar knows. He is intimately connected
with the seven sons of Sophia (Wisdom), the seven sons of Aditi
(universal Wisdom), her eighth being Marttanda, the Sun, which
seven are the seven planetary regents or genii. Therefore Chnouphis
was the spiritual Sun of Enlightenment, of Wisdom, hence
the patron of all the Egyptian Initiates, as Bel-Merodach (or
Bel-Belitanus) became later with the Chaldeans.
**** Hermes, or rather Thot, was a generic name. Abul Teda shows
in "Historia Anti-Islamitica" five
Hermes, and the names of Hermes, Nebo, Thot were given respectively
in various countries to great Initiates. Thus Nebo, the
son of Merodach and Zarpanitu (whom Herodotus calls Zeus-Belos),
gave his name to all the great prophets, seers and Initiates.
They were all "serpents of Wisdom," as connected with
the Sun astronomically, and with Wisdom spiritually.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 211 TWO SCHOOLS OF MAGIC.
Hermes), to whom Hermes Trismegistus attributes the invention
of magic."*
The "invention of magic!" A strange
term to use, as though the unveiling of the eternal and actual
mysteries of nature could be invented! As well attribute,
millenniums hence, the invention instead of the discovery
of radiant matter to Prof. Crookes. Hermes was not the inventor,
or even the discoverer, for, as said in the foot-note, Thot-Hermes
is a generic name, as is Enoch (Enoichion, the "inner, spiritual
eye"), Nebo, the prophet and seer, etc. It is not
the proper name of any one living man, but a generic title of
many adepts. Their connection in symbolic allegories with the
serpent is due to their enlightenment by the solar and planetary
gods during the earliest intellectual Race, the Third. They are
all the representative patrons of the Secret Wisdom. Asclepios
is the son of the Sun-god Apollo -- and he is Mercury; Nebo is
the son of Bel-Merodach; Vaivasvata Manu, the great Rishi, is
the son of Vivisvat -- the Sun or Surya, etc., etc. And while,
astronomically, the Nagas along with the Rishis, the Gandharvas,
Apsarasas, Gramanis (or Yakshas, minor gods) Yatudhanas and Devas,
are the Sun's attendants throughout the twelve solar months; in
theogony, and also in anthropological evolution, they are gods
and men -- when incarnated in the nether world. Let the
reader be reminded, in this connection, of the fact that Apollonius
met in Kashmir Buddhist Nagas -- which are neither serpents
zoologically, nor yet the Nagas ethnologically, but "wise
men."
The Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, is but
a series of historical records of the great struggle between white
and black Magic, between the Adepts of the right path, the Prophets,
and those of the left, the Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses.
Even the students of Occultism, though some of them have more
archaic MSS. and direct teaching to rely upon, find it
difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the Sodales
of the Right Path and those of the Left. The great schism
that arose between the sons of the Fourth Race, as soon as the
first Temples and Halls of Initiation had been erected under the
guidance of "the Sons of God," is allegorized in the
Sons of Jacob. That there were two schools of Magic, and that
the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one,
is shown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob. And here
it may be well to quote a few sentences from "Isis Unveiled."
The dying Jacob thus describes his sons: "Dan," he says,
"shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in
the path, that biteth the horse-heels, so that his rider shall
fall backwards (i.e., he will teach candidates black
magic) . . . . I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!"
Of Simeon and Levi the patriarch remarks that they" . . .
are brethren; instru-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Pantheon," text 15.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 212 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
ments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul,
come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly."*
Now in the original, the words "their secret" really
are "their SOD."** And Sod was the
name for the great mysteries of Baal, Adonis and Bacchus, who
were all sun-gods and had serpents for symbols. The Kabalists
explain the allegory of the fiery serpents by saying that this
was the name given to the tribe of Levi, to all the Levites,
in short, and that Moses was the chief of the Sodales.***
It is to the mysteries that the original meaning of the "Dragon-Slayers"
has to be traced, and the question is fully treated of hereafter.
