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    "name": "Volume II — Anthropogenesis"
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 16,
    "slug": "66-a-panoramic-view-of-the-early-races-263",
    "title": "A PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE EARLY RACES ... 263",
    "of": 49,
    "words": 7072,
    "text": "## A PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE EARLY RACES ... 263\n\n\nThe Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 1, Early Races\n\n###### The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol.\n2\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 263 MILLIONS OF YEARS HENCE.\n\n[[This page continued from previous section]]\n\n**A** **P**ANORAMIC **V**IEW\nOF THE **E**ARLY **R**ACES.\n\nThere is a period of a few millions of years to cover between\nthe first \"mindless\" race and the highly intelligent\nand *intellectual *later \"Lemurians\"; there is\nanother between the earliest civilization of the Atlanteans and\nthe historic period.\n\nAs witnesses to the Lemurians but a few silent records in the\nshape of half a dozen broken colossi and old cyclopean ruins are\nleft. These are not allowed a hearing, as they are \"productions\nof blind natural forces,\" we are assured by some; \"quite\nmodern\" we are told by others. Tradition is left contemptuously\nunnoticed by sceptic and materialist, and made subservient to\nthe Bible in every case by the too zealous Churchman. Whenever\na legend, however, refuses to fit in with the Noachian \"deluge\ntheory,\" it is declared by the Christian clergy \"the\ninsanely delirious voice of old superstition.\" Atlantis is\ndenied, when not confused with Lemuria and other departed continents,\nbecause, perhaps, Lemuria is half the creation of modern science,\nand has, therefore, to be believed in; while Plato's Atlantis\nis regarded by most of the scientists as a dream.\n\nAtlantis is often described by believers in Plato as a prolongation\nof Africa. An old continent is also suspected to have existed\non the Eastern coast. Only Africa, as a continent, was never part\nand parcel of either Lemuria or Atlantis, as we have agreed to\ncall the Third and Fourth Continents. Their archaic appellations\nare never mentioned in the\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 264 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nPuranas, nor anywhere else. But with simply one of the esoteric\nkeys in hand it becomes an easy task to identify these departed\nlands in the numberless \"lands of the gods,\" Devas and\nMunis described in the Puranas, in their *Varshas, Dwipas,*\nand* zones. *Their Sweta-Dwipa, during the early day of\nLemuria, stood out like a giant-peak from the bottom of the sea;\nthe area between Atlas and Madagascar being occupied by the waters\ntill about the early period of Atlantis (after the disappearance\nof Lemuria), when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean,\nand Atlas was half-sunk.\n\nIt is of course impossible to attempt, within the compass of even\nseveral volumes, a consecutive and detailed account of the evolution\nand progress of the first three races -- except so far as to give\na general view of it, as will be done presently. Race the first\nhad no history of its own. Of race the second the same may be\nsaid. We shall have, therefore, to pay careful attention only\nto the Lemurians and the Atlanteans before the history of our\nown race (the Fifth) can be attempted.\n\nWhat is known of other continents, besides our own, and what does\nhistory know or accept of the early races? Everything outside\nthe repulsive speculations of materialistic science is daubed\nwith the contemptuous term \"Superstition.\" The wise\nmen of to-day will believe nothing. Plato's \"winged\"\nand *hermaphrodite *races, and his golden age, under the\nreign of Saturn and the gods, are quietly brought back by Haeckel\nto their *new* place in nature: our divine races are shown\nto be the descendants of Catarrhine apes, and our ancestor, a\npiece of sea slime.\n\nNevertheless, as expressed by Faber, \"the *fictions *of\nancient poetry . . . . will be found to comprehend some portion\nof historical truth.\" However one-sided the efforts of the\nlearned author of the \"*Mysteries of the Kabiri,*\"*\n--* efforts directed throughout his two volumes to constrain\nthe classical myths and symbols of old paganism, \"to bear\ntestimony to the truth of Scripture,\" -- time and further\nresearch have avenged, partially at least, that \"truth\"\nby showing it *unveiled. *Thus it is the clever adaptations\nof Scripture, on the contrary, which are made to bear evidence\nto the great wisdom of archaic paganism. This, notwithstanding\nthe inextricable confusion into which the truth about the Kabiri\n-- the most mysterious gods of antiquity -- was thrown by the\nwild and contradictory speculations of Bishop Cumberland, Dr.\nShuckford, Cudworth, Vallancey, etc., etc., and finally by Faber.\nNevertheless, all, from first to last, of these scholars had to\ncome to a certain conclusion framed by the latter. \"We have\nno reason to think,\" he writes, \"that the idolatry of\nthe Gentile world was of a merely arbitrary contrivance; on the\ncontrary, it seems to have been built, almost universally, *upon\na traditional remembrance of certain real events. These events\nI apprehend to be the destruction of*\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 265 BAILLY AND FABER.