The Mundane Egg

Whence this universal symbol?

The Egg was incorporated as a sacred sign in the Cosmogony of every people on the earth, and was revered both on account of its form and of its inner mystery.

From the earliest mental conceptions of man, it has been known as:

• the best representation the origin and secret of Being
• the gradual development of the imperceptible germ within the closed shell
• the inward working, without any apparent outward interference of force
  • from a latent nothing produced an active something, needing only heat

Having gradually evolved into a concrete, living creature, it broke its shell. It appeared to the outward senses as a self-generated and self-created being.

This must have been a standing miracle from the beginning.

The Secret Teaching explains the reason for this reverence by the symbolism of the prehistoric races.

In the beginnings, the “First Cause” had no name.

Later it was pictured in the fancy of the thinkers as an ever invisible, mysterious Bird that dropped an Egg into Chaos, which Egg became the Universe.

Hence Brahmâ was called Kâlahansa, the “Swan in [Space and] Time.”

Becoming the Swan of Eternity, Brahmâ, at the beginning of each Mahâmanvantara, lays a Golden Egg, which typifies the great Circle, or [circle] itself a symbol for the Universe and its spherical bodies.

A second reason for the Egg having been chosen as the symbolical representation of the Universe, and of our Earth, was its form.

It was a Circle and a Sphere; and the ovi-form shape of our Globe must have been known from the beginning of symbology, since it was so universally adopted. The first manifestation of the Kosmos in the form of an Egg was the most widely diffused belief of Antiquity.

As Bryant shows,552 it was a symbol adopted among the Greeks, the Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians. In the Egyptian Ritual, Seb, the God of Time and of the Earth, is spoken of as having laid an Egg, or the Universe, an “Egg conceived at the hour of the Great One of the Dual Force.”553

Ra is shown like Brahmâ gestating in the Egg of the Universe.

The Deceased is “resplendent in the Egg of the Land of Mysteries.”554 For, this is “the Egg to which is given Life among the Gods.”555 “It is the Egg of the great clucking Hen, the Egg of Seb, who issues from it like a hawk.”556

Among the Greeks the Orphic Egg is described by Aristophanes, and was part of the Dionysiac and other Mysteries, during which the Mundane Egg was consecrated and its significance explained.

Porphyry also shows it to be a representation of the world: “Ἑρμηνεύει δὲ τὸ ὠὸν τὸν κόσμον.”

Faber and Bryant have tried to show that the Egg typified the Ark of Noah—a wild belief, unless the latter is accepted as purely allegorical and symbolical.

It can only have typified the Ark as a synonym of the Moon, the Argha which carries the universal seed of life; but had surely nothing to do with the Ark of the Bible.

The belief that the Universe existed in the beginning in the shape of an Egg was general. And as Wilson says:

A similar account of the first aggregation of the elements in the form of an Egg is given in all the Purânas, with the usual epithet Haima or Hiranya, “golden,” as it occurs in Manu, I. 9.557

Hiranya, however, means “resplendent,” “shining,” rather than “golden,” as is proven by the great Indian scholar, the late Svâmi Dayanand Sarasvatî, in his unpublished polemics with Professor Max Müller. As said in the Vishnu Purâna:

Intellect [Mahat] … the [unmanifested] gross elements inclusive, formed an Egg … and the Lord of the Universe himself abided in it, in the character of Brahmâ. In that Egg, O Brâhmana, were the continents, and seas and mountains, the planets and divisions of the planets, the gods, the demons and mankind.558

Both in Greece and in India the first visible male Being, who united in himself the nature of either sex, abode in the Egg and issued from it.

This “First-born of the World” was Dionysus, with some Greeks; the God who sprang from the Mundane Egg, and from whom the Mortals and Immortals were derived.

The God Ra is shown, in the Book of the Dead, beaming in his Egg [the Sun], and the stars off as soon as the God Shoo [the Solar Energy] awakens and gives him the impulse.559 “He is in the Solar Egg, the Egg to which is given Life among the Gods.”560

The Solar God exclaims: “I am the Creative Soul of the Celestial Abyss. None sees my Nest, none can break my Egg, I am the Lord!”561

In view of this circular form, the “[vertical bar]” issuing from the “[circle],” or the Egg, or the male from the female in the androgyne, it is strange to find a scholar saying, on the ground that the most ancient Indian MSS. show no trace of it, that the ancient Âryans were ignorant of the decimal notation.

The 10, being the sacred number of the Universe, was secret and esoteric, both as regards the unit and cipher, or zero, the circle.

Max Müller tells that “the two words cipher and zero, which are but one, are sufficient to prove that our figures are borrowed from the Arabs.”562

Cipher is the Arabic cifron, and means “empty,” a translation of the Sanskrit sunyan, or “nought,” says the Professor.563

The Arabs had their figures from Hindûstan, and never claimed the discovery for themselves. As to the Pythagoreans, we need but turn to the ancient manuscripts of Boethius’ treatise, De Arithmetica, composed in the sixth century, to find among the Pythagorean numerals the “1” and the “0,” as the first and final figures.564

Porphyry, who quotes from the Pythagorean Moderatus,565 says that the numerals of Pythagoras were “hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained ideas concerning the nature of things,” or the origin of the Universe.

If, on the one hand, the most ancient Indian MSS. show as yet no trace of decimal notation in them, and Max Müller states very clearly that until now he has found but nine letters, the initials of the Sanskrit numerals; on the other hand, we have records as ancient, to supply the wanted proof. We speak of the sculptures and the sacred imagery in the most ancient temples of the far East. Pythagoras derived his knowledge from India;

Max Müller corroborates this statement, at least so far as to allow that the Neo-Pythagoreans were the first teachers of “ciphering,” among the Greeks and Romans; that they “at Alexandria, or in Syria, became acquainted with the Indian figures, and adapted them to the Pythagorean Abacus.” This cautious admission implies that Pythagoras himself was acquainted with only nine figures.

Thus we might reasonably answer that, although we possess no certain proof, exoterically, that the decimal notation was known to Pythagoras, who lived at the very close of the archaic ages,566 yet we have sufficient evidence to show that the full numbers, as given by Boethius, were known to the Pythagoreans, even before Alexandria was built.567

This evidence we find in Aristotle, who says that “some philosophers hold that ideas and numbers are of the same nature, and amount to ten in all.”568 This, we believe, will be sufficient to show that the decimal notation was known among them at least as early as four centuries b.c., for Aristotle does not seem to treat the question as an innovation of the Neo-Pythagoreans.

But we know more than this; we know that the decimal system must have been used by the mankind of the earliest archaic ages, since the whole astronomical and geometrical portion of the secret sacerdotal language was built upon the number 10, or the combination of the male and female principles, and since the “Pyramid of Cheops,” so-called, is built upon measures of this decimal notation, or rather upon the digits and their combinations with the nought. Of this, however, sufficient has been said in Isis Unveiled, and it is useless to repeat it.

The symbolism of the Lunar and Solar Deities is so inextricably mixed up, that it is next to impossible to separate from each other such glyphs as the Egg, the Lotus, and the “Sacred” Animals. The Ibis, for instance, was held in the greatest veneration in Egypt. It was sacred to Isis, who is often represented with the head of that bird, and also sacred to Mercury or Thoth, who is said to have assumed its form while escaping from Typhon. There were two kinds of Ibises in Egypt, Herodotus569 tells us; one quite black, the other black and white. The former is credited with fighting and exterminating the winged serpents which came every spring from Arabia, and infested the country. [pg 388]The other was sacred to the Moon, because the latter planet is white and brilliant on her external side, dark and black on that side which she never turns to the Earth. Moreover, the Ibis kills land serpents, and makes the most terrible havoc amongst the eggs of the crocodile, and thus saves Egypt from having the Nile over-infested by those horrible saurians. The bird is credited with doing this in the moonlight, and thus being helped by Isis, whose sidereal symbol is the Moon. But the more correct esoteric truth underlying these popular myths is, that Hermes, as shown by Abenephius,570 watched over the Egyptians under the form of that bird, and taught them the Occult arts and sciences. This simply means that the ibis religiosa had, and has, “magical” properties in common with many other birds, the albatross preëminently, and the mythical white swan, the Swan of Eternity or Time, the Kâlahansa.