Meanwhile it follows that, if Moses was the chief of the Mysteries,
he was the Hierophant thereof, and further, if, at the same time,
we find the prophets thundering against the "abominations"
of the people of Israel, that there were two schools. "Fiery
serpents" was, then, simply the epithet given to the Levites
of the priestly caste, after they had departed from the good
law, the traditional teachings of Moses: and to all those
who followed Black Magic. Isaiah, when referring to the
"rebellious children" who will have to carry their riches
into the land whence come "the viper and fiery flying
serpent" (xxx. 6), or Chaldea and
Egypt, whose Initiates had already greatly degenerated in his
day (700 B.C.), meant the sorcerers of those
lands.**** But these must be carefully distinguished from the
"Fiery Dragons of Wisdom" and the "Sons of the
Fire Mist."
In the "Great Book of the Mysteries" we
are told that: "Seven Lords created Seven men; three Lords
(Dhyan Chohans or Pitris) were holy and good, four less heavenly
and full of passion. . . . The chhayas (phantoms) of
the Fathers were as they."
This accounts for the differences in human nature, which is divided
into seven gradations of good and evil. There were seven tabernacles
ready to be inhabited by Monads under seven different Karmic conditions.
The Commentaries explain on this basis the easy spread of evil,
as soon as the human Forms had become real men. Some ancient
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Genesis," ch. xlix.
** Dunlap, in his introduction to "Sod, the Mysteries
of Adonis," explains the word "Sod"
as arcanum, religious mystery, on the authority of Schindler's
"Penteglott." "The secret of
the Lord is with them that fear him," says Psalm xxv., 14.
This is a mistranslation of the Christians, for it ought to read
"Sod Ihoh (the mysteries of Ihoh) are for those
who fear him" (Dunlap, "Mysteries
of Adonis," xi). "Al (El) is terrible
in the great Sod of the Kadeshim (the priests, the holy,
the Initiated), Psalm lxxxix, 7" (ibid.).
The Kadeshim were very far from holy. (Vide Part
II., "The Holy of Holies.")
*** "The members of the priest-Colleges were called
Sodales," says Freund's "Latin Lexicon"
(iv. 448). "Sodalities were constituted in the Idaean Mysteries
of the MIGHTY MOTHER,"
writes Cicero in de Senectute. ("Mysteries of
Adonis.")
**** The priests of Baal who jumped over the fires. But this was
a Hebrew term and a local one. "Saraph" -- "fiery
or flaming venom."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 213 THE SEVENTH SON OF THE SEVENTH SON.
philosophers ignored the seven in their genetical accounts and
gave only four. Thus the Mexican local Genesis has "four
good men" described as the four real ancestors of
the human race, "who were neither begotten by the gods nor
born of woman"; but whose creation was a wonder wrought by
the creative Powers, and who were made only after "three
attempts at manufacturing men had failed." The
Egyptians had in their theology only "four sons of God,"
whereas in Pymander seven are given -- thus avoiding
any mention of the evil nature of man; though when Seth from a
god sank into Set-Typhon, he began to be called "the seventh
son." Whence probably arose the belief that "the seventh
son of the seventh son" is always a natural-born magician,
though, at first, only a sorcerer was meant. APAP,
the serpent symbolizing evil, is slain by Aker, Set's serpent;*
therefore Set-Typhon could not be that evil. In the "Book
of the Dead" it is commanded (v. 13)
that chapter clxiii. should be read "in the presence of a
serpent on two legs," which means a high Initiate, a Hierophant,
for the discus and ram's horns** that adorn his "serpent's"
head in the hieroglyphics of the title of the said chapter denote
this. Over the "serpent" are represented the two mystic
eyes of Ammon,*** the hidden "mystery god." This passage
corroborates our assertion, and shows what the word "serpent"
meant in antiquity.