\n\n*the first *(the fourth in esoteric teachings) *Race\nof mankind by the waters of the Deluge.*\"* *(*Chap.\nI. p. *9). To this, Faber adds: --\n\n\"I am persuaded that the tradition of the sinking of the\nPhlegian isle is the very same as that of the sinking of the island\nAtlantis. They both appear to me to allude to one great event,\nthe sinking of the whole world beneath the waters of the deluge,\nor, if we suppose the arch of the earth to have remained in its\noriginal position, the rising of the central water above it. M.\nBailly, indeed, in his work upon the Atlantis of Plato, the object\nof which is evidently to depreciate the authority of Scriptural\nchronology, labours to prove that the Atlanteans were a very ancient\nnorthern nation, long prior to the Hindoos, the Phoenicians, and\nthe Egyptians.\" (*\"A Dissertation on the Kabiri,\"\np. *284.)\n\nIn this Faber is in agreement with Bailly, who shows himself more\nlearned and intuitional than those who accept Biblical chronology.\nNor is the latter wrong when saying that the Atlanteans were the\nsame as the Titans and the giants.* *(*See *\"*Lettres\nsur l*'*Atlantide.*\") Faber adopts the more willingly\nthe opinion of his French *confrere, *as Bailly mentions\nCosmas Indico-Pleustes, who preserved an ancient tradition about\nNoah -- that he \"formerly inhabited the *island *Atlantis\"\n(*ibid*). This island, whether it was the \"Poseidonis\"\nmentioned in \"Esoteric Buddhism,\" or the Continent of\nAtlantis, does not much matter. The tradition is there, recorded\nby a Christian.\n\nNo Occultist would ever think of dispossessing Noah of his prerogatives,\nif he is claimed to be an Atlantean; for this would simply show\nthat the Israelites repeated the story of Vaivasvata Manu, Xisuthrus,\nand so many others, and that they only changed the name, to do\nwhich they had the same right as any other nation or tribe. What\nwe object to is the literal acceptation of Biblical chronology,\nas it is absurd, and in accord with neither geological data nor\nreason. Moreover, if Noah was an Atlantean, then he was a Titan,\na giant, as Faber shows; and if a giant, then why is he not shown\nas such in *Genesis?* *\n\nBailly's mistake was to reject the submersion of Atlantis, and\nto call the Atlanteans simply a Northern and *post diluvian\n*nation, which, however, as he says, certainly \"flourished\nbefore the foundation of the Hindu, the Egyptian, and the Phoenician\nempires.\" In this, had\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* This is shown by Faber, again a pious Christian, who says that\n\"the Noetic family also . . . bore the appellations of *Atlanteans\n*and *Titans, *and the great patriarch himself was\ncalled by way of eminence *Atlas *and *Titan.*\"*\n*(*Vol. II. p. *285). And if so, then, *according\nto the Bible, *Noah must have been the progeny of the Sons\nof God, the *fallen* *angels, *agreeably to the\nsame authority, and of the \"daughters of men who were fair,\"\n(*See Genesis, chap. *vi.) And why not, since his father\nLamech slew a man, and was, with all his sons and daughters (who\nperished in the Deluge), as bad as the rest of mankind?\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 266 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nhe only known of the existence of what we have agreed to call\n*Lemuria, *he would have again been right. For the Atlanteans\nwere *post diluvian *to the Lemurians, and Lemuria was\nnot submerged as Atlantis was, but was *sunk *under the\nwaves, owing to earthquakes and subterranean fires, as Great Britain\nand Europe will be one day. It is the ignorance of our men of\nscience, who will accept neither the tradition that several continents\nhave already sunk, nor the periodical law which acts throughout\nthe Manvantaric cycle -- it is this ignorance that is the chief\ncause of all the confusion. Nor is Bailly wrong again in assuring\nus that the Hindus, Egyptians, and Phoenicians came after the\nAtlanteans, for the latter belonged to the Fourth, while the Aryans\nand their Semitic Branch are of the Fifth Race. Plato, while repeating\nthe story as narrated to Solon by the priests of Egypt, intentionally\nconfuses (as every *Initiate *would) the two continents,\nand assigns to the small island which sunk last all the events\npertaining to the two enormous continents, the prehistoric and\ntraditional. Therefore, he describes the *first couple, *from\nwhom the whole island was peopled, as being formed of the Earth.\nIn saying so, he means neither Adam and Eve, nor yet his own Hellenic\nforefathers. His language is simply allegorical, and by alluding\nto \"Earth,\" he means \"matter,\" as the Atlanteans\nwere really the first purely *human *and* terrestrial\n*race -- those that preceded it being more divine and ethereal\nthan human and solid.\n\nYet Plato must have known, as would any other initiated adept,\nabout the history of the Third Race after its \"Fall,\"\nthough as one pledged to silence and secrecy he never showed his\nknowledge in so many words. Nevertheless, it may become easier\nnow, after acquainting oneself with even the approximate chronology\nof the Eastern nations -- all of which was based upon, and followed\nthe early Aryan calculations -- to realize the immense periods\nof time that must have elapsed since the separation of the sexes,\nwithout mentioning the First or even the Second Root-Races. As\nthese must remain beyond the comprehension of minds trained in\nWestern thought, it is found useless to speak in detail of the\nFirst and Second, and even of the Third Race in its earliest stage.