Were it otherwise, indeed, why should all the ancient peoples, who were no more fools than we are, have had such a superstitious dread of killing certain birds? In Egypt, he who killed an Ibis, or the Golden Hawk, the symbol of the Sun and Osiris, risked death, and could hardly escape it. The veneration of some nations for birds was such that Zoroaster, in his precepts, forbids their slaughter as a heinous crime. In our age, we laugh at every kind of divination. Yet why should so many generations have believed in divination by birds, and even in Oömancy, which is said by Suidas to have been imparted by Orpheus, who taught how, under certain conditions, to perceive in the yolk and white of an egg, that which the bird born from it would have seen around it during its short life. This Occult art, which, 3,000 years ago, demanded the greatest learning and the most abstruse mathematical calculations, has now fallen into the depths of degradation; and to-day it is the old cooks and fortune-tellers who read the future for servant-girls in search of husbands, from the white of an egg in a glass.

Nevertheless, even Christians have to this day their sacred birds; for instance, the Dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost. Nor have they neglected the sacred animals; and the evangelical zoölatry, with its Bull, Eagle, Dion, and Angel—in reality the Cherub, or Seraph, the fiery-winged Serpent—is as much Pagan as that of the Egyptians or the Chaldeans. These four animals are, in reality, the symbols of the four Elements, and of the four lower Principles in man. Nevertheless, they correspond physically and materially to the four constellations [pg 389]that form, so to speak, the suite or cortège of the Solar God, and which, during the winter solstice, occupy the four cardinal points of the zodiacal circle. These four “animals” may be seen in many of the Roman Catholic New Testaments in which the “portraits” of the Evangelists are given. They are the animals of Ezekiel’s Mercabah.

As truly stated by Ragon:

The ancient Hierophants have combined so cleverly the dogmas and symbols of their religious philosophies, that these symbols can be fully explained only by the combination and knowledge of all the keys.

They can be only approximately interpreted, even if one discovers three out of these seven systems, viz., the anthropological, the psychic and the astronomical. The two chief interpretations, the highest and the lowest, the spiritual and the physiological, were preserved in the greatest secrecy, until the latter fell into the dominion of the profane. Thus far, with regard only to the pre-historic Hierophants, with whom that which has now become purely—or impurely—phallic, was a science as profound and as mysterious as Biology and Physiology are now. This was their exclusive property, the fruit of their studies and discoveries. The other two were those which dealt with the Creative Gods, or Theogony, and with creative man; that is to say, with the ideal and the practical Mysteries. These interpretations were so cleverly veiled and combined, that many were those who, while arriving at the discovery of one meaning, were baffled in understanding the significance of the others, and could never unriddle them sufficiently to commit dangerous indiscretions. The highest, the first and the fourth—Theogony in relation to Anthropogony—were almost impossible to fathom. We find the proofs of this in the Jewish “Holy Writ.”

It is owing to the serpent being oviparous, that it became a symbol of Wisdom and an emblem of the Logoi, or the Self-Born. In the temple of Philæ, in Upper Egypt, an egg was artificially prepared of clay mixed with various incenses. This was hatched by a peculiar process, and a cerastes or horned viper was produced. The same was done in the Indian temples, in antiquity, in the case of the cobra. The Creative God emerges from the Egg that issues from the mouth of Kneph, as a winged Serpent, for the Serpent is the symbol of the All-Wisdom. With the Hebrews the same Deity is glyphed by the Flying or “Fiery Serpents” of Moses in the Wilderness; and with the Alexandrian Mystic she becomes the Orphio-Christos, the Logos of the Gnostics. [pg 390]The Protestants try to show that the allegory of the Brazen Serpent and of the Fiery Serpents has a direct reference to the mystery of the Christ and the Crucifixion, whereas, in truth, it has a far nearer relation to the mystery of generation, when dissociated from the Egg with the Central Germ, or the Circle with its Central Point. Protestant Theologians would have us believe their interpretation only because the Brazen Serpent was lifted on a pole! Whereas it had rather a reference to the Egyptian Egg standing upright supported by the sacred Tau; since the Egg and the Serpent are in-separable in the old worship and symbology of Egypt, and since both the Brazen and Fiery Serpents were Seraphs, the burning “Fiery” Messengers, or the Serpent Gods, the Nâgas of India. Without the Egg it was a purely phallic symbol, but when associated therewith, it related to cosmic creation. The Brazen Serpent had no such holy meaning as the Protestants would ascribe to it; nor was it, in fact, glorified above the Fiery Serpents, for the bite of which it was only a natural remedy; the symbological meaning of the word “Brazen” being the feminine principle, and that of “Fiery,” or “Gold,” the masculine principle.

Brass was a metal symbolizing the nether world … that of the womb where life should be given…. The word for serpent in Hebrew was Nachash, but this is also the term for brass.

It is said in Numbers that the Jews complained of the Wilderness where there was no water,571 after which “the Lord sent fiery serpents” to bite them, and then, to oblige Moses, he gave him as a remedy the Brazen Serpent on a pole for them to look at; after which “any man when he beheld the serpent of brass … lived” (?). After that the “Lord,” gathering the people together at the well of Beer, gave them water, and grateful Israel sang this song, “Spring up, O well.” When, after studying symbology, the Christian reader comes to understand the innermost meaning of these three symbols, Water, Brazen, and Serpent, and a few more, in the sense given to them in the Holy Bible, he will hardly like to connect the sacred name of his Saviour with the Brazen Serpent incident. The Seraphim (שרפים) or Fiery Winged Serpents, are no doubt connected with, and inseparable from, the idea of the “Serpent of Eternity—God,” as explained in Kenealy’s Apocalypse; but the word Cherub also meant Serpent, in one sense, though its direct meaning is different, for the Cherubim and the Persian [pg 391]Winged Griffins (Γρύπες), the guardians of the Golden Mountain, are the same, and the compound name of the former shows their character, as it is formed of kr (כר), a circle, and aub or ob (אוב), a serpent, and therefore means a “serpent in a circle.” And this settles the phallic character of the Brazen Serpent, and justifies Hezekiah for breaking it.572 Verbum satis sapienti!

In the Book of the Dead, as just shown,573 reference is often made to the Egg. Ra, the Mighty One, remains in his Egg, during the struggle between the “Children of the Rebellion” and Shoo, the Solar Energy and the Dragon of Darkness. The Deceased is resplendent in his Egg when he crosses to the Land of Mystery. He is the Egg of Seb. The Egg was the symbol of Life in Immortality and Eternity; and also the glyph of the generative matrix; whereas the Tau, which was associated with it, was only the symbol of life and birth in generation. The Mundane Egg was placed in Khoom, the Water of Space, or the feminine abstract Principle; Khoom becoming, with the “fall” of mankind into generation and phallicism, Ammon the Creative God. When Ptah, the “Fiery God,” carries the Mundane Egg in his hand, then the symbolism becomes quite terrestrial and concrete in its significance. In conjunction with the Hawk, the symbol of Osiris-Sun, the symbol is dual, and relates to both Lives—the mortal and the immortal. The engraving of a papyrus in Kircher’s Œdipus Egyptiacus,574 shows an egg floating above the mummy. This is the symbol of hope and the promise of a Second Birth for the Osirified Dead; his Soul, after due purification in the Amenti, will gestate in this Egg of Immortality, to be reborn therefrom into a new life on earth. For this Egg, in the Esoteric Doctrine, is Devachan, the Abode of Bliss; the Winged Scarabæus also being another symbol of it. The Winged Globe is but another form of the Egg, and has the same significance as the Scarabæus, the Khopiroo—from the Root khoproo, to become, to be reborn—which relates to the rebirth of man, as well as to his spiritual regeneration.