But as to the Nagals and Nargals, whence came the similarity of
names between the Indian Nagas and the American Nagals?
"The Nargal was the Chaldean and Assyrian chief of the Magi
(Rab-Mag), and the Nagal was the chief sorcerer of the Mexican
Indians. Both derive their names from Nergal-Serezer, the Assyrian
god, and the Hindu Nagas. Both have the same faculties and the
power to have an attendant daemon, with whom they identify
themselves completely. The Chaldean and Assyrian Nargal kept his
daemon, in the shape of some animal considered sacred,
inside the temple; the Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can
-- in the neighbouring lake, or wood, or in the house in the shape
of some household animal."****
Such similarity cannot be attributed to coincidence. A
new world is discovered, and we find that, for our forefathers
of the Fourth Race,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Book of the Dead" xxxix.
** The same ram's horns are found on the heads of Moses which
were on some old medals seen by the writer in Palestine, one of
which is in her possession. The horns, made to form part of the
shining aureole on the statue of Moses in Rome (Michael Angelo),
are vertical instead of being bent down to the ears, but the emblem
is the same; hence the Brazen Serpent.
*** But see Harris's "Magic Papyrus" No.
v.; and the ram-headed Ammon manufacturing men on a potter's wheel.
**** Brasseur de Bourbourg: "Mexique,"
pp. 135 and 574.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 214 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
it was already an old one. That Arjuna, Krishna's companion and
chela, is said to have descended into Patala, the
"antipodes," and therein married Ulupi,* a
Naga (or Nagini rather), the daughter of the king of the Nagas,
Kauravya.**
And now it may be hoped the full meaning of the serpent emblem
is proven. It is neither that of evil, nor, least of all, that
of the devil; but is , indeed, the [[SEMES EILAM ABRASAX]]
("the eternal Sun-Abrasax"), the central spiritual sun
of all the Kabalists, represented in some diagrams by the circle
of Tiphereth.
And here, again, we may quote from our earlier volumes and enter
into further explanations.
"From this region of unfathomable depth (Bythos, Aditi, Shekinah,
the veil of the unknown) issues forth a circle formed of spirals.
This is Tiphereth; which, in the language of symbolism, means
a grand cycle, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as
to follow the spirals, lies the serpent -- emblem of Wisdom and
Eternity -- the dual Androgyne; the cycle representing Ennoia,
or the divine mind (a power which does not create but which must
assimilate), and the serpent, the Agathodaemon, the Ophis, the
Shadow of the Light (non-eternal, yet the greatest divine
light on our plane). Both were the Logoi of the Ophites:
or the Unity as Logos manifesting itself as a double
principle of Good and Evil."
Were it light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could
not appreciate nor even realise it. Shadow is that which enables
light to manifest itself, and gives it objective reality. Therefore,
shadow is not evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary
which completes Light or Good: it is its creator on Earth.
According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are
immutable Light and Shadow, Good and Evil being virtually one
and having existed through all eternity, as they will ever continue
to exist so long as there are manifested worlds.
This symbol accounts for the adoration by this sect of the Serpent,
as the Saviour, coiled either around the sacramental loaf, or
a Tau, the phallic emblem. As a Unity, Ennoia and Ophis are the
Logos. When separated, one is the Tree of Life (spiritual),
the other, the Tree
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Ulupi has an entirely Atlantean ring about it. Like Atlantis,
it is neither a Greek nor a Sanskrit name, but reminds one of
Mexican names.
** "Mahabharata," Adiparva, Sloka, 7788, 7789. The "Bhagavata
Purana," ix., xx., 31, as explained by Sridhera, the commentator,
makes Ulupi the daughter of the king of Manipura; but the late
Pundit Dayanand Saraswati, certainly the greatest Sanskrit and
Puranic authority in India on such questions, personally corroborated
that Ulupi was daughter of the king of the Nagas at Patala, or
America, 5000 years ago, and that the Nagas were Initiates.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 215 BUDDHA'S GREAT MOUNTAIN.
of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find Ophis urging
the first human couple -- the material production of Ilda-Baoth,
but which owed its spiritual principle to Sophia-Achamoth -- to
eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis represents divine Wisdom.
The serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree
of Life, are all symbols transplanted from the soil of India.
The Arasa-Maram, the banyan tree, so sacred with the Hindus (since
Vishnu during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty
shade and there taught human philosophy and sciences), is called
the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protecting
foliage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils
their first lessons on immortality and initiate them into the
mysteries of life and death. The Java-Aleim of the Sacerdotal
College are said, in the Chaldean tradition, to have taught the
sons of men to become like one of them. To the present day Foh-tchou,*
who lives in his Foh-Maeyu, or temple of Buddha, on the top of
the "Kouin-long-sang,"** the great mountain, produces
his greatest religious miracles under a tree called in Chinese
Sung-Ming-Shu, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life,
for ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality.
This marvellous display takes place every three years, when an
immense concourse of Chinese Buddhists assembles in pilgrimage
at the holy place.
Now it may become comprehensible why the earliest Initiates and
Adepts, or the "Wise Men," for whom it is claimed that
they were initiated into the mysteries of nature by the UNIVERSAL
MIND, represented by the highest angels, were named the "Serpents
of Wisdom" and "Dragons;" as also how the first
physiologically complete couples -- after being initiated into
the mystery of human creation through Ophis, the manifested
Logos and the androgyne, by eating of the fruit of knowledge
-- gradually began to be accused by the material spirit of posterity
of having committed Sin, of having disobeyed the "Lord
God," and of having been tempted by the Serpent.
So little have the first Christians (who despoiled the Jews of
their Bible) understood the first four chapters of Genesis in
their esoteric meaning, that they never perceived that not only
was no sin intended in this disobedience, but that actually the
"Serpent" was "the Lord God" himself, who,
as the Ophis, the Logos, or the bearer of divine creative wisdom,
taught mankind to become creators in their turn.*** They
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Foh-tchou, literally, in Chinese meaning Buddha's lord, or the
teacher of the doctrines of Buddha-Foh.
** This mountain is situated south-west of China, almost between
China and Tibet.
*** Let the reader be reminded that in the Zohar, and
also in all the Kabalistic works, it is maintained that "Metatron
united to Shekinah" (or Shekinah as the
veil (grace) [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 216 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
never realised that the Cross was an evolution from the
"tree and the serpent," and thus became the salvation
of mankind. By this it would become the very first fundamental
symbol of Creative cause, applying to geometry, to numbers, to
astronomy, to measure and to animal reproduction. According to
the Kabala the curse on man came with the formation of woman.*
The circle was separated from its diameter line. "From
the possession of the double principle in one, that is the Androgyne
condition, the separation of the dual principle was made, presenting
two opposites, whose destiny it was, for ever after, to seek reunion
into the original one condition. The curse was this,
viz.: that nature, impelling the search, evaded the desired result
by the production of a new being, distinct from that reunion or
oneness desired, by which the natural longing to recover a lost
state was and is for ever being cheated. It is by this tantalizing
process of a continued curse that Nature lives."** (Vide
"Cross and Circle," Part II.)
The allegory of Adam being driven away from the "Tree of
Life" means, esoterically, that the newly separated Race
abused and dragged the mystery of Life down into the region of
animalism and bestiality. For, as the Zohar shows, that
Matronethah (Shekinah, the wife of Metatron symbolically) "is
the way to the great Tree of Life, the Mighty Tree," and
Shekinah is divine grace. As explained: This Tree reaches the
heavenly vale and is hidden between three mountains (the upper
triad of principles, in man). From these three mountains, the
Tree ascends above (the adept's knowledge aspires heavenward)
and then redescends below (into the adept's Ego on Earth).