*\nOne has to begin with the latter, when it reached its full human\nperiod, lest the uninitiated reader should find himself hopelessly\nbewildered.\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* In that wonderful volume of Donnelly's \"Atlantis, the Antediluvian\nWorld,\" the author, speaking of the Aryan colonies from Atlantis,\nand of the arts and sciences the legacy of our Fourth Race --\nbravely announces that \"the roots of the institutions of\nto-day reach back to the Miocene age.\" This is an enormous\nallowance for a modern scholar to make; but civilization dates\nstill further back than the Miocene Atlanteans. \"Secondary-period\"\nman will be discovered, and with him his long forgotten civilization.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 267 THE NATURAL \"FALL.\"\n\nThe THIRD RACE FELL -- and created no longer: it *begot *its\nprogeny. Being still mindless at the period of separation it begot,\nmoreover, anomalous offspring, until its physiological nature\nhad adjusted its instincts in the right direction. Like the \"lords\nthe gods\" of the Bible ' the \"Sons of Wisdom,\"\nthe Dhyan-Chohans, had warned them to leave alone the fruit forbidden\nby Nature: but the warning proved of no value. Men realized the\nunfitness -- we must not say sin -- of what they had done, only\nwhen too late: after the angelic monads from higher spheres had\nincarnated in, and endowed them with understanding. To that day\nthey had remained simply physical, like the animals generated\nfrom them. For what is the distinction? The doctrine teaches that\nthe only difference between animate and inanimate objects on earth,\nbetween an animal and a human frame, is that in some the various\n\"fires\" are latent, and in others they are active. The\n*vital fires *are in all things and not an atom is devoid\nof them. But no animal has the three higher principles awakened\nin him; they are simply potential, latent, and thus *non-existing.\n*And so would the animal frames of men be to this day, had\nthey been left as they came out from the bodies of their Progenitors,\nwhose *shadows *they were, to grow, unfolded only by the\npowers and forces immanent in matter. But as said in **P**YMANDER:\n--\n\n\"This is a Mystery that to this day was sealed and hidden.\nNature* being mingled with Man** brought forth a wondrous miracle;\nthe harmonious commingling *of the essence of the Seven *(Pitris,\ngovernors) and her own; the *Fire *and the *Spirit *and\nNature (the noumenon of matter); which (commingling) forthwith\nbrought forth seven men of opposite sexes (negative and positive)\naccording to the essences of the seven governors.\" (*Divine\nPymander, Chap. I., Sect. *16.)\n\nThus saith Hermes, the thrice great Initiate,*** \"the Power\nof the\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* Nature is the *natural *body, the shadow of the Progenitors;\nand --\n\n** MAN is the \"Heavenly man,\" as already stated.\n\n*** The \"Pymander\" of our museums and libraries is an\nabridgement of one of the Books of Thoth, by a Platonist of Alexandria.\nIn the Third Century it was remodelled after old Hebrew and Phoenician\n**MSS**. by a Jewish Kabalist, and called the \"Genesis\nof Enoch.\" But even its disfigured remnants show how closely\nits text agrees with the Archaic Doctrine, as is shown in the\ncreation of the Seven Creators and *seven primitive men*.\nAs to Enoch, Thoth or Hermes, Orpheus and Kadmus, these are all\ngeneric names, branches and offshoots of the seven primordial\nsages (incarnated Dhyan Chohans or Devas, in *illusive, *not\nmortal bodies) who taught Humanity all it knew, and whose earliest\ndisciples assumed their master's names. This custom passed from\nthe Fourth to the Fifth Race. Hence the sameness of the traditions\nabout Hermes (of whom Egyptologists count five) Enoch, etc., they\nare all inventors of letters; none of them dies but still lives,\nand they are the first Initiators into, and Founders of the Mysteries.\n*The Genesis of Enoch *disappeared only very lately among\nthe Kabalists. Guillaume [[Footnote continued on next page]]\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 268 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nThought Divine.\" St. Paul, another Initiate, called our world\n\"the enigmatical mirror of pure truth,\" and St. Gregory,\nof Nazianzen, corroborated Hermes by stating that \"things\nvisible are but the shadow and delineation of things that we cannot\nsee.\" It is an eternal combination, and images are repeated\nfrom the higher rung of the ladder of being down to the lower.\nThe \"Fall of the Angels,\" and the \"War in Heaven\"\nare repeated on every plane, the lower \"mirror\" disfiguring\nthe image of the superior mirror, and each repeating it in its\nown way. Thus the Christian dogmas are but the reminiscences of\nthe *paradigms *of Plato, who spoke of these things cautiously,\nas every Initiate would. But it is all as expressed in these few\nsentences of the *Desatir: -*-\n\n\"All that is on Earth, saith the Lord (Ormazd), is the *shadow\nof something that is in the superior spheres. *This luminous\nobject (light, fire, etc.) is the shadow of that which is still\nmore luminous than itself, and so on till it reaches ME, who am\nthe light of lights.\"\n\nIn the Kabalistic books, and in the *Zohar *pre-eminently,\nthe idea that everything objective on earth or in this Universe\nis the Shadow -- *Dyooknah* -- of the eternal Light or\nDeity, is very strong.