In the Theogony of Mochus, we find Æther first, and then Air, the two principles from which Ulom, the Intelligible (Νοητὸς) Deity, the visible Universe of Matter, is born, out of the Mundane Egg.575

In the Orphic Hymns, Eros-Phanes evolves from the Divine Egg, which the Æthereal Winds impregnate, Wind being the “Spirit of God,” or rather the “Spirit of the Unknown Darkness”—the Divine Idea of Plato—which is said to move in Æther.576 In the Hindû Kathopanishad, [pg 392]Purusha, the Divine Spirit, already stands before the Original Matter, “from whose union springs the Great Soul of the World,” Mahâ-Âtmâ, Brahmâ, the Spirit of Life,577 etc.; the latter appellations being all identical with Anima Mundi, or the “Universal Soul,” the Astral Light of the Kabalist and the Occultist, or the “Egg of Darkness.” Besides this there are many charming allegories on this subject, scattered through the Sacred Books of the Brâhmans. In one place, it is the female creator who is first a germ, then a drop of heavenly dew, a pearl, and then an Egg. In such cases, of which there are too many to enumerate separately, the Egg gives birth to the four Elements within the fifth, Æther, and is covered with seven coverings, which become later on the seven upper and the seven lower worlds. Breaking in two, the shell becomes the Heaven, and the contents the Earth, the white forming the Terrestrial Waters. Then, again, it is Vishnu who emerges from within the Egg, with a Lotus in his hand. Vinatâ, a daughter of Daksha and wife of Kashyapa, “the Self-born, sprung from Time,” one of the seven “Creators” of our World, brought forth an Egg from which was born Garuda, the Vehicle of Vishnu; the latter allegory having a relation to our Earth, as Garuda is the Great Cycle.

The Egg was sacred to Isis; and therefore the priests of Egypt never ate eggs.

Isis is almost always represented holding a Lotus in one hand, and in the other a Circle and a Cross (crux ansata).

Diodorus Siculus states that Osiris was born from an Egg, like Brahmâ. From Leda’s Egg, Apollo and Latona were born, and also Castor and Pollux, the bright Gemini. And though the Buddhists do not attribute the same origin to their Founder, yet, no more than the ancient Egyptians or the modern Brâhmans, do they eat eggs, lest they should destroy the germ of life latent in them, and thereby commit sin. The Chinese believe that their First Man was born from an Egg, which Tien dropped down from Heaven to Earth into the Waters.578 This egg-symbol is still regarded by some as representing the idea of the origin of life, which is a scientific truth, though the human ovum is invisible to the naked eye. Therefore we see respect shown to it from the remotest antiquity, by the Greeks, Phœnicians, Romans, the [pg 393]Japanese, and the Siamese, the North and South American tribes, and even the savages of the remotest islands.

With the Egyptians, the Concealed God was Ammon or Mon, the “Hidden”, the Supreme Spirit. All their Gods were dual—the scientific Reality for the sanctuary; its double, the fabulous and mythical Entity, for the masses. For instance, as observed in the Section “Chaos, Theos, Kosmos,” the Elder Horus was the Idea of the World remaining in the Demiurgic Mind, “born in Darkness before the Creation of the World”; the Second Horus was the same Idea going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed with matter and assuming an actual existence.579 Horus, the “Elder,” or Haroiri, is an ancient aspect of the Solar God, contemporary with Ra and Shoo; Haroiri is often mistaken for Hor (Horsusi), Son of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptians very often represented the rising Sun under the form of Hor, the Elder, rising from a full-blown Lotus, the Universe, when the solar disk is always found on the hawk-head of that God. Haroiri is Khnoom. The same with Khnoom and Ammon, both are represented as ram-headed, and both are often confused, though their functions are different. Khnoom is the “modeller of men,” fashioning men and things out of the Mundane Egg, on a potter’s wheel; Ammon-Ra, the Generator, is the secondary aspect of the Concealed Deity. Khnoom was adored at Elephanta and Philæ,580 Ammon at Thebes. But it is Emepht, the One, Supreme Planetary Principle, who blows the Egg out of his mouth, and who is, therefore, Brahmâ. The Shadow of the Deity, Kosmic and Universal, of that which broods over and permeates the Egg with its vivifying Spirit, until the Germ contained in it is ripe, was the Mystery God whose name was unpronounceable. It is Ptah, however, “he who opens,” the opener of Life and Death,581 who proceeds from the Egg of the World to begin his dual work.582

According to the Greeks, the phantom form of the Chemis (Chemi, ancient Egypt) which floats on the Ethereal Waves of the Empyrean Sphere, was called into being by Horus-Apollo, the Sun-God, who caused it to evolve out of the Mundane Egg.

The Brahmânda Purâna contains fully the mystery about Brahmâ’s Golden Egg; and this is why, perhaps, it is inaccessible to the Orientalists, [pg 394]who say that this Purâna, like the Skanda, is “no longer procurable in a collective body,” but “is represented by a variety of Khandas and Mâhâtmyas professing to be derived from it.” The Brahmânda Purâna is described as “that which has declared in 12,200 verses, the magnificence of the Egg of Brahmâ, and in which an account of the future Kalpas is contained, as revealed by Brahmâ.”583 Quite so, and much more, perchance.

In the Scandinavian Cosmogony, placed by Professor Max Müller, in point of time, as “far anterior to the Vedas,” in the poem of Wöluspa, the Song of the Prophetess, the Mundane Egg is again discovered in the Phantom-Germ of the Universe, which is represented as lying in the Ginnungagap, the Cup of Illusion, Mâyâ, the Boundless and Void Abyss. In this World’s Matrix, formerly a region of night and desolation, Nefelheim, the Mist-Place, the nebular, as it is called now, in the Astral Light, dropped a Ray of Cold Light which overflowed this cup and froze in it. Then the Invisible blew a scorching Wind which dissolved the frozen Waters and cleared the Mist. These Waters (Chaos), called the Streams of Eliwagar, distilling in vivifying drops, fell down and created the Earth and the Giant Ymir, who had only the “semblance of man” (the Heavenly Man), and the Cow, Audumla (the “Mother,” Astral Light or Cosmic Soul), from whose udder flowed four streams of milk—the four cardinal points; the four heads of the four rivers of Eden, etc.—which “four” are symbolized by the Cube in all its various and mystical meanings.

The Christians—especially the Greek and Latin Churches—have fully adopted the symbol, and see in it a commemoration of life eternal, of salvation and of resurrection. This is found in, and corroborated by, the time-honoured custom of exchanging “Easter Eggs.” From the Anguinum, the “Egg” of the Pagan Druid, whose name alone made Rome tremble with fear, to the red Easter Egg of the Slavonian peasant, a cycle has passed. And yet, whether in civilized Europe, or among the abject savages of Central America, we find the same archaic, primitive thought, if we will only search for it, and do not—in the haughtiness of our fancied mental and physical superiority—disfigure the original idea of the symbol.

[pg 395] Section VII. The Days and Nights of Brahmâ. This is the name given to the Periods called Manvantara (Manuantara, or between the Manus) and Pralaya, or Dissolution; one referring to the Active Periods of the Universe; the other to its times of relative and complete Rest, whether they occur at the end of a Day or an Age, or Life, of Brahmâ. These Periods, which follow each other in regular succession, are also called Small and Great Kalpas, the Minor and the Mahâ Kalpas; though, properly speaking, the Mahâ Kalpa is never a Day, but a whole Life or Age of Brahmâ, for it is said in the Brahma Vaivarta: “Chronologers compute a Kalpa by the Life of Brahmâ. Minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are numerous.” In sober truth they are infinite; for they have never had a commencement; or, in other words, there never was a first Kalpa, nor will there ever be a last, in Eternity.