This Tree is revealed in the day time and is hidden during the
night, i.e., revealed to an enlightened mind and hidden
to Ignorance, which is night. (See Zohar I., 172, a
and b.) "The Tree of the Knowledge of the Good and
the Evil grows from the roots of the Tree of Life." (Comm.)
But then also: "In the Kabala it is plainly to be found that
"the 'Tree of Life' was
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] of Ain-Soph), representing
the Logos, is that very Tree of Knowledge; while
Shamael -- the dark aspect of the Logos -- occupies only the rind
of that tree, and has the knowledge of EVIL alone. As Lacour,
who saw in the scene of the Fall (chap. iii., Genesis)
an incident pertaining to Egyptian Initiation, says: -- "The
Tree of the Divination, or of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil . . . . is the science of Tzyphon, the
genius of doubt, Tzy to teach, and phon, doubt.
Tzyphon is one of the Aleim; we shall see him presently under
the name of Nach, the tempter" (Les OEloim,
Vol. II., p. 218). He is now known to the symbologists under
the name JEHOVAH.
* This is the view taken and adopted by all the Church Fathers,
but it is not the real esoteric teaching. The curse did
not begin with the formation of either man or woman, for their
separation was a natural sequence of evolution, but for breaking
the law (See supra).
** "By which (human) nature lives," not even the animal
-- but the misguided, sensual and vicious nature, which men,
not nature, created.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 217 "MYTHICAL" MONSTERS A REALITY.
the ansated cross in its sexual aspect, and that the 'Tree
of Knowledge' was the separation and the coming
together again to fulfil the fatal condition. To display this
in numbers the values of the letters composing the word Otz (
), tree, are 7 and 9, the
seven being the holy feminine number and the nine the number of
the phallic or male energy. This ansated cross is the symbol of
the Egyptian female-male, Isis-Osiris, the germinal principle
in all forms, based on the primal manifestation applicable in
all directions and in all senses."*
This is the Kabalistic view of the Western Occultists, and it
differs from the more philosophical Eastern or Aryan views upon
this subject.** The separation of the sexes was in the programme
of nature and of natural evolution; and the creative faculty in
male and female was a gift of Divine wisdom. In the truth of such
traditions the whole of antiquity, from the patrician philosopher
to the humblest spiritually inclined plebeian, has believed. And
as we proceed, we may successfully show that the relative
truth of such legends, if not their absolute exactness --
vouched for by such giants of intellect as were Solon, Pythagoras,
Plato, and others -- begins to dawn upon more than one modern
scientist. He is perplexed; he stands startled and confused before
proofs that are being daily accumulated before him; he feels that
there is no way of solving the many historical problems that stare
him in the face, unless he begins by accepting ancient traditions.
Therefore, in saying that we believe absolutely in ancient records
and universal legends, we need hardly plead guilty before
the impartial observer, for other and far more learned writers,
among those who belong to the modern scientific school, evidently
believe in much that the Occultists do: e.g., in "Dragons,"
not only symbolically, but also in their actual existence at one
time.
"It would have indeed been a bold step for anyone, some thirty
years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection
of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them
the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated
tales, believed to be time-honoured fictions, as actual facts;
and those of the nursery as being, in many instances, legends,
more or less distorted, descriptive of real beings or events.
Nowadays it is a less hazardous proceeding . . . . . "
Thus opens the introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting
work by Mr. Charles Gould, called "Mythical Monsters."
He boldly states his belief in most of these monsters. He submits
that: -- "Many of the so-called mythical animals, which,
throughout long ages and in all nations, have been the fertile
subjects of fiction and fable, come
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The Source of Measures."
** Vide infra, "The Septenary," in Part II.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 218 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
legitimately within the scope of plain matter-of-fact natural
history; and that they may be considered, not as the outcome of
exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once existed, and
of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and inaccurate descriptions
have filtered down to us, probably very much refracted, through
the mists of time. . . . Traditions of creatures once co-existing
with man, some of which are so weird and terrible as to appear
at first sight to be impossible. For me the major part of
those creatures are not chimeras but objects of rational study.