\n\nThe Third Race was pre-eminently the bright shadow, at first,\nof the gods, whom tradition exiles on Earth after the allegorical\nwar in Heaven; which became still more allegorical on Earth, for\nit was the war between spirit and matter. This war will last till\nthe inner and divine man adjusts his outer terrestrial self to\nhis own spiritual nature. Till then the dark and fierce passions\nof the former will be at eternal feud with his master, the Divine\nMan. But the *animal *will be tamed one day, because its\nnature will be changed, and harmony will reign once more between\nthe two as before the \"Fall,\" when even mortal man was*\ncreated *by the Elements and was not born.\n\nThe above is made clear in all the great theogonies, principally\nin the Grecian (*see Hesiod and Theogony*)*. The mutilation*\nof* Uranos *by his son *Kronos, *who thus condemns\nhim to impotency, has never been understood by the modern Mythographers.\nYet, it is very plain; and having been universal* (*vide foot\nnote infra*)*, *it must have contained a great abstract\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Postel saw it. It was\nmost certainly in a great measure a transcript from the books\nof Hermes, and far anterior to the Books of Moses, as Eliphas\nLevi tells his readers.\n\n* Uranos is a modified Varuna, \"the Universal encompasser,\"\nthe all-embracer, and one of the oldest of the Vedic deities --\n**S**PACE, the maker of Heaven and Earth, since both\nare manifested out of his (or its) seed. It is only later that\nVaruna became the chief of the Adityas and a kind of Neptune riding\non the *Leviathan -- Makara, *now the most sacred and mysterious\nof the signs of the Zodiac. Varuna, \"without whom no creature\ncan even wink,\" was degraded like Uranos, and, like him,\n*he fell into generation, *his functions, \"the grandest\ncosmical functions,\" as Muir calls them, having been lowered\ndown from heaven to earth by exoteric anthropomorphism. As the\nsame [[Footnote continued on next page]]\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 269 THE SYMBOLISM OF KRONOS.\n\nand philosophical idea, now lost to our modern sages. This punishment\nin the allegory marks, indeed \"a new period, a second phase\nin the development of creation,\" as justly remarked by Decharme\n(*Mythologie de la Grece Antique, p. *7), who, however,\nrenounces the attempt to explain it. Uranos has tried to oppose\nan impediment to that development, or natural evolution, by *destroying\nall his children as soon as born. Uranos, *who personifies\nall the creative powers of, and in, *Chaos *(Space, or\nthe unmanifested Deity) is thus made to pay the penalty; for it\nis those powers which cause the *Pitris *to evolve primordial\n*men* from themselves -- as, later on, these men evolve\n*their *progeny -- without any sense or desire for procreation.\nThe work of generation, suspended during a moment, passes into\nthe hands of *Kronos,* time, *who unites himself with *Rhea\n*(the earth in esotericism -- matter in general), and thus\nproduces, after celestial -- terrestrial Titans. The whole of\nthis symbolism relates to the mysteries of Evolution.\n\nThis allegory is the exoteric version of the esoteric doctrine\ngiven in this part of our work. For in *Kronos *we see\nthe same story repeated again. As Uranos destroyed his children\nfrom *Gaia *(one, in the world of manifestation, with Aditi\nor the Great Cosmic Deep) by confining them in the bosom of the\nEarth, *Tythea, so Kronos *at this second stage of creation\ndestroyed his children from *Rhea -- *by devouring them.\nThis is an allusion to the fruitless efforts of Earth or Nature\nalone to create real *human* men. (*See our Stanzas\nIII. -- X., et seq., and also Berosus*'* account of primeval\ncreation.*) Time swallows its own fruitless work. Then comes\nZeus -- Jupiter, who dethrones his father in his turn.** Jupiter\nthe Titan, is Prometheus, in one sense,*** and varies from Zeus,\nthe Great\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n[[Footnote continued from previous page]] Orientalist says, \"The\nattributes ascribed to Varuna (in the Vedas) impart to his character\na moral elevation and sanctity far surpassing that attributed\nto any other Vedic Deity.\" But to understand correctly the\nreason of his fall, like that of Uranos, one has to see in every\nexoteric religion the imperfect and sinful work of man's fancy,\nand also to study the mysteries which Varuna is said to have imparted\nto Vasishta. Only . . . \"his secrets and those of Mitra *are\nnot to be revealed to the foolish.*\"\n\n** Kronos *is not only [[*Chronos*]],* time*,\nbut also, as Breal showed in his *Hercule et Cacus *(p.\n57), comes from the root *Kar*, \"to make, to create.\"\nWhether Breal and Decharme, who quotes him, are as right in saying\nthat in the Vedas *Kronan *is a creative god, we have our\ndoubts. Breal probably meant Karma, or rather Visva-Karma, the\ncreative god, the \"Omnificent\" and the \"great Architect\nof the world.\"\n\n** The Titanic struggle, in theogony at least, is the fight for\nsupremacy between the children of *Uranos *and *Gaia\n*(or Heaven and Earth in their abstract sense), the Titans,\nagainst the children of *Kronos, *whose chief is Zeus.\nIt is the everlasting struggle going on to this day between the\nspiritual inner man and the man of flesh, in one sense.