One Parârdha, or half of the existence of Brahmâ, in the ordinary acceptation of this measure of time, has already expired in the present Mahâ Kalpa; the last Kalpa was the Padma, or that of the Golden Lotus; the present one is the Varâha,584 the “Boar” Incarnation, or Avatâra.

[pg 396] One thing is to be especially noted by the scholar who studies the Hindû religion from the Puranâs. He must never take the statements found therein literally, and in one sense only; and those especially, which concern the Manvantaras, or Kalpas, have to be understood in their several references. Thus these Ages relate, in the same language, to both the great and the small periods, to Mahâ Kalpas and to Minor Cycles. The Matsya, or Fish Avatâra, happened before the Varâha or Boar Avatâra; the allegories, therefore, must relate to both the Padma and the present Manvantara, and also to the Minor Cycles which have occurred since the reäppearance of our Chain of Worlds and the Earth. And as the Matsya Avatâra of Vishnu and Vaivasvata’s Deluge are correctly connected with an event that happened on our Earth during this Round, it is evident that, while it may relate to pre-cosmic events, pre-cosmic in the sense of our Cosmos, or Solar System, it has reference, in our case, to a distant geological period. Not even Esoteric Philosophy can claim to know, except by analogical inference, that which took place before the reäppearance of our Solar System, and previous to the last Mahâ Pralaya. But it teaches distinctly, that after the first geological disturbance of the Earth’s axis, which ended in the sweeping down to the bottom of the seas of the whole Second Continent, with its primeval races—of which successive Continents, or “Earths,” Atlantis was the fourth—there came another disturbance owing to the axis again resuming its previous degree of inclination as rapidly as it had changed it: when the Earth was indeed once more raised out of the waters—as above, so below, and vice versâ. There were “Gods” on Earth in those days; Gods, and not men, as we know them now, says the tradition. As will be shown in Volume II, the computation of periods, in exoteric Hindûism, refers to both the great cosmic and the small terrestrial events and cataclysms, and the same may be demonstrated in respect to names. For instance, the name Yudishthira—the first king of the Sacae or Shakas, who opens the Kali Yuga Era, which has to last 432,000 years, “an actual king who lived 3,102 years b.c.”—applies also to the Great Deluge, at the time of the first sinking of Atlantis. He is the “Yudishthira,585 born on the mountain of the hundred peaks, at the extremity of the world, beyond which nobody can [pg 397]go” and “immediately after the flood.”586 We know of no “Flood” 3,102 years b.c., not even that of Noah, for, agreeably with Judæo-Christian chronology, it took place 2,349 years b.c.

This relates to an esoteric division of time and a mystery explained elsewhere, and may therefore be left aside for the present. Suffice it to remark, at this juncture, that all the efforts of imagination of the Wilfords, Bentleys, and other would-be Œdipuses of esoteric Hindû Chronology, have sadly failed. No computation of either the Four Ages, or the Manvantaras, has ever yet been unriddled by our very learned Orientalists, who have therefore cut the Gordian Knot by proclaiming the whole “a figment of the Brâhmanical brain.” So be it, and may the great scholars rest in peace! This “figment” is given at the end of the Commentaries on Stanza II of the Anthropogenesis, in Volume II, with Esoteric additions.

Let us see, however, what were the three kinds of Pralayas, and what is the popular belief about them. For once it agrees with Esotericism.

Of the Pralaya, before which fourteen Manvantaras elapse, having over them as many presiding Manus, and at whose close occurs the Incidental, or Brahmâ’s Dissolution, it is said in Vishnu Purâna, in condensed paraphrase:

At the end of a thousand Periods of Four Ages, which complete a day of Brahmâ, the earth is almost exhausted. The Eternal (Avyaya) Vishnu then assumes the character of Rudra, the Destroyer (Shiva), and reünites all his creatures to himself. He enters the Seven Rays of the Sun and drinks up all the Waters of the Globe; he causes the moisture to evaporate, thus drying up the whole Earth. Oceans and rivers, torrents and small streams, are all exhaled. Thus fed with abundant moisture the Seven Solar Rays become Seven Suns, by dilation, and they finally set the World on fire. Hari, the destroyer of all things, who is the Flame of Time, Kâlâgni, finally consumes the Earth. Then Rudra, becoming Janârdana, breathes clouds and rain.587

There are many kinds of Pralaya, but three chief periods are specially mentioned in old Hindû books. The first of these, as Wilson shows, is called Naimittika,588 “Occasional” or “Incidental,” caused by the intervals of Brahmâ’s Days; it is the destruction of creatures, of all that lives and has a form, but not of the substance, which remains in [pg 398]statu quo till the new Dawn after that Night. The second is called Prâkritika, and occurs at the end of the Age or Life of Brahmâ, when everything that exists is resolved into the Primal Element, to be remodelled at the end of that longer Night. The third, Âtyantika, does not concern the Worlds, or the Universe, but only the Individualities of some people. It is thus the Individual Pralaya, or Nirvâna, after having reached which, there is no more future existence possible, no rebirth till after the Mahâ Pralaya. The latter Night—lasting as it does 311,040,000,000,000 years, with the possibility also of being almost doubled in the case of the lucky Jîvanmukta who reaches Nirvâna at an early period of a Manvantara—is long enough to be regarded as eternal, if not endless. The Bhâgavata Purâna589 speaks of a fourth kind of Pralaya, the Nitya, or Constant Dissolution, and explains it as the change which takes place imperceptibly in everything in this Universe from the globe down to the atom, without cessation. It is growth and decay—life and death.

When the Mahâ Pralaya arrives, the inhabitants of Svar-loka, the Upper Sphere, disturbed by the conflagration, seek refuge “with the Pitris, their Progenitors, the Manus, the Seven Rishis, the various orders of Celestial Spirits and the Gods, in Mahar-loka.” When the latter is reached also, the whole of the above enumerated beings migrate in their turn from Mahar-loka, and repair to Jana-loka, “in their subtile forms, destined to become reëmbodied, in similar capacities as their former, when the world is renewed at the beginning of the succeeding Kalpa.”590

Clouds, mighty in size, and loud in thunder, fill up all Space [Nabhas-tala]. Showering down torrents of water, these clouds quench the dreadful fires, … and then they rain uninterruptedly for a hundred [divine] Years, and deluge the whole World [Solar System]. Pouring down, in drops as large as dice, these rains overspread the Earth, and fill the Middle Region (Bhuvo-loka) and inundate Heaven. The World is now enveloped in darkness; and all things, animate or inanimate, having perished, the clouds continue to pour down their Waters, … and the Night of Brahmâ reigns supreme over the scene of desolation.591

This is what we call in the Esoteric Doctrine a Solar Pralaya. When the Waters have reached the region of the Seven Rishis, and the World, our Solar System, is one Ocean, they stop. The Breath of Vishnu becomes a strong Wind, which blows for another hundred Divine Years until all clouds are dispersed. The wind is then reäbsorbed: and That—

[pg 399] Of which all things are made, the Lord by whom all things exist, He who is inconceivable, without beginning, the beginning of the Universe, reposes, sleeping upon Shesha [the Serpent of Infinity] in the midst of the Deep. The Creator [(?) Âdikrit] Hari, sleeps upon the Ocean [of Space] in the form of Brahmâ—glorified by Sanaka592 and the Saints (Siddhas) of Jana-loka, and contemplated by the holy denizens of Brahma-loka, anxious for final liberation—involved in mystic slumber, the celestial personification of his own illusions…. This is the Dissolution [(?) Pratisanchara] termed Incidental because Hari is its Incidental [Ideal] Cause.593 When the Universal Spirit wakes, the World revives; when he closes his eyes, all things fall upon the bed of mystic slumber. In like manner, as a thousand Great Ages constitute a Day of Brahmâ [in the original it is Padmayoni, the same as Abjayoni, “Lotus-born,” not Brahmâ], so his Night consists of the same period…. Awaking at the end of his Night, the Unborn … creates the Universe anew.594