The dragon, in place of being a creature evolved out of the imagination
of an Aryan man by the contemplation of lightning flashing through
the caverns which he tenanted, as is held by some mythologists,
is an animal which once lived and dragged its ponderous coils
and perhaps flew. . . . . To me the specific existence of the
Unicorn seems not incredible, and in fact, more probable than
that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth* . . . For
my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from 'the contemplation
of the visible workings of external nature.' It seems to me easier
to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the utterance
of these oft-told tales until their original appearance is almost
unrecognisable, than that uncultured savages should possess
powers of imagination and poetical invention far beyond those
enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present day;
less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods
and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of
all descriptions are transformations than to believe them
to be inventions."**
It is shown by the same geologist that man, "successively
traced to periods variously estimated from thirty thousand
to one million years . . . . . , co-existed with animals
which have long since become extinct (p. 20)."
These animals, "weird and terrible," were, to give
a few instances -- (1) "Of the genus Cidastes, whose
huge bones and vertebrae show them to have attained a length of
nearly two hundred feet . . . . . . " The remains of such
monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh
in the Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2)
The Titanosaurus montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet
in length; (3) the Dinosaurians (in the Jurassic beds
of the Rocky Mountains), of still more gigantic proportions; (4)
the Atlanto-Saurus immanis, a femur of which
alone is over six feet in length, and which would be thus over
one hundred feet in length! But even yet the line has not been
reached, and we hear of the discovery of remains of such titanic
proportions as to possess a thigh-bone over twelve feet in length
(p. 37). Then we read of the monstrous Sivatherium
in the Himalayas, the four-horned stag, as large as an elephant,
and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium:
of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The Unicorn: a Mythological Investigation,"
Robert Brown, jun., F.S.A.
** Pp. 3 and 4, Introduction to "Mythical Monsters."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 219 THE FLYING DRAGONS.
crocodile jaws on a duck's head, etc., etc. All these were
co-existent with man, most probably attacked man, as man attacked
them; and we are asked to believe that the said
man was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive
that, surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man,
unless himself a colossal giant, could have survived, while all
his foes have perished? Is it with his stone hatchet that he had
the best of a Sivatherium or a gigantic flying saurian?
Let us always bear in mind that at least one great man of science,
de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why man should
not have been "contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia
and go back as far as the Secondary Period."*
"It appears," writes the very conservative Professor
Jukes, "that the flying dragons of romance had something
like a real existence in former ages of the world."** "Does
the written history of man," the author goes on to ask, "comprising
a few thousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent
existence? Or have we in the long mythical eras, extending over
hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies
of Chaldea and China, shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed
down by tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors
to existing lands, from others which, like the fabled Atlantis
of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great
catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization;"
(p. 17).
The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants, themselves
smaller than their ancestors the Mastodons, and Hippopotami, are
the only surviving relics, and tend to disappear more entirely
with every day. Even they have already had a few pioneers of their
future genus, and have decreased in size in the same proportion
as men did. For the remains of a pigmy elephant were found (E.
Falconeri) in the cave deposits of Malta; and the
same author asserts that they were associated with the remains
of pigmy Hippopotami, the former being "only two feet six
inches high; or the still-existing Hippopotamus (Choeropsis)
Liberiensis, which M. Milne-Edwards figures as little more
than two feet in height."***
Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or
fairy-tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the
Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that "the things that
men do know can in no way be compared, numerically speaking, to
the things that are unknown";**** and thus they laugh only
at their own ignorance.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "The Human Species," p.
52.
** "Manual of Geology," p.
301.
*** "Recherches sur les Mammiferes,"
plate I.
**** Preface to "Wonders by Land and Sea," (Shan Hai
King).
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