\n\n*** Just as the \"Lord God,\" or Jehovah, is Cain esoterically,\nand the \"tempting serpent\" as well, the male portion\nof the androgynous Eve, before her \"Fall;\" the female\nportion of Adam Kadmon; the left side or Binah of the right side\nChochmah in the first Sephirothal Triad.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 270 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\n\"Father of the Gods.\" He is the \"disrespectful\nson\" in Hesiod. Hermes calls him the \"Heavenly man\"\n(Pymander); and even in the Bible he is found again under the\nname of Adam, and, later on -- by transmutation -- under that\nof Ham. Yet these are all personifications of the \"sons of\nWisdom.\" The necessary corroboration that Jupiter belongs\nto the purely *human Atlantean cycle -- if Uranus* and*\nKronos *who precede him are found insufficient -- may be found\nin Hesiod, who tells us that the Immortals have made men and created\nthe Golden and the Silver age (First and Second Races); while\nJupiter created the generations of Bronze (an admixture of *two\n*elements), of Heroes, and the men of the age of Iron. After\nthis he sends his fatal present, by Pandora, to Epimetheus,* which\npresent Hesiod calls \"a fatal gift,\" or the *first\nwoman. *It was a punishment, he explains, sent to man \"for\nthe theft of divine creative fire.\" Her apparition on earth\nis the signal of every kind of evil. Before her appearance, the\nhuman races lived happy, exempt from sickness and suffering --\nas the same races are made to live under Yima's rule, in the Mazdean\n*Vendidad.*\n\nTwo deluges may also be traced in universal tradition by carefully\ncomparing Hesiod, the Rig Veda, the Zend-Avesta, etc., while no\n*first *man is ever mentioned in any of the theogonies\nsave the Bible.** Everywhere the man of *our race *appears\nafter a cataclysm of water, after which tradition mentions only\nthe several designations of continents and islands which sink\nunder the ocean waves in due time.*** \"Gods and mortals have\none common origin\" says Hesiod (*ibid. v*. 108); and\nPindar echoes the statement (*Nem. VI., *1). Deucalion\nand Pyrrha, who escape the Deluge by constructing an ark like\nNoah's (*see Apollod.,* 1, 7, 2,* and Ovid, Metam. *I,\n260, 899.), ask Jupiter to re-animate the human race whom he had\nmade to perish under the waters of the Flood. In the Slavonian\nMythology (*Lithuanian legend, in Grimm, Deutsche Myth. *1,\n545), all men were drowned, and two old people, a man and his\nwife, alone remained. Then *Pram-gimas *(the \"master\nof all\") advised them to jump *seven times *on the\nrocks of the earth, and *seven new races *(couples) were\nborn, from which came the nine Lithuanian tribes. As well understood\nby the author of the *Mythologie de la Grece Antique -- *the*\n*four ages\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* In the Egyptian legend, translated by M. Maspero (the ex-director\nof the Bulaq Museum), called the \"two Brothers,\" the\noriginal of Pandora is given. *Noum, *the famous heavenly\nartist, creates a marvellous beauty, a girl which he sends to\n*Batoo, *after which the happiness of the latter is destroyed.\nBatoo is man, and the girl Eve, of course.* *(*See Maspero*'*s\nEgyptian Legends, and also Decharme*'*s *\"*Mythologie\nde la Grece Antique.*\")\n\n** Yima is not the \"first man\" in the *Vendidad,\n*but only in the theories of the Orientalists. -- See further\non.\n\n*** Boeotia, then ancient Athens, and Eleusis were submerged.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 271 THE RACES IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY.\n\nsignify periods of time, and are also an allegorical allusion\nto the races. \"The successive races, destroyed and replaced\nby others,\" he says, \"without any period of transition,\nare characterized in Greece by the name of metals, to express\ntheir ever-decreasing value. Gold, the most brilliant and precious\nof all, symbol of purity . . . . qualifies the first race. . .\n. . The men of the second race, those of the age of Silver, are\nalready inferior to the first. Inert and weak creatures, all their\nlife is no better than a long and stupid infancy. . . . They disappear.\n. . . The men of the age of Bronze are robust and violent (the\nthird race); their strength is extreme. They had arms made of\nbronze, habitations of bronze; used nought but bronze. Iron, the\nblack metal, was yet unknown\" (*Op. at D., *143-155).\nThe fourth generation (race) is, with Hesiod, that of the heroes\nwho fell before Thebes (see \"*The Seven Against Thebes,*\"*\n*by AEschylus), or under the walls of Troy.\n\nThus, the four races being found mentioned by the oldest Greek\npoets, though very much confused anachronistically, our doctrines\nare once more corroborated by the classics. But this is all \"Mythology\"\nand poetry. What can modern science have to say to such an euhemerization\nof old fictions? The verdict is not difficult to foresee. Therefore\nan attempt must be made to answer by anticipation, and prove that\nfictions and *empirical *speculations are so much of the\ndomain of that same science, that none of the men of learning\nhave the slightest right, with such a heavy beam in their own\neye, to point to the speck in the eye of the Occultist, even if\nthat speck be not a figment of our opponents' imagination.\n\n---------\n\n##### STANZA X. -- (Continued.)\n\n40. **T**HEN THE THIRD AND FOURTH (*races*)*\n*BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE. **W**E ARE THE KINGS,\nWE ARE THE GODS (*a*)*.