This is “Incidental” Pralaya; what is the Elemental (Prâkritika) Dissolution? Parâshara describes it to Maitreya as follows:

When, by dearth and fire all the Worlds and Pâtâlas [Hells] are withered up595 … the progress of Elemental Dissolution is begun. Then, first, the Waters swallow up the property of Earth (which is the rudiment of Smell), and Earth deprived of this property proceeds to destruction … and becomes one with Water…. When the Universe is, thus, pervaded by the waves of the watery Element, its rudimentary flavour is licked up by the Element of Fire … and the Waters themselves are destroyed … and become one with Fire; and the Universe is, therefore, entirely filled with [ethereal] Flame, which … gradually overspreads the whole World. While Space is [one] Flame, … the Element of Wind seizes upon the rudimental property, or form, which is the Cause of Light, and that being withdrawn (pralîna), all becomes of the nature of Air. The rudiment of form being destroyed, and Fire [(?) Vibhâvasu] deprived of its rudiment, Air extinguishes Fire and spreads … over Space, which is deprived of Light, when Fire merges into Air. Air, then, accompanied by Sound, which is the source of Ether, extends everywhere throughout the ten regions … until Ether seizes upon Contact [(?) Sparsha, Cohesion—Touch?], its rudimental property, by the loss of which, Air is destroyed, and Ether [(?) Kha] remains unmodified; devoid of Form, Flavour, Touch (Sparsha), and Smell, it exists [un]embodied [mûrttimat] and vast, and pervades the whole of Space. Ether [Âkâsha], whose characteristic property and rudiment is Sound [the “Word”] exists alone, occupying all the vacuity of Space [or rather, occupying the whole containment of Space]. Then the Origin [Noumenon?] of the Elements (Bhûtâdi) devours Sound [the collective [pg 400]Demiurgos]; [and the hosts of Dhyân Chohans] and all the [existing] Elements596are, at once, merged into their original. This Primary Element is Consciousness, combined with the Property of Darkness [Tâmasa—Spiritual Darkness rather], and is, itself, swallowed up [disintegrated] by Mahat [the Universal Intellect], whose characteristic property is Intelligence [Buddhi], and Earth and Mahat are the inner and outer boundaries of the Universe. In this manner, as [in the Beginning] were the seven forms of Nature [Prakriti] reckoned from Mahat to Earth, so … these seven successively reënter into each other.597

The Egg of Brahmâ (Sarva-mandala) is dissolved in the Waters that surround it, with its seven zones (dvîpas), seven oceans, seven regions, and their mountains. The investure of Water is drunk by Fire; the (stratum of) Fire is absorbed by (that of) Air; Air blends itself with Ether [Âkâsha]; the Primary Element [Bhûtâdi, the origin, or rather the cause, of the Primary Element] devours the Ether, and is (itself) destroyed by Intellect [Mahat, the Great, the Universal Mind], which, along with all these, is seized upon by Nature [Prakriti] and disappears. This Prakriti is, essentially, the same, whether discrete or indiscrete; only that which is discrete is, finally, lost or absorbed in the indiscrete. Spirit [Pums] also, which is one, pure, imperishable, eternal, all-pervading, is a portion of that Supreme Spirit which is all things. That Spirit [Sarvesha] which is other than (embodied) Spirit, and in which there are no attributes of name, species [nâman and jâti, or rûpa, hence body rather than species], or the like … [remains] as the (sole) Existence [Sattâ]. Nature [Prakriti] and Spirit [Purusha] both resolve [finally] into Supreme Spirit.598

This is the final Pralaya599—the Death of Kosmos; after which its Spirit rests in Nirvâna, or in That for which there is neither Day nor Night. All the other Pralayas are periodical, and follow the Manvantaras in regular succession, as the night follows the day of every human creature, animal, and plant. The Cycle of Creation of the Lives of Kosmos is run down; the energy of the Manifested “Word” having its growth, culmination, and decrease, as have all things temporary, however long their duration. The Creative Force is Eternal as noumenal; as a phenomenal manifestation, in its aspects, it has a [pg 401]beginning and must, therefore, have an end. During that interval, it has its Periods of Activity and its Periods of Rest. And these are the Days and Nights of Brahmâ. But Brahman, the Noumenon, never rests, as It never changes, but ever is, though It cannot be said to be anywhere.

The Jewish Kabalists felt the necessity of this immutability in an eternal, infinite Deity, and therefore applied the same thought to the anthropomorphic God. The idea is poetical, and very appropriate in its application. In the Zohar we read as follows:

As Moses was keeping a vigil on Mount Sinai, in company with the Deity, who was concealed from his sight by a cloud, he felt a great fear overcome him, and suddenly asked: “Lord, where art thou … sleepest thou, O Lord? …”And the Spirit answered him; “I never sleep: were I to fall asleep for a moment before my time, all the creation would crumble into dissolution in one instant.”

“Before my time” is very suggestive. It shows the God of Moses to be only a temporary substitute, like Brahmâ, the male, a substitute and an aspect of That which is immutable, and which, therefore, can take no part in the Days, or Nights, nor have any concern whatever with reäction or dissolution.

While the Eastern Occultists have seven modes of interpretation, the Jews have only four; namely, the real-mystical, the allegorical, the moral, and the literal or Pashut. The latter is the key of the exoteric Churches and not worth discussion. Here are several sentences, which, read in the first, or mystical key, show the identity of the foundations of construction in every Scripture. They are given in Isaac Myer’s excellent book on the Kabalistic works, which he seems to have well studied. I quote verbatim.

“B’raisheeth barah elohim ath hashama’ yem v’ath haa’retz, i.e., ‘In the beginning the God(s) created the heavens and the earth’; (the meaning of which is;) the six (Sephiroth of Construction),600 over which B’raisheeth stands, all belong Below. It created six, (and) on these stand (exist) all Things. And those depend upon the seven forms of the Cranium up to the Dignity of all Dignities. And the second ‘Earth’ does not come into calculation, therefore it has been said: ‘And from it (that Earth) which underwent the curse; came it forth.’ … ‘It (the Earth) was without form and void; and darkness was over the face of the Abyss, and the Spirit of Elohim … was breathing (me’racha’pheth, i.e., hovering, brooding over, moving, …) over the waters.’ Thirteen depend on thirteen (forms) of the most worthy Dignity. Six thousand years hang (are referred to) in the first six words. The seventh (thousand, the millennium) above it (the cursed Earth) is that [pg 402]which is strong by Itself. And it was rendered entirely desolate during twelve hours (one … day …). In the thirteenth, It (the Deity) shall restore them … and everything shall be renewed as before; and all those six shall continue.”601

The “Sephiroth of Construction” are the six Dhyân Chohans, or Manus, or Prajâpatis, synthesized by the seventh “B’raisheeth,” the First Emanation, or Logos, and who are called, therefore, the Builders of the Lower or Physical Universe, all belonging Below. These Six [6-pointed star with middle dot], whose essence is of the Seventh, are the Upâdhi, the Base or Fundamental Stone, on which the Objective Universe is built, the Noumenoi of all things. Hence they are, at the same time, the Forces of Nature; the Seven Angels of the Presence; the Sixth and Seventh Principles in Man; the spirito-psycho-physical Spheres of the Septenary Chain, the Root Races, etc. They all “depend upon the Seven Forms of the Cranium” up to the Highest. The “Second ‘Earth’ does not come into calculation,” because it is no Earth, but the Chaos, or Abyss of Space, in which rested the Paradigmatic, or Model Universe, in the Ideation of the Over-Soul, brooding over it. The term “Curse” is here very misleading, for it means simply Doom or Destiny, or that fatality which sent it forth into the objective state. This is shown by that “Earth,” under the “Curse,” being described as “without form and void,” in whose abysmal depths the “Breath” of the Elohim, or collective Logoi, produced, or so to say photographed, the first Divine Ideation of the things to be. This process is repeated after every Pralaya before the beginnings of a new Manvantara, or Period of sentient individual Being. “Thirteen depend on thirteen Forms,” refers to the thirteen Periods, personified by the thirteen Manus, with Svâyambhuva, the fourteenth—13, instead of 14, being an additional veil—those fourteen Manus who reign within the term of a Mahâ Yuga, a Day of Brahmâ. These thirteen-fourteen of the objective Universe depend on the thirteen-fourteen paradigmatic, ideal Forms. The meaning of the “six thousand Years” which “hang in the first six Words,” has again to be sought in the Indian Wisdom. They refer to the primordial six (seven) “Kings of Edom,” who typify the Worlds, or Spheres, of our Chain, during the First Round, as well as the primordial men of this Round. They are the septenary pre-Adamic First Root-Race, or they who existed before the Third, Separated Race. As they were Shadows, and senseless, for they had not yet eaten of the [pg 403]fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, they could not see the Parzuphim, or “Face could not see Face”; that is to say, primeval men were “unconscious.” “Therefore, the primordial (seven) Kings died,” i.e., were destroyed.602 Now, who are these Kings? They are the Kings who are the “Seven Rishis, certain (secondary) divinities, Indra [Shakra], Manu, and the Kings his Sons [who] are created and perish at one period” as Vishnu Purâna tells us.603 For the seventh “thousand,” which is not the millennium of exoteric Christianity, but that of Anthropogenesis, represents both the “Seventh Period of Creation,” that of physical man, according to Vishnu Purâna, and the Seventh Principle, both macrocosmic and microcosmic, and also the Pralaya after the Seventh Period, the Night, which has the same duration as the Day, of Brahmâ. “It was rendered entirely desolate during twelve hours.” It is in the Thirteenth (twice six and the synthesis) that everything shall be restored, and the “six shall continue.”

Thus, the author of the Qabbalah remarks quite truly that:

Long before his [Ibn Gebirol’s] time … many centuries before the Christian era, there was in Central Asia a “Wisdom Religion”, fragments of which subsequently existed among the learned men of the archaic Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, Hindûs, etc…. [And that] the Qabbalah most likely originally came from Âryan sources, through Central Asia, Persia, India and Mesopotamia, for from Ur and Haran came Abraham and many others, into Palestine.604

Such was also the firm conviction of C. W. King, the author of The Gnostics and Their Remains.

Vâmadeva Modelyar describes the coming Night most poetically. Though it is given in Isis Unveiled, it is worthy of repetition.

Strange noises are heard, proceeding from every point…. These are the precursors of the Night of Brahmâ; dusk rises at the horizon, and the Sun passes away behind the thirteenth degree of Makara [the tenth sign of the Zodiac], and will reach no more the sign of the Mîna [the Zodiacal sign Pisces, or the Fish]. The Gurus of the Pagodas, appointed to watch the Râshichakram [Zodiac], may now break their circle and instruments, for they are henceforth useless.

Gradually light pales, heat diminishes, uninhabited spots multiply on the earth, the air becomes more and more rarefied; the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers see their waves exhausted, the ocean shows its sandy bottom and plants die. Men and animals decrease in size daily. Life and motion lose their force, planets can hardly gravitate in space; they are extinguished one by one, like a lamp which the hand of the Chokra [servant] neglects to replenish. Sûrya [the Sun] flickers and goes out, matter falls into Dissolution [Pralaya], and Brahmâ merges back into [pg 404]Dyaus, the Unrevealed God, and, his task being accomplished, he falls asleep. Another Day is passed, Night sets in, and continues until the future Dawn.

And now again reënter into the Golden Egg of his Thought the germs of all that exist, as the divine Manu tells us. During His peaceful rest, the animated beings, endowed with the principles of action, cease their functions, and all feeling [Manas] becomes dormant. When they are all absorbed in the Supreme Soul, this Soul of all the beings sleeps in complete repose, till the Day when it resumes its form, and awakes again from its primitive darkness.605

As the Satya Yuga is always the first in the series of the Four Ages or Yugas, so the Kali ever comes the last. The Kali Yuga now reigns supreme in India, and it seems to coincide with that of the Western Age. Anyhow, it is curious to see how prophetic in almost all things was the writer of Vishnu Purâna, when foretelling to Maitreya some of the dark influences and sins of this Kali Yuga. For after saying that the “barbarians” will be masters of the banks of the Indus, of Chandrabhâgâ and Kâshmîra, he adds:

There will be contemporary monarchs, reigning over the earth, kings of churlish spirit, violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and wickedness. They will inflict death on women, children, and cows; they will seize upon the property of their subjects [or, according to another reading, be intent upon the wives of others]; they will be of limited power … their lives will be short, their desires insatiable…. People of various countries intermingling with them will follow their example; and, the barbarians being powerful [in India] in the patronage of the princes, whilst pure tribes are neglected, the people will perish [or, as the Commentator has it: “the Mlechchhas will be in the centre, and the Âryas in the end”].606Wealth and piety will decrease day by day, until the world will be wholly depraved…. Property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification…. External types will be the only distinction of the several orders of life; dishonesty [anyâya] will be the (universal) means of subsistence; weakness the cause of dependence; menace and presumption will be substituted for learning; liberality will be devotion; a man if rich will be reputed pure; mutual assent will be marriage; fine clothes will be dignity…. He who is the strongest will reign … the people, unable to bear the heavy burthens [khara-bhâra, load of taxes], will take refuge among the valleys…. Thus, in the Kali Age, will decay constantly proceed, until the human race approaches its annihilation [pralaya]. When … the close of the Kali age shall be nigh, a portion of that divine Being which exists, of its own spiritual nature [Kalkî Avatâra] … shall descend upon Earth, … endowed with the eight superhuman faculties…. He will reëstablish righteousness upon earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of Kali Yuga shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as crystal. The [pg 405]men who are, thus, changed … shall be as the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita Age (or Age of Purity). As it is said: “When the Sun and Moon and (the Lunar Asterism) Tishya, and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion, the Krita [or Satya] Age shall return….”607

Two persons, Devâpi, of the race of Kuru, and Maru [Moru], of the family of Ikshvâku, … continue alive throughout the Four Ages, residing at … Kalâpa.608 They will return hither, in the beginning of the Krita Age609 … Maru [Moru]610 the son of Shîghra, through the power of devotion (Yoga) is still living … and will be the restorer of the Kshattriya race of the Solar Dynasty.611

Whether right or wrong with regard to the latter prophecy, the “blessings” of Kali Yuga are well described, and fit in admirably even with that which one sees and hears in Europe and other civilized and Christian lands in the full XIXth, and at the dawn of the XXth century of our great “Era of Enlightenment.”

[pg 406] Section VIII. The Lotus, as a Universal Symbol. There are no ancient symbols without a deep and philosophical meaning attached to them, their importance and significance increasing with their antiquity. Such is the Lotus. It is the flower sacred to Nature and her Gods, and represents the Abstract and the Concrete Universes, standing as the emblem of the productive powers of both Spiritual and Physical Nature. It was held as sacred from the remotest antiquity by the Âryan Hindûs, the Egyptians, and by the Buddhists after them. It was revered in China and Japan, and adopted as a Christian emblem by the Greek and Latin Churches, who made of it a messenger, as do now the Christians, who have replaced it with the water-lily.

In the Christian religion, in every picture of the Annunciation, Gabriel, the Archangel, appears to the Virgin Mary, holding in his hand a spray of water-lilies. This spray, typifying Fire and Water, or the idea of creation and generation, symbolizes precisely the same idea as the Lotus, in the hand of the Bodhisattva who announces to Mahâ-Mâyâ, Gautama’s mother, the birth of Buddha, the world’s Saviour. Thus also, were Osiris and Horus constantly represented by the Egyptians in association with the Lotus-flower, both being Sun-Gods or Gods of Fire; just as the Holy Ghost is still typified by “tongues of fire,” in the Acts.