*\n\n41. **T**HEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK AT. **W**IVES\nFROM THE \"MINDLESS,\" THE NARROW-HEADED. **T**HEY\nBRED MONSTERS, WICKED DEMONS, MALE AND FEMALE. **A**LSO\n**K**HADO (*Dakini*) WITH LITTLE MINDS (*b*).\n\n42. **T**HEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR HUMAN BODY. **M**ALE\nAND **F**EMALE THEY WORSHIPPED (*c*). **T**HEN\nTHE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER (*d*).\n\n(*a*) Such were the first truly physical men, whose first\ncharacteristic was -- pride! It is the Third Race and the gigantic\nAtlanteans, the\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 272 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nmemory of whom lingered from one generation and race to another\ngeneration and race down to the days of Moses, and which found\nan objective form in those antediluvian giants, those terrible\nsorcerers and magicians, of whom the Roman Church has preserved\nsuch vivid and at the same time distorted legends. One who has\nread and studied the Commentaries on the archaic doctrine, will\neasily recognise in some Atlanteans, the prototypes of the Nimrods,\nthe Builders of the Tower of Babel, the Hamites, and all these\n*tutti quanti *of \"accursed memory,\" as theological\nliterature expresses it: of those, in short, who have furnished\nposterity with the orthodox types of Satan. And this leads us\nnaturally to inquire into the religious ethics of these early\nraces, mythical as these may be.\n\nWhat was the religion of the Third and Fourth Races? In the common\nacceptation of the term, neither the Lemurians, nor yet their\nprogeny, the Lemuro-Atlanteans, had any, as they knew no dogma,\nnor had they to believe *on faith. *No sooner had the mental\neye of man been opened to understanding, than the Third Race felt\nitself one with the ever-present as the ever to be unknown and\ninvisible ALL, the One Universal Deity. Endowed with divine powers,\nand feeling in himself his *inner *God, each felt he was\na Man-God in his nature, though an animal in his physical Self.\nThe struggle between the two began from the very day they tasted\nof the fruit of the Tree of Wisdom; a struggle for life between\nthe spiritual and the psychic, the psychic and the physical. Those\nwho conquered the lower principles by obtaining mastery over the\nbody, joined the \"Sons of Light.\" Those who fell victims\nto their lower natures, became the slaves of Matter. From \"Sons\nof Light and Wisdom\" they ended by becoming the \"Sons\nof Darkness.\" They had fallen in the battle of mortal life\nwith Life immortal, and all those so fallen became the seed of\nthe future generations of Atlanteans.*\n\nAt the dawn of his consciousness, the man of the Third Root Race\nhad thus no beliefs that could be called *religion. *That\nis to say, he was equally as ignorant of \"gay religions,\nfull of pomp and gold\" as of any system of faith or outward\nworship. But if the term is to be defined as the binding together\nof the masses in one form of reverence paid to those we feel higher\nthan ourselves, of piety -- as a feeling expressed by a child\ntoward a loved parent -- then even the earliest Lemurians had\na religion -- and a most beautiful one -- from the very beginning\nof their intellectual life. Had they not their bright gods of\nthe elements around\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The name is used here in the sense of, and as a synonym of \"sorcerers.\"\nThe Atlantean races were many, and lasted in their evolution for\nmillions of years: all were not bad. They became so toward their\nend, as we (the fifth) are fast becoming now.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 273 THE GOLDEN AGE.\n\nthem, and even within themselves?* Was not their childhood passed\nwith, nursed and tendered by those who had given them life and\ncalled them forth to intelligent, conscious life? We are assured\nit was so, and we believe it. For the evolution of Spirit into\nmatter could never have been achieved; nor would it have received\nits first impulse, had not the bright Spirits sacrificed their\nown respective super-ethereal essences to animate the man of clay,\nby endowing each of his inner principles with a portion, or rather,\na reflection of that essence. The Dhyanis of the Seven Heavens\n(the seven planes of Being) are the NOUMENOI of the actual and\nthe future Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven Powers of\nnature - the grosser effects of which are perceived by us in what\nScience is pleased to call the \"modes of motion\" --\nthe imponderable forces and what not -- are the still higher noumenoi\nof still higher Hierarchies.\n\nIt was the \"Golden Age\" in those days of old, the age\nwhen the \"gods walked the earth, and mixed freely with the\nmortals.\" Since then, the gods departed (*i.e.*, became\ninvisible), and later generations ended by worshipping their kingdoms\n-- the Elements.\n\nIt was the Atlanteans, the first progeny of *semi-divine *man\nafter his separation into sexes -- hence the first-begotten and\nhumanly-born mortals -- who became the first \"Sacrificers\"\nto the *god of matter. *They stand in the far-away dim\npast, in ages more than prehistoric, as the prototype on which\nthe great symbol of Cain was built,** as the first anthropomorphists\nwho worshipped form and matter. That worship degenerated very\nsoon into *self-worship, *thence led to phallicism, or\nthat which reigns supreme to this day in the symbolisms of every\nexoteric religion of ritual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve *became\nmatter, *or furnished the soil, Cain and Abel -- the latter\nthe life-bearing soil, the former \"the tiller of that ground\nor field.