It had, and still has, its mystic meaning, which is identical in every nation on earth. We refer the reader to Sir William Jones.612 With the Hindûs, the Lotus is the emblem of the productive power of Nature, through the agency of Fire and Water, or Spirit and Matter. “O Thou [pg 407]Eternal! I see Brahm, the Creator, enthroned in thee above the Lotus!” says a verse in the Bhagavad Gîtâ. And Sir W. Jones shows, as already noted in the Stanzas, that the seeds of the Lotus, even before they germinate, contain perfectly-formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what they will become one day, as perfected plants. The Lotus, in India, is the symbol of prolific Earth and, what is more, of Mount Meru. The four Angels or Genii of the four quarters of Heaven, the Mahârâjahs of the Stanzas, stand each on a Lotus. The Lotus is the two-fold type of the Divine and Human Hermaphrodite, being so to say, of dual sex.

With the Hindûs, the Spirit of Fire or Heat—which stirs up, fructifies, and develops into concrete form, from its ideal prototype, everything which is born of Water, or Primordial Earth—evolved Brahmâ. The Lotus-flower, represented as growing out of Vishnu’s navel, the God who rests in the Waters of Space on the Serpent of Infinity, is the most graphic symbol ever yet made. It is the Universe evolving from the Central Sun, the Point, the ever-concealed Germ. Lakshmî, who is the female aspect of Vishnu, and who is also called Padma, the Lotus, in the Râmâyana, is likewise shown floating on a Lotus-flower, at the “Creation,” and during the “Churning of the Ocean” of Space, as also springing from the “Sea of Milk,” like Venus-Aphrodite from the Foam of the Ocean.

… Then, seated on a lotus, Beauty’s bright Goddess, peerless Shrî, arose Out of the waves … sings an English Orientalist and poet, Sir Monier Williams.

The underlying idea, in this symbol, is very beautiful, and, furthermore, shows an identical parentage in all the religious systems. Whether as the Lotus or water-lily, it signifies one and the same philosophical idea; namely, the Emanation of the Objective from the Subjective, Divine Ideation passing from the abstract into the concrete, or visible form. For, as soon as Darkness, or rather that which is “Darkness” for ignorance, has disappeared in its own realm of Eternal Light, leaving behind itself only its Divine Manifested Ideation, the Creative Logoi have their understanding opened, and they see in the Ideal World, hitherto concealed in the Divine Thought, the archetypal forms of all, and proceed to copy and build, or fashion, upon these models, forms evanescent and transcendent.

At this stage of Action, the Demiurge is not yet the Architect. [pg 408]Born in the Twilight of Action, he has yet to first perceive the Plan, to realize the Ideal Forms, which lie buried in the Bosom of Eternal Ideation, just as the future lotus-leaves, the immaculate petals, are concealed within the seed of that plant.

In Esoteric Philosophy the Demiurge, or Logos, regarded as the Creator, is simply an abstract term, an idea, like the word “army.” As the latter is the all-embracing term for a body of active forces, or working units—soldiers, so is the Demiurge the qualitative compound of a multitude of Creators or Builders. Burnouf, the great Orientalist, seized the idea perfectly, when he said that Brahmâ does not create the Earth, any more than the rest of the Universe.

Having evolved himself from the Soul of the World, once separated from the First Cause, he evaporates with, and emanates, all Nature out of himself. He does not stand above it, but is mixed up with it; Brahmâ and the Universe form one Being, each particle of which is in its essence Brahmâ himself, who proceeded out of himself.

In a chapter of the Book of the Dead, called “Transformation into the Lotus,” the God, figured as a head emerging from this flower, exclaims:

I am the pure Lotus, emerging from the Luminous Ones…. I carry the messages of Horus. I am the pure Lotus which comes from the Solar Fields.613

The lotus-idea may be traced even in the Elohistic first chapter of Genesis, as stated in Isis Unveiled. It is to this idea that we must look for the origin and explanation of the verse in the Jewish Cosmogony which reads: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth … the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself.”614 In all the primitive religions, the Creative God is the “Son of the Father,” that is to say, his Thought made visible; and before the Christian era, from the Trimûrti of the Hindûs down to the three Kabalistic Heads of the scriptures, as explained by the Jews, the Triune Godhead of each nation was fully defined and substantiated, in its allegories.

Such is the cosmic and ideal significance of this great symbol with the Eastern peoples. But when applied to practical and exoteric worship, which had also its esoteric symbology, the Lotus, in time, became the carrier and container of a more terrestrial idea. No dogmatic religion has ever escaped having the sexual element in it; and to this day it soils the moral beauty of the root idea of symbology. The [pg 409]following is quoted from the same Kabalistic MS. which we have already cited on several occasions:

Pointing to like signification was the Lotus growing in the waters of the Nile. Its mode of growth peculiarly fitted it as a symbol of the generative activities. The flower of the Lotus, which is the bearer of the seed for reproduction, as the result of its maturing, is connected by its placenta-like attachment to mother-earth, or the womb of Isis, through the water of the womb, that is, the river Nile, by the long cord-like stalk, the umbilicus. Nothing can be plainer than the symbol, and to make it perfect in its intended signification, a child is sometimes represented as seated in or issuing from the flower.615 Thus Osiris and Isis, the children of Cronus, or time without end, in the development of their nature-forces, in this picture become the parents of man under the name Horus.

We cannot lay too great stress upon the use of this generative function as a basis for a symbolical language, and a scientific art-speech. Thought upon the idea leads at once to reflection upon the subject of creative cause. In its workings Nature is observed to have fashioned a wonderful piece of living mechanism, governed by an added living soul; the life development and history of which soul, as to its whence, its present, and its whither, surpass all efforts of the human intellect.616 The new-born is an ever-recurring miracle, an evidence that within the workshop of the womb an intelligent creative power has intervened to fasten a living soul to a physical machine. The amazing wonderfulness of the fact attaches a holy sacredness to all connected with the organs of reproduction, as the dwelling and place of evident constructive intervention of deity.

This is a correct rendering of the underlying ideas of old, of the purely pantheistic conceptions, impersonal and reverential, of the archaic philosophers of the prehistoric ages. It is not so, however, when applied to sinful humanity, to the gross ideas attached to personality. Therefore, no pantheistic philosopher would fail to find the remarks that follow the above, and which represent the anthropomorphism of Judean symbology, other than dangerous for the sacredness of true religion, and fitting only for our materialistic age, which is the direct outcome and result of that anthropomorphic character. For this is the key-note to the entire spirit and essence of the Old [pg 410]Testament, as the MS. states, treating of the symbolism of the art-speech of the Bible:

Therefore the locality of the womb is to be taken as the Most Holy Place, the Sanctum Sanctorum, and the veritable Temple of the Living God.617 With man, the possession of the woman has always been considered as an essential part of himself, to make one out of two, and jealously guarded as sacred. Even the part of the ordinary house or home consecrated to the dwelling of the wife was called the penetralia, the secret or sacred, and hence the metaphor of the Holy of Holies, of sacred constructions taken from the idea of the sacredness of the organs of generation. Carried to the extreme of description618 by metaphor, this part of the house is described in the Sacred Books as the “between the thighs of the house,”and sometimes the idea is carried out constructively in the great door-opening of Churches placed inward between flanking buttresses.