\"\n\nThus the first Atlantean races, born on the Lemurian Continent,\nseparated from their earliest tribes into the righteous and the\nunrighteous; into those who worshipped the one unseen Spirit of\nNature, the ray of which man feels within himself -- or the Pantheists,\nand those who offered fanatical worship to the Spirits of the\nEarth, the dark Cosmic, anthropomorphic Powers, with whom they\nmade alliance. These were the earliest *Gibborim, *\"the\nmighty men of renown in those\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The \"Gods of the Elements\" are by no means the Elementals.\nThe latter are at best used by them as vehicles and materials\nin which to clothe themselves. . . . .\n\n** Cain was the *sacrificer, *as shown at first in chap.\niv. of *Genesis, *of \"the fruit of the ground,\"\nof which he was *first tiller*, while Abel \"brought\nof the firstlings of his flock\" to the Lord. Cain is the\nsymbol of the first male, Abel of the first female humanity, Adam\nand Eve being the types of the third race. (See \"*The\nMystery of Cain and* *Abel.*\") The \"murdering\"\nis blood-shedding, but not taking life.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 274 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\ndays\" (*Gen. *vi.); who become with the Fifth Race\nthe *Kabirim:* Kabiri with the Egyptians and the Phoenicians,\nTitans with the Greeks, and Rakshasas and Daityas with the Indian\nraces.\n\nSuch was the secret and mysterious origin of all the subsequent\nand modern religions, especially of the worship of the later Hebrews\nfor their tribal god. At the same time this sexual religion was\nclosely allied to, based upon and blended, so to say, with astronomical\nphenomena. The Lemurians gravitated toward the North Pole, or\nthe Heaven of their Progenitors (the Hyperborean Continent); the\nAtlanteans, toward the Southern Pole, the* pit*, cosmically\nand terrestrially -- whence breathe the hot passions blown into\nhurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. The two\npoles were denominated, by the ancients, Dragons and Serpents\n-- hence good and bad Dragons and Serpents, and also the names\ngiven to the \"Sons of God\" (Sons of Spirit and Matter):\nthe good and bad Magicians. This is the origin of this dual and\ntriple nature in man. The legend of the \"Fallen Angels\"\nin its esoteric signification, contains the key to the manifold\ncontradictions of human character; it points to the secret of\nman's self-consciousness; it is the angle-iron on which hinges\nhis entire life-cycle; -- the history of his evolution and growth.\n\nOn a firm grasp of this doctrine depends the correct understanding\nof esoteric anthropogenesis. It gives a clue to the vexed question\nof the Origin of Evil; and shows how man himself is the separator\nof the **O**NE into various contrasted aspects.\n\nThe reader, therefore, will not be surprised if so considerable\nspace is devoted in each case to an attempt to elucidate this\ndifficult and obscure subject. A good deal must necessarily be\nsaid on its symbological aspect; because, by so doing, hints are\ngiven to the thoughtful student for his own investigations, and\nmore light can thus be suggested than it is possible to convey\nin the technical phrases of a more formal, philosophical exposition.\nThe \"Fallen Angels,\" so-called, are *Humanity*\n*itself. *The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred,\nhas never had *any being before *the appearance of physical\nconscious man. It is man who has begotten, nurtured, and allowed\nthe fiend to develop in his heart; he, again, who has contaminated\nthe indwelling god in himself, by linking the pure spirit with\nthe impure demon of matter. And, if the Kabalistic saying, \"*Demon\nest Deus inversus*\"* *finds its metaphysical and\ntheoretical corroboration in dual manifested nature, its practical\napplication is found in Mankind alone.\n\nThus it has now become self-evident that postulating as we do\n(*a*) the appearance of man before that of other mammalia,\nand even before the ages of the huge reptiles; (*b*) periodical\ndeluges and glacial periods owing to the karmic disturbance of\nthe axis; and chiefly (*c*) the birth of man\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 275 NO DEVILS OUTSIDE HUMANITY.\n\nfrom a Superior Being, or what materialism would call a *supernatural*\nBeing, though it is only super-*human* -- it is evident\nthat our teachings have very few chances of an impartial hearing.\nAdd to it the claim that a portion of the Mankind in the Third\nRace -- all those Monads of men who had reached the highest point\nof Merit and *Karma *in the preceding Manvantara -- owed\ntheir psychic and *rational *natures to divine Beings *hypostasizing\n*into their fifth principles, and the *Secret* *Doctrine\n*must lose caste in the eyes of not only Materialism but even\nof dogmatic Christianity. For, no sooner will the latter have\nlearned that those angels are identical with their \"Fallen\"\nSpirits, than the esoteric tenet will be proclaimed most terribly\nheretical and pernicious.* The *divine *man dwelt in the\nanimal, and, therefore, when the physiological separation took\nplace in the natural course of evolution -- when also \"all\nthe animal creation was *untied,*\"* *and males\nwere attracted to *females -- that race fell: *not because\nthey had eaten of the fruit of Knowledge and knew good from evil,\nbut because they knew no better. Propelled by the sexless creative\ninstinct, the early sub-races had evolved an intermediate race\nin which, as hinted in the Stanzas, the higher Dhyan-Chohans had\nincarnated.** \"When we have ascertained the extent of the\nUniverse and learnt to know all that there is in it, we will multiply\nour race,\" answer the *Sons of Will and Yoga *to their\nbrethren of the same race, who invite them to do as they do. This\nmeans that the great Adepts and Initiated ascetics will \"multiply,\"\n*i.e*., once more produce *Mind-born *immaculate\nSons -- in the Seventh Root-Race.\n\nIt is so stated in the Puranas; in *Adi Parvan *(*p.\n*115)* *and *Brahma* *Purana, *etc. In\none portion of the *Pushkara Mahatmya, *moreover, the separation\nof the sexes is allegorized by Daksha, who, seeing that his will-born\nprogeny (the \"Sons of passive Yoga\"), will not create\nmen, \"*converts half himself into a female *by whom\nhe begets daughters,\" the future females of the Third Race\nwhich begat the giants of Atlantis,\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* It is, perhaps, with an eye to this *degradation *of\nthe highest and purest Spirits, who broke through the intermediate\nplanes of lower consciousness (the \"Seven circles of fire\"\nof Pymander), that St. James is made to say that \"this Wisdom\n(*psuche *in the original) descended not from above, but\nis earthly, sensual, *devilish*\"; and *Psuche*\nis *Manas, *the \"human soul,\" the Spiritual Wisdom\nor Soul being *Buddhi. *Yet Buddhi *per se, *being\nso near the Absolute, is only *latent* consciousness.\n\n** This is the \"undying race\" as it is called in Esotericism,\nand exoterically the fruitless generation of the first progeny\nof Daksha, who curses Narada, the divine Rishi, alleged to have\ndissuaded the Haryaswas and the Sabalaswas, the sons of Daksha,\nfrom procreating their species, by saying \"Be born in the\nwomb; there shall not be a resting place for thee in all these\nregions\"; after this Narada, the representative of that race\nof *fruitless *ascetics, is said, as soon as he dies in\none body, to be reborn in another.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 276 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nthe Fourth Race, so called. In the Vishnu Purana it is simply\nsaid that Daksha, the father of mankind, established sexual intercourse\nas the means of peopling the world.\n\nHappily for the human race the \"Elect Race\" had already\nbecome the vehicle of incarnation of the (intellectually and spiritually)\nhighest Dhyanis before Humanity had become quite material. When\nthe last sub-races -- save some lowest -- of the Third Race had\nperished with the great Lemurian Continent, \"the seeds of\n*the Trinity of Wisdom*\"* had* already acquired\nthe secret of immortality on Earth, that gift which allows the\nsame great personality to step *ad libitum *from one worn-out\nbody into another.\n\n(*b*)* *The first war that earth knew, the first\nhuman gore shed, was the result of man's eyes and senses being\nopened; which made him see that the daughters of his Brethren\nwere fairer than his own, and their wives also. There were rapes\ncommitted before that of the Sabines, and Menelauses robbed of\ntheir Helens before the Fifth Race was born. Titans or giants\nwere the stronger; their adversaries, the wiser. This took place\nduring the Fourth Race -- that of the giants.\n\nFor \"there *were *giants\" in the days of old,\nindeed* and the evolutionary series of the animal world is a warrant\nthat the same thing took place within the human races. Lower still\nin the order of creation we find witnesses for the same in the\nflora going *pari passu *with the fauna in respect of size.\nThe pretty ferns we collect and dry among the leaves of our favourite\nvolumes are the descendants of the gigantic ferns which grew during\nthe carboniferous period.\n\nScriptures, and fragments of philosophical and scientific works\n-- in short, almost every record that has come down to us from\nantiquity -- contain references to giants. No one can fail to\nrecognize the Atlanteans of the Secret Doctrine in the Rakshasas\nof Lanka -- the opponents conquered by Rama. Are these accounts\nno better than the production of empty fancy? Let us give the\nsubject a few moments of attention.\n\n-------\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The traditions of every country and nation point to this fact.\nDonnelly quotes from Father Duran's *Historia Antigua de la\nNueva Espana *of 1885, in which a native of Cholula, a centenarian,\naccounts for the building of the great pyramid of Cholula, by\nsaying as follows: \"In the beginning, before the light of\nthe Sun had been created, this land (Cholula) was in obscurity\nand darkness . . . . but immediately *after the light of*\n*the Sun arose in the East, *there appeared gigantic men\n. . . . who built the said pyramid, its builders being scattered\nafter that to all parts of the Earth.\"\n\n\"A great deal of the Central American history is taken up\nwith the doings of an ancient race of giants called Quinanes,\"\nsays the author of \"Atlantis\" (p. 204.)\n\nNext Section\n\nContents",
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