No such thought, “carried to the extreme,” ever existed among the old primitive Âryans. This is proven by the fact that, in the Vedic period, their women were not placed apart from men in penetralia, or Zenanas. This seclusion began when the Mahommedans—the next heirs to Hebrew symbolism, after Christian ecclesiasticism—had conquered the land and gradually enforced their ways and customs upon the Hindûs. The pre- and post-Vedic woman was as free as man; and no impure terrestrial thought was ever mixed with the religious symbology of the early Âryans. The idea and application are purely Semitic. This is corroborated by the writer of the said intensely learned and Kabalistic revelation, when he closes the above-quoted passages by adding:

If to these organs as symbols of creative cosmic agencies the idea of the origin of measures as well as of time-periods can be attached, then indeed, in the constructions of the Temples as Dwellings of Deity, or of Jehovah, that part designated as the Holy of Holies, or the Most Holy Place, should borrow its title from the recognized sacredness of the generative organs, considered as symbols of measures as well as of creative cause. With the ancient wise, there was no name, and no idea, and no symbol of a First Cause.

Most decidedly not. Rather never give a thought to it and leave it for ever nameless, as the early Pantheists did, than degrade the sacredness of that Ideal of Ideals, by dragging down its symbols into such [pg 411]anthropomorphic forms! Here again one perceives the immense chasm between Âryan and Semitic religious thought, the two opposite poles, Sincerity and Concealment. With the Brâhmans, who have never invested the natural procreative functions of mankind with an “original sin” element, it is a religious duty to have a son. A Brâhman, in days of old, having accomplished his mission of human creator, retired to the jungle, and passed the rest of his days in religious meditation. He had accomplished his duty to nature, as mortal man and its co-worker, and henceforth gave all his thoughts to the spiritual and immortal portion of himself, regarding the terrestrial as a mere illusion, an evanescent dream—which, indeed it is. With the Semite, it was different. He invented a temptation of flesh in a garden of Eden, and showed his God—esoterically, the Tempter and the Ruler of Nature—cursing for ever an act, which was in the logical programme of that Nature.619 All this exoterically, as in the cloak and dead-letter of Genesis and the rest. At the same time, esoterically, he regarded the supposed sin and fall as an act so sacred, as to choose the organ, the perpetrator of the original sin, as the fittest and most sacred symbol to represent that God, who is shown as branding its entering into function as disobedience and everlasting sin!

Who can ever fathom the paradoxical depths of the Semitic mind! And this paradoxical element, minus its innermost significance, has now passed entirely into Christian theology and dogma!

Whether the early Fathers of the Church knew the esoteric meaning of the Hebrew Testament, or whether only a few of them were aware of it, while the others remained ignorant of the secret, is for posterity to decide. One thing, at any rate, is certain. As the Esotericism of the New Testament agrees perfectly with that of the Hebrew Mosaic Books; and since, at the same time, a number of purely Egyptian symbols and Pagan dogmas in general—the Trinity, for example—have been copied by, and incorporated into, the Synoptics and St. John, it becomes evident that the identity of those symbols was known to the writers of the New Testament, whoever they may have been. They must have been also aware of the priority of the Egyptian Esotericism, since they have adopted several symbols which typify purely Egyptian conceptions and beliefs, in their outward and inward meaning, and which are not to be [pg 412]found in the Jewish Canon. One of these is the water-lily in the hands of the Archangel, in the early representations of his appearance to the Virgin Mary; and these symbolical images are preserved to this day in the iconography of the Greek and Roman Churches. Thus Water, Fire and the Cross, as well as the Dove, the Lamb and other Sacred Animals, with all their combinations, esoterically yield an identical meaning, and must have been accepted as an improvement upon Judaism pure and simple.

For the Lotus and Water are among the oldest symbols, and in their origin are purely Âryan, though they became common property during the branching off of the Fifth Race. To give an example; letters, as well as numbers, were all mystic, whether in combination, or taken separately. The most sacred of all is the letter M. It is both feminine and masculine, or androgyne, and is made to symbolize Water in its origin, the Great Deep. It is a mystic letter in all languages, Eastern and Western, and stands as a glyph for the waves, thus [three triangles]. In the Âryan Esotericism, as in the Semitic, this letter has always stood for the Waters. In Sanskrit, for instance, Makara, the tenth sign of the Zodiac, means a Crocodile, or rather an aquatic monster associated always with Water. The letter Ma is equivalent to, and corresponds with, the number 5, which is composed of a Binary, the symbol of the two sexes separated, and of the Ternary, the symbol of the Third Life, the progeny of the Binary. This, again, is often symbolized by a Pentagon, the latter being a sacred sign, a divine Monogram. Maitreya is the secret name of the Fifth Buddha, and the Kalkî Avatâra of the Brâhmans, the last Messiah who will come at the culmination of the Great Cycle. It is also the initial letter of the Greek Metis, or Divine Wisdom; of Mimra, the Word, or Logos; and of Mithras, the Mihr, the Monad Mystery. All these are born in, and from, the Great Deep, and are the Sons of Mâyâ, the “Mother”; in Egypt, Moot; in Greece, Minerva, Divine Wisdom; of Mary, or Miriam, Myrrha, etc., the Mother of the Christian Logos; and of Mâyâ, the Mother of Buddha. Mâdhava and Mâdhavî are the titles of the most important Gods and Goddesses of the Hindû Pantheon. Finally, Mandala is, in Sanskrit, a “Circle,” or an Orb, also the ten divisions of the Rig Veda. The most sacred names in India generally begin with this letter, from Mahat, the first manifested Intellect, and Mandara, the great mountain used by the Gods to churn the Ocean, down to Mandâkinî, the heavenly Gangâ, or Ganges, Manu, etc., etc.

Will this be called a coincidence? A strange one is it then, indeed, when we see even Moses, found in the Water of the Nile, with the symbolical consonant in his name. And Pharaoh’s daughter “called his name Moses; and she said, Because I drew him out of the Water.”620 Besides which, the Hebrew sacred name of God, applied to this letter M, is Meborach, the “Holy” or the “Blessed,” and the name for the Water of the Flood is Mbul. A reminder of the “Three Maries” at the Crucifixion, and their connection with Mare, the Sea, or Water, may close these examples. This is why, in Judaism and Christianity, the Messiah is always connected with Water, Baptism; and also with the Fishes, the sign of the Zodiac called Mînam in Sanskrit, and even with the Matsya (Fish) Avatâra, and the Lotus, the symbol of the womb, or with the water-lily, which has the same signification.

In the relics of ancient Egypt, the greater the antiquity of the votive symbols and emblems of the objects exhumed, the oftener are Lotus-flowers and Water found in connection with the Solar Gods. The God Khnoom, the Moist Power, or Water, as Thales taught, being the principle of all things, sits on a throne enshrined in a Lotus. The God Bes stands on a Lotus, ready to devour his progeny. Thot, the God of Mystery and Wisdom, the sacred Scribe of Amenti, wearing the solar disk as head gear, sits with a bull’s head—the sacred bull of Mendes being a form of Thot—and a human body, on a full blown Lotus. Finally, it is the Goddess Hiqit, under her shape of a frog, who rests on the Lotus, thus showing her connection with water. And it is from the unpoetical shape of this frog-symbol, undeniably the glyph of the most ancient of the Egyptian Deities, that the Egyptologists have been vainly trying to unravel the mystery and functions of the Goddess. Its adoption in the Church, by the early Christians, shows that they knew it better than our modern Orientalists. The “frog or toad Goddess” was one of the chief Cosmic Deities connected with Creation, on account of this animal’s amphibious nature, and chiefly because of its apparent resurrection, after long ages of solitary life, enshrined in old walls, in rocks, etc. She not only participated in the organization of the World, together with Khnoom, but was also connected with the dogma of resurrection.621 There must have been some very profound and [pg 414]sacred meaning attached to this symbol, since, notwithstanding the risk of being charged with a disgusting form of zoölatry, the early Egyptian Christians adopted it in their Churches. A frog or toad, enshrined in a Lotus-flower, or simply without the latter emblem, was the form chosen for the Church-lamps, on which were engraved the words, “Ἐγώ εἰμι ἀναστάσις”—I am the resurrection.622 These frog-Goddesses are also found